187. Is eRank Accurate? Where is the Data From?

Summary

Crickets to Cha-Chings: Episode 187 - Is eRank Accurate? Where is the Data From?

Release Date: September 30, 2024
Host: Julie Berninger, Gold City Ventures
Guest: Anthony Wolf, Founder of Erank

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1. Introduction and Guest Background

In Episode 187 of Crickets to Cha-Chings, host Julie Berninger welcomes Anthony Wolf, the founder of Erank, a prominent tool for Etsy and other marketplace sellers. Anthony shares his journey of creating Erank nearly nine years ago to assist his wife in optimizing her Etsy shop, which eventually evolved into a comprehensive tool supporting multiple marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay.

[00:36] Anthony Wolf: "I built Erank nine years ago to help my wife sell on Etsy, and it grew into a tool that now assists sellers across various marketplaces."

2. Overview of Erank Tools and Data Sources

Julie highlights how Erank is instrumental for her students in understanding high-search, low-competition keywords. Anthony elaborates on the tool’s functionality, emphasizing its visual dashboard that uses a color-coded system (yellow, red, green) to indicate keyword viability.

[01:20] Julie Berninger: "One thing we all like about Erank is that it has a visual dashboard with yellow, red, and green next to each of the keywords."

Anthony explains that Erank sources data directly from Etsy and third-party providers who share browsing behaviors from over 10 million users, predominantly in the US. This combination allows Erank to blend supply and demand insights effectively.

[02:09] Anthony Wolf: "We take user behavior and calculate search volume and trend information from third-party data providers, blending it with competition data directly from Etsy."

3. Tracking Trends Over Time

The discussion moves to Erank’s capability to track keyword trends over time. Anthony describes the tool’s "monthly trends" feature, which allows users to analyze search behaviors over the past 15 months, and the "trend buzz" feature that extends beyond Etsy to include 33 different marketplaces.

[04:14] Anthony Wolf: "We can rewind back to September 2023 and see what sort of Halloween keywords were popular, across various categories and even international markets."

Julie shares her experience using Erank to identify niche keywords related to professions and holidays, noting the importance of understanding buyer identities in the gifting space.

4. Insights from the Annual Buyer Survey

Anthony introduces Erank’s annual buyer survey, which aims to gather direct feedback from Etsy buyers—a shift from the usual seller-focused opinions. This survey, conducted with 1,000 American buyers, has uncovered consistent patterns over three years.

[10:35] Anthony Wolf: "Buyers see Etsy as a great site for purchasing gifts, especially during the holiday season. Make sure your items are clearly giftable."

Key insights from the survey include:

• Gift Perception: Buyer's focus on giftability emphasizes the need for listings to appear as ideal gifts, incorporating relevant keywords.

• Quality of Listings: Maintaining a well-presented shop with high-quality images is crucial, as 82% of surveyed buyers prioritize pictures.

• Effective Descriptions: Clear and accurate descriptions influence 80% of purchase decisions, underscoring the importance of detailed and engaging product descriptions.

• Communication: Proactive communication regarding shipping status can significantly impact buyer satisfaction and review rates.

[19:31] Anthony Wolf: "82% of people said pictures mean a lot to them. 80% said descriptions help them make a purchase decision."

5. Improving Listings: Photos and Descriptions

Julie and Anthony delve into practical strategies for enhancing Etsy listings. Anthony advises sellers to use multiple high-resolution images to showcase products from various angles, especially for items with intricate details or imperfections.

[15:52] Anthony Wolf: "The more images you have, the better. Show every angle and detail so buyers can visualize the product fully."

He also recommends investing in tools like light boxes for photographing small items, which can elevate the quality of product images without breaking the bank.

For descriptions, Anthony emphasizes the necessity of avoiding generic disclaimers and instead crafting informative, engaging narratives that accurately represent the product.

[19:30] Anthony Wolf: "Descriptions are super important. Make sure you write good descriptions that accurately describe your product."

6. Shipping and Customer Communication

The conversation shifts to shipping strategies, a critical aspect influenced by Etsy’s emphasis on competitive shipping rates and speeds. Anthony confirms that shipping practices like offering free shipping and ensuring fast dispatch can significantly boost sales.

[34:20] Anthony Wolf: "Free shipping has a positive influence on purchase decisions for 43% of surveyed buyers. Fast shipping also enhances customer satisfaction."

He advises maintaining transparent communication with buyers about shipping statuses, including notifying them of any delays to prevent negative reviews.

[22:40] Anthony Wolf: "If there’s a delay, let them know immediately. It reduces tension and lowers the chances of receiving a one-star review."

7. International Market Insights

Anthony provides insights into international markets, noting that Australia, along with France and Germany, are key regions for Etsy sellers. He points out that Australian sellers benefit from seasonal differences, allowing for off-season sales in North America and Europe.

[26:00] Anthony Wolf: "Australia hovers around as a key market, similar to France and Germany. They often search in English on Etsy, which influences keyword strategies."

He also touches on the potential of Spanish-speaking markets and advises sellers to consider localization strategies while leveraging Etsy’s internal translation capabilities.

[29:13] Anthony Wolf: "60% of Americans are prepared to buy from international sellers, so ensure shipping times and costs are optimized for a global audience."

8. Enhancing Listings Through Social Elements

Julie shares a case study of a seller who successfully differentiated her soy candles by incorporating engaging videos, leading to substantial sales growth. Anthony reinforces the importance of integrating social media elements to boost visibility and reviews.

