Building Your Etsy Business Tip #9 - Organizing Your Etsy Shop into Shop Sections

Personal Note: Every thing happens all at once. After I spent four months at home, patiently searching for a job while preparing to open my Etsy business, both efforts were rewarded at the same time! Unfortunately, for this blog that has meant a rocky start, as I have not had much extra time.  I now spend my days substitute teaching and my nights furiously sewing to build my Etsy inventory and to prepare for all of the upcoming craft fairs that I am now registered for.  This will mean inconsistent posts in this blog, as I work out the kinks of my suddenly extremely busy schedule. Thank you for bearing with me!

ETSY SHOP SECTIONS

Today I will be talking about setting up Shop Sections in your Etsy shop.

Your Etsy shop may contain mostly similar products. For example, all of my listings right now are fabric bags and purses.  Maybe you only make crochet items, or maybe you only make earrings. Even so, it is important to divide your Etsy shop into sections, because if an item catches a potential Etsy buyer’s eye, you want them to quickly and easily see all of the products that are most similar to the product they are interested in.  This is important because the entirety of your product line will not appeal to all of your customers all of the time.  For example in my shop, people who come to shop for sports-related items:

are probably not the same people who are going to buy a bag with owls, cats, or monsters printed on it:

To make it easier for Etsy shoppers to find the bag designs that they are most interested in, I have divided my Etsy Shop into Shop Categories.  You can always edit your categories, so just divide your projects into something that makes sense to you, and see if this organization system works for your shoppers!

As of October 7, 2014, my shop is divided into five sections; Sports Fan Bags, Pretty Print Bags, Halloween Bags, Christmas Bags, and Cute Critter Bags.  I have a few bags in the Halloween category that could work for the whole fall season or even year round. When Halloween is over, I will simply alter the category listing for these bags so that they are easier to find.

You can easily add your items to shop sections when you first list the item. However, this tutorial assumes that you have posted several items for sale without adding anything to the “Shop Section Category”.

Creating Shop Sections is really easy! Below, I have listed the steps required to do so!

1. Open an item on your Etsy page and select “Edit”.

2. Scroll down to below where you entered your product description and find the box labeled “Shop Section”

 3. Select “Add a section to your shop” and type in a name for your section. Remember, this name will be public, so make sure it is spelled correctly and will make sense to Etsy shoppers!

 If you want to add your item to a section that you have already created, simply select it from the drop down menu.

 4. Now scroll down, and select “Preview Listing”

5. You can now check if your item was placed in the correct Shop Section and Click “Publish”

6. Repeat this process for each of your Etsy items until your shop is organized!

It is best to start organizing your shop into sections in the early days of your Etsy business to save yourself the time that it will take to go through and edit each individual item later.

I hope that you find this tutorial helpful. Now get over to Etsy and start organizing!

Until next time, please check out my Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/PearTreeStitches and follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PearTreeStitches. Happy Crafting!

Getting Started with Etsy Day 4 - How to Estimate Shipping Costs

Today's topic is how to estimate shipping costs before listing items on Etsy. This is an important topic, because if the shipping costs are set too high, people will be reluctant to purchase otherwise inexpensive items. However, if the shipping costs are set too low, the Etsy seller may end up paying for part of the shipping and eating into his or her precious profits!

Here is what I did to estimate my shipping costs.

Step 1: Purchasing My Shipping Containers

My first three Etsy items are all Humbug bags. The medium size bags measure 7.5in x 5.5in and the small size bags measure 5.5in x 4.5in. Luckily, these bags are constructed out of sturdy quilted fabric, so they can be safely flattened for shipping.

Because shipping in the United States is priced based on weight, shape, and size, I wanted to purchase the smallest, lightest shipping container possible that would also keep my item safe during shipping.

I visited Staples and purchased some 8.5 x 11 inch bubble mailers. 

A package of 12 bubble mailers cost me $13.56.  This means that each envelope costs $1.13. I made a note of this price, so that I could add it into to my overall shipping cost estimate.

Step 2: Estimating the Weight of My Etsy Shipments

To estimate the weight of my Etsy shipments, I put together a sample package to weigh on my shipping scale. I placed one item inside one of my bubble envelopes. I also included three sheets of plain white printer paper.  When I ship my Etsy items, I will be including a printed letter-sized receipt.  I also assume that I will be making return address labels on my printer to make my Etsy shipments look more professional.  The three sheets of paper serve to estimate the added weight of a receipt and a shipping label.

I weighed one sample package with a small size humbug bag and one sample package with a medium sized humbug bag and took note of their weights.

Step 3: Estimating Etsy Shipping Costs

Next, I visited the website of the United States Postal Service (http://postcalc.usps.com) to find out how much it would cost to mail my packages both domestically and internationally. 

As of September 16th, 2014 it costs $1.19 to mail a 2 ounce, large-sized envelope from Boston, Massachusetts to San Diego, California through standard Priority Mail. I took this number and added it to the cost of a single bubble envelope. This resulted in a total shipping cost of $2.32. I rounded this number up to the nearest dollar amount, and I was left with a domestic shipping cost of $3.00. 

I repeated this same procedure with international destinations and came up with an international shipping cost of $8.00. 

Now, when Etsy asks me how much I will be charging my customers to ship an item, I have an accurate number to give that is fair to my Etsy customers and my own profit margin! 

I hope this tutorial was helpful! Tomorrow's topics include opening an Etsy shop and listing items on Etsy. In the meantime, please check out my new shop at www.etsy.com/shop/PearTreeStitches! Thanks for reading!