← How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
Ep 157 | Study Shows Etsy Sellers Undercharge for their Products –Dr. Danny Zane
00:50:11
Professor Danny Zane studies and teaches marketing at Lehigh University. Listen in as he shares fascinating consumer insights about the Etsy Marketplace and how many Etsy sellers have the potential to earn even more from their listings. **“How to...
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, my name is Lizzie Smiley and I absolutely love helping people connect with their calling and all the tools they need to kick roadblocks and excuses right out the door so they can cultivate the life they dream about. If you want to launch, grow, pivot or scale your Etsy shop, or you've always wanted to develop the mindset and skills to run your own business, then I'm your girl. I've had that entrepreneurial spirit going strong since my very first lemonade stand and now I'm a work at home mama with multiple online companies and a full time Etsy shop, all while being present with my kids for the everyday chaos and most important milestones. On this podcast we'll talk about all things business, mindset, Etsy, creativity, dazzling our customers, and so much more. There's plenty of room at this table for you, so scooch on in and let's go. I'm holding nothing back. Welcome to how to sell your stuff on Etsy. I'm so glad you're here. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week I have such a different episode. You guys know how I love to mix it up and this one does not disappoint. I actually don't have any housekeeping for you today, or if I do, I'll have to plug it in in a separate video because we are recording this a little early, earlier than it's publishing, but I had to get Professor Danny Zane on my schedule to talk to us about what's happening in research with as it pertains to marketing, and he has some really specific advice for Etsy sellers based on what they're finding. So just going to jump right into it. I hope you're cool with that. Let me tell you a little bit about Danny Zane. He is an Associate professor of Marketing at Lehigh University who specializes in consumer psychology. His research explores the inferences consumers draw about themselves and companies based on the information that they have available in the marketplace and how these inferences impact their consumption behaviors. So it's going to be all about how shoppers are on Etsy and what they perceive by looking at your listing and how it's going to affect whether or not they make a buying decision. This is going to be really, really powerful for physical sellers especially, but absolutely pertains also to the digital product and the print on demand space. You're going to have some takeaways from this, so let's dig into it. Let's welcome Professor Dani Zane to the podcast. Hi Professor Zane. Welcome to the podcast.
- [02:16]
B
Hey Lizzie. Thanks it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
- [02:19]
A
Well, I think that I need to thank you because you're taking a chance in trusting me with the next 30, 40 minutes or so because you are such a different guest for us. But it's going to be so fascinating.
- [02:31]
B
Yeah. Hopefully I can bring a unique perspective. I imagine coming at this from a little bit of a different angle than maybe most of your speakers, but we'll see what we do.
- [02:40]
A
Yeah, for sure. So get us up to speed. Tell us who you are, what you do, where you are. Give us the background.
- [02:48]
B
Of course. Yeah. So my name is Danny Zane. I'm an associate professor of marketing at Lehigh University. And so specifically I specialize in consumer behavior, consumer psychology. So basically half of my job is researching consumers and their consumption, but within that, also approaching it, of course, from the marketer side of things. And so understanding how marketers affect consumers and how consumers then react to all of these marketing tactics that we see in the world around us. And then the other half of my job, of course, is teaching and so trying to essentially, I guess, get the next generation of marketers ready. But yeah, the research is really what sort of fascinates me. And I have some research that I think pertains nicely to your audience. And so I know we'll get into that, but it's kind of what I do on a day in, day out basis.
- [03:40]
A
Remind me, and you may have said this and I missed it because I was listening. I was trying to listen carefully, actually. But where is Lehigh University?
- [03:46]
B
Ah, yeah, sorry. So Lehigh University is in Pennsylvania, in the United States. It's the eastern Pennsylvania.
- [03:53]
A
Okay. I have a family, like in the Pittsburgh area. So a little familiar, but not totally. I was going to say I feel like Lehigh sounds familiar to me, but I couldn't totally place it. Okay, so Professor Zane, how did you get into marketing? Like, what is the background story that had you go down this path? Because it's a very special creature who chooses this and I love it. And I just want to understand how that happened.
