Stephanie's Guide to Setting Up an Etsy Shop

So maybe you've been thinking about opening an Etsy shop, there is a lot to do when you decide to do this.

Having set up 4 shops, I wish i had a list like this for the first 2

Here's the list broken down into steps.

#1 have product. I'm assuming you already have this

#2 take awesome pictures of said product, search the Etsy forums, there's tons of awesome advice. there

#3 Use one of these pics as your avatar and write yourself a profile, shop policies, announcement. again, there's tons of advice about that in the fora as well.

#4 look up shipping. if you are in the US, go to postalcalc.usps.gov, and find the pricing for 1 oz, 2 oz, etc (use whatever weights you will be using) to the US, Canada, mexico, and austrailia to start, you can add more later.

#5 make shipping profiles with the shipping information you just gleaned For more on shipping, there is a really good thread started in business topics about the subject, (written by GoTo) here's the shipping thread

#6 read up on SEO, basically, you want the beginning of your announcement, your "shop title" (or the words under your shop name) your titles, tags, and beginnings of your descriptions to be descriptive of what you sell, again. This is SEO at it's most basic.

#7 Start listing! make sure your tags are accurate, your descriptions are descriptive, etc.

The reason I say listing last is because you want everything else in place first, I made the mistake of not having it in place.