Why isn’t my Etsy shop getting any sales?
Successful Etsy shops didn’t make it through luck, divine favoritism from the Etsy algorithm gods, or even talent.
I’m a top Etsy seller and consult on e-commerce for small and micro retail businesses. My Etsy shop, as just one part of my brand, brings in a solid income. At this time, I’ve hired someone to run the day to day operations while I focus on growth, design, and my other businesses. That’s a huge benefit to me since I have a chronic illness and need lots of rest. But I wouldn’t have been able to get to this point in my business without understanding niche and how it impacts my shop.
Niche is foundational to selling products, and all successful retail businesses understand niche well, whether through intuition or research. Whether you want to develop a side hustle or a main hustle using Etsy, understanding niche better will put you on par with the best shops.
A bestselling niche sticker for young LGBTQ+
folks made by ThinkingInSpace
So what is niche, exactly?
Put simply, niche refers to a specific group of potential customers who we target with a specific offering. These customers are defined by shared qualities - whether it’s interests, aesthetics, income, philosophy or politics.
But often, it’s the complex mix of these which, together, make these people see the world in a particular way and desire particular things.
By targeting specific, well-defined niches, we gain access to lower-competition markets where we can charge what we’re worth and build the perfect products and experiences for customers who we really, actually understand.
It’s easy to make mistakes with niche, however — and from my experience observing shops and coaching e-commerce clients, I see 3 main mistakes with niche over and over again. If you can avoid these mistakes, you’ll already be on your way to success.
In these articles, I’ll dive into 3 common niche mistakes that lead to dead Etsy shops. And I’ll answer the question “Why isn’t my Etsy shop getting any sales?” in just three main points. If your Etsy shop has no sales, if you’re not getting any Etsy traffic, or if your Etsy listings aren’t converting to sales, this article is for you.
Mistake #1: Thinking that niche is about types of products
Nike is aimed at people who want to take risks, challenge themselves and work hard to achieve excellence. They don’t just make sneakers or athletic wear, and their products aren’t for just anyone. (In fact, they’re not for me— which is just fine.)
In fact, their tagline is, “Nike delivers innovative products, experiences and services to inspire athletes.”
By orienting their niche around who they serve, they’re free to develop a wide array of things that audience would enjoy.
And because they know exactly who their products are for, they will hit the mark when they develop new offerings.
Similarly, your business should make an an array of products for a particular and well-defined audience.
It’s a mindset shift from “I make (X type of product)’ to ‘I make things for (X type of customer).
I see this misconception around niche as a “type of product” a lot among struggling Etsy sellers. Perhaps this problem is best explained by discussing a perennial Etsy fixture: The Very Nice, Unremarkable Candle Shop.
Ahem. Introducing…
The Cautionary Tale of the Very Nice, Unremarkable Candle Shop
They’re hand-poured. They’re soy. They’re Very Nice. In fact, these candles are JUST as nice as the nicest candles on Etsy from the top-selling candle shop.
The pictures… are good. The SEO… is fine. And the prices? Reasonable.
So how many sales have they had?
That depends heavily on if you count their very kind and supportive friends and family.
“Why aren’t I getting any sales on Etsy?” the seller might post in a seller group or Etsy forum. They might attach their dead Etsy stats page to attest to just how bleak things are.
They are hoping for a magic trick that will turn their shop into a moderate success. Surely better SEO will do it. Surely, some different pictures will turn things around.
Once I came across a seller of Very Nice Unremarkable Candles on an Etsy forum and suggested she might focus more on niche by developing products to suit specific, defined audiences. She replied, “But Very Nice Unremarkable Candles are my niche! How can I focus more than that?”
And sure - in an alternate universe, this seller might be doing great — if there weren’t 10,000 other sellers who also make Very Nice Unremarkable Candles.
But in this universe, we have a problem, because people just aren’t buying enough Very Nice Unremarkable candles to support that many sellers.
If we all shopped for candles like @dril, we could finally support all the Etsy sellers who make nice candles.
Sellers who find themselves in this position have two options: Evolve or go out of business.
Evolving means going back to the drawing board and figuring out who your products are for, and then designing things that will delight and electrify that target customer. It can be a challenge, but it’s well worth it.
Mistake #2: Having the wrong size niche or lacking uniqueness
Some sellers have a niche that’s built around a type of customer, which is a great start, but they’re still not getting any sales. Their products are good, and their photos might even be excellent. But still, they limp along with a few sales a week, at best. They aren’t running a store, they’re watching their dream stagnate.
If that sounds familiar, you might have the wrong size niche.
Many small business owners belong to the same customer niche as the one they market and sell to. Their customer niche isn’t so much something they chose as it is where they ended up by default.
That can be a huge asset. Being similar to your own customers helps you understand them intuitively and develop the correct products and approach.
SouthLakeGifts makes very unique candles such as this potted succulent candle. They have over 14,000 sales.
But it also has risks.
Ideally, when we choose a customer niche to sell to, we will choose that niche partly based on the size of that niche relative to the size of our business.
There should be a good match - smaller online businesses benefit from small to mid-sized, well-defined niches.
It’s similar to how many social networks grow: They start out doing just one thing and doing it well, then expand once they’ve grown. Facebook started out as being only for Harvard students, then expanded to North American universities before expanding to the general population.