- [04:14]
B
Well, the reason why I'm a professor, the silliest answer is I always loved school. And so I figured, hey, is there a way I can sort of do school for the rest of my life? And so that's sort of the nerdy, high level answer. But in terms of getting into consumer behavior, I think it merges sort of all of my interests. So I did study marketing when I was an undergraduate and I really enjoyed all of that. But at the same time, I was always super, super interested in psychology. And so I always was reading these popular psychology books and just really fascinated by how people make decisions and think about the world and are affected by all the things around them. And so I did, after undergraduate, go into industry and actually work in a marketing agency for a bit and, you know, had some experience, but just couldn't get this idea out of my mind of there seems to be this position out there where I can answer these questions about consumption in the way that I want and essentially study these questions from a unique perspective and coming from a different angle. And so after looking into it, I just fell in love with this idea of being an academic researcher in the space of consumer behavior. And again, specifically, sort of the consumer psychology aspect of it all.
- [05:26]
A
I think that is so cool. I can very much relate to that. I did not study marketing, but I did. I did enjoy. I did enjoy college very much. Tell me. I'm, like, wondering which direction to go first. I'm kind of thinking it would be really interesting for you to give us a little bit of your Marketing 101 hook. That first day when the students come to your first class for the first time, how are you? Like, you know, what do you. What are the basics that may. I mean, to be honest, a lot of Etsy sellers probably don't even know that. You know what I mean? Like, we're kind of just. We see a TikTok and we're like, I'm gonna start an Etsy shop. She did it. I can do it. And we don't necessarily have some of the basics. Would you maybe give us just, I mean, like, take your time, give us a little bit of a marketing lesson?
- [06:08]
B
Sure, yeah. I think the biggest.
- [06:10]
A
Maybe you told me about.
- [06:12]
B
Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest misconception, just as a, you know, a quick side note here is a lot of students come to us and they're like, oh, marketing is advertising. And, you know, I wanted to get into it because I sort of wanted to, like, steer clear of numbers and math or, you know, just sort of do this sexy advertising piece. And it's so much more than that. Like, yes, of course that's a big part of it, but that's something we're struggling with, actually. And we're trying to think about how can we break down this misconception as early as possible of, you know, marketing is just advertising, because it's not. And so then, you know, to go to, hey, give you this Marketing 101 lesson. There's a pretty simple sort of like flowchart framework that I think you could mentally think about here. And it's essentially like four steps. And then I'd say, you know, yeah, we could dive into the nuances, but high level, if you can sort of keep these four steps in mind, like, I think it would work wonders for you regardless of what space you're in. Etsy shop owner, small business owner, elsewhere working in a large corporation. Again, I think even with the marketplace moving as fast as it is and all of these technological advancements that are coming down the pipeline, I stand true to, I think if you can hold onto these that I'm about to tee up for you here, you'll be pretty solid. And so the first thing is you need to a understand the marketplace and what's happening with consumers at a high level. And so again, that's things like, yeah, what are these huge things in the, in the macro environment around us that are happening? The biggie on everybody's mind right now is generative AI, right? And so how is that going to change the way that sort of consumers navigate the world? How is it going to change the way that we do business? And so on and so forth. But essentially, at the end of the day, it's doing your market research. And so before you dive into something, understanding what's this marketplace look like, what are the people operating in this marketplace look like? And I know it's sort of simpler said than done, but if you do that piece nicely, the rest can sort of unfold from you. So that's piece one is definitely do your research, right? You have this aha moment of like, oh, I want to start this shop or I have this idea for a new product. That's awesome. Then go and do your research after you do that, right? And you've sort of built some legs around this thing. Next step is define your marketing strategy. And so this is pretty simple in that there's a nice acronym which is stp. And so basically you need to segment and then target and then position. And so segmenting is just basically understanding. You're never going to be able to capture everybody in the entire world, right? We can start grouping consumers based on their similarities, maybe based on something as simple as their demographics, right. Whether it's something along the age lines of gender or age. You can get super complex, right, and get into segmenting or grouping consumers based on their behaviors and all sorts of personality traits and everything. And there are companies out there that can help you do that if you really want to get into it. But understand that you're not going after everybody, most likely. I mean, mass marketing doesn't. We don't see very much of it. And so understanding, okay, what segments of consumers or groups of consumers are really going to resonate with this and then you fold