8 Steps to Start Selling Woodworking Items on Etsy
Are you a woodworker who is considering launching an Etsy shop? If you are like me you’ve probably been considering it for a while but weren’t sure if you could be successful with it.
In this post, I’ll walk you through what you need to know to start selling your woodworking items on Etsy.
STEP 1: Determine What to Sell
Before you create an account with Etsy it is important to first have a clear understanding as to what you want to sell. As a woodworker, the possibilities of what you can create and sell are endless. One thing to keep in mind with your Etsy shop is it only takes one item to make your shop a success. Don’t get bogged down in trying to design 20 items to list. Focus your efforts on 1 or 2 items to get started.
If your items start to take off (I hope they do) you’ll be making a lot of these. Make sure you can produce these items in larger quantities with relative ease to avoid burnout.
STEP 2: Plan for Packing Items
One of my biggest expenses on Etsy is shipping. It’s this reason why I have this as step 2. Once you have a product in mind, giving some serious thought to how you will ship the item will save you some serious headaches and money down the road.
For woodworking projects I recommend planning out the dimensions so that the final product can fit into a USPS Priority Mail Shipping Box. Why do I recommend this? Because you can get these boxes shipped directly to your house for FREE!!!! You can select from a wide variety of sizes and I kid you not, they will ship them to your front door for FREE!
Obviously this means you have to ship via USPS Priority but with the discounted rates provided by Etsy this will be your cheapest route (usually).
USPS offers both flat rate shipping boxes as well as standard shipping boxes. The flat rate boxes are fantastic for woodworking projects because weight is not a factor in the price. As long as it fits in the box, it ships anywhere in the US for the same price.
When planning out your product dimensions for shipping, I recommend using a handy tool that Etsy provides to estimate shipping cost.
Here you can determine if it makes sense to use a USPS flat rate box or a standard shipping box. Simply plug in your product dimensions (keep in mind this is packaged product dimensions) and Etsy will tell you the estimated cost to ship based on your inputs. I always use 90210 as a reference, as California is typically the farthest shipping distance away from where I am located. Once you have the Etsy estimate, check the flat rate box shipping rates and see which is cheaper.
I have several items that do not fit into a USPS box as the dimensions are unavoidably unusual. For these items, I actually custom make my boxes from a single flat sheet of corrugated cardboard. This brings my cost per box down to roughly .20 cents a box. If I purchased the same size box pre-made, it would cost me over $1.50 a box and that’s with a bulk order discount.
STEP 3: Batch Out Your Builds
Alright, so now you have your product designs ready to go and you’ve factored in shipping dimensions when determining the size of your products. Before you list anything, you want to make sure you have a process in place for how you will batch these items out. What I mean by this is, what will your process be for building 10, 20, even 50 of these at a time. Go in with the mindset that this product is going to fly off the shelf and make sure you can easily crank them out when it does.
My process for this is simple. I take a stopwatch and I time myself making an item. I pause the stop watch and write down how long each step of the build took (how long did the cuts take to complete, sanding, assembly, packaging). Once this is complete, I evaluate each step and brainstorm how I can be more efficient. Doing this has allowed me to identify areas where a simple Jig can be built to increase assembly time, or I can determine how to make multiple cuts at once and group different tasks together to cut down on prep time.
STEP 4: Build your Brand Images
With hundreds of thousands of shops on Etsy, it is really important that you do whatever you can to make yourself stand out. An easy way to do this is to build a strong brand image. Like your logo and shop banner.
I recommend using Canva.com to do this. It's free to join and they have tons of templates you can use to help design your logo and brand images. You can always pay a professional to design your logo, but there are so many free resources out there, I’d recommend giving it a try first and if you don’t like the way it looks, pay someone to do it for you.
STEP 5: Take EXCELLENT Product Photos
I KNOW we haven’t even created an Etsy account yet, what is going on!? Trust me, these steps will set you up for success, so take the time beforehand to do it right and I promise you the sales will follow.
Along the same line as your logo and brand images, you want to make sure that your product images are TOP NOTCH. This can be accomplished with just a smartphone but if you have access to a nice camera (or someone who does) I’d recommend using it to take your product pictures.
Lighting is key for these photos. I use the Inkeltech Ring Light - 18 inch 3000K-6000K Dimmable Bi-Color Light Ring to help brighten up my settings. Pay close attention to what you have in the background of your images and if you are building products that people will use, take some photos of people actually using them. It’s the perfect opportunity to have your wife/husband give modeling a go.
Etsy allows up to 10 photos per listing. I recommend taking advantage of this and capturing plenty of shots so you can easily fill all 10 slots.
A few other photography product recommendations (this is what I use):
Camera- Sony Alpha A6100 Mirrorless Camera
Tripod- PHOPIK 77 Inches Tripod, Lightweight Aluminum Camera Tripod
STEP 6: Create your Etsy Account
Now it’s time to actually jump into Etsy and get your products listed! The beauty of Etsy is there is no fee to get started. They do offer a premium account for 10 bucks a month, but I do not recommend that when you are just getting started.
