With over four million sellers on Etsy, it can be challenging to get your listings noticed by shoppers. A fantastic way to get noticed is to get featured on Etsy in their own marketing materials! But how in the world do you make that happen? Well, today on The Jam, that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about.

Getting featured on Etsy

Today we’re talking about how to go about getting your shop featured on Etsy (or at least increase your odds of getting your shop featured). Etsy wants to promote your shop in its newsletter, social media, and other marketing channels. When you make money, Etsy makes money! Etsy went through a transformation a handful of years ago. They really wanted to make it clear that their focus was on sellers making sales. They want their revenue to come from their sellers’ revenue.

Before that, they had a push where there were a lot of seller offerings and some of their revenue came from those sorts of things. They’re still out there, but they’re really not continuing to try to milk money from sellers as much as they have in the past. They really wanted it to be clear that their bread and butter is coming from the success and sales of the sellers on their platform.

Some tips to get featured on Etsy

We’ve looked through the Etsy Help Center, and we put together some of our own tips to increase your chances of being featured by Etsy. Maybe you want to appear in Etsy’s marketing materials. Or maybe you just want to up your promotion game. If either of those is high on your to-do list then this is the article for you.

Let’s dive in!

Follow selling guidelines closely to get featured on Etsy

First things first, you need to make sure that your products in your shop are either handmade, vintage, or craft supply.

You have to follow the guidelines that Etsy sets forth and make sure that you’re selling something that actually can be sold on that platform, otherwise, you really have no chance at all of getting featured on Etsy’s marketing material.  
 
Now, when we say handmade, keep in mind that this can include digital products. Etsy does offer digital products on its website. It just can’t be something that you bought somewhere else (like a stock image) and are reselling on the platform. It has to be something that you made.

Update your shop fields

Along those same lines with Etsy policies, Etsy wants to make sure that your shop policies are filled in so that buyers know what to expect (just like you as a shop know what to expect from Etsy).

Make sure that all of your Etsy shop fields are updated completely and accurately.

This includes things like the about section, your shop policies, your shipping policies, any sort of production partners you work with. Etsy is all about operating transparency. They really want to make sure that your shop is on the up and up if they’re going to be promoting you.

To get featured on Etsy, the products you sell should be your own

We should mention, too, that you shouldn’t be selling products, designs, or intellectual property that doesn’t belong to you.

Now, this might seem like a no-brainer to people out there legitimately trying to make a living on Etsy. But, the fact of the matter is there are shops out there who try to take advantage of this. They buy things on other platforms and then try to resell them on Etsy.

You can try to get away with this as long as you can, but it’s against Etsy’s policies. It’s not morally right to do that in the first place, and you’re certainly not going to be featured when Etsy goes to do their digging and finds out that you’re just reselling something that you bought on Alibaba or Amazon.

Avoid insensitive products

Avoid products that could be considered culturally insensitive.

For more information on that, you can check out Etsy’s prohibited items policy. Definitely steer clear of those. Basically, there are a lot of these things out there that may have a niche market. And someone might find it inappropriate or insensitive.

Sure, there are going to be people that are going to buy those items. But if you’re looking to get promoted in Etsy’s newsletter, social media, or anything like that, you need something that’s going to be suitable for a mass audience.

Stay away from NSFW

What about things that are not safe for work? While Etsy doesn’t specifically mention this in their handbook, it’s unlikely that they’re going to be including things that are designed for mature audiences in their public marketing and their promos. Obviously, they’re okay with it being on their platform. However, if you’re looking to get featured, you should be sensitive to that.

Understand that your products designed for more mature audiences have less chance of being featured in a public marketing campaign that Etsy is going to be running.

Focus on good customer service to get featured on Etsy

Something else that you should be doing is keeping your shop in good standing by replying to messages quickly, shipping on time, and getting good reviews.

Etsy wants to keep track of shops that are best in class as far as being on Etsy, and also they’re going to avoid sending a lot of traffic to shops that aren’t keeping up.  
 
We’ve heard this before. Etsy will throttle things if a shop has fallen behind on orders, fallen behind on messages, stuff like that because every shop on Etsy is part of the Etsy community. If any shops drop the ball and give buyers a bad experience, it’s going to reflect poorly on all the sellers on Etsy. You definitely want to be lumped in with the good ones.

A problem they’re working on

This is definitely a problem that Etsy is aware that they have. That these are individual sellers making individual things. It’s not like you have some big chain store on the platform that has a massive inventory. This is something that Etsy is very sensitive to. We think they do a pretty good job of trying to work together with sellers to make sure that you’re not being overwhelmed by the number of orders and you’re not getting behind and unable to fulfill orders on time. 

Star Seller Badge

Etsy also just announced a star seller badge that Etsy sellers can get if they meet certain criteria. These are directly in line with the things that they want to see sellers doing in order to achieve that star badge. So as of now, you can go into your shop settings on Etsy and you can see how close you are to attaining that. This serves as a good benchmark to see how Etsy views your shop. It also helps you understand the things that you can be improving on to better your chances of getting featured on Etsy’s marketing materials.

But is this all enough to get featured on Etsy?

This is all fantastic stuff. But remember, you’re not going to get featured on Etsy if you are breaking any of these rules. And even if you’re doing all these things, this is just the bare minimum. You might not necessarily get featured at this point. Even if you’re following all these rules that we just went through. So what can you do? How can you try to push forward and get that feature from Etsy? 

Have quality product photos

The first one you can do is take great product photos.

Once you’ve done a search, when you’re browsing around as a shopper, what’s going to grab your attention to a specific listing and pull you in? A great photo.

Make sure that you really spend that time on your photos. You don’t want dark and blurry photos. Create bright, vibrant photos. You want photos that are going to draw the buyer in. They want to see more photos of your product. They want to see it from different angles. Pay attention to those photos.

Be engaged with the community

Another thing you could do to give yourself a leg up in getting featured is being active with the Etsy community.

Etsy has said before that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We really think that they believe this is true. It’s what their company is based on. They’re bringing a bunch of sellers together onto a single platform. These sellers can all work together and satisfy a bunch of shoppers’ needs. Instead of everyone having to go it on their own.  
 
Being active in the Etsy community is awesome. Answering people’s questions in the forums (which can be a negative space sometimes) and offering something productive is going to be making someone’s day at least a little bit better. Now, whether or not this will actually get you noticed by the team on Etsy who is putting together marketing material, we don’t know. But it certainly can’t hurt.

Optimize your SEO to increase your chances of getting featured by Etsy

Finally, something we talk about a lot is optimizing your SEO. Etsy themselves will be using search to browse listings for their marketing.

If they’re looking for products that fall into a specific category and with specific keywords, they’re going to be using search to find those. They’ll also look for great photos. This combination should help you increase your odds of getting featured.

Final thoughts

There you guys go! There are some tips you can follow to increase the odds of getting featured on Etsy! Along with a couple of bonus tips from us, follow this guide to take elevate your shop to the next level. You’ll be on your way to increased chances of getting featured on the Etsy marketing channels in no time!

But be careful what you wish for! You just might find yourself featured in an Etsy email. Then, you may not know what to do with all the sales that start flooding in through your doors! But, that’s a whole new problem for a whole different Jam 😁

Have you ever been featured by Etsy? Let us know down in the comments how it affected the sales in your shop!

And as always, happy selling! 

 

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