This can be a full-time job in and of itself to turn your Etsy shop into a full-time job. However, just like in life, the duration of effort you put in determines your level of achievement. The distinction is that on Etsy, squandering time in the incorrect sections of your shop could be unsatisfying and even unpleasant.

We prepared a list of To- dos after extensive research and some personal experimentation that will optimize your Etsy business and inevitably help your business grow. The trick is to figure out what’s lacking or needs to be improved in your shop & concentrate on that. Here’s how to increase etsy sales –

Add new items

The more things you have now in your store, the more likely it is that clients will expect from you. Every time you upload an innovative product, Etsy’s algorithm provides you a boost. You don’t even have any new items to add? It’s not a problem. You can make packages off of your current products. If you sell headbands, for instance, you could put together a 3-pack or 5-pack bundle. This would have the added benefit of raising the average consumer expenditure.

You don’t have to add new things every day (that’ll burn you out), but try to add a few other new products per month to keep the shop from being stagnant.

Optimize title and description

It’s important to make your title and description shine out in the Etsy search engine results – and on Google – if you want to be found. This will assist in attracting customers to the product. To begin, use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to discover what people are searching for when they are searching for a product in your category.

You may also use Etsy to look for keyword phrases. Take a glance at this one, for example. For instance, let’s say you’re selling “baby shower” items. Use Etsy search and put “Baby Shower” to get search terms. You’ll notice a list of terms that consumers frequently utilize from there.

Market your shop

Etsy allows you to shop in a really attractive way. You link your products with that quality to establish a pleasant visual “feel” for the shop. If you’re not a skilled designer, engage a freelancer or somebody you know to develop your header image and give your store an experienced and welcoming air. Branding on Etsy is very much about reliability, your logo, the headline picture, and how your products, logo, and shot all work together just to tell your story.

Step away from the big competition

It’s vital to realize that Etsy has millions of businesses and the Internet has billions of websites. There is a lot more competition now regardless of what you sell.

The majority of individuals do not look beyond the first page of Google search results. People are trying to find what they’re searching for as soon as reasonably practicable, even on a website like Etsy. As a result, it’s critical to position your online material as close to the actual search engine results as feasible.

You simply cannot compete with Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, and other large firms on Google. So go narrow and fight with fewer firms to get your website on the top page of Search engine rankings. E-Commerce sites are catering to the people who are looking for a large slice of a large pie. Big corporations aren’t interested in small pies, which leaves a gap in the market for your company. Aim for a large slice of a tiny pie.

You could be fighting with other smaller companies on Etsy. However, there are so many Etsy shops attempting to appeal to the general public that you still have an opportunity to step out by marketing to a niche.

Take help from a professional photographer

Your smartphone camera is, therefore, no longer up to the task! Because consumers can’t touch or feel your goods, your photos must highlight their best features. Invest in a quality camera to improve your merchandise photography. Make absolutely sure you have adequate lighting, a clean item area, and a pleasing backdrop. Always be sure to emphasize the size and purpose of your product, as well as whether it’s scaled. Don’t stress if you make mistakes; anyone can use a picture editing program to fix any lighting or color errors, as well as crop your photograph.

Packaging

Another component of your merchandise that you should not overlook is the packaging. Sending a wonderful thing in a pity-worthy package is not a good idea. You don’t have to go all overboard, but we live in a world where people evaluate a book by its cover, you’ll have to put a lot of effort into the packaging’s design, even though it is, after all, the very first item your buyers see.

The packing you use will ultimately depend on the things you’re selling, but it’s worth investing in because it adds value to your sale and protects the item while being transported.

Whether you’re deciding on the best CNC materials for a machining process or selecting sustainable raw elements, there are multiple factors to consider, including:

• Availability
• Pricing
• Performance
• Industry regulations
• Manufacturing environment

Here we’ll run through these crucial considerations to help you select the right manufacturing material for your product.

Availability Of Materials

Over the last year, businesses have experienced extreme shortages owing to pandemic restrictions, economic pressure, and logistical challenges.

Forbes reports show rising commodity prices and shortages in everything from lumber to semiconductor chips.

It’s essential to consider the supply chain and whether specialized materials are available when it comes to choosing your product materials. Some may not be available with the same lead times and reliability, and you don’t want that to hurt your manufacturing.

Shipping is also crucial since raw materials requiring special packaging or transport arrangements may be harder to get when they are in high demand.

Locally-sourced materials are often the most secure option, depending on the manufacturing sector. This option substantially reduces transportation difficulties and increases the likelihood of quick turnaround deliveries.

Cost Implications Of Choosing Manufacturing Materials

The next factor is cost – a crucial consideration for any manufacturing process.

For most production companies, it’s a balancing act of:

• Lower cost vs. lower quality vs. higher profits
• Higher cost vs. higher quality vs. potentially lower profits

If you’re being forced to change some of your manufacturing materials due to pricing, now is an excellent time to analyze the demand for premium versions of your products, to see if it’s worth continuing their production.