[40:15] Julie Berninger: "A seller made a cold brew coffee candle and paired it with a viral video, which significantly boosted her sales."

[42:36] Anthony Wolf: "Using social media to drive traffic and encourage positive reviews can enhance your shop’s ranking and trustworthiness on Etsy."

9. Upcoming Features and Erank Extension

In the final segment, Anthony introduces Erank’s new browser extension, designed to provide real-time insights directly within the user’s browsing experience. Initially available for Etsy on Chrome, the extension offers features like keyword rankings, competitor analysis, and AI-assisted listing optimization.

[43:53] Anthony Wolf: "Our browser extension allows you to see top keywords, understand competitor tags, and get AI-generated title and description suggestions directly within your browser."

He announces plans to expand the extension’s compatibility to other platforms like Shopify, Amazon, and more, aiming to support sellers wherever they choose to operate.

[46:09] Anthony Wolf: "We’re enabling the extension for different platforms in the coming weeks, ensuring sellers can optimize their listings no matter where they sell."

Julie expresses excitement about the extension’s potential, comparing it to existing tools like Keywords Everywhere, and encourages listeners to try it out.

[47:00] Julie Berninger: "You can download the extension, enable it on your browser, and start optimizing your listings with ease."

Conclusion

Julie wraps up the episode by thanking Anthony for his valuable insights and discussing the continuous evolution of Erank to support sellers across various platforms. Listeners are encouraged to explore Erank’s tools and take advantage of the latest features to enhance their Etsy shops and beyond.

[47:30] Anthony Wolf: "Thanks, Julie. My pleasure."

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Key Takeaways:

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Utilize tools like Erank to analyze keywords, monitor trends, and understand buyer behavior.

• Optimized Listings: High-quality photos and detailed, accurate descriptions are vital for increasing conversions.

• Customer Communication: Proactive updates on shipping and handling any delays can improve customer satisfaction and reviews.

• International Focus: Expanding into key international markets can drive additional sales, with customization for local preferences.

• Social Integration: Leveraging social media to promote products can significantly enhance visibility and sales.

• Continuous Improvement: Stay updated with tools like Erank’s browser extension to continually optimize listings across multiple platforms.

For more information and to explore Erank’s tools, visit erank.com and download their browser extension to start optimizing your Etsy shop today.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Crickets to Cha Chings podcast. I'm Julie Berninger from Gold City Ventures and I have a special guest today. I'm here with Anthony Wolf, the founder of Erank. Welcome, Anthony.

[B]

Hi, Julie. It's great to see you again.

[A]

It's great to see you again as well. So we wanted to bring you on to talk about trends, what's new with one of our favorite data tools, what you're releasing, and also maybe discuss some interesting buyer insights that you have from your annual buyer survey that you want to share with our audience. So we're going to get into all those things, but before we do, can you just give everyone a quick background on you and the tool Erank?

[B]

Yeah, certainly. So I'm the founder of Erank. I built it going on nine years ago now. Can you believe it? Nine years. Essentially I built a couple of tools for my wife to help her sell an Etsy and then have this realization that other people could probably use these tools as well. So created Etsy Rank back in the day. And yeah, going on nine years later, we now Erank. We've got tools to help people optimize their listings for Etsy, do keyword and product research for Etsy, Amazon, ebay and a bunch of other marketplaces. And oh gosh, there's so much. I'll stop there because I know we've got a time limit. I can go on for hours.

[A]

Well, one thing that we love to use Erank for is to help our students in our Eprintables course understand what keywords are highly searched but have low competition. And one just for someone who hasn't used Erank, one thing that we all like about it is that it has a visual dashboard with yellow, red and green next to each of the keywords. And that's just really smart. I'm just curious, how did you come up with that idea and how, how do you even, how are you making that? Like people are wondering where is this from? Where the. If you could just give us from a non technical person's perspective when they're seeing Halloween party invites and three greens across or something like that, where, where is that data coming from and what does that mean to the seller?

[B]

Okay, I'll try and keep it simple. So our keyword tool has a couple of data sources. So one is Etsy. So we get a lot of competition and keyword ideas from Etsy. We also have a couple of third party data providers and what they do is they have, oh gosh, over 10 million folks around the world with a big chunk of those in the US who have said, okay, we will share our browsing behavior with you. And that basically means we can look at what they search for on Etsy. So imagine this, you've got millions of people who are using Etsy and you have insight into what they're looking for. So that's really the two data sources. So we take the user behavior and calculate search volume and trend information from those third party data providers. On the competition side, we get that directly from Etsy, so we blend those two together. So you've got a good idea of the supply and demand side for different keywords.

[A]

And I know a lot of our new sellers love this tool because not only just the red, the stop sign color scheme is helpful, but also if you're brand new or even if you're not new, if you're finding keywords that are less competitive, less sellers figured out that they that these are good ideas highly searched for, then it can just be an easier leg up in making sales on Etsy. So in terms of trends, I'm just curious, are you ever tracking that data over time? Are you ever saying, wow, Halloween has just taken off and now it's just huge on Etsy year over year or, or the holidays have really increased or even the digital products for the holidays? I'm just curious from a trends perspective, are you ever looking at that on the Erank side and do you have any interesting insights of things that kind of surprise you or your team from that data?