into the T of targeting. And so that's understanding now, okay, which of those groups am I really going to go after? Are there going to be more than one or just one? And so again, it's really sort of about narrowing your base to understand who is really going to give you that value and who are you going to build these profitable relationships with. And then from there it's all about positioning. And this is sort of the biggie where it's, okay, I now understand what segments I want to go after. I've sort of chosen them, right? I've come across my target audience, I know now who I'm going after. And positioning is now really about defining your brand or your product or both in terms of how it's going to resonate with those targets that you've chosen while at the same time building a competitive advantage against any competition out there, right? Making sure that you seem sufficiently different and hopefully optimal compared to these alternatives out there. And so that's sort of step two is stp, right? Find your groups, decide who you're going to target, think about high level, how you're going to position yourself, your product, your brand that's going to resonate with them while also sort of protecting you from outside competition. And then the next step in the flowchart is where you get into your marketing tool bag, so to speak. Really getting into the nitty gritty. The technical term is your marketing mix, but there's essentially four big components that you can think about living here. These sort of four levers you can pull as a marketer. Broad strokes, we call them the four P's. So one is of course, your product. You're nothing without a product. You need something to be able to sell and to offer to consumers. Then from there it's your price. And so of course, pricing is a huge part that I think is sometimes overlooked. And actually some of the research that we connected on talks about this idea of pricing in the Etsy world. And so we can get into that. So that's number two. And then three is your, what we call place or basically, how are you going to distribute your product, right? What marketing channels are you going to operate through? Are you going direct to consumer? Are you going to be in these brick and mortar shops, go through retailers? So on and so forth. And then finally is promotion and that is any outward facing communications you do to your consumers. So yes it includes advertising but it also includes really anything that is consumer facing that they're going to see about your product or brand. And so these are sort of the four levers, broad strokes you can play with to really operationalize that higher level strategy we talked about. And then just to round out this flowchart super quick, it's all about building profitable relationships with your consumers, with your target customers. And so unfortunately we still actually do see sort of companies taking this short sighted view of like hey if I can make the sale I've achieved it. Right? But no, it's about building these relationships so that people will spread word of mouth about your brand so that they'll come back around and repurchase and hopefully become brand loyal. And it's unfortunately something that's still sort of surprisingly overlooked in a lot of cases. And so again if you could sort of do those things broad strokes, I'd say That's, that's Marketing 101.
- [12:49]
A
That was incredible. That was so great. Thank you for that. Also that was, I took notes. That was really fun because I was wondering how closely does, does this, is it going to align to what we talk about, how we teach people to do Etsy and we. I'm going to give you a break from speaking because I just made you do a whole monologue but like we, we just use some different words. So step one we talk about do your research, establish demand for your product and figure out what the trends are that you can leverage to find opportunity. Number two, niche down. So don't go super broad but go niche and then you know, create products that you can micro niche down so you position for your niche. And then number three, marketing mix. I guess that's just like you're establishing your, establishing your product and your business plan. That was probably the most, we probably break that down into more, we refine that one a little more. I'm not saying, I know you're way more detailed than me Professor Zane. I'm just saying that one was the harder one to relate to. And the number four relationships which is creating a, creating again relationships that make people want to come back and purchase over and over and over again which then also kind of ties back into number three because it's create products that are consumable if you can and, or where people will want to buy other things from you because they're related within the niche. So that was so fun and actually I'M like, good job, Etsy coaches, because we're teaching it correctly.
- [14:12]
B
There you go.
- [14:13]
A
We can relate to you. Yeah, let's get into some of your research a little bit. I also have a side topic that I think is really interesting because when I think of college, I think of now I'm 42 years old, guys, so it's been a few minutes and I know that things are different now. Even just watching my kids go through elementary school, I'm thinking textbooks and how even back, of course, when I was in school, they got dated so quickly. And so I'm really excited to hear from you, Professor Zane. How are you guys staying on top of the, like, I mean it constant changes. Like it's not just every month, it's every day, especially throwing AI in the mix. And I'm just curious how you're like helping students and in your own research, how are you guys tackling that challenge these days?
