Week 15 Update on The Science of Renewing Your Etsy Items



Cuff links by MetalsinTime on Etsy

 Back in February, I posted an initial update to show the amazing success I was finding by playing the Renewing Game, as outlined by my girl Steph at nerd JERK.  It has now been 15 weeks since I began renewing items at strategically planned times every day, and I wanted to see how the numbers were looking thus far. 

To review briefly, I used Google Analytics to determine when I was having the most traffic to my shop, and then I scheduled different items to renew during those times using http://www.statsy.org/.  That's all I did.  It's that simple.  For those of you who aren't familiar with how Etsy works, when you do a search for a particular item, your search results are sorted in chronological order by the most recently listed item first.  Thus, to get the most exposure, you need to make sure your items are showing up first, and you can do this by renewing your items.  While you do pay to renew an item, the same price you'd pay to initially list an item ($0.20 per item), the return on your investment can be extremely high.

Why is this important? If you choose not to renew your items, you run the risk of falling deep in the search results and never being found.  Each listing on Etsy "buys" you 4 months time.  If you've got items in your shop that were listed 2 or 3 months ago, the odds of having those items seen can get really low.  If you're in a popular category, you might not get seen at all, as Etsy will only show the first how-many-ever thousand items in a category!

I've heard many sellers flat out refuse to renew, just because they simply don't want to spend the extra money, or feel its Etsy's way of ripping you off.  If you fall into this category, keep reading.  I've got evidence to show this renewing can actually work to your benefit!

For this comparison, I looked at the last 15 weeks that I've been strategically renewing (January 1 - April 16) to the previous 15 weeks (September 18 - December 31). 

Here are the cold, hard facts:

Item views:  increased by 161%
Revenue (aka money made!):  increased by 206%

Is that incredible, or what?! Its also interesting to note that there was 1 entire week in March where I didn't renew at all.  I was on vacation and didn't want to shut the shop down, but didn't want to encourage a high number of sales either :)

Would you like to see similar increases?  I firmly believe this will only work well for you if you have a sufficient number of items in your shop, if your item descriptions/tags are already fantastic, and if your item photos are great.  If you're already there, take notes on Steph's article, give this a shot and see where your sales go!

Pssssst.......juicy sales gossip! Pass it on!



Black Friday Sale!  All in-stock drink tags will be $5!

Although it may look like there has been little activity over at PinkyCrafts (as evidenced by my lack of posting!), that is definitely not the case. I've been working on a little surprise for my customers: a Black Friday sale!  I'll be taking part in this fun holiday tradition, along with several other members of the Etsy community, including my friends on the DTeam.

Ok, technically, it's a 5 day sale - but that's just even better news for you. It begins Thanksgiving Day, and runs until the end of Cyber Monday.  I'll be releasing tiny bits of information about the sale up until Thanksgiving, and maybe even posting extra special VIP coupons throughout the sale.  The only way you'll find out the details of this fabulous sale is to stay tuned to this blog or my Facebook fan site (http://www.facebook.com/pinkycrafts).

Now, without further ado, here is the first announcement about the sale:

*************All in-stock drink glass tags and wine glass charms will be $5*****************

Like all juicy news - make sure to pass this information on!  More details tomorrow!

Drum Roll Please........

Its official!  PinkyCrafts has been open for business for exactly six months!  It's been a wild ride, a learning experience, and such a blessing all at the same time.  During my former life in corporate America, I learned the importance of staying positive and celebrating life - this is the message I wanted my shop to carry. Its only now, nine months after I left that former life behind, that I can see why my early career was so important in shaping my life.  I initially felt that it was a waste, a disheartening experience that was all for nothing, and a waste of a very expensive college education.  However, now I feel like I've truly found my calling: helping people celebrate the good times in life. I had to have that early career experience in order to identify and appreciate this true goal for my life.  Every sale is still a thrill, and I'm so honored every time somebody selects me to help outfit their party or preserve their memories. 

Now for the cold, hard facts that I know everybody is curious about. Note - in case you were wondering, all of these facts DO NOT include me; all of my data has my visits excluded from them, so all the data is for legitimate customers/visitors.  Its also important to point out that no particular statistic will necessarily indicate how successful (or not) a shop may be; I'm just publishing my statistics for those new shops that may be curious, and to also document my first six months for myself!

Visits: PinkyCrafts had a total of 9,092 visits during the first six months, 2,362 of these were absolutely unique visitors.  I had an average of 49.15 visits per day. 23% of of my visits were brand new visitors (this right at the average for Etsy itself), while 76.66% of my visitors were returning visitors.  My visitors spent an average of 2:07 on my site.

Visitors: PinkyCrafts has been visited by shoppers all over the world - 86 countries total!  Here are the top five:
1. United States (7,980 visitors)
2. Canada (351 visitors)
3. UK (107 visitors)
4. Australia (99 visitors)
5. Argentina and Brazil (tie at 34 visitors each)

Referral Sources: My top five referral sources were:
1. Direct Etsy visitors
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. Etsy Finds emails
5. Twitter

Sales: I hit my 40th sale tonight, so I officially had 40 sales in my first six months.  Of those, 38 have been to US buyers, and two have been from Canadian buyers. My feedback rating stands at 100% positive, and I have 159 total shop hearts! My busiest month has been this month, September, by a wide margin.  I've had 11 sales so far this month, following only two sales during the month of August.  I've seen a 944% increase in profits this month over last month - woo hoo!  My most popular item has ended up being my drink glass tags; I've sold 230 of them to 10 different buyers in the two months since I introduced them!

Fun Facts:  I'm amazed at just how much information Google can provide about your visitors, such as 110 of my visitors were using a dial-up connection (!!); but this was only 1.21% of my visits.  How about this one - 9% of my visitors have visited my site more than 200 times!  And don't worry, this statistic doesn't include me; there really are people out there besides me that have been to my shop that many times!

I'm a data geek, so I hope this information was as interesting to you as it was to me.  Cheers to a successful second half of this first year for PinkyCrafts!