A friend of mine recently asked me how to open a shop on etsy. A young friend of her’s had made a lanyard bracelet that she felt was so cool everyone would want one. Rather then give her the very basics on where to sign up for his shop, I felt I could give him a little insight into what you REALLY have to do when you open your shop. Advice I think many of us would have liked to had gotten before we took on this task:

1. search the site for similar items. see what people are calling it, how well they are selling, how much competition you would have.
2. think of a descriptive and memorable shop name, then do a etsy/google search for it. see if anyone else anywhere is using it. If so, try something else. You want to make it easy for people to find you by being different.
3. Open your account
4. take great pictures close-up of the bracelet on a plain white background as well as on a wrist.
5. think about who would wear the bracelet and write a description with that person in mind. Is it retired women going to a formal function or teen boys who ride skateboards? Give as much detail about the bracelet as possible.
6. Will be you be taking returns? How will you be shipping? could you do custom orders? Be sure to write this information in you policies section.
7. USE ALL YOUR TAGS. I cannot stress this one enough. This is how people will find your bracelet amongst the gazillion listings that go up every day.
8. tell everyone you know to tell everyone they know about your shop. twitter, facebook, myspace, youtube, and anything else you know about because you are young and know much more about this stuff then we do.
9. list 1 every day and experiment with how you list them to see what gets the most views. like one could be under jewelry while another is under accessories.
10. in the end the one listing will only cost you 20¢ but you are going to have to make at least 10 to be taken seriously.

hope that was helpful.

What advice would you wanted to have before you opened your shop?