- [14:56]
B
Yeah, college is sort of in a crisis in some ways. Right. Like it's on everybody's mind. And so this is something we're talking about all the time. And you know, our department meetings and university level meetings and everything is exactly this because it is sort of a wild landscape that evolves essentially by the minute. Right. Like you said, it's so quick. One, I'll say I don't use a textbook in my classroom, so I just want to throw that out there.
- [15:22]
A
Nice.
- [15:24]
B
So I think there's sort of two big things I'll say here. One is, yes, it's sort of impossible to keep up, in a sense. And so what we are doing is, for example, having our students go out and do their learning by doing, as we call it, or experiential learning. And so we're recognizing, hey, yes. You can't just stay cooped up in this classroom. Right. With this knowledge that we sort of just can't keep up with fast enough. You need to go out into the world and apply some of these foundational tools. Right. That we're providing with you. But get your boots on the ground and start working on these real world problems for real world clients as soon as you can. And that's what's going to help you learn the best, both in terms of, you know, Right. Getting comfortable, applying these tools, but also understanding how they're ever shifting like, like we've talked about here. And so that's a big thing, is we're recognizing, yeah, it's no longer fine to just sit in a classroom. Right. Learn these concepts, move to your next class and do the same thing. It's no, get out into the world, you know, figure it out, bring knowledge back to us so we can update our model and sort of again, turn it into this relationship. Right. It's no longer just a one way marketing, marketing operation from us anymore as educators. Right. We're now looking to build these relationships with our students and make it more circular, as we sort of talked about, is a nice way to go about it in any respect. And then the other big thing I'd say is, yes, while we get into all these nuances and things are changing by the minute, I think the, at least in marketing, right, I won't speak to other disciplines, but I think in marketing, sort of that core framework I just briefly talked to you about, but these core pillars we know that exist and on top of that, some of these core psychological theories that we know drive people's decision making and how they view the world, I don't think they are changing. Yes, we'll find nuances and they'll update, but I think these things have been established and they've really stood the test of time so that they can be sort of serving as a foundation. And then, yeah, you'll layer in all of these technological advancements and all of these changes in society. But I honestly think that in my opinion, some of these frameworks are strong enough to stand the test of time and really can still be these helpful tools. And so we try to keep that in mind for our students as well as, yeah, you're going to go out and find all these different things happening, but if you can sort of, you know, pull them back into these frameworks and think, do they fit in? We think that they will and we think that being able to hold onto some right mental structure is helpful so that you don't feel overwhelmed by all of these things that are happening so fast in the world around us and having some, you know, foundation to stand on.
- [18:09]
A
Hey. Hey, guys. Today's episode is sponsored by Profit Tree, which is a new and incredible tool that will massively help your Etsy shop grow. My friend and fellow Etsy coach, Hannah Gardner, she's been on the podcast and you may know her from her massive, incredible YouTube channel, Ecom Hannah. Highly recommend. She's a seven figure seller who's obsessed with data tracking. This is like her superpower. I love it. Profitree is a service that's going to seamlessly integrate with your Etsy shop to give you automated, real time profit tracking for your store. So for the first time ever, you can now Obtain meaningful actionable insights on core metrics of your Etsy shop. No more Excel sheets. Vlookups. I don't even know what that is. Or exporting reports. Y'all have been asking for this and Hannah and her team have over delivered. This is like one of those new tools that I'm so stinking excited about. With Profit Tree you can spend less time playing catch up and more time growing your shop. So the integration will allow you to easily import and track your business expenses and product costs. Which means that you can maximize sales of each item in your collection by seeing the true profit breakdowns in the blink of an eye. Forget about hours of manual work to only get outdated data. No kidding. Not to mention if you're like me and you don't even try because the numbers make your eyes bleed. So embarrassing, but it's true. But Profitree is going to do the work for you so you can get clear insights of all of your unique product variations, which is so helpful. Additional features to Profit Tree include real time calculations, low stock alerts, one click print on demand integrations, trend spot your product. That's helpful. Track duplicated products so you can see which one's doing better and