 So, what should you know about before opening your Etsy shop? Well, like all good things, it does come down to preparation. And I really believe that that 80-20 rule is alive and well here, 80% is in the preparation and 20% is in the simply setting up the shop. Isn't that good to know? Because in this video, I'm going to share with you nine steps that you need to take in order to get fully prepared to open up your Etsy shop. So that you can focus on creating fabulous listings from your amazing art. Well, hello and welcome or welcome back to my channel. My name is Sophie and I love to help artists just like you to set up, market and grow a highly profitable business doing what they love. And if you'd like more tips and tricks on exactly that building your art business, then you're in the right place. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and the bell to get notified every time I post a new video. Let's go ahead and look at those nine things you want to do in preparation before you go ahead and open up your Etsy shop. So number one, number one, you want to make sure that you've chosen the sales platform as the best platform for you because your audience is already on Etsy. They're already shopping on Etsy. They're looking around. They're saving. They're liking your audience profile of the people who are already using that platform. There is completely no point in you setting up a shop if your audience is over there shopping offline in a little boutique somewhere. So you want to make sure that you have done things like work out exactly who your target audience are and drill down and profile your ideal customer. Once you've come to that conclusion that that's where they are, then this is the perfect place for you. Now if you'd like some resources on how to do just that, I've left a link to a video below here that helps you with your target audience and also a link to a free download, our ideal customer avatar worksheet so you can go ahead and profile that person and make sure that they're the perfect fit for your new Etsy shop. Number two, research your niche on Etsy and make sure that there is plenty of demand for what you're offering. There's nothing worse than you setting up and opening your shop blissfully unaware that there are thousands and thousands of people already offering what you offer and perhaps they've got a better offering, lower price, free postage, bundles of things and you're sitting there trying to market and bring awareness to your shop when actually people are already shopping elsewhere. So you want to make sure that you have a good look. Ideally you're looking for that sweet spot where there's high demand and low competition. That can be a little bit tricky on Etsy at the moment but you know, you never know. You might just be the next trend coming and you find that people haven't got there yet and you can just ride that wave. But whatever it is, you want to make sure that you do that research and really find out who else is operating in your niche because if it looks like it is a saturated marketplace, you might need to think again. Number three, make sure you get clear on your business numbers. So many times I hear people complaining about Etsy seller fees which are pretty transparent by the way if you read all the detail where it says Etsy seller fees, I'll put a link below where you can just go and have a look at that. Currently at time of shooting it's 6.5% and you might pay some extras if for example you sell to a country that's in a different currency to the one that your shop is set up in. So I'm set up in Australia. Obviously if I send sale to the US then I'm going to pay a conversion fee on that as well. So there's a few little extra bits and bobs there. So we want to make sure that you are pricing for profit. Check out this video where I walk you through my six steps to pricing for profit so you can make sure that what you're offering on your Etsy store by the time you've allowed for your seller fees and all those bits and bobs that you are still going to walk away with a healthy profit because otherwise there's really no point in doing it. Number four. You want to make sure before you open up that you've got a really good shop title and here's a hint here. We want to be using keywords so you want to think about the name of your shop in terms of something that people might search for. So if you do I don't know ocean art prints then perhaps you might want to have ocean art prints in the title of your store. Now the caveat here is if you ever want to do something that's an ocean related but not a print then you're going to struggle if you won't want to put that on that store. So make sure that the title you choose is general enough to include a few different things that you might want to do down the track but still it's really good if you can get some keywords in there. So don't set up your shop in your name. You can have your website in your name or you can have your social media or what other things for your personal brand in your name. But if you're going to set up an Etsy shop it's usual to use a specific name. So do a little bit of research and find a name that A isn't used already and something that you think reflects what you're going to be selling. Step five now listen this is an optional step. You don't need to do this but you might want to just grab all the social media accounts that have the same name as your shop. You might not use them because you might say oh I use my own personal brand for social media but if you've grabbed those names it stops anyone else taking them and who knows down the track you might say well I want a personal brand and I want an account for my shop as well and the last thing you want to do is then go and look for it and find that someone else has already taken it. So make sure that you do that as well. Step six you're going to create an about you document. Now that's some copy that you can use when you go to actually setting up the about section in your shop. It's kind of the story about you and your brand. So you want to make it personable. You want to think about the person that's going to be reading it i.e. your ideal customer. So tell the story of how the brand came about. How the shop came about. How and where you make your products and services. What's your inspiration. Tell a little story. So if you've already got some sort of an about document you might find you could start from there and