How to Sell on Etsy: An easy place to start a bling or embroidery business

Even if you have a small budget you can get started with a rhinestone or embroidery business on Etsy.

Etsy is an excellent online resource for selling your wares. If you’re a small-business owner, a designer, a reseller, or an apparel decorator, this is a great site. If you’re producing anything in relatively small quantities—for example, that don’t perhaps justify an entire website, which can be expensive—Etsy is the perfect option for you.

Etsy allows you to create an online store within the their website. You can customize your store with a banner and logo. You can sell your products in your store, and upload your own photos to accompany them. You can tag each product under the category it fits under, or how you want people to find it. For example, if you’re selling Bling or rhinestone tshirts, you could tag an item with “bling, rhinestones, tshirts” and any user searching these tags will come across your item. You can get very creative and even make custom rhinestone stickers.

Etsy is useful because it provides an entire system and online presence for your product. Customers know they can trust Etsy’s online-payment system, and Etsy organizes everything for you so all you have to worry about is pricing your item, shipping it to the customer, and collecting your payment. Etsy, like Paypal and Ebay, also has its own dispute system, in case any problems occur. As there is also a rating system in place, you can get positive and negative reviews based on your selling prowess. If you prove to be a reliable seller, with fast shipping and a good response time, chances are you’ll get 5-star reviews. These positive reviews will help you sell your products. Additionally, Etsy has a very handy messaging system set-up, so you can interact directly with the customer without having to resort to email.

There are no membership fees on Etsy. All you have to do is go onto etsy.com and follow their easy instructions to creating an account. You will need a valid credit card to sign up (for verification purposes). You will need to convert your buyer account into a seller account in order to create a store. Etsy will guide you through how to name and list your store. You can give information about your store and your products in the profile section of your shop. Make it easy-to-read, fun, and informative. Most sellers on Etsy market an “easygoing” tone, so, as they say, keep it casual. Be sure to fill out your {“about the seller” tab, as well. Include a small photo of you and explain what got you into the business, what inspires you, etc. Give buyers the opportunity to get to know you—this will encourage them to support you by buying your products. Craft an attractive, noticeable banner to head your shop. They charge a small feel for each transaction and have some other upgrades as well, see their site for details. This fee might only be a small amount of change, which is nice if you don’t want to come out of pocket for all the costs of your own website. Colman and Company recommends our Patch Kit as a great item to sell for embroiderers. Patches are a good example of an item that you might want to experiment with different ideas. You can try custom name patches, iron on slogans or fun designs; this website can let you experiment with ideas… and prices. Find the right items for your customers without having to make a big investment.

So once you’ve set yourself up, you’ll be ready to start listing products. Of course, to sell products, you must know at which price to sell them. The best way to determine the price is to input information into the following equation: labor + material + expenses + profit = wholesale x2 = retail price. Shipping is another cost on top of this, and is charged in addition to the cost of the item. Make sure you can estimate how much it will cost you to ship said item. Essential to selling your product are good pictures. Etsy allows you to upload five photos per product. Make sure you use them all and capture the product at every angle. High-quality photographs will make your item look 100x better—poorly photographed items look cheap and poorly-made, even though they might be of high professional quality. Selling Rhinestone tshirts or other apparel is a perfect example of this. If you use rhinestone transfers, you want to be sure you are taking pictures in very good lighting, this will help show off the bling and get people excited to order from you. When you use Colman and Company rhinestones you will find that the brilliance is fantastic and you will absolutely have people returning to your Etsy page.

And that’s it! As you can see, selling on Etsy is actually quite easy. So get out there and start making money! If you need ideas for some items you can sell visit Colman and Company and click around!