EP 31. 8 Ways You Might Be Making Your Etsy Business Harder Than It Needs to Be

In today’s episode, I’m sharing eight ways you may be making your Etsy business harder than it needs to be.

From the way you choose products to the way you create listings, use trends, consume advice, and manage your time, some of the things that feel productive may actually be creating more work.

If your Etsy shop feels heavier, more confusing, or more time-consuming than you expected, this episode will help you identify what may be getting in the way—and what to do differently.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey there and welcome to the Modern Etsy Seller, the podcast where busy women build, grow, and profit on Etsy. I'm your host, Melissa Carroll, a full-time teacher, a busy mom, and an Etsy seller who's built two successful Etsy shops in the small moments of everyday life. Here you'll find simple strategies, real behind-the-scenes insight, and the clarity you need to stop second guessing and start moving forward one intentional step at a time. Let's get to it. Hey guys, welcome back. Today we're gonna talk about eight ways you're making your Etsy business harder than it needs to be. You already know running an Etsy business takes work. You have designs to create, listings to publish, orders to fill, and in the beginning, you still have a lot to learn in addition to having a lot to do. But none of it is really hard. I'm not saying it's a cakewalk, but a lot of times it's our actions that are making things feel harder than they are. It's what we're doing, or sometimes what we're not doing. And that is actually good news because it means we have the power to fix it. So today I'm gonna run through eight things that might be making your business feel harder than it should and what to do instead. You probably won't hear yourself in all eight of these, but there's a good chance there will be one or two that make you think, oh, that sounds like me, or yeah, I do that. Everything I'm about to walk through is a mistake I've made or I've watched other sellers make, and usually it happens because nobody told them there was a simpler way before they started building the hard way. So if you're already running a shop, this is a chance to see where you can lighten the load. And if you haven't started yet, this is your shortcut. You get to build it right the first time instead of untangling it later. So let's get to that list. Okay, number one, you're juggling too many different products. When you find print on demand, you quickly see that there are a lot of options for what to sell. Shirts, mugs, candles, keychains, throw pillows, you name it, you can sell it. And because you're not holding inventory with print on demand, it can feel like there's no downside to trying lots of different things. But there is. There is absolutely a downside to having too many products. And I'm telling you, I see it with a lot of new shops. They have 25 listings up, but they're spread across multiple products. So four t-shirts, two sweatshirts, a couple ornaments, a few notebooks. And I look at that and all I think about is how hard and time consuming it likely was to get there. Every product brings with it multiple unique components that you have to create and learn. Instead, pick one product, build the pieces, and reuse them for every listing. Learn how to design for the product and see how far you can stretch it across different buyers, occasions, and messages. Figure out what works and what doesn't work. Get really good at it before adding the next. It's kind of like learning to actually juggle. You wouldn't start learning with five balls. That would make things unnecessarily hard, right? So instead you'd start with two and get really good at the two, and then you would add a third, get really good with three, then add a fourth. That's what we want to do as we grow our shop. Number two, you're taking a scattered approach to creating listings. When you sit down to create a listing, you make every decision in the moment. Which mock-ups do I want to use? Should I offer different options for this one? Do I really need a video? Where is that product information I need? Maybe I should design a few more products before I finish this one. Even though you've created listings before, the process still feels different every time because you have never turned it into a system. That scattered approach creates extra work. It makes it feel harder. You forget steps, you waste time looking for files, you make the same decisions over and over again. Because there's no clear process to follow, every listing takes way more mental energy than it should. Instead, you need to build a repeatable listing system. Decide what steps every listing should move through, what information every listing needs, which pieces can be reused, and where everything will be stored. Create your templates, save your product specs, organize your mockups, build your informational images, create a checklist that takes you from the initial product idea all the way through publishing. Then each new listing is not a brand new project. It is another product moving through a process you already understand. The goal is not just to create things faster, it is to make listing products feel predictable, organized, and much easier to repeat. Number three, you keep changing decisions you already made. Maybe you spent time creating all your mock-ups. Then 10 listings in, decide you want them all to be different. Or you set your prices, built them into your listings, and then started questioning whether you should lower everything. Or you decided which product options to offer, how your shop would be organized, what your branding would look like. But instead of building on those decisions, you keep reopening them. When you continually revisit and change decisions that have already been made, you are making it hard to move forward, right? Because moving forward when you're going backward is impossible. Instead, make the best decision you can with the information you have and consider it settled. You can revisit it later if there is a clear business reason to do so. Reasons like customers are confused or the numbers aren't working or a change that would solve a specific problem your shop is having. Trust me here, your business becomes easier to run when you stop rebuilding the foundation and instead start building on top of it. Okay, number four, you're letting perfectionism win. This might sound similar to number three, but it is different. Number three was about reopening decisions that you've already made, and perfectionism often prevents you from even making the decision or finishing the work in the first place. And let me tell you, this one has me written all over it. I have to actively combat this every day. So, what does it look like in your Etsy business? You spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find