When I opened my Etsy shop, I’d decided that I wouldn’t pay for
advertising. I held out for over six
months.
My shop is really a Christmas
shop. I don't always want to focus on Christmas, but for now, it's a
Christmas shop. I never expected many sales until November, but once
Halloween was out of the way, I thought it might pick up a little. And
for a while it did. In the first week of November, my shop went from
having a handful to no visits per day, to around 100. Now whilst I knew
it wasn't quite time to pop open the Champagne, I was definitely pleased about
it, but I was also cautious.
In that first week of November,
when my visits picked up, the traffic was broken down as follows:
External Searches <1%
Etsy Search 7%
Direct Links 15%
Social Media 78%
I started to wonder if I'd ever
sell my stock, and after reading a few horror posts about shops who whose
Etsy traffic stopped over night, I thought I would give paid advertising a
try after all.
Apologies if I’m trying to
reach anybody to suck eggs here, but for those of you who don’t know,
Etsy’s Promoted Listings is a pay-per-click advertising service. When a
potential customer searches for an item and those search terms match the
description of one of your items, your item has a chance
of popping up in front of that potential customer on one of several pre-designated
spots. It’s based on bidding though, so
if another seller's item also matches but has a higher bid, their item will get
the spot. If that potential buyer clicks on the ‘ad’, the seller pays the
bid fee. To make sure things don’t get out of hand, the seller sets a
daily amount which they are prepared to pay.
When it runs out, no more ad space.
Simple, right?
Well, yes and no.
I started my campaign with a
daily spend of $1. It’s not a lot, but
it’s not going to deprive me of my lunch, and even a little bit has to help,
right? So off I went...
Etsy have a helpful little
dashboard (which I brought up on my phone) which shows how your campaign is
going. So you can see how many times your items(s) have been given
one of those pre designated spots, how much of your daily allowance has been
spent and how many clicks you’ve had. Throughout
the day I checked in. I'd got some ad
space, and a couple of clicks. There wasn't much money left, but at least
I knew my items were being seen, which was my biggest fear. I left it to
tick along on its own.
On the second day of my campaign,
I had another look at the dashboard. As I'd previously looked at
it on my phone, what I hadn't realised was that I hadn't seen the full
board. Moving the columns along, I got a bit of a shock.
I knew that Etsy
automatically set the bid/click amount, which is all down to algorithms I
don't know how algorithms work and it sounds too much like maths for me to want
to find out, but I’d assumed they each bid would be a similar (ish) amount
per item. I couldn’t have been more
wrong. Etsy had put a bid of 78c on
one item. That’s right, 78% of my daily budget on one
item. To make it worse, that particular item was my top seller. It was one of the first items in my shop,
therefore it had more views, and more likes. In short, that item did not
need the help that the other, newer items needed.
If you're wondering, here is
the item:
Cute isn't he? Well I
think so.
Anyway, advertising like
that will never help me. Each kit is for sale at a cost of £8.00.
It costs me £4.00 for materials, so the profit is £4.00. There are four
remaining kits to sell (I started with low numbers just in case).
I know I just said I didn't
like maths, but I'm going to do it. Because yesterday there was a click
which cost me 78c, and this morning, there was another, also at 78c, 30% of the
potential profit. You could soon pay more in advertising than you make
from a sale, particularly as Etsy tells you to leave your promotion as is for a
week to get a proper feel for how it's going. But the maths makes no
sense to me. Where did that figure come from?
That item would more than
likely make the advertising statistics look good, lots of impressions,
potentially more clicks, but they’ve put all the money in the item most likely
to be clicked on, but like I said, I wanted to give the newer items a boost. Admittedly, a click on that item could bring
a potential customer to my shop. But that item is a Robin cross stitch
kit. If they're looking for a cross stitch kit, they'll only find only
one other. If they specifically wanted a robin, they won't find
another. Whereas a search for, and a click on a bauble could bring that
potential customer into my shop, which is filled with baubles, and that is much
better for me.
So I had a read up, and this is
what I discovered:
Etsy advertising isn't really
equal. As with normal searches, Etsy
will 'prioritise the items we think buyers will like the most and assign each
listing a 'quality' score.' It goes on to say that alongside relevancy of
the search, 'Etsy's search algorithm also considers how well individual items
tend to do in search.' If a buyer clicks favorites, or purchases an item
after they've seen it in search results, that action contributes to the
listing's quality score'. Now I may be wrong, but that tells me that if
you already have a listing that's already being favourited and purchased on a
regular basis (i.e. already doing well) it's more likely to
be picked up on ads. Which in my case defeats the purpose of getting a
boost from an ad. Bit of a vicious circle isn't it?
Does this also mean then, for
example, that I could have a higher bid than an established shop, but the
established shop will get the spot because their listing is 'better
quality'?
In the long run, I suppose it
would work out. Eventually an item should get more likes, and based on
that, higher ad placement, but at what cost?
Even worse, am I potentially
paying for space that an established shop would get higher placement anyway?
I understand us newbies have to
learn the ropes. The established shops have also started from nothing and
good for them. I don't expect to surpass anyone, I just want that elusive
boost!
Will I get out of the blocks?
I understand that Etsy is a
business. In a way, I don't blame them for not wanting to promote any old
item. I suppose it comes down to credibility, but really, the time to vet
products is when they're listed, but now, Etsy are more than happy enough to
take money for products, which by that way of reasoning are below par.
I'm not going to give up on
promoted listings just yet, but, feeling every inch the naughty child, I
did change the settings. I changed the bid amount for my top seller to
pretty much the same as the other items. I've increased the bid amount
for items which I think might draw traffic into my shop. I've even
increased my daily limit to $2.00. The beauty is, I can lower it again if
I need to.
I'll let you know how I get on.
No comments:
Post a Comment