Other options include:

• Testing and evaluating prototypes of lower-cost alternatives.
• Outsourcing material production to cut production costs.
• Restructuring your commodity offerings to introduce different price points.

The goal is to have sustainable manufacturing costs and output quality.

The Importance Of Manufacturing Material Specifications

When considering prototyping alternatives, the specifications required  will be a key driver in identifying suitable options.

It is helpful to look at the properties of the raw material. Look for the core features of the materials, including heat resistance, durability, storage requirements, and any handling tools.

Your product features are also crucial – what is the design of your device intended to achieve? What are the unique selling points that make your goods appealing to your target customer?

Identifying the key features of your products will help you determine the right materials to produce them with.

Identifying Industry Regulations 

Many industries have legislation and regulations regarding materials used in manufacturing.

Choosing a material without reviewing the regulations can cause major setbacks in production and cost you time and money.

For example if you’re working in the USA, some industry regulations include:

• Vehicle production or parts manufacture must comply with The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
• The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) regulates medical devices.
• The United States Department of Housing (HUD) regulates the construction, installation, and safety of manufactured homes.

One example in CNC milling is Aluminium 6061, a common general-purpose material used for its strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance.

This alloy is often used in auto parts. Therefore, vehicle manufacturing regulations may impact your ability to use this material in your products.

Likewise, Carbon Steel 1045 is commonly used in architecture. Businesses using the steel must have it tested and provide evidence that it complies with home building legislation. 

How The Production Environment Impacts Manufactured Material Selections

Finally, the manufacturing environment matters, so you’ll need to determine:

• The production processes required for your product.
• The end use of the product.

Once you know your production process and the product’s end-use, you can find materials that will work within those environments. 

If your products will be exposed to harsh environments, you might need to look at corrosion protection, chemical interactions, and protective finishes.

Products used solely in climate-controlled spaces may have greater flexibility. However, it’s still crucial to look at your intended materials durability and ensure that the materials are the right fit for your product’s use case.

With deliberate research and careful consideration, you can find the right materials to use for your products. Selecting the right materials will ensure your products don’t fail, prevent future roadblocks, and lead to higher profits. 

Digital marketing is about capturing the attention of your target audience by creating content that users find relevant and valuable. While traditional marketing strategies focused on print and media ads to reach customers, current content management and SEO efforts have become far more competitive and complex.

SEO is not only about the technical aspects of getting a page to rank but also about the brand stories that appeal to audiences across different platforms.

Rob Lloyd, Director of Lloyds SEO & Digital believes SEO is more than just words on a page or backlinks. According to Rob, good, long lasting results from any SEO strategy should focus on building a brand, and that requires a strong understanding of digital marketing as a whole.

To make the most of a contemporary SEO campaign, let’s look at the importance of choosing the right SEO agency and how they can help your business overcome the challenges of reaching the right audience, build quality strategies, and grow your business.

Agencies Help You Understand Your Target Audience

When you release an advert, you want it to reach the right people but for your brand message to be effective in a marketing campaign, you need to understand your target audience.

Modern SEO is about speaking to the needs of the customer and ensuring they feel valued. This means creating a digital marketing strategy that understands consumer problems, challenges, and their motivations. A digital agency will ask the questions: “How will I address their needs and why should they choose my business?”

While prior optimization strategies were only about Google’s algorithms, digital agencies are recognising the importance of value-added messages that problem-solve and satisfy the needs of niche markets.

By choosing an SEO agency with expertise and experience, businesses receive marketing campaigns based on industry research into your demographic, your brand story, and your goals.

Expertise in Digital Marketing

A trustworthy agency will not only help you with SEO but a whole digital marketing campaign. Because optimization is more about the user experience, agents focus on user friendly website design and content across digital platforms to improve your online visibility and reach your audience.

Every part of this process is based on more than just high ranking keywords but rather on the reach and the meaningfulness of content.

How Marketing Agencies Facilitate SEO

The role of a digital marketing agency is to help you understand your target audience by creating optimization campaigns and brand messages that connect to your market.

An agency that has experience within your niche, will create focused marketing efforts across platforms that are visited or used by your audience. This includes social media marketing, email marketing, pay per click, and web campaigns.

Agencies also have the expertise to create content marketing that extends beyond metrics alone. Content reflective of the target audience and niche drive sales and create growth. This means getting the message across a lot faster with tangible results that will build your audience and your brand.

Digital Marketing and the User Experience

The user experience cannot be forgotten in SEO. An agency that understands the importance of design and the user experience creates websites and online platforms that helps users understand what the brand or business is all about. It’s important to create a positive impression as soon as someone clicks on your web pages. When the intent of your brand message and who you are is clear, you are more likely to attract and retain online customers.

Apart from the website and content aesthetic, agencies emphasize the importance of fast load times, pages that are quick to navigate, and relevancy are sure ways of enhancing the user experience.