[B]

Looking at what people search for over time is always full of surprises. Some good, some disturbing, but usually it's very interesting. And there's a lot you can learn when it comes to preparing your shop, especially for big seasons like Christmas and holiday season. So at Erank, what we've done is I was telling you about those users that have given us permission to share their searching data. We go back 15 months and we have a trends section and there's a monthly trends feature which allows you to go in there and look at what people were searching for on Etsy over those previous 15 months. So if you're going Black Friday's coming up or Halloween's coming up, what was it like last year? So you can rewind back to say September 2023 and then we said 2018 back to September 2023 and see what sort of Halloween keywords were popular. We also have a bunch of categories there as well. So you can pick the top keywords from various Etsy categories. And we also Have a couple of pseudo categories for folks that sell print on demand products as well. So you can go in there and have a look at mugs and shirts and things like that to see popular. So it's fascinating. We see a lot of history repeating itself. So Halloween obviously, Mother's Day, Father's Day, all the usual suspects. It gets really interesting when you see fads pop up. So the one that keeps coming back to mind is back around. Oh gosh, you remember the Bernie Mittens, Bernie Sanders mittens he was wearing. Yeah, that really popped. But obviously it was a one off sort of thing. So they're some of the. Not sort of a surprise I guess they're the anomalies that you will sometimes see when you go back in time. Those will not repeat themselves. But yeah, so that's the, the trend section there. There are two actual trend features that we've got. One's a monthly trend which I just described Etsy historical, multiple different categories. And then there's trend buzz which goes well beyond Etsy. So it's got 33 different marketplaces in there. So it's got the usual suspects like the Amazon, the ebay's the Walmart, it's got brick and mortar, so it's got Lowe's and Home Depot in there. So if you're looking for ideas, I mean you probably can't sell there, but you may be looking for ideas that can be really useful as well. And we also have some international marketplaces as well. So there's a lot that you can see there as well. I really like the trend buzz because sometimes I really just want to know what was hot yesterday or over the past seven days. So if you, if you're a real finger on the pulse sort of person, then you may find the, the trend bar section is really useful for you. So a couple of scenarios could be you wanted to know what was hot on Amazon UK yesterday. That information is there if you want to. Maybe you sell on Depop and you want to know what was popular over the past 30 days on Depop. You can go in there and see what was there. So you get great ideas using this information.

[A]

So some just to give you a sense of how I use Erank to prepare to for this podcast in YouTube. Sometimes I like to type in different things into Erank's keyword search tool. Like for example, I just did two episodes on nurses and teachers what they could sell on Etsy respectively. And I'll just type in nurse or teacher and then I'll sort and understand, okay, what, which related keyword searches have lower competition in those two areas. And, and kind of that's something I've noticed. Like the profe. Etsy. I always knew Etsy was about holidays, but more and more I'm kind of understanding how important it is like for people's identities, like whether it's their professions, whether they're an aunt or an uncle or something like, because probably the. In the gifting space that's, that's been huge. So I'm just kind of curious. I mean, maybe this is more something that I do in my role, but I like to just. You mentioned the Mittens. Can you think of any other recent things or is anyone on your team kind of looking at. Oh wow, like how like for example, Halloween. Halloween was all pink this year. I don't know if that's something you can see in the data, but I saw this kind of post Barbie movie movement where all the holidays became pink suddenly and now people just want to see pink holidays. Not everybody, but a growing subset want pink stuff. Pink pumpkins, pink Christmas tree, all that. Is that something that you guys are seeing on the back end too? Or is it more like this is just a whole bunch of noise and you can kind of choose your own adventure as you're going into it.

[B]

I have to confess, I am not the biggest trendsetter, trendy person out there. So I don't follow them, the trends really closely. But if you follow Starla or Pam, they're always reviewing what, what's been popular and they will call out things like that. Jan on our team also has a monthly newsletter that goes out. So I strongly recommend you subscribe to that because it's got really good insights. Get in there each month and she will literally go through like the top thousand keywords that we found on Etsy. She also does it for the UK and Australia and Canada as well. So if you want really good understanding of what's been popular, I would strongly recommend you subscribe to that and check out what Pam and Starla are creating in their videos too.

[A]

I love all of that content so I'm gonna link below for anyone that's not familiar with it so they can come check that out. Okay, cool. So I think I wanna move on to the annual buyer survey results. And just for overall setting the context for anyone listening, Anthony and his team go out and interview buyers and we can learn a lot. And I'm not talking about sellers, we're talking about buyers, Etsy buyers. We can learn a lot by putting ourself in the shoes of the who's looking at our shops, our listings, our products, and deciding what to buy, when to buy, whether or not to buy. So it's important for all of us. And in some of these things, even maybe the ones that seem obvious, it's important for us to really think through whether we are meeting their expectations, exceeding their expectations in these categories. So, Anthony, we'd love to hear any insights that you have regarding this survey and how we can improve our own listings to make more sales.

[B]

