This content outlines a comprehensive, ad-free strategy for Etsy sellers to significantly increase traffic and sales by optimizing listings with customer-centric SEO and leveraging external traffic sources like Pinterest.
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How do you have a soldout Etsy shop? In
today's video, I'm going to give you the
no ads strategy that you have not heard
of, but that you need to know. Now, the
number one problem that I'm hearing from
Etsy sellers is that sales are down and
traffic is down. So, in this video,
you'll learn how to increase your
traffic, increase your sales, and
increase your conversion rate, all
without spending money on ads. Now, I've
been in e-commerce for over 13 years. I
worked for some big companies like
Zappos and Zoolilly in the buying and
product development side. And then I
started an Etsy shop when I married my
husband who uh was in the military and
we moved a lot. So I thought, okay, I'm
going to do some side hustles, try to
figure out what to do. And Etsy was one
of the side hustles. I ended up applying
everything I had known from corporate
e-commerce to Etsy. Made over a million
dollars in profit and 1.7 over 1.7
million in revenue. And that is my
background. I've started teaching Etsy
to people a few years ago. We've taught
over 5,800 Etsy sellers. We have a
company of over 53 people. And I also
own a software company called Etsio. And
that is an SEO software for Etsy
sellers. Number one thing to do is to
turn off your ads. Step one, turn off
your ads. Yes, I said it. Uh because why
is that? Well, number one, unoptimized
listings will ruin your shop when ads
are running because you're spending a
lot of money to put these products in
front of potentially, most likely the
wrong customers who don't convert, and
then it's giving you a lower conversion
rate, lower click-through rate, and it's
just signaling to Etsy all these red
flags about your shop, and it gives you
what they call a negative shop quality
score. Now, Etsy doesn't tell you what
your score is, but they say that every
shop has a quality score, a shop quality
score, and if you have a negative one,
it will impact your visibility. So, by
running ads to unoptimized listings, you
can create a negative shop quality
score, which just hurts all of your free
organic traffic. A lot of people don't
know how to look at return on ad spend,
and if it's under four, you're most
likely losing money. And then if it's
under two, you could almost certainly be
losing money. We work with sellers who
do millions a year. And when you peel
away the top 20 Etsy sellers that we
work with, only one out of 20 are
running ads. That is huge. So, now that
you've turned your ads off, we're going
to go to number two, which is to
optimize your listings with consistent
customer ccentric SEO. Now, let's talk
about traffic because there's two
components to traffic. The quantity, the
amount of traffic, and the quality of
traffic. how good those eyeballs are.
How much money do those eyeballs have in
their bank accounts and we don't want to
just get random bot traffic or people
who have no money or no intention of
spending money with us and so the
quality of traffic is super important.
SEO is how you get higher quality
traffic. What type of SEO gets you
higher quality traffic? Well, customer
centric SEO. The thing is most Etsy
sellers are creating their listings
using SEO that is super product focused,
right? Let's just say, okay, this mouse
pad is 6 mm neoprene black with
embroidered piping and 8 in by 11 in.
Okay, no one cares. I am looking for a
minimalist, washable, which I need to
wash this mouse pad. Okay, do you see
the difference? One set of keywords was
all about the product, which I know cuz
I put all the thought into making it. My
customer does not care. My customer just
cares that it's durable, that it's
washable, and that it's black. What do
they care about? What are the features
they care about? What is the what is the
occasion they're purchasing it for?
Where is the location they're going to
put it in their home? Who is the
recipient? And this is how quality
buyers search. Getting your stuff in
front of the wrong people that wouldn't
spend the money on it, that is going to
hurt your conversion rate, which just
ends up hurting the ranking of all of
your listings in your shop. So, think
about it this way. buyer centric SEO or
customer ccentric SEO. It's more purpose
focused, the purpose of it versus
product focus, the details of it. A
couple of examples I'm going to put up
that I like. It said USA pottery lavender/periwinkle
lavender/periwinkle
swirled large 6-in picture. Does the
buyer care that it's a 6-in picture?
What if it was 7 in? Do people know how
to spell periwinkle? And do they care
that it's swirled? Is is swirled
something they're typing in instead?
Right, here are some keywords that you
could add in. So like gray kitchen
picture, ceramic, pottery, kitchen wear,
bridal shower gift, wedding keepsake,
right? Because that is the purpose of
this product. It's very unlikely that
someone would spend, let's say it's a
$100. Would someone buy that for $100
for themsel or they more likely to buy
that for $100 if it is a bridal shower
gift? And which one has a stronger
buying intent? Someone needs to buy a
bridal shower gift. that is something on
their list that they have to check off.
