AN Etsy seller who made £107k a year in revenue has revealed her three top tips to success.
Dylan Jahraus, who often shares her selling advice on her social media pages, explains that the first year on Etsy was the scariest of her life because it was the year she got married, moved to a new state, got pregnant and turn down an “amazing” corporate job to go all in on Etsy.
However, it was a bold move that clearly paid off.
Speaking on her podcast ‘Etsy seller success with Dylan Jahraus,’ she says: “I went from not taking Etsy seriously at all to then closing out my first full year at £107k ($134,000) in revenue.
She then goes on to helpfully share some free invaluable lessons she learned along the way so that you don’t make the same expensive mistakes.
Do not start on Etsy casually
To begin with, she starts by saying that the first lesson she learned is to not start on Etsy casually if you’re kind of “half in half out.”
“You need to attack it like a business from day one,” she points out.
Dylan notes how she did exactly that when she first started, and would post one listing with one photo of the product, which was just a picture of something that was from her wedding.
“I treated this like an eBay listing,” she continues.
“It was just a really short title, not much potential.”
I went from not taking Etsy seriously at all to then closing out my first full year at £107k ($134,000) in revenue
Dylan Jahraus
The Etsy seller explains that after two months, it finally sold, but by this time she’d forgotten she even had an Etsy shop so she ended up scrambling to make it and ship it.
Dylan goes on to say how she slowly started seeing Esty more like a business.
“So with Etsy, now I’m posting things on Facebook,” she explains.
“I’m going to Craigslist and I’m doing anything to get my traffic up.
I kept doing that at volume because those actions were free and by month four I was hitting over £7.9k ($10k) a month.”
After realising this could possibly be something, Dylan says she started taking all of the principles she’d learned from her corporate e-commerce career and applied them to Etsy.
Create best seller badge listings in your shop
The second piece of advice that Dylan has is to do whatever it takes to create as many best seller badge listings in your shop as possible right away.
“Once something starts working for you, yes lean into it, but rapidly expand the rest of your product mix,” she recommends.
You really have to become very successful with multiple products, multiple listings, multiple categories
Dylan Jahraus
“At the same time, if you’re really looking to blow up your shop, you’re not going to do that in a linear way with one product that just steadily grows.
“It’s really one product doing well and then another product and then another product and then another product.”
Foe anyone eager to know how you do this, Dylan says it’s all to do with how you build the listing to begin with.
“You really have to become very successful with multiple products, multiple listings, multiple categories,” she says.
For example, she notes if you have a Tumbler made for teachers with a teacher’s name on it, it’ll do well for Christmas gifting, but then it may stop selling.
She says: “So then you’re going to also want to add maybe that same Tumbler but targeted towards bridesmaids. It could be a bridesmaid name Tumblr gift.”
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Dylan goes on to point out that this could then become a graduation Tumbler gift, then there’s Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparents.
Start selling things that your customers want
The successful Etsy seller concludes by noting that another big lesson she learned was to start selling things that your customers want versus only things you like.
“This was huge in taking my business beyond $10k per month,” she explains.
“The first thing I sold I liked. That was something that I used at my wedding, but everything after that I really didn’t like.
“So if your goal is to make money, I recommend emotionally detaching from the product.”