You know, we run this annual survey, so we've done it for three years now. We're about to prepare our fourth one. And the problem I've seen, especially in the forums, is everyone's got an opinion and usually it's a seller's opinion. So it's good general feedback for the most part. But it's anecdotal. So I thought, okay, why not reach out to the buyers? Let's find a thousand buyers in America and say, right, what do you think about Etsy? What makes you come back and buy on Etsy, things like that. Because I wanted to get it directly from people. And 1,000 was a good number because it doesn't get too expensive, but it's statistically significant. And over the past three years we've seen some really common patterns emerge. And I think it's really good advice for anyone that's just getting started, anyone that's preparing for holiday season and even veterans that have been around for a while and maybe they're going, I seem to have flatlined. What am I doing wrong? Well, this is kind of like your little buyer mind reading device or report. So the thing that really stands out for me is buyers see Etsy as a great site for purchasing gifts and especially coming up in holiday season. So my takeaway from that is make sure your item looks like it's a gift. And when you think about people in gift buying mode, who are they buying for? Aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, parents, things like that. So make sure that your listing is clearly giftable. I hope that's the right word anyway, so get those keywords into your tags and into your descriptions and titles so that people go, hmm, this makes a good gift. I mean, obviously don't put those words in there. If it's not really a good gift, if it's a supply may not be perfect. The next thing is the quality of shop listings. So you're probably going, what is that? Well, think of it like this. You go into a dusty old store and you're trying to buy Something new for someone and there's cobwebs and cracks and mold and whatever. You're like, you're out of that store straight away, right? It's like, I don't want anything to do with this place. Same applies to online stores. So if your store looks like it's well maintained, it's interesting. There are great quality pictures, things like that. If you spruce up your store, it really helps and has an effect on people's willingness to buy from you. So think the opposite. You don't want that dodgy, poorly maintained store. You want something that's got great photos. 82% of people who we surveyed said pictures mean, you know, it's a big deal. Get great pictures. Don't take a snapshot with your cell phone in pole lighting. Make sure you go the extra mile to have great quality pictures. And the other thing is descriptions. So descriptions. I see a lot of people take shortcuts here. It's like just put in a whole bunch of disclaimers, you have to return this within 24 hours or blah, blah, blah. Well, unfortunately, descriptions are super important. 80% of people said descriptions help them make a purchase decision. So make sure you write good descriptions that accurately describe your product. And please don't scare people off. Imagine this. You've done your keyword research, you've taken great photos, and then you have a horribly worded, scary description. That description can ruin all that good work you did previously. So make sure you've got a great description in there. Yeah. Can you talk for a second? I'm running out of breath. I get excited.

[A]

Okay, so you're running out of breath and everyone listening is having like 12 heart attacks. Because they're like, my pictures are terrible, my descriptions are confusing. So let's talk about ideas about how they can improve the listening images and the descriptions without, like getting overwhelmed. Because even for me, who's been selling for so long, I mean, I think I started in like 2016, 2017. I still get stressed out sometimes because I'm like, I'm not a photographer and I'm not a writer. So what, you know, what am I doing here? So with the images and actually, I'm curious if you see this. I started getting these notifications from Etsy that I think Maybe I'd like 20 listings that didn't have enough photos. And I probably. I don't know what they consider enough some that I was like, look, I don't have the mental bandwidth to put six photos right now. I'm going to put one or two Photos because they're giving me these notifications. I'm like, okay, they're probably reducing my visibility in search because I don't have enough photos because they know that it lowers conversion. I'm just curious if you see on your end because you have all this data, are you seeing like when we're saying you need good images, I mean, obviously, well, lighting, lighting definitely open a window, you know, you know, everyone knows their own home. Like if you're taking pictures at your house, when did you get the most light? Is it 8am? Is it 3pm? Like make an arrangement to take those pictures that day, take them outside, whatever. But in terms of like number of pictures, are you seeing anything on the back end of like. Oh, the, the listings that do the best tend to have like six. And has that changed recently?

[B]

Julie? I haven't done detailed analysis, but the general observation is the more the merrier. Think of it like this. Again, you're going into that store and maybe, maybe selling a vintage product. This is a, to me, it's an interesting example. You know, it's vintage. You know, there are going to be imperfections, signs of age and things like that. In that situation, you want to have pictures of everything, you know, like the main item, whatever it is, but you also want to have a close up on, you know, a chip or a crack or some fading and things like that. So give people as many images as possible. They can't get in there and feel the image and look at it from all different sorts of angles. So take as many pictures as you can. Okay. If you're selling twine, there's only so many pictures you can, you know, create that can be useful. But anything that's a bit more tangible, physical products, take as many as you can. Try and get at least your main image in really high resolution so people can zoom in and see the detail. And if you're a brilliant artist, I mean, this works in your favor, right? You can show off some of your talents by having those high resolution images. And the last thing is, if you sell jewelry or small items, pop onto Amazon and look for a light box. My wife did that for her jewelry store and it made a huge difference. She can control the environment, she can get her camera out, take some great snapshot, all because the lighting is good, it's uniform, it's clean. So if you've got small items, if you can invest in one of those, it's not super expensive and will pay itself off very quickly.

[A]

Anthony, I feel like we just got a hot tip because you so Anthony have known each other for years. Because we've been around for years and so is he. You never used to tell us what category your wife sold in. I feel like I just learned, I just learned the whole thing. It's jewelry. She sells jewelry.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Cool. That's awesome.

[B]

Yep. She, she swore me to secrecy many years ago, but.

[A]

Yeah, but over time you've kind of relaxed on it. Yeah. Okay. Well that's awesome. That's cool. I'm sure the jewelry sellers out there will find solidarity in doing all that stuff. Yeah. So in terms of the photography, I also want to mention too, we had an episode a few, maybe a couple months ago with a UGC photographer where if your shop can invest money, maybe a couple hundred dollars in, in this, you can pay a professional to take your photos. And there's different levels of professional. There's like the studio professional and then there's the UGC which is kind of just user generated content. Like somebody, in the case of earrings, like it would be somebody wearing your earrings or something like that. So someone, if someone's freaking out, like I really hate doing this or I can't take good pictures or anything. You could hire somebody if you have the budget for it.

