Keeping Your Shop Active ✽ And Advertising Through Etsy

I hope you all have had a blessed and restful Sunday today! I thought we'd talk about ways to boost our listings and advertise our shop without ever leaving Etsy, today...

One of the ways that you can help your keywords, tags, and titles do their work is to keep your shop "active". If your keywords aren't good, they don't give you much to work with, but if they are, you still want to give them a little help once in a while! If you let your shop get stagnant, or if you don't sell enough items, Etsy may push your perfectly good listing further and further back, just to bring forward shops that are continually "building up".

Some ways to keep your shop active are...
-Post new listings.
-Renew current listings (that will give that listing a boost, as well as helping your shop activity level).
-Rework keywords that may be hurting your sales (I've noticed a definite improvement in my shop views each time I've done this, so this is definitely a good, cheap way to do it!).
-Update your shop announcement section (you never want this out dated!!!)
-Share your listings (you can do this through an Etsy team, so you don't have to leave Etsy :) ).
-Switch out your featured listings, if you have a sale, or new releases, or seasonal items!
-Post a shop update.

These things just kind of keep your shop fresh, help you catch mistakes (like not taking down the "sale sign" yesterday), and let Etsy know that you haven't forgotten about your shop, meaning you probably mean business ;).

There are a few ways that Etsy has given you to advertise through their site:
-Promoted listings. These cost a minimum of $1 a day, but if you are confident you can make an extra $30 or more with them a month, you have nothing to lose! I've never done this, but if I did, I would promote my Custom Quote Canvas or my Music Chalkboard first. While my shop has about a 2% conversion rate (not as good as Etsy's desired 3%, but higher than Etsy's average 1%), those specific listings have a 6% and 3% conversion rate, respectively, so if I decided to spend the money, they would be the most likely to make it worthwhile. It's an option, but one that you do have to pay for, so that is up to discretion.
-Sharing your items with Etsy teams. You can share new listings, renewed listings, sales, coupons, best sellers... there is a team thread for just about everything (also threads for the "like for a like" game, but remember, that can be dangerous for your conversion rates). There are soooo many Etsy teams on Etsy, and you can get in ones just to share sales, just to sell crochet items, just to share Christian items, just for bloggers and Etsians to team up to build up blogs by advertising Etsy stores... it's endless! Pick some to be in, and start sharing just to give your items another place to be seen, but don't try to encourage too many people who don't want to buy to actually click on your item ;). I'm part of C.A.P.S.Team (Christian Artists Promoting Shops), if you want a place to start out on :). They have an Etsy group board, too, which would be great for building a Pinterest following if you use that platform as your social media advertising site!
-Posting shop updates. To do this, you will need a phone that can take and upload pictures, and the free "Sell on Etsy" app (comment: this thing sends you notifications for everything. I didn't know that when I downloaded it to share updates, and those first few "favorites" I got afterwards made me jump, haha! Tori said the noise sounds like a barn theme... lol!) My phone doesn't take great pictures, so I actually usually screenshot my product to get a picture to share... it works ;)! The great thing about shop updates is that they share with anyone who has liked your shop, followed you, or bought from you (if I remember correctly) without them having to sign up for anything, and not in an annoying way. It takes just a couple minutes, and you can tag listings in the update that will let people know where they can find what you are mentioning!

Do you actively update and freshen up your Etsy shop? Have you tried the Sell on Etsy app? And does it's notification jingle scare you at 5:00 in the morning ;)?