The rules of internet marketing are always changing.
Strategies that work today don’t always work tomorrow.
Etsy made significant algorithm changes in 2018.
Why?
Etsy is a business. They want to continue to grow. Growth can come by adding new customers, by adding new sellers or a combination of both.
Everybody is fighting for new customers. New customers are expensive to acquire.
We believe the 2018 algorithm change was implemented to attract and give new sellers a chance.
Before 2018
The Etsy search algorithm has always been weighted to sales conversions. If your shop made lots of sales, Etsy would continue to give you lots of traffic.
This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. There are many more factors in play now.
Let’s discuss the fallout of the 2018 algorithm change.
Less Organic Traffic
2017 was our best year on Etsy, which makes sense since our shop had developed a following and we embraced using paid traffic.
2018 might be our shop’s worst year on Etsy. (Our own domain is doing great)
2019 was decent, better than 2018, worse than in 2017.
Our Etsy shop’s conversions are the same, and our reviews are still excellent, so they aren’t the issue.
Traffic is the issue.
Fewer customers always mean fewer sales.
Our number strategy to generate and drive traffic to our Etsy shop has always been Pinterest.
We’ve discussed Pinterest lots before. Let’s review a less used plan but one that shouldn’t be ignored.
To be fair, we haven’t spent very much time on Pinterest in the last few years. Probably if we had stayed more focused on this traffic source, our sales on Etsy would have been much better.
Blogger Outreach
Bloggers continuously need content to give to their audience. As their blog grows, they generally have to produce content at a faster pace.
You need to contact all the bloggers in your niche and ask if they want to review your products. Don’t solely focus on the most prominent bloggers as they can be expensive and hard to reach.
Focus on bloggers that produce great content. Even if the website is relatively new, give them a chance. Every time, you get a blogger to review your products, you’re building backlinks to your Etsy shop (or website), and you’re getting to introduce your products to a broader audience.
It’s generally a win/win proposition. Your blog gets new exposure, the blogger receives content for their website.
Hit and Miss
This strategy is hit and miss. You will have to spend time finding the blogs to contact, send them emails and hope for a positive reply.
You might find your initial efforts to be underwhelming, but I’d advise you to dedicate a small portion of your time to blogger outreach.
Syndication
Once in a while, lightning does strike, and your shop can be rewarded.
More prominent blogs will syndicate smaller blog articles.
What does this mean?
Take Yahoo for example. They don’t write most of their articles.
They syndicate them from smaller websites, which is essentially copy-pasting the article onto their site with an attribution link back to the original source.
If by chance, the blogger’s article that is featuring your item gets syndicated by a more prominent website, your shop could be flooded with external traffic and great sales!
Influencers for Hire
If you have the budget, you can hire YouTubers to review your listings via FameBit.
More Etsy Tips
This series aims to teach Etsy sellers on how to improve their shops and sell more items.