[B]

Yeah, you know, I. Again, my wife's store, she's in jewelry, highly competitive as you can imagine. And as she was using Erank to discover competitors, she started to realize they were using third parties for exactly that reason to take photos. And some of those I'm not going to out the stores, but you can tell they had models that came in, they did it, they were professional photographers. And going back to what I said about quality of shop listings and having great pictures, they were beyond great pictures. So I think that again, if you have the resources and you can invest in that, by all means do so. I have a few other tips that don't cost you money that we found in the survey as well. Would you like me to cover off those as well? Would that be helpful?

[A]

Yeah, let's do it.

[B]

Okay. So this one's a little controversial. My wife and I sort of disagree on this one. But the stats tell the story here. It's got to do with communication with the buyer. So my wife's kind of like, I'll ship it and they'll reach out to me if there's a problem. I am more of a fan of almost over communicating. Not to the point where you're irritating, but there are a couple of key things when you need to communicate with buyers. Number one is if there's been any delay in the shipment. 82% of people said, you have to let me know and think about it, it's holiday season, you're maybe like me, a last minute shopper and there's a delay and you don't know about it, you're freaking out if it doesn't get there on time, you're leaving a one star review. So you want to try and control that situation. So if something happens and there is a delay, let them know straight away, I'm really sorry, something's happened, etc. Etc. What that does is it starts to reduce the tension. Suddenly I'm like, oh, okay, I haven't been forgotten. There was an issue. It's going to arrive two days later. That's okay. You know, suddenly my blood pressure is coming down. So whenever there's a dolly, reach out to them, let them know. The second thing is 77% of people that we surveyed said just let us know when it's shipped. And you know, okay, well Etsy sends something out. But the beauty of Etsy compared to Amazon and ebay is it's more personal. You know, they are here on Etsy to buy gifts, so it's kind of nice to let them know it's shipped. Now here's the other beauty. And this ties into reviews. Again, reviews don't cost you money. If you're paying for reviews, that's a big problem. 90% of people that we surveyed said reviews play a huge part in the decision making process. So if you've got one in four people leaving a review, that's not enough. You really want to get 1 in 3 or better. So if you start that communication process, hey, I just shipped it, please let me know if it arrives on time, whatever. Then once it arrives, you get notification, reach out to them again and say, hey, just checking to see if everything arrived, if it was okay. What that does is it creates this sort of communication between people and it increases the chances of them leaving a positive review. So, so really if I would say really start to communicate with people, don't get irritating and email them 10 times. It's really just when you ship it, when it arrives, and for goodness sake, if it's running late, definitely message them because the last thing you want to do is get a negative review. So there are a couple of things. Communication and work on your reviews. Try and get one in three folks leaving a review or even better.

[A]

Yeah. And wow, I think now people are having a heart attack because one in three is rosy. Have you ever Done the stats on that. I'm just saying. And maybe my familiarity is mostly in physical product or digital products. I haven't sold physical products in a while, but I would say I'm looking at 2 in 10 is a good score for 2 in 10 people leave reviews or, you know, even sometimes 1 in 10 if you're new. So I don't know if that's just digital or that's physical. Like, if you can see. Can you see that in the data? Or you're saying, like, that's just the goals. Like, try to get 1 in 3. Like, are like all the best listings. Truly have 1 in 3. I'm just curious where you're getting that from.

[B]

I have never sliced it by digital and physical. I think it would be really good exercise and I think, I think we're going to do it because to me, it's like, I want to know if I'm, you know, at least in the middle of the package, if I'm doing what the average seller is doing and say, okay, I'm not doing things terribly wrong. I think it'd be really interesting. Gosh, I wish I knew the answer right now. I don't.

[A]

Yeah, I can tell you. Just, I've seen a lot more digital sellers give. See this information just from our E printables group. I feel like the digital is. It's lower maybe because it's what people need it for is less. Whereas you're not always gifting a digital product. When you're gifting a product, you love leaving a review because you want to talk about how the person liked the gift. It's like part of your experience. Right? Like, oh, my niece loved it. She was so cute. Blah, blah, blah. Here's a picture, which I love. I mean, when we're talking about, you know, picture quality, actually, as a buyer, I always look at the user pictures because I'm like, what does it look like on its worst day? You know, like somebody taking it from their iPhone with terrible lighting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I love the ones that show scale. Oh, it's so helpful. Like, it may. And it may reduce your conversions if. If the product is not the size that the person is looking for, but it'll probably give you better reviews on the back end.

[B]

So. Yeah. And here's the thing. The. To me, the easiest things in SEO have the least impact on rank. So putting in the keywords in there, okay, that's great. You're matching. That's fine. But the things that are the hardest to achieve have the greatest influence because they're harder to fake. You can't have some sketchy person from some part of Australia creating these really bad listings. Really, those reviews, the ratings, the pictures that they send, this is the hard stuff to fake. So if you can get more and more of those, that sends the strongest signal to Etsy that you are doing a great job as a seller.

[A]

It's funny that you, okay, you walked into this with Australia, but it's funny you mentioned that. So I was doing stats on our Facebook group and the second most populous city was Melbourne, Australia, in our list. And Cody and I are both from Massachusetts. I'd lived in the west coast for a while, so I'm not surprised that some of the people are from there. But I was so shocked. So I'm thinking Australia is. Is this becoming kind of like a hotspot for Etsy sellers? Is it a hotspot for Etsy buyers? I'm just curious on your end if you have ever looked at the country data either from the seller or buyer perspective and if you have any, like, insights on that.