why. Add custom expenses, optimize listings profitability and identify listing issues like missing skus and cogs. Right now when you sign up, you can start with a seven day free trial and make sure to use code Tree10T R E E10 to save 10% on your membership. And as someone who knows how important the tracking piece is, you guys but I don't feel like it's a strength of mine in that area. I am so super excited about this service because it's going to take the piece off of my plate that I'm not good at but still give me the benefit of having that work done. Super stoked. So check it out. Start gathering the best possible data for your shop, for your listings and it's going to help you grow and scale your business. So thank you so much Hannah and Profitree. You guys are lifesavers. I totally agree with you and I love, I love how you're handling that. Getting them out in the marketplace. I'm just like send them to me. They can position a product, we can teach them digital products or print on demand and especially digital as college students. That's so fascinating. But I also love that you are like boots on the ground out there just interfacing with people like me and other others that are doing it real time in the world. Like that that back and Forth conversation. I'm sure. I mean that actually now that I think about it, I'm thinking like you know, in the medical that that's very much what they're doing in those schools and always have done. So it's so great that we're seeing that happen in marketing. And we really need you academics, we need people who have the time and their job is to research to stay on top of it because otherwise, I mean we're constantly researching day in and day out in our own little tests but we need the bigger ones. And in fact I'd love, I'm such a geek for psychology as well. I'd love to hear any of your thoughts on like consumer behav and what you're seeing in the research showing is happening now like post Covid world. It's so different consumer wise. Do you have any thoughts on that? I just pulled that out on you. I apologize Professor Zane, but I'm fascinated by that discussion before I get there.
- [21:41]
B
Right. Like I think to put it nicely, you'll have a company run an A B test, right. Maybe you test two versions of an email and you split your sender group and you send some this version A, some version B. Right. And then we'll conclude like hey, version A did better. Great. We'll send that to the rest of our, our customers, right. That we were sort of using as, as a holdout sample. And so that's great. And so I think, you know, we come in is to say, well, do you really truly understand why version A did better from sort of a theoretical psychological underpinning level. Right. And a lot of the times the answers that we'll get from sort of marketers, right, who are, yes, hustling and bustling and doing this, you know, day in and day out and it's probably only one thing they're doing in this week out of a million the answer is sometimes like no, not really. And so what we would say is, well we can help you understand what that is so that next time you have a little more confidence in designing your next version A, right. And you might actually systematically understand, hey, what is resonating with our consumers not in just this one off email, but more broadly speaking. And so again, if you can hold on to some of these foundations that people like myself research, I think there's value in that. But again, I'm trying to market myself so that I continue to have a job and a livelihood here. Right. So I'll say that and then yeah, in terms of where we've gone Post pandemic, it's a wild, wild place. I always tell my students in class, I pull up all these trends, like how the COVID 19 pandemic affected us all. And I always tell them, if you want a sort of a simple pulse on things, I always say just look at the super bowl ads. And if you look at them sort of holistically, you'll get a sense for like, what's the sign of the times in our country, right? What's sort of the collective ethos and feeling in the country? Because when the pandemic hit, right, we totally ditched all of the humor and it was very much about connecting as a community and really these heartfelt messages and so forth. And now I think we've reemerged, right, and we're seeing all of these celebrity cameos and lots of humor again in the last year or two. And so I think even looking broad level at something like that will help you understand where sort of the country going collectively. And so, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that helps or.
- [24:00]
A
Not, but no, it totally doesn't. I mean, like, gosh, I feel like I could talk to you for hours about that. It would be so interesting. I think there is so much value to how you can give us the why. I mean, we may be testing frantically, but you're right, we are far too busy juggling 17 billion things to even, to even think about the why. So we're very, very grateful for your work. Would you talk about your particular research that caught my attention when we connected on pricing strategies and what you're seeing? Well, your advice to Etsy sellers, because it kind of surprised me. I'd love to have a conversation about it.