If it had tried to compete right out the gate as a general-purpose social network, it would have failed.
Instead, it focused on a limited niche that was better suited for the size of the business at that time. When it had grown enough to finally open to the general public, it was a strong contender with Myspace and overtook them quickly.
When you choose your customer niche based only on your own interests, you risk choosing a niche that is too popular or not popular enough.
Maybe you’re an Etsy seller of boho décor. You love that style, and you understand both the products and your customer base perfectly.
But your sales are low and flat. You get no native Etsy search traffic - instead you have to drive all the traffic yourself, painstakingly, from your own socials. You’re running ads that do nothing but drain your meager sales income.
A popular (and unique!) Boho decor wall piece by HYKRY
And you don’t know why, because you’re doing well creating the products. The photos are excellent. You know how to talk about your product. You know your customers. You’re doing nothing wrong.
Except that your niche is too big relative to the current size of your business.
In the big pond of your big niche, you’re the little fish that’s not getting any food. (A search for ‘boho’ on Etsy generates nearly 10 million results.) The traffic is all going to the high-powered, established shops. As they make more and more sales, Etsy prioritizes them even more.
You could take a blunt force approach and try to buy your way past them with ads. (May the gods have mercy on you and your bank account.)
But here’s some real talk: Running ads alone won’t do much except make Etsy richer. You can’t compete with established sellers even if your products are identical in quality. By virtue of their existing success and customer base, they will scoop up the traffic before it gets to you. They don’t even need to advertise on Etsy. (I don’t.)
Don’t get discouraged. You just need to build a smaller pond.
‘Niching down’ is one of the best ways to build a smaller pond for yourself and start getting some traffic.
Niching down is what we call the process of finding a smaller niche within your niche.
If you have just one product in your shop that sells, it’s time to figure out why that product has succeeded in terms of niche. If nothing’s selling yet, you’ll need to broadly evaluate your existing product niches, potential subniches, and other adjacent niches that may present better targets.
That candlemaker we discussed earlier could examine all the types of people that buy candles and the reasons that people buy candles. Through research, they find out that personalized anniversary candles sell well.
They develop a new style (please don’t omit this part) of personalized anniversary candle that’s different from the others, and start making sales! Along the way, they add in several other unique personalized anniversary gifts, and customers increase their average order value.
Sellers just starting out should focus on niches with keywords that return roughly between 5,000 and 100,000 results. And all sellers need to ensure they are offering something that is different from everyone else.
Mistake #3: Your Product Quality Isn’t Competitive In Your Niche
Many people will gladly help critique your SEO or your photos, but they won’t tell you if you simply are not producing good enough products.
It feels really personal and rude, so it’s a type of feedback you are probably not going to get, even if it’s needed.
The good news is that if your products aren’t up to par yet, it’s not the end of the road for your shop. In fact, it’s not even necessarily a major obstacle.
First, let’s talk about what it means for a product to be competitive in its niche.
JaneArtTideStudio makes incredible abstract paintings.
I’ll be the first to tell you that you do not have to be the best.
In fact, I would never advise that you make product quality your number one priority. Focusing on product quality over everything else isn’t the best way to make money, and it’s also not necessary.
The question isn’t, “Are your products perfect?”
It’s “Are your products good enough?”
A “good-enough product” is one that meets a reasonable standard of craftsmanship and is aesthetically appealing to its target customer. It’s been created with a level of skill that is passably professional.
If you aren’t sure if your products meet that bar, you’ll need some friends or even some strangers who aren’t afraid to give you an honest critique. Make sure to tell them you want honesty because you really want to improve. (I offer consults for Etsy sellers, as well.)
A good way to critique is the way we often do in design classes — give both a genuine compliment and a critique. There’s something to like about every piece! Ask for critique to be given this way, and you’ll find it more useful and easier to handle.
DebbyNeal makes beautiful acrylic pour paintings, an abstract painting style that has seen a huge number of products postings from amateur artists. Fad art styles can be lucrative for a select few
You can also ask questions like, “Would you buy it? Why or why not?” — and listen carefully. This info is uber-valuable, and even more so if it comes from multiple people inside your target market.
We all have abilities and talent in some areas and not others. Crafting a successful shop is as much about avoiding what you do badly as it is about leaning into what you do well.
If your product quality isn’t competitive, you’ll simply need to make things in a way that doesn’t rely on skills you don’t (yet) have.
All you need is good judgment— enough to know when you have hit the mark and when you haven’t.
One way is to lean into the skills that you have developed to a professional level while avoiding those you haven’t. The other is to outsource when needed.
You’re actually in a great position, because you can start thinking about your business as a business starting right now. Do you need to purchase art on a marketplace? Seek out public domain or vintage artwork? Should you concentrate more on product development than on implementation? Do you need to hire or outsource? Should you have products manufactured rather than handmake?
These things don’t make you a cheater— they actually align you with other successful business owners. Like you, most business owners can’t do all the jobs in their business, but they know quality when they see it and can pick winners.
They know how to leverage others’ skills and how to pull it all together. And they make more money because they don’t simply sell their labor (which we all have a finite amount of), they leverage resources to create value.
If you’d like to learn more about how to build an Etsy shop that’s wildly attractive to people in your niche, book a free consultation with me today.
