One of my very longtime clients has been selling on Etsy now for a few years and has had success. This is in addition to her own website and blog. I asked her if she would be kind enough to share some of her tips for success with selling vintage on Etsy.
Perhaps these tips will help you find your sweet spot of success selling on Etsy!
Mary Ann Kennedy owns The Gatherings Antique Vintage. She specializes in antique and vintage clothing, table linens, bed linens, fabric, home decor, sewing tools, quilts, and toys from yesteryear. She has been our client for more than 10 years and I feel quite confident in saying that Mary Ann knows more than a thing or two about selling antique and vintage treasures!
She notes that since vintage is essentially one of a kind unique items, there are very few repeat buyers. However, when an item sells, if she has a similar item, she lists that. Generally it sells quickly. So, listing similar items does generate sales.
Keeping it fresh is huge. As with any search engine, keeping your content fresh encourages the spiders and bots to revisit your shop or website. She advises that you list something in your shop every day or as often as possible. By doing this, you keep your store “fresh” and this does increase views. Visibility is huge, and results in sales.
Do your due diligence and list your products in the categories that are more popular. Do research to identify these Etsy categories that generate more sales, because these categories are where the buyers are going and looking.
When you get a review, thank the customer for taking the time to write their review. That’s just good customer service and makes the buyer feel appreciated for taking time out of their day to write you a nice review.
Utilize the Etsy Thank You Coupon. This encourages 2nd and 3rd time buyers and sales.
Connect to your buyers with a well written detailed description of each item, including the era of the item. This is especially important with vintage and antique items. Not only does it give you credibility with the buyer that you know what you are talking about, but if well written, it can make the buyer feel that they just have to purchase that particular item no matter what!
Another thing we do outside of Etsy is blog her products. Every month Mary Ann will send me a list of 15 items that she puts in her New Arrivals section of her Etsy shop. We do staggered blog posts for the month in her blog. Each blog post contains a link back to the item in her website store, another link back to the item in her Etsy shop, and yet another link back to her newsletter sign up form.
All of Mary Ann’s tips are in keeping with good SEO (search engine optimization) best practices for search engine visibility. Which has been a topic over the years that we have discussed many times in order to get her the best possible results.
Visit The Gatherings Antique Vintage website, blog and Etsy shop to see some of the beautiful items Mary Ann has to offer!