My Handmade Business: Starting from scratch

Two weeks ago, I started thinking about what I would do if I could start my business all over from the ground up. What steps would I need to take? What would I need to do first? What would I name it? What type of business would it be?

The first thing I did was set up my task list. These are the things that I knew my business needed before I could even open my shop up on the selling platform: Etsy.

Task List

• Choose a name for business
• Set up Blog
  • Create at least 5-10 posts
  • Create a Mailing List
  • Create an About Us page
  • Create a Logo and Branding
• Set up a Facebook Page
• Set up an Instagram (link FB and IG)
• Set up a TikTok account
• Set up a YouTube account
• Set up an Etsy store
  • Link all Socials to Etsy and Etsy to all socials
  • Add products

When it comes to adding products on Etsy, know that you will need at least 100 products. Some people are successful with a few products, but I can guarantee that they have a huge following on social media to be successful. If you are starting from scratch (like I am) you need multiple products to catch the slice of Etsy pie. Out of just 50 products (right now) I have had one sale (from a friend on my personal FB), half of my traffic has been from Etsy search, and the other half has been from my direct links on social media.

I will need to go back and actually optimize those listings even more for search such as optimizing pictures to include alt tags and adding in a few more keywords (after some research on eRank), but for now, getting those listings to 100 is important. Optimizing is something that you can do a little each day (especially once you see if a product isn’t drawing in enough traffic). Plus, Etsy takes time before the algorithm can show you the search terms for why customers have seen your product. Currently, my store is 14 days old as of July 28, 2024. I still can’t see search terms. That usually takes about a month or so, but I can still optimize until I can see those.