They have a budget for that. They're
going to spend money on that purpose for
themselves. They're really just
browsing, right? And and to convert on
something like that, it's a much lower
percentage. So, a much lower quality
type of traffic. Now, let's look at
this. This one, comfort colors
respiratory therapist t-shirt. Master of
oxygen, guardian of breath, celebrate
lung heroes, got oxygen. Wow. If I was
going to buy that for a nurse, would I
think of any of those things? No.
Absolutely not. Got oxygen. I would
never even think to type that into Etsy.
How about celebrate lung heroes? I would
never even think that. But what about
this floral nurse oversized t-shirt?
Oversized fit. That is part of purpose
and utility. Perfect gift for nursing
grads. All right. Recipients,
respiratory therapists, or class
celebration. that assigns a much more
purpose and utility to that product. So,
okay. So, we've talked about having
consistent customer- ccentric SEO as
number two. Now, the third thing that
you need to do to succeed on Etsy, no
ads required, is to tap into Pinterest
most profitable traffic. And Pinterest
is a gold mine. I I will like die on
this hill because Pinterest can bring
you traffic 10 years from now. And wow,
what a good ROI on 20 seconds. It is
also a search engine. Pinterest is a
search engine. People type things in.
There's there's an algorithm. There's
ranking, which means there's so many
ways to get traffic by competing in that
s in those search results. It is
basically like adding another search
engine that is funneling traffic to
Etsy. So, it's like having a second
engine running traffic to that listing.
Your competitors likely don't have that
working for them. It's also the same
customer on both an Etsy and Pinterest,
which I love. It's very similar
customer. So, strong alignment there.
It's super super easy to outsource
Pinterest. You could task it out to
someone who is lower skill set, maybe a
VA. You could easily train them on this.
The plan for Pinterest is to be doing 20
pins per day, 7 days a week. So, 20* 7
game plan, 20 pins a day, 7 days a week.
You're going to have tons and tons of
boards with this. You do not have to do
Pinterest ads. So, no Pinterest ads
required, but optimization is a must,
which is why we talked about
optimization previously. Pinterest does
not work if your listings aren't
optimized. Pinterest requires that you
have Pinterest optimized listings. SEO
is a huge part of that. So, if your SEO
is broken on Etsy, good luck on
Pinterest. It Pinterest would be a total
waste of your time. And what I've
noticed is people who say Pinterest
doesn't work for me, they weren't doing
it right. They didn't have the right
SEO. their listings weren't optimized
for Pinterest. So, when I look at their
listings, I say, "No wonder it didn't
work for you. Of course, it didn't work
for you. I would have never expected it
to work for you." And for me, you can
kind of see on the screen here,
Pinterest brought me 552,000 visits to
my shop. And that's almost double Etsy
search. And that was free Pinterest. And
you can see out of the 589,000 visits
from social media, this is free social
media, Pinterest was like 90% of that. I
spent definitely more than twice as much
time doing Facebook than Pinterest. Yet,
look at the results. So, when you're
looking for a good ROI on your time,
Pinterest absolutely is it. Now,
Pinterest is the long game. So, this
doesn't work overnight. This is not a
quick fix. So, this brings me to number
four. And the fourth step is actually
what I call our fast track suite of
traffic. Now, I'm an impatient person,
so I get it. You want traffic yesterday.
And so I'm going to give you on the
screen my favorite traffic sources for
fast traffic and they are Facebook, Tik
Tok, Instagram, LinkedIn, email
marketing, PR gift guides, blogs,
influencer marketing, YouTube shorts and
long form, Etsy forums, OOTD forums,
that means outfit of the day, and B2B
groups and communities like school
communities or circle communities. The
key is mastering one platform at a time.
You can automate a lot of this with
tools like ManyHat. You can outsource
this type of lead genen to VAS for a
very low hourly rate. You want to apply
these channels to your highest
converting listings. So, it's really
worth the time. And always, always,
always look at the value of a view. So,
what is the value of a view? I want to
go over this. And this this is actually
a screenshot from my shop. You want to
scroll down on your stats. You're going
to sort by views, high to low. So, you
can see the views. And then on the right
side, you can see the revenue that came
from those views. And then we're going
to do a little math. I want to teach you
an equation called the value of a view.
And what you're going to do is you're
going to take the revenue on that
listing and you're going to divide it by
the traffic. So for example, this top
listing, I did $102,000
on it and I got $264,000
views on it. So 102 divided by 264. That
is 38. So 38 is the value of every view.