More Reasons to Focus on Digital Marketing as a Whole

Optimizing your website requires a competitive approach that tells a story about your brand across digital platforms. An expert agency who understands your niche, can develop content that speaks to the needs of your market by addressing their pain points. Through innovative and smart advertising, an agency will create pages that capture the attention of users. Because of their knowledge of what works and what should be avoided, they apply the correct language and use platforms that are frequented by your target audience. For example, if you wanted to reach business executives, an agency may use Facebook ads over Instagram or TikTok to appeal to this particular group. The wording and presentation of content are also integral parts of appealing to such a niche audience.

Achieving success in SEO is all about thinking outside of the box and having the right team on your side. By choosing your agency wisely, a custom SEO campaign will be designed to encompass a variety of online platforms, unique content creation, and the latest optimization trends. The purpose of these marketing tactics is to improve your online visibility and to give your audience more reasons to depend on you as their authority.

It seems like just about anyone can give business advice these days, but the better advice comes from those who have personally experienced the highs and lows, trials and tribulations, and hopes and fears of entrepreneurship.

 Luke Lazarus is a perfect example of someone’s advice that’s worth listening to. Even better, he’s willing to share his knowledge gained in more than 20 years of doing business.

As founder and CEO of Luke Lazarus Consulting, the Australian native is happy to help clients navigate all aspects of modern business, from marketing to accounting.

This support to clients can include everything from general pointers and encouragement for the owner of a start-up (or pre-start-up) who doesn’t have much more than big dreams, to an already-successful business owner who wants to move their organization to the next level in terms of increasing products, services, customer base, workforce and more.

Sometimes this help can include a deep dive into all aspects of the business from top to bottom to find areas that can be improved, made more efficient, or simply removed if they’re not serving their purpose. In some cases, with Luke Lazarus’s encouragement, a company owner can take steps to make larger structural changes and position his or her company well for the future. Sometimes this starts by going back to core values and building from there.

Luke Lazarus is also a proponent of using newer social media tools to better connect with existing and potential customers. Doing this correctly and consistently can be a challenge, but with guidance, great things can be achieved.

He encourages company employees and owners to look ahead to what customers may want or need in terms of trends, or what tools can help.

Learning and teaching

Luke Lazarus has had the spirit of an entrepreneur in him for years, even at a young age. He began his first business at age 8, and continued to work on the side while attending school, playing sports and other extracurricular activities. He maintained high grades and strong involvement in extracurricular activities.

When he was considering higher education, he received offers and invitations from some of the more prestigious universities in the world, including the Ivy League schools in the U.S. College officials praised his work ethic as well as high grades and attention to detail.

Ultimately, he decided to study at Melbourne Business School, where he earned a master’s degree in business administration at age 24. 

With a combination of “book smarts” and “real world smarts,” Luke Lazarus went forth into the world. Over the years, he launched four businesses and helped grow them from a good idea to a successful thriving company that he was involved in all levels of. Then, each company was purchased, netting him not only decent proceeds from the sale but the opportunity to move onto another venture.

At age 33, with financial independence achieved from several successful business sales, he could have easily walked away and pursued a life of leisure. But he still had a desire to share his skills to grow businesses, whether by himself or by guiding others, Luke Lazarus was ready to move into a new role: the business consultant. As an expert, he’s been able to directly help more than 100 businesses improve everything they do.

Be sure to plan

Luke Lazarus especially likes working with new companies as well as ones that are performing poorly financially. He teaches them skills to not only hang on and fix money problems that may have started right out of the gate or started small and grew. He also teaches owners better habits for going forward. Sometimes all the owners need is encouragement and some new strategies. Other times they may need more hands-on expertise in creating better processes. 

Like each business, the advice offered is different and unique for every situation. Some start-ups may need help with the basics such as researching their industry, their competition, their products and the other ingredients required for a business plan.

The business plan remains a great starting place, but also needs keep on evolving as the business grows. Some businesses may create a thorough plan when they open the company’s doors, but they soon put it aside.

Instead, Luke Lazarus suggests always keeping the plan around to be referred to for years. He also suggests looking beyond the plan to establish how the business connects to stakeholders and clients. This emotional connection is vital for attracting and keeping customers. Because anyone can offer certain products or services, or even certain price points, customers may use other reasons for choosing one business over another. This may even happen on a subconscious, emotional level.

He likes to invite businesses to consider this connection to customers first, and not get too caught up in the paperwork, the projections or the analytics. 

Although numbers are important to the bottom line and overall stability, Luke Lazarus said what’s especially vital is how the company is seen and perceived by others.

All company employees, from the CEO down, need to have a unified message about the organization and its value.

Social media efforts

Modern businesses need to have a social presence, since that’s where their audience can be found, and the various channels are where they can let the world know what they are.

Be careful about putting something on every channel unless you have the time or the staff to keep them active, which means always keep posting fresh content.

Luke Lazarus can be found on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Along with regular posts, businesses should look for ways to advertise on these sites. They can allow you to target your posts for certain demographic and geographic groups – essentially your ideal customers who will be most receptive to your message.

Always reaching out to new potential customers as well as keeping existing customers satisfied is a challenge that can be accomplished through social media use by your business.