[B]

Yes. So Australia is up there and it's a bit of a. I can pick on Australia, obviously, but it's. It's a really interesting country because the seasons are reversed. So if you're selling seasonal items, you can get some good sales off season in, in North America and Europe. In terms of popularity, Australia will go up and down in terms of the most popular country throughout the. Throughout the year, it's typically hovering around about. It's about as popular as maybe France or Germany. From our perspective, we get slightly more keyword data from our Australian audience than we do from our French and German audiences. So it's really popular. Other markets that I like to watch, I think of it like this. It's US number one, UK number two, Canada number three. And then it's usually interchanging between Australia, Germany and France. So they are the key markets. I hope that helps.

[A]

Have you ever looked at it digital versus physical for the countries?

[B]

No. No, I have not. Well, you're really asking questions today.

[A]

Yes, I always just. I want to look out for my digital audience because what we have seen over time is that more people are buying digital products in those other countries, but still not tons. So, like, maybe it makes sense to do UK spelling on a couple listings. Maybe it makes sense. We talked about seasonal swap. Sometimes people will make Mother's Day sales in a month. That's not U.S. mother's Day. And we're like, oh, because it's Australian Mother's Day. Or something. And then we're realizing it. So I think that that probably makes sense at this point versus like, oh, I'm gonna make an entire Etsy shop dedicated solely to one of these other markets. Because I'm just, I'm guessing like how big is the US compared to number two? Is it, is it like, you know, piece of pie? So like 75% US, 25%. Is, is it that obvious from the data?

[B]

Yeah, from memory it's about 60, 40. So 60% US and the rest of the other countries in that order that I said. Okay, actually that's if you're trying to crack into one of those markets, I strongly recommend you pop into our trend buzz. And we have the popularity, the most popular keywords in those different countries. So you can just go in there and select Canada, Australia, Germany. So if you're curious, we have that in there as well.

[A]

Okay, pop quiz. What about Spanish speaking? Sometimes we'll see like right now we'll see like quinceanera, which is like a holiday that people are more like a moment of life celebration for. I think when you're 16 that would be your coming of age celebration. But beyond that, I'm not actually sure how, how many other products in Spanish are people looking for? But I bet there's tons of sellers that also speak Spanish that could be catering to these markets. Is there anything that you're seeing like, oh, actually there's a lot of searches in Spanish. Like people should be, yeah, okay.

[B]

Especially in jewelry. Again, I'll talk about my wife's store. She's had a lot of success catering to the US Spanish speaking market. One thing we've also noticed is that Spain is right on the cusp of breaking it into the markets where we have enough data to actually start showing trend information and keyword data. So it's one of those markets that, yeah, I think maybe in the next six months it'll break through the other countries. In the Netherlands there's a lot of Dutch speaking folk out there that are searching on Etsy. Now here's a bit of interesting trivia for you, Julie. We've noticed this in Germany and France is that they often search in English. And this is a bit of an odd thing because we'll then we've isolated that audience and said, okay, what do they do on Otto or other German marketplaces? And they'll actually switch to German and search in German there. But on Etsy they will search in English. And there's a couple of reasons for it. One, they see Etsy as an American site. So they sort of switch to English. 2 Etsy haven't done the best job localizing their website for Germans and French and Spanish speaking people. So they will often have links to English keywords and then they just rely on the algorithms to translate and magically show listings that match in the equivalent word in whichever language the person's in. So it's kind of fuzzy. You will go into our trend tools and you'll see, oh, there's a lot of English words in Germany. And that's the reason why it's just Etsy skewing the results and people switching to English mode when they're on an American side.

[A]

Okay, thank you. That helps to kind of explain what we might be seeing in the back end when we go into Erank and see various things. And also I want to give actionable advice to someone listening. So let's just use the Quinceanera situation. And if I'm pronouncing that wrong, I'm so sorry everybody. I haven't taken Spanish since not a native speaker. It's been a long time since I took a Spanish class. So is someone making a brand new listing and they're writing in Spanish or what you're saying is actually Etsy's already translating the titles and such for you. You should just add a couple tags of whatever that event or cultural moment is. But like, you don't have to, you don't have to necessarily create a duplicate listing where the whole thing is going to be in that other language or is the answer. It depends.

[B]

Well, it depends. So theoretically you can rely entirely on Etsy to handle the translations and I've seen cases where people will do the translation and it kind of messes up the listings. So I'm not going to tell you which way to do it because it's kind of outside my area of expertise. But I would probably recommend. Well, I would recommend you lean on Etsy's customer support to ask them what they would recommend. I generally would say stick to the language you're most familiar with. So if your shop's in English, just do it in English, but allow Etsy to translate to those other marketplaces. Oh, and another little tidbit from our survey. 60% of those folks, 60% of Americans are totally prepared to buy from international sellers as well. So something to keep in mind, I guess. If you're selling digital, I'm assuming you're selling globally, but if you're selling physical products, keep it in mind. Just make sure your shipping times are good and your shipping costs are as reasonable as you can make them. Sorry, that's for international audience wanting to.

[A]

Sell to the U.S. so Anthony, you're walking into this too. So Etsy has put out all of these scary things saying regarding shipping and we have a lot of handmade sellers in this audience since this podcast was originally hosted by Lauren who Lauren Keplinger, who sold baby blankets and her audience is primarily handmade. So. Hi everyone who stuck around through that transition, we're so glad to have you. But tell us, what are you seeing in the data? Like, I don't want to say Etsy is bullying, I don't want to use that word. But Etsy loves to strongly encourage that sellers get very, very competitive with their shipping. Both rates, time, all of that stuff which I, it's understandable. I get their side, but also from the average seller's side, it's, it's a challenge. There's a lot of like, logistical things that have to all go correctly in order for the shipping to work. From pricing how you physically produce and all of that, you know, life gets in the way, et cetera. So are you seeing anything in the data where, you know, you see what Etsy is seeing? Like you understand why they're telling us like, yeah, like the best listings really do ship in two days and they cost less than 10 or have you looked at any of that data?

