I have been officially open for business on Etsy for 22 days. I have 2 sales, 433 views and 64 items listed. So far, so good in terms of sales as I wasn’t expecting to have any by now, but I wanted to kind of share my earliest impressions of selling on the site. I’m hoping this may provide some insight into what it’s like to be really new on Etsy for anyone considering joining. I’ve read so many articles about how to start a shop but none from the perspective of someone who has just started so I want to share with you want I have learned over the last busy busy month.

I am HELLA busy right now so this is going to be a quick bullet point list. Hope ya don’t mind.

• Etsy is REALLY easy to use. Very easy, anyone could open a shop there if you had something handmade/ vintage/ crafty to sell.
• Get your shipping & returns policies all planned out before you open your shop. When you open a shop Etsy makes you list something as you are making your seller account so have a product prepared when you make your shop.
• Get  the max amount of free listings when you open by opening with a referral link. I really don’t want to seem scabby in this point but free listings are a massive help when you start your shop. Etsy gives its sellers a link that people can sign up with and get 40 free listings saving you $8. Get yourself one of these and use it. When I opened my shop Etsy had a promo on where I could get 20 free listings and I regretted using it when I found out about the 40 listings link. The seller gets 40 free listings too. I’m going to include mine here if anyone wants it, but of course if you have a friend with an Etsy account ask them for theirs and you both can have 40 free listings. They will be so grateful. My Link —>  http://etsy.me/2g9AwO4
• Listings take so much time. Try to find ways to reduce the time. Try to factor the amount of time you spend on listings into your price.
• Actually, the entire shop takes a crazy amount of time. If you have lots to list it will take you ages. If you make a mistake in the shipping part of your listing that you copy and pasted into every one you will manually have to go through and fix them all. It takes ages to figure out how much postage to charge for each country. Prepare to spend a decent few hours/ days setting up shop.
• Etsy fees will be more than you’ll expect. It only advertises a $0.20 listing fee and a 3.5% commission but there’s a bit more to it than that. In the UK you’ll pay £0.04 ish tax on all the listings and some on the transaction. Yeah. They charge you £0.14 for transactions too. It aaaaall adds up so make sure you grab those free listings.
• Shipping is so important. I’m very lucky enough to have a dad that works for Royal Mail and knows the ins and outs of my countries postal service. Your packaging should be protective and waterproof. Your postage label should be covered in sellotape to protect it from the rain. Don’t leave your parcels/letters in post boxes over night after collection and make sure the weight of your parcel is correct.
• And finally , etsy is such a rush! That first cha ching on your phone is the best feeling ever, I want to hear it over and over.

Good luck future etsians! I hope this post was helpful!