then tailor it according to what fits for your shop. So you want to do that just create it on a word document or on a note somewhere where you can copy and paste into your Etsy shop when you're in that setup process. Number seven. So you need to have a place where all your listings are listed off Etsy. So you could start out with a simple spreadsheet when you've got the name and the title of the object and the size for reference and all the details. Perhaps a little photograph you can pop in there. You can create your own skew numbers. That's what I do. So and the price. You could make a spreadsheet with all the bits and bobs that you need for your product. Now you might have them listed on different on an online software or an app. That's fine. But if you're just starting out sometimes the easiest way is to simply do it in a spreadsheet. What you don't want to do is create your listings individually in the Etsy app because if something happens and you need to set it up again you also want to keep a reference of everything that you've got for sale and you've sold outside of Etsy. After all you might do other things. You might go to markets or you might put them on your own website or you might be doing different things. So make sure you've also got a list of everything that you plan to list on your Etsy store. All right. Number eight in this preparation before you set up your Etsy shop you want to sort of create five to 10 listings minimum. So the way I do it is I gather all the photos in folders that are listed with the item name and number. And then I have a document that has all my copy for the descriptions, the titles, the keywords that I'm going to use, et cetera. So this might take a little bit of time at first and you might need to look at other people's shops to kind of see how they're structuring it or what they're saying where. But at the end of the day the title is super important, the description is super important, the images are super important. I'm going to come on to that on another video so make sure to look out for that one. But you want to create a system that you can use on going. So folders where you list out all the images and you might create all of those with mockups and different kind of branded images. You might do that in say Canva or Photoshop. And then you can just port them over and put them into the folder that pertains to that item. Then you can use something like again the spreadsheet or a Word doc where you have all the title, description, keywords, all the bits and bobs you're going to use when you go to the listing. When you do this the first time it can seem super overwhelming. But trust me, the further into it you go the easier you will find. So number nine, this is the final piece. You might be thinking, Fuse, I think that's an awful lot of things I have to do. But like I said at the beginning, this is 80% of setting up your shop. So number nine is you want to get all your things together for your shop profile. That is the lovely banner image that sits across the top. There's a couple of sizes I recommend using the biggest size because that gives you more shop frontage. It also shows on desktop but it doesn't show. The small one doesn't show on mobile. So you've got those sorts of things to contend with. Make the nice big banner so that you can use it as an advertising space for your shop. Some images, some words describing what you do. And then you'll use a little profile picture. So a logo perhaps that you've got created. Everything needs to be on brand. So you want to make sure that your shop is completely branded. If you don't have a brand for your store you definitely want to get one done. A logo, colors, fonts, all of those good things. So when people go on the shop, everything all looks nice and neat and branded to say. So you need the banner, you need the little profile image and then you can put up to I think five different pictures in your about section. And again, there's a really good studio setups behind the scenes, perhaps you making the product so that people when they're looking at your shop can read about you and then can just see some real kind of working images. And that helps them to feel a little bit closer and get more of an understanding of what it is that you do and what you make. So again, you can gather all of those in your Etsy profile folder, ready to go. Then last but not least, I would recommend allocating a day or maybe two days to get all of that done. So if you've never done the listings before you might want to allocate a couple of days because you've got to create images and write descriptions. And maybe you haven't even got photographs of the products that you're going to be selling so you might need to start there. So allocate a couple of days for the setup phase. Everything you need to do to set up before you open the Etsy shop. Do that in a couple of days so that you're ready. Then all you need to do is go across to Etsy, sign up and follow the shop setup procedure and you'll have everything ready. Imagine that, that will just be so satisfying. There's nothing worse than setting up a shop and having the one obligatory listing on it. And then you go, oh now I need to go away and work out all the other bits because now it's open and people could see it and it's got one listing on it and it's got maybe no banner and half finished or non-existent writing. So being prepared means that you can set up and open your store quick and easy. Now look out for other videos around the Etsy theme because we're going to be talking about how you can grow it, what the essentials for the shop are, some SEO, all of those good things. So make sure you're subscribed to the channel so you don't miss out on those videos and look out in the description below because I'll link to anything else I think might be of use. If you've loved this video, don't forget to give me a thumbs up and maybe leave me a comment in the comments below letting me know which one of those things was the most helpful for you and of course if you're planning now to set up your Etsy shop. I also have a link where you can get 40 free listings that will show below here as well. So if you haven't set up your shop and you're a complete beginner, you don't have an Etsy account then that's my little gift to you. That's 40 listing fees that you don't have to worry about right now. So good luck with setting up your Etsy shop and I will see you on another video.