[B]

I have, yeah. And they are spot on. You know, they have looked at the data and there is overwhelming evidence that when you tweak your shipping in certain ways it really has a positive impact on sales. So free shipping, it's totally true. I know most of us will probably say, well, I make the shipping free, I just increase the product price. Well, guess what, it's still true. I think we had like 40, 43% of folks say that, you know, free shipping has that positive influence on their purchase decision making process. So definitely do that where you can. Returns get a bit tricky, but I'll talk about that in a second. Fast shipping is another key thing. So okay, it's not price related, but if you can prepare a product and have it on standby like my wife does, she can ship stuff out really quickly. So that's really neat. Doesn't necessarily apply to a lot of shops that have very intense, heavily personalized items, but if you can get stuff out the door quickly, that really helps. And then on the other end of shipping, and this is something that I sometimes overlook and others overlook and that is having a hassle free return policy is really important. So technically, it's part of the shipping process. I order it, it arrives, and it's not what I expected. If I know that I can return this without too much hassle, that kind of makes me more willing to buy from that seller, gives me a little bit more trust and things like that. So I certainly keep these in mind. And again, if you look at the survey, you'll see more information about those aspects of shipping. But don't treat it with this regard. Try and be as considerate as possible. Think about yourself. If you are buying something and it arrives and it's nothing like the picture or in your mind's eye, you know, make sure it's easy to return, get it to them as quickly as possible. And I know in this situation, if it's free shipping and you're, you know, you're accepting a refund, you're going to be out of, out of pocket for that shipping cost. The thing is, the trust that it builds up outweighs the cost of those occasional returns that you have to handle.

[A]

Okay, just one question for you.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I don't know if you sometimes, like, have a friend. Maybe you have a friend who's like a nurse or something, and, you know, there's like, do as I say and do as I do where you're like, okay, like, we don't give, you know, the doctor says you're not supposed to give your kid Doritos. And then you ask your friend, they're like, oh, yeah, my kid, like, eats Doritos every day. Because, you know, it's just the way it is or something like that. Does your wife off of free shipping?

[B]

She does.

[A]

She does. Okay, so that's, that's when, you know, that's what, you know, it's. It's a thing. And okay, so if she does. For anyone that just had another heart attack when we're telling you this, how is. Did she raise her prices by the exact price of the shipping? Is she using the Etsy ship? Like, we got to give people something so they're not spiraling here. Like, how. How is she making that work?

[B]

So she has raised the prices a tiny bit, but she also sits on that psychological cusp, you know, the 29, 99, the 39, that sort of thing. So she's sort of in this between a rock and a hard place. So thankfully for some of her products, she's. She's been able to just suck it up and absorb the cost. And if you've been shipping with usps, those increased costs it's each year though, it is getting harder and harder for her to absorb it. So she will have to start increasing her costs for others. If you've got a good healthy margin, you know, if, if you can, if you've got enough buffer or padding in there, then you can probably do what my wife did and just absorb the cost. But yeah, it's, it's, it's tough. And I know a lot of folks out there are really struggling to rub two pennies together. They have to watch every single item, every single expenditure. So I wish I could give people a good bit of advice that says, yep, just raise your prices. Sometimes it just doesn't quite work. And a piece of research that we did from the day that we saw was the conversion rate diminishes as the price goes up. So it's kind of a fine line. You have something, you sell it for 99 cents, your conversion rate can be terrific, 5, 10%, something like that. The envy of someone that's selling a hundred dollar item. So you're going to have to do a little bit of experimentation, I think with your pricing and figure out whether you're going to absorb that shipping cost or not.

[A]

And I think if you are not making tons of sales, like I would say less than $500 a month, it's, you can experiment a lot more without getting nervous. Like I get nervous if I'm touching a best selling listing. So anyone that you know is a, is curious, is afraid because we all know you kind of mess with stuff. You could, you don't want to fix it if it's not broken, but maybe you could be doing better if you had something else. It's tough. One thing I do want to mention that I actually saw, I think I might have found this using Erank. I was trying to look up, I was making a trends video on coffee because I love coffee. I'm like everyone must love coffee. Let's things that people love. They're gonna go on Etsy and they're gonna buy products related to the thing. So I'm like, let's see everything regarding coffee that is interesting. And I found this person, I've mentioned it before on this podcast because I just think it's fascinating. She was selling those soy candles, giftable soy candles, but it looked like a cold brew coffee. So it was kind of like a clear.

[B]

That's kind of cruel, isn't it?

