The maker’s Roadmap

Your Ultimate A to Z Guide to Starting and Growing

a Profitable Handmade Shop.

tizzit.co
 before you start

I am Deb! The founder of Tizzit.co, handmade business

coach, cheese lover, and determined to help you turn
your handmade skills into a profitable business. Over the
years, I’ve helped thousands of handmade shop owners
start, grow and profit from their handmade shops with my
training videos, online courses, and programs.

Now, it’s your turn. I believe (in fact, I am sure!) that with the right training, the right
advice, and a supportive community who won’t let you quit, you can build a wildly
successful handmade business - and that’s exactly what Tizzit is all about.

My flagship system, The Maker’s Roadmap, will take you through each stage of starting
and growing a successful and profitable handmade shop so you can get back to
doing what you love most (making) and worry less about the rest (business and ugh...
marketing). Are you ready? Let’s do this.
 before you start

know the facts

There is A LOT of info out there about Etsy SEO, some great…. some ill-informed and
downright dangerous for your shop’s success.

My biggest piece of advice is to always, always check the facts. What I am about to
share in this video isn’t an opinion piece, it’s factual information from the horse’s
mouth. I am not making any of this up, and you can find this information on Etsy’s
website.

In fact, I highly recommend you take the time to read the Etsy Seller Handbook and
its section on SEO - but because I love summing up stuff and because you’re probably
too busy to go read the whole thing anyway, here’s what you need to know about Etsy
search, and how it really works.
 how etsy search works

They are two main phases to any Etsy search:

1. Query Matching
2. Ranking

phase one: query matching

This is how Query Matching works:

Someone types a few keywords in the search field of Etsy, looking for a product to buy.
For example, that person might type in “baby socks”. This is called a “search query”.

Etsy will use this information and look in their database for items that match this
search query, hence the name “query matching”. All this means is that Etsy scans all the
products listed on their platform looking for a keyword match for “baby socks” in the

• Product Titles
• Product Tags
• Product Categories
• Product Attributes

phase one: query matching

So far so good. Someone typed “baby socks” on the platform and Etsy found a list of
items that might be relevant.
At this stage, there are still thousands and thousands of listings that Etsy could show to
this shopper.

So how does Etsy decide which listing to show first? In other words, how does Etsy rank
works?

Etsy #1 goal is to shop shoppers listings or products that they are likely to buy. To do
that they look at a few things:
 how etsy search works

• Relevancy
• Listing quality score
• Recency
• Cutomer and market experience score
• Shipping price
• Translations and languages
• Shoppers habits

Let’s look at each of them and what they mean for you as a seller:

relevancy
Put simply, the more closely your title, tags, attributes, and categories match the search
query, the more likely it is that your item will show up higher in the search results
because it is more “relevant”.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

Use ALL 13 tags

Add relevant attributes options

Pick specific categories for your products

Listing quality score

Etsy wants people to buy, and so they want to show potential shopper product listings
that they know sell well. As soon as you list a product in your shop, Etsy keeps track of
how well it is performing.

How many people who click on your product listing end up purchasing it?

That’s called your listing conversion rate, and the higher it is, the more Etsy will want to
show your product to potential shoppers.
 how etsy search works

On the other hand, if a lot of people click but no one ever purchases, Etsy will start
showing your listing less. That’s why it’s important to keep your conversion rates up.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

Spend some time making sure your listings are optimized for sales: your
product photography should be of a professional standard, your product
descriptions should highlight benefits and not just features, and focus on
the quality of your traffic rather than on the volume.

recency
Etsy likes new products. When you list a new item, it gets a temporary little boost
lasting from a few hours to a few days - during which Etsy will rank this particular
product a bit higher in search results.

Why does this happen? Well sasdly, it isn’t necessarily to help you out. Sorry!
By momentarily giving more visibility to this product, Etsy can see how shoppers
interact with it and gather data for that “listing quality score” with just mentioned.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

Yes, newer items do get a boost but NO, this is not a viable Etsy SEO
strategy. In fact, Etsy has said black on white “Regularly renewing your
Listing quality score
items or creating new listings just to get this small boost isn’t an effective
search optimization strategy.” It is much more important to pick the right
tags and to focus on your “listing quality score” or “conversion rate”.
 how etsy search works

Customer and market experience score

Another score! Etsy want people to have the best possible experience on the platform to
maintain their brand standards and encourage repeat buyers. For this reason they look
at your reputation.

Bottom line: If you have a lot of great reviews, you’re more likely to rank higher than if
you have a few open cases against your shop.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

Provide excellent customer service to encourage 5 star product reviews

(reply to convo quickly, ship quickly, represent items accurately so there’s
no surprise when they receive item, etc.)

Make sure you have complete shop policies

Make sure you craft a great about section for your shop

shipping price
People don’t like paying for shipping and are more likely to buy if the shipping is cheap
or even better, free. Etsy knows that from studying shoppers behavior, and because just
like you - they want sales, they use shipping in their algorithm.

Items with lower shipping fees rank higher in search.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

When and if possible, try to lower your shipping fees. I know this isn’t always
possible, but again, I am just giving you the facts - and this is a part of the
algorithm.
 how etsy search works

translation and languages

This one is pretty straight forward and most useful for those of you who want to sell to
more than one country/language.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

If you set up your shop’s language as “Spanish”, don’t write your tags in
English. And vice versa. Etsy will translate them for you.

If you can, add manual translations - they will often be better than the
automatically generated one from Etsy and help you get found (rank higher).

shoppers habits
OK this is the last one, and it’s a BIGGIE, so pay close attention.
All the ranking factors we just covered help Etsy decide in which order to display search
results, but there is NO SUCH THING as a unified “rank” anymore - meaning that if I type
in “baby socks” and you type in “baby socks”, we will not see the same results, and not in
the same order.

This is called Context Specific Results or CSR and was added to the Etsy search
algorithm in September 2018.
Etsy uses past behavior data on the platform to show each shopper results that they are
more likely to buy.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

You simply can’t aim at being #1 - there is no such thing anymore. Don’t
“check your rank” by typing your keywords to see where your products show
up because every shopper sees different results - that’s not goint ot help
you achieve or understand anything. Instead, use your shop stats to discover
which keywords are driving the most traffic.
 thank you!
For further help, support and training to help you start, grow and
profit from your handmade shop, check out Tizzit HQ

4-STEP MAKER’S ROADMAP SYSTEM

LIBRARY OF IN-DEPTH COURSES AND

TRAINING

LIVE MONTHLY COACHING SESSIONS

A SUPPORTIVE ONLINE COMMUNITY

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