So for every one view I got, I got about
38 cents of revenue. So the value of
every view on this product is 38. Now
let me go to the second one.4 $46,000 on
that and then $127,000 views. So 46,000
divided by 127,000
the value of a view was 36. Now let's go
to the one below it. $62,000 in revenue
divided by 118,000 views. Oo, the value
of that view is 52
per view. Lastly, let's do the bottom
one. 52 was the S and then the flower
wall. $54,000 divided by 95,000
views, 56 cents. So, I will have a
stronger return of driving traffic to
these bottom listings compared to these
top listings. So the value of each view
on the S and the flower wall was over 50
cents. So it is so worth my time to be
doing the fast track suite on these
listings because if I can get 20 people
to see the listing on average I'm making
$10. That is huge. And you don't have to
pay for ads for any of this. Now the key
is having consistency with these
strategies so that you get consistent
traffic. And what these strategies do is
it creates this bakedin builtin free
organic traffic to your shop. And that
way it's not like ads where like you
turn the faucet on, you turn the faucet
off and everything changes about your
revenue. Now I will say these strategies
are not intuitive. These are not taught
on YouTube what you do on each of these
platforms which means good for you
because your competition is not doing
this. It gives you a competitive
advantage and Etsy sees those listings
as higher converting and then used to
start ranking higher than your
competition and Etsy loves when you
drive external traffic. They even have
share and save links so that when you do
drive external traffic, you don't pay
any Etsy fees on that transaction. If
you are at a point where you have low
traffic, you need to take strong bold
action in order to build a strong
organic base. So dipping your toe in
just, you know, doing something once,
putting a post up once, creating an
account, you have to fully commit to
mastering one platform at a time. You
might be thinking, "Well, wow, that
seems like so much work, Dylan. I don't
know if I want to do that." Well, I made
over a million dollars in profit. I
retired my husband when he was 37 years
old. So, yeah, it's a lot of work, but
is it worth it? Absolutely. You know, it
got us full financial freedom in our
mid-30s. So, yes, it's a lot of work.
It's strategic. It's learning, but you
can do it if you want to. And that is
why I say winning is a choice. It's
going to require you to learn strategies
and tools and steps that you don't know
currently. You can win if you want to.
Right now, the number of buyers is
outpacing the number of sellers on Etsy.
Most sellers don't have any advanced
strategy. And so, if you are willing to
learn how to be more competitive, how to
grow your business, you can do really
well. And the important thing to
remember is doing more of what's not
working doesn't make it work. And I
mentioned we help Etsy sellers scale
their businesses. Whether they are a
beginner, they don't even have a shop,
or whether they are already making over
a million dollars a year. We help
sellers from all levels. We have over
half of our company dedicated to
supporting sellers with their shops. Uh
because we assign two to three coaches
to your business. We're giving you
personalized guidance. you have calls
with me twice a week and it just ensures
that any 15 minutes you are putting into
Etsy, we want to make sure that you are
focusing on what I call profitable
action steps. Otherwise, you're spinning
your wheels. You're wasting your time.
You're not going to really be going
anywhere. If you are open-minded to
learning about what a custom plan for
your shop would look like, if you're
open-minded to learning new strategies,
or if you're open-minded to the types of
results that our clients are getting,
and you would like to learn more, you
can book a free call with us to learn
more about that on the call. It's about
45 minutes, totally free. We will put
together a custom plan for your shop.
Everyone needs a different level of
support. So, we have made over 400
custom plans for people before to fit
the level of support they need, their
budget, whether you need a lot of help,
just a little help. So, if that
interests you, you can book a free call
with us. Again, whether you join us or
not, you would leave that call with
clarity on what you should be focusing
on and what you're missing. And if you
want to see the real-time results of
these strategies for yourself with your
own eyes, you can comb through all of
our results inside of our platform.
We've actually opened up the back end of
our platform where our students are
posting and you can kind of be a fly on
the wall and see all the results that
are coming in real time. All of our
guidance is personalized for you.
Nothing cookie cutter, nothing generic.
It's all about your shop, your listings.
We're actually pulling your shop open,
helping you choose the right customers,
choose the right products, fix your
specific listings. SEO will help you
with competitor analysis for your
specific shop. Everything is catered to
you. what you want to do. It's not
generic advice. It's not like watching
YouTube videos. It's all about your
specific shop. And then our trainings
and tutorials are over 500 hours. All
right, everyone. I hope you are all
willing to take these actions. Remember,
step one, turn off your ads and then
follow all the steps in this video. And
I cannot wait to hear about your
results. All right, guys. I'll see you
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