The UGLY Truth About Etsy | 7 Reasons You Have NO SALES

About this video

Seven ‘ugly truths’ about selling on Etsy and how to overcome them, contrasting Etsy with Amazon (capital-intensive) and Shopify (traffic problem). One: saturation and low margins — don’t open a print-on-demand T-shirt-only shop; POD sellers she helps who do well, per her claim, don’t focus only on tees and sweatshirts, and shops need a dynamic product mix viewed through a blended-margin lens, not a flat 20-30% margin. Two: you must balance average order value against margin — volume/high-margin-low-AOV (digital, supplies), low-margin/high-AOV (POD, physical), or high-AOV/high-margin (digital, handmade) — and be realistic about a category’s limits. Three: shutdowns and closures are common for new shops due to Etsy’s automatic anti-spam filters; don’t panic, appeal and be patient, distinguishing a shop closure from an account/user closure, which needs different ID such as an EIN or taxpayer ID. Four: trademark/copyright infringement — check the USPTO, never assume ’everyone else sells it’ makes it safe, and keep infringing terms out of tags as well as titles, since rights holders sweep Etsy in waves. Five: Etsy is not get-rich-quick; she cites a student going from $97 to over $21,000 in a month as her claim but says it is not typical, and notes most get-rich-quick sellers are noise, not real competition. Six: B/C-level sellers chase bestsellers, arriving about six months late alongside hundreds of others, and never beat the market leader. Seven: most sellers can’t create or communicate a value proposition — start with the customer (‘why would someone want this, who would want it’) and reverse-engineer the product, and learn marketing, where Etsy offers many free levers.

Key takeaways

• Avoid T-shirt-only print-on-demand; build a dynamic product mix and judge it on blended margin, not a flat percentage
• Deliberately balance average order value against margin for your category instead of expecting both to be high
• New-shop shutdowns are often automatic anti-spam filters — appeal, be patient, and know shop vs. account closure differ
• Check trademarks via the USPTO and keep infringing terms out of tags too, not just titles
• Bestseller-chasing is a losing strategy: trends visible on Etsy are already about six months old

Episode details: published November 27, 2023 · 8:48 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dylan Jahraus’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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