Journey to a Successful Etsy Shop - Part 1

Becoming successful on Etsy is not easy.  Initially, I set up my shop so I could make a little money to 'feed the habit' of my sewing and embroidering hobbies.  It didn't much matter to me that I only garnered a handful of sales the first year.  Or the second year.  

Recently though, I decided to put more effort into building a brand and business.  I wanted to drive traffic to my store and began researching the best way to do that.  There are literally thousands of articles written about how to drive more business to your website/store. Let me sum it up for you - it's not easy.  Or cheap.  Or quick.  No matter what they tell you. 

What I Started With - Facebook

I started with Facebook.  My Facebook page for my business is Sehosas Facebook Page.  I had a few likes on the page when I began my journey to success  - around 15.  For those of you not familiar - there is a difference in 'post' likes and 'page' likes.  With my newfound desire to make my shop successful, I started by posting photos on Facebook of some items in my Etsy shop.  I had a few post likes but no page likes from my efforts.  In essence, nothing happened.  No sales were generated from my efforts.

Then I learned that I could promote my page by having Facebook advertise it.  So, $30 later I had promoted my page and garnered about another 15 page likes.  I was up to 30 page likes.  In essence, nothing happened.  No sales were generated from my efforts.

I decided to try boosting posts instead of promoting my page.  Another $50 and Facebook had shown a few of my posts to roughly 2,000 people.  I had about 50 post likes and another 10 page likes.  I even promoted a giveaway and got 1 share and 3 comments (one was my own). Again, nothing had really happened and there were no sales.

While $80 isn't a huge amount of money, it's more than I would flush down the toilet.  Which is what I felt like happened with my Facebook endeavor.  

In the next post, I will review the next step I took - Google Adwords.