How Many Listings Should I Have On Etsy To Be Successful? (You'll Be Shocked At The Answer)

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You’ve probably heard people say that you need at least 100 listings to be successful on Etsy. What?! While it’s true that having more listings gets you more exposure, there’s nothing written in stone that you have to have a certain amount of items for sale in your Etsy shop to make money. It’s actually more about what products you’re making and if they’re in high demand right now.

How Many Etsy Listings Do I Need?

I started my shop with 7 listings. I wanted to try selling on Etsy, but I wasn’t 100% committed. It was kind of an experiment to see if it would work.

I didn’t have a ton of money to put into making a bunch of items and having them not sell.

I actually started my Etsy shop on a budget of under $100. I made sales when I only had 7 items in my Etsy shop. I actually made over $1,000 in one month with those 7 listings!

As you can tell by that, it depends more on what items you’re selling and if they’re in demand than how many listings you have in your shop.

Now I do have over 100 items in my shop after a few years of selling on Etsy, but I feel like telling a beginner Etsy seller that they need at least that many items to be successful is overwhelming and not true.

I’m proof that it’s not true. I remember wondering how in the world I was ever going to get 100 items in my shop when I had no money to keep making new products.

I didn’t know what was going to sell well yet, so adding a bunch of stuff that might not sell seemed like a waste of money.

I didn’t know who my customers were yet and what they liked in order to make products for them that would sell.

I was making a few new products, but they weren’t selling like my first ones because I didn’t know what my customers liked and I was completely missing the mark with my new stuff.

I do agree that customers feel more at ease if your shop looks like it has a lot of items. They see your shop as more professional and established if you have more than a few items in your Etsy shop.

Plus, if you have more products for the same type of customer, you could sell multiple items to the same person.

How To Get More Products In Your Etsy Shop

Here’s an easy way to get more listings in your shop without having to have a bunch of different ideas for items and spend money making things that won’t sell.

Make your current products available in different colors and sizes if possible and make separate listings for them.

For instance, I make burlap placemats. The burlap I buy comes in multiple colors. So I can offer the same placemats in other colors of burlap.

I also paint on the placemats. So I can offer the same placemat designs with different colors of paint.

I could also make separate listings for each set size. I could have a listing for a set of 2 placemats, a listing for a set of 4 placemats and so on. By doing this I could take a few products and turn them into 30 or 40 listings and make my Etsy shop look full.

Be sure to vary your keywords somewhat in the listings so you’re able to reach more people through different search results.

Now you’ve just made a complete Etsy shop that looks full with only a few items.

If you’re not a beginner Etsy seller and you’ve already started making some sales, I would say you should start adding new items to your shop.

You have an idea of what your customers are liking and buying. Use what is working and see how you can add new products.

The more listings you have, the better, but you want to make sure they are going to get the customer’s attention and sell.

When you are ready to add more products to your shop, my Profitable Handmade Product Planner will help you come up with ideas for new best-selling products to make you more money.

This post will also show you how to find trendy craft ideas on Pinterest that you can make and sell in your Etsy shop.

How Many Etsy Listings Should I Start With?

You can start your Etsy shop with only one listing. However, you want your store to have more than one item for your shoppers to browse through.

By having at least 10 items in your Etsy shop, you’ll look like you’re a more seasoned seller and give yourself a chance at making a multiple item sale to your first customers.

There are people who only sell one item in their shop and are successful, but it’s very unlikely that this will happen.

Once you’ve designed a few products, use the method I shared above to use color and size variations to create more listings using the same few products.

How Many Views Is Normal On Etsy Before A Sale?

In my newest shop, it took me 120 views and 85 visits to make my first sale. You can learn more about that here.

I was kind of missing the mark on my popular item research at that time. So this can actually go a lot faster if you’ve got the right products.

It will also depend on how many listings you have in your shop and whether you’ve done the research to make sure your items are in demand and being searched for.

If your product isn’t on trend or sought after, you may never make any sales. This is the number one reason why many Etsy sellers fail.

You have to use a tool like Erank to find keywords, trends, and product ideas before you create something. Otherwise you could be wasting your time.