Sign up with this link to get 40 free listings! Etsy Sign Up
The sign up process is very straightforward and only takes a few minutes to complete.
STEP 7: Build your Product Listings
Etsy, along with just about any site out there, leverages a thing called SEO or search engine optimization to help people find your listings. There are a lot of other factors at play that Etsy uses to rank both a shop and a listing that is beyond the scope of this post, but the basics of SEO are important to consider when building out a product listing.
SEO is essentially the way to allow search engines to determine what your listing is about. There are a ton of resources out there explaining SEO way better than I can, but it all boils down to Keywords. Think about your product and think about what you would type into google to find that exact item. You want to use descriptive language to help google (and users) easily identify your listing.
TITLE
In the title of your listing I recommend including a combination of several keywords. An example of this is as follows. Take my Floating Succulent Shelves. I title them:
These are all keywords that someone might type into a search bar if they are looking for this specific item.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Reuse these keywords in as natural and frequent a way as you can throughout your description. Try to capture a quick overview of what your product is in the first few sentences.
Be sure to include every detail possible regarding your item within the description. Leave nothing to chance. Buyers will suprise you with a wide variety of questions regarding your listing. If you can get ahead of those questions and include them in the description that will help to drive sales.
Common things to include in the description are:
Product Dimensions
Materials Used
Weight Capacity (if applicable)
Color options
Production times
Shipping limitations/expectations
I also include a disclaimer and closing statement in each of my listings. Here’s an example of what I include. Feel free to use this as a template for your listings.
“Please Note: This piece is handmade and there may be minor variations from piece to piece. Dimensions are within .25 of an inch. Final tone and the grain of the wood will vary. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out! At COLwoodCraft we are committed to providing high quality, unique pieces. If for any reason you are unsatisfied with your purchase please let us know. We’ll be sure to make things right.”
PRICING
I recommend taking some time to research what your competition is pricing similar items. If your item is 100% unique, that is great but odds are there will be something similar to your item on the site that you can reference when pricing your items.
You’ll also want to consider your profit margins when pricing your items. To calculate your profit margins, you’ll need to figure out what all of your costs are. Keep in mind this includes all of your material but also the fees Etsy takes.
Here is a link to Etsy's Fee Structure but to summarize, Etsy charges you 0.20 cents per listing and takes a 5% transaction fee and a 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee for credit card processing. To make this easier to understand, simply take 8% of the price you are charging, plus 0.50 cents and that is how much of the total purchase price Etsy will take from your sale.
So for example, if I sell something for 10 bucks, 8% of 10 dollars is .80 cents plus the 0.50 cents equals $1.30 cents. That’s Etsy’s cut.
There is no magic number when it comes to an acceptable profit margin. It’s really up to you and what works for your own goals. On average, a profit margin of 30-35% is a good target for homemade goods.
TAGS
Etsy allows you to include up to 13 tags per listing. Tags are essentially keywords that Etsy using to help determine what items to show customers when they search for things.
There are a lot of resources out there to help you come up with tags for your items. I’ve used a site called Marmalead.com but this is also something you can figure out yourself.
You want your tags to be very short descriptions of what you are trying to sell. If you are selling a shelf you’ll want to include tags that help identify what makes your shelf unique. You could use tags like “Floating Plant Shelf” or “Succulent Shelf” or “Rustic Wall Decor”. Think about the words or phrases that someone would type into a search bar and use those as your tags.
SHIPPING
I recommend offering free shipping on all of your items. Factor the cost of shipping into your overall pricing strategy. The reason I recommend this is Etsy ranks items with free shipping higher as customers prefer to purchase items with free shipping. It’s not the end of the world if you can’t make this work for what you are selling but you can typically build this cost into the price to offset shipping expenses.
STEP 8: Focus on the CUSTOMER
You’ve heard it a million times, “the customer is always right”. Well, that is especially true on Etsy. While it didn’t happen often when I first launched my shop, if I had any complaint at all from a customer (the stain color wasn’t what they were expecting, the size didn’t work for them, etc) I was very quick to respond and offer a refund or exchange. In most cases it was more cost effective to simply offer a refund, but I’m happy to do whatever the customer prefers. You might think this is a waste of time and money but trust me REVIEWS ARE KING on Etsy. A few negative reviews can go a long way in damaging your brand. On the other hand, a few really positive reviews is all it takes to convince a customer to go with your product over the thousands of others on the site.
I had a customer who was really upset that the shelf I shipped her didn’t assemble correctly. I ship my shelves with a detailed description of how to assemble them and after a few email exchanges we were able to determine that she was trying to attach the board upside down. She had already left a 4 star review but after our conversation, she updated it to a 5 star! I do not recommend ever asking a customer to update a review. If you take care of the situation 9 times out of 10 they will be so happy you took care of them that they’ll go in and update that review on their own.
CONCLUSION
There you have it! That’s all it takes to start selling your woodworking items on Etsy! I hope this helped guide you in the right direction and gave you that boost of confidence you needed to move forward with opening your shop! Let me know down in the comments below if you have any questions or if you launched your shop, how it’s going!
Step by step instructions for building a continuous grain wine box!