[A]

Yeah, well, I mean it's cruel to the person but like people really identify if you drink cold brew, like you identify with it because you're taking that jolt right in the morning, like, it's serious. I used to be a cold brew drinker. I'm actually more of a decaf now after I had kids, because I just, like, need to take it down a couple notches. But I was cold brew for a while. And this seller, she had only been around a few months and she was making tons of sales. And then I typed back into Etsy, cold brew, ice, coffee, candle. And I saw she wasn't the only person selling this. So I have no clue if she was offering free shipping or not. But I bring her up because if you're someone that you're like, if I do the free shipping, it's going to be awful. Okay, well, give yourself some other edge that other people don't have. And what this one seller had is that she had a video of herself on, I think it was either TikTok or Instagram of herself making this candle. And it kind of. People love that first iced coffee pour, where you pour the coffee and the milk swirls around and the ice cubes and all that. She had that, but it was obviously a candle. And then she showed herself, like, chopping the fake ice cubes and putting it into. I don't know, they're like a gel thing, putting them in the thing. And that video had 2.5 million views on it. Because everyone loves coffee and people love candles and whatever. So I guess this is. And then they even myself, like, I clicked into her shop and then I'm looking at her items and everything. So my point is that she has now has a competitive advantage over all of her other competitors. Because why? I mean, there's someone that would put the extra energy to be like, oh, is there anyone that's selling this cheaper? Is there anyone that's. Yeah, like, they're always gonna be those people. But most people are kind of lazy and they just saw your candle and they know that candle looks good and that's what they're gonna buy when they're on Etsy. And I think that's why she had so many sales so quickly. So I wanted to mention if anyone's kind of spiraling on, like, I can't offer free shipping. Well, is there a way that you can be different just in, like, so people can get to know your item and fall in love with it a little better than the other ones that are showing up in the search results? And I think some sort of social pairing could be helpful. Even if it's just one video like this this lady, she posted a lot of videos about her candles, but none of them really took off. But, like, for whatever reason, people like this coffee one and they thought, I mean, I thought it was cool with the ice cubes. I'm still talking about it. I looked at this months ago and I'm telling everyone I put something on the podcast five times. So I just think, you know, adding a social element can really help somebody.

[B]

Totally. Again, yeah. And I think Etsy reward you very slightly for bringing in traffic. And again, okay, maybe it's not a search result that led to the sale or a search that led to a sale, but if you can get those folks to leave a positive review, that just boosts Etsy's trust in your shop. So when people are searching for that product, guess who gets bumped up in the rankings? So if you can find that way to bring in people through Instagram or YouTube or TikTok, whatever, brilliant. I think sometimes you just get blessed by the algorithms on those social media sites and suddenly something happens and it works. But really, if you're in a situation like that, again, I have to say embrace the reviews. Really try and maximize it, because at some point that traffic will dry up and you've got to try and rely on search and other ways to bring people in until you can have another social boost. So, yeah, embrace the reviews. Get as many positive ones as you can.

[A]

Okay, so, Anthony, I'm totally taking over your time. I don't know if you had a hard stop here, but I wanted to just wrap up with what's upcoming in Erank.

[B]

So we, a couple of months ago, we released the first version of our browser extension. So I don't know if you've seen this yet, Julie, but basically you install it in Chrome and then you open it up and on the side panel you'll see your rank. So if you pop into Etsy, like if you go to the homepage, you'll see the top keywords on Etsy all within the one thing. You don't have to open up a new tab. It just sits there on the side. If you go into a shop, you can see what makes that shop tick. You know, the most popular items, the tags they're using. If you were to go into your listing and start editing a listing, our AI listing helper will appear. So if you're like me and you get stuck in this writer's block mode, you can put in a short description of what the listing is and it'll come back with a couple of title ideas. Some. Some Descriptions to get you started and some tags so you can actually start copying and pasting from that little side panel directly into your listing. You can see stats on how popular those keywords are and things like that. So we don't have a lot of users on it at the moment, but we're getting some great feedback from folks. One thing that they've said is please make it available for Shopify, for Amazon, ebay, and teachers, pay teachers, Go Imagine and places like that. So what we're doing is we're going to start following our members around. Primarily we're all about Etsy, but now I think we can't be all about a corporation. We have to be about people. We have to be about the sellers that we're trying to help. So we will follow you wherever you go to sell. So our browser extension is going to be enabled for those different places over the next coming weeks and months, so that when you're selling somewhere and you're kind of stuck, you can rely on Erank to show you useful information to help you optimize your listing, to do trend research, do competitor research, things like that. So we're trying to get to a point where regardless of how the money comes in or where it comes in, we're there to support you. So if you haven't already checked it out, go into earring.com, click on the extension link that's in the navigation, install it into Chrome and give it a play. Play around with it.

[A]

Awesome. I absolutely love this. So there's the keywords everywhere extension. I don't know if you're familiar with that. That's more something if anyone's listening, like a blogger would use someone in my position. I use it a lot. And I noticed I was on Pinterest the other day and it was showing me keywords and I'm like, this is the best thing ever. So I love how you're thinking of like, okay, I'm going to follow my customer and not necessarily be platform specific. That makes a lot of sense because then we're using different tools, not just Etsy. So that's huge. Okay, so we have this extension for anyone that doesn't know. You just have to download it and then you have to enable it on your browser and it just appears. As long as you're logged in, it just appears. So I'm going to link in the description below if anyone wants to check that out and experience what it could be like. But it sounds super easy to use. Is it called Sidekick? Is that what you guys call it?

[B]

Yeah, that's what I originally called it. I thought it was a cool name because it sits on the side, but there was some confusion about that, so we renamed it to the Erank browser extension. It's kind of a bit more boring.

[A]

Okay. All right. All right. Yeah. You tried to make it fun. That's okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for coming on today. We really appreciate it. We're going to link below if people want to check out Erank and all the tools. And thank you for sharing the trends and the insights. You're welcome back anytime. We always are down to discuss those type of things, so thank you.

[B]

Thanks, Julie. My pleasure.