Selling Knitting on Etsy

I am going to share my experiences of selling my knitted goods on Etsy. I sold my hand knits hats there for many years and had a quite a good rate of success.

Etsy is a very well known selling platform for hand made and vintage wares and supplies. You can buy everything from beads to wedding dresses. It is a USA website, and now many countries have its own derivative.

Click here to read an interesting article about why Etsy is a better platform than Ebay for selling crafts.

Etsy is very much photograph driven.  Other etsy sellers, and viewers, make 'treasuries' of their favourite items.  In addition, items are featured on the front page.  Having your goods featured in treasuries and on the front page will drive people to your store, and the key to this is fabulous photographs.

Take a look - see which items are being featured.

Theres LOADS of knitting shops on Etsy. Some do brilliantly well. 

I've sold over 80 baby hats in 2 years. Not bad actually, as I have only dipped in and out of selling on Etsy and haven't listed many items.  I haven't used professional photographs, just ones I have taken with my mediocre digital camera.  I place my hats on top of a wooden chest of drawers so theres a nice background.

The hats that have sold well have been chunky pompom hats, in neutral or unusual colours.  And elf hats, which are bought by photographers for use as photography props.  There is a good market for these type of goods.

Disadvantages that I have found in Etsy selling is that most customers are from the USA. This in itself is not a disadvantage, American people are wonderful. What is not wonderful is the unpredictability of the postal services.  I have found that once a week has gone by, I receive messages asking me when the hat will arrive. Erm... I don't know!

Only one of my hats has gone missing in the post, but some take several weeks to get there and the customer has understandably become a little impatient.  I find it frustrating as I post all sales within 1 business day.

Posting abroad with tracking costs a fortune, almost as much as the item, so I think its only worth using such a service for high end expensive goods.

I am also inundated on Etsy with messages from newborn baby photographers offering me photographs in exchange for free hats. 

Now, the most succesful baby hat sellers do have their Etsy shops full of professional photographs.  Obviously the hats look much better on a baby, taken by a talented photographer.

I have sent a few hats off to photographers, no photos. Only one photographer has given me photos of the hats I sent. I've lost a few hats now so have started to ignore the messages.

Some photographers have very kindly sent me images of hats that they have purchased with permission to use in my Etsy shop.

You may receive similar offers, and I feel it is very much your decision whether you give away your good in exchange for photos. You may find a wonderful and reliable photographer who will really help your business.

If you sell ready made one of a kind knitted items, there is no point doing this, you will need to find another way of taking super desirable photos.  I shall write about this seperately.