the perfect shade of blue or the greatest font combination Etsy has ever known. You tweak your mock-ups until everything is a blur. Or designs sit in your in-progress folder because you're not quite sure they are good enough. A lot of this feels like work and it gives you something to focus on, but at the end of the day, nothing's done. You haven't actually accomplished anything. And maybe this is just me, but I come out of a perfectionism session where I've reworked an idea endlessly, more mentally exhaust it than when I'm actually accomplishing things. If you have one hour to work on your shop this week, choosing between two nearly identical fonts probably is not going to change your business. If that design isn't good enough, well, then it won't sell. But you won't know until you get it out there. Instead, you need to settle for be work, which as a teacher is really hard for me to say, and it's hard for me to do, but they say done is better than perfect. And while I don't believe that in all situations, I absolutely do believe it here because the goal is not to create something flawless before anyone sees it. We want to just create something solid, put it out into the world, and let the response tell you what deserves more of your time. You can always improve something later if that's what the data shows you needs to happen. But you cannot learn anything from something that just sits in your in progress folder. Okay, the number five way you're making your Etsy business harder than it needs to be is by building your whole shop around trends. Now, to be clear, I am not against trends. Trends can be a great addition to a shop that already has a strong foundation. But if every product you create is based on whatever is popular right now, you are going to be constantly designing, constantly researching, and constantly searching for the next thing. And most of what you create will only be relevant for as long as the trend lasts. That is going to make your business feel like nonstop work. Instead, build the core of your shop around customers, occasions, and messages that do not expire. Then you can add trends in a more strategic and intentional way. Ideally, you can take a trend and apply it to a product or a concept that has already been proven it can sell in your shop. That way you're not rebuilding your business around every new trend. You're using the trends to refresh what's already working. Okay, number six, you're not leveraging AI. Now, I know some of you are avoiding it on principle, and I respect that. Others feel overwhelmed by it, and some of you just don't know where it actually fits into an Etsy business. But either way, it's a tool that is sitting on the table that could be saving you tons of time. AI does not need to run your business for you, it doesn't need to replace your ideas, your judgment, your voice. And while I'm not against people using AI for designing, that's not what I'm gonna suggest here either. Instead, use ChatGPT or Claude, which is my personal preference these days, to speed up the parts of your business that do not need to start from a blank page every single time. You can use it to brainstorm variations on a message, or you can use it to organize your research or to generate new ideas. You can use it to create the opening paragraph of your listing descriptions. I do that every single time. You can help, you can have it help you create customer emails or analyze your stats. Then use your own experience to shape, edit, and decide what actually belongs in your business. You do not have to hand everything over to AI, but you can let it lighten your load by taking some of the repetitive and time-consuming work off your plate so that you can spend more time creating those listings. Okay, number seven, you're following too much advice. There's a lot of information out there, a lot of people sharing what helped them find Etsy's success and what they believe is the right strategy to build a profitable shop. And many times the advice conflicts. One person says you need to get up 300 listings as quickly as possible, while someone else says get up 50 really great listings. Or one person is saying to choose a very specific niche and the other one is saying to focus on trends. And most of the time, neither is wrong, they're just different. Both can work, but not simultaneously in the same shop. Listening to too many people creates uncertainty, confusion, and decision paralysis. You have so much information coming at you that even simple decisions start to feel very complicated. You are no longer sure what advice applies to your shop, what to ignore, or what to do next. The information that was meant to help you ends up leaving you feeling overwhelmed and afraid of making the wrong choice. Instead, choose a small number of sources you genuinely trust. Take the advice that makes sense for the business you are building, and then give yourself permission to ignore everything else. Okay, number eight, you're trying to do all the things. Everyone wants their business to succeed as quickly as possible. And it's easy to assume that the more you do, the faster that success will come. So you set out to list 10 products a day, learn how to run Etsy ads, learn Pinterest strategies, post on social media, A-B test your titles and thumbnails, and somehow keep up with everything else in your life. But doing more does not always mean making more progress. When you divide your limited time between too many things, you're going to stay busy, but you're not going to be able to give enough attention to any one thing to actually make sure it can work. So instead, choose one main priority at a time based on where your business is right now. So for example, if your shop is not yet open, your priority is getting it open and publishing listings, not figuring out Etsy ads. Or if you have a bunch of products but no one is clicking them, your priority is figuring out why. Here's where you may do some thumbnail testing before you go and publish another 20 new listings. Remember, everything else can wait. Not forever, just until the priority in front of you has had enough of your attention to actually make a difference. Okay, so now be honest with yourself. Are you making your Etsy business harder than it needs to be? If you found yourself wanting to raise your hand and say she's talking to me during one or more of those, then there's probably something you can simplify. Take it one thing at a time. As you simplify each one, your business will feel a little easier to manage and it will be much easier to keep moving forward. And before you go, if this episode helped you in any way, I'd love it if you would leave a podcast review. Reviews help more Etsy sellers find the show, and your feedback helps me create more of the episodes you want to hear. Thanks for listening, and I will see you in the next episode.