- [24:35]
B
So, yeah, just to follow up from your last question, and I think my research then folds into it is a lot of people now. There's a huge push for authenticity. That's something that sort of come post pandemic, like we were all homebodies and looking for things that really resonated with us and that hasn't gone away. And so I think, you know, stemming from this notion of authenticity and it really folds into like these handmade products, which I know, you know a ton of stuff on Etsy is. And so when you look at a peer to peer marketplace, the sort of big thing is traditional marketing. Some of these traditional marketing cues, like a brand name, they sort of aren't in play, right? When you're a single shop owner, you don't have an established brand name, so to speak. Like a Coca Cola of the world, right. It's just never going to happen. And so in these peer to peer marketplaces, it then becomes, well, what signals really do matter? And it is things like perceived authenticity which might come from perceived or is it handmade or not. How much effort does it seem like is going into your entire operation? We know that consumers reward effort. We love to feel like people are thinking through things and really putting their heart and their souls into their product. And then my research to get there is looking at, well, do consumers have a sense of how much you as the producer of, let's say a good that you're selling on your Etsy shop, do they have a sense of how much you enjoy producing this thing? And so broad strokes, we went and looked our Etsy Shop owners telling us how much they enjoy producing certain products that they offer among their many in their shop, right? Or just in general, if they sort of specialize, are they signaling this to prospective buyers that they indeed enjoy this? And we found an overwhelming no. So we scraped, we scraped a ton of Etsy profiles and across these shops we just don't really see shop owners signaling what we call their production enjoyment, right. How much they enjoy producing a good in this case. And so we said, well that's fascinating because we know enjoyment is a super powerful signal in other ways in other marketing research that's been done that I won't get into. And so we said, well, let's really understand, should Etsy shop owners, for example be signaling their enjoyment if they really enjoy making one of their products, should they be relaying that to their customers and is there a benefit in that? And so what we found was an overwhelming yes. And I'll qualify it with some conditions here in a second. But what we found is that if you as the, what we call a seller or in this case, right, an Etsy Shop owner, if you signal how much you enjoy producing, let's say one of your products, we find that a, it increases prospective customers interest. So just thinking about getting them through this purchase funnel to actually make a purchase, they're more likely for example, to perhaps click on your profile if that's showing up in, you know, a bio, right. Or a piece of text that they sort of see to click into. Or again, if you're sending emails to your customers, if it's included in an email like hey, this is the product that I've enjoyed creating the most, it's going to improve your click through rates right to your shop. And then we also find that actually These prospective customers are willing to pay more for products that sellers have signaled really enjoy making. And so simply by telling somebody, hey, you know, of all of the things I make, let's say this product here, right, this candle all anchor on, for example, that I've sort of handcrafted, right, really enjoyed making it, well, people are going to be willing to pay more for that. And so that's pretty fascinating. And the whole underlying psychology here is that we find signaling how much you enjoy making something makes prospective customers believe it's of higher quality. And there's a ton of psychology behind that that I won't necessarily get into unless you want me to. But essentially by signaling enjoyment, we find that people say, hey, this must be a higher quality product. And there's several reasons. But for example, we know that there's something called a flow state. And so there's this general idea that you hit this flow state and it's when your ability is sort of at its upper limit and you've sort of perfectly matched what you're doing to your upper abilities. And so if you're operating in the space of your upper abilities, right, and you're sort of maximizing everything and you've hit this flow state, well, that's going to again, create this high quality product because you're, you're really putting your sort of everything you've got behind it and also sort of enjoying it at the same time. We know that people who are intrinsically motivated versus extrinsically motivated, also this is playing into it. So, right. I'm doing this because I love it. And so again, I'm going to now put my, you know, my heart and my soul, my sweat and my tears into it as opposed to if I'm just doing it for the money, right, this extrinsic reward, well, then are you just going through the motions, right, to make this income or whatever it might be? And so that's another part of it is that enjoyment is really intimately linked to this broader idea of intrinsic motivation. I'm doing this thing for the inherent value I'm getting out of it and not just for some extrinsic reward like becoming popular or making a ton of money or something like that. So, yeah, that's the wonders it can work from the shop owner's perspective is we think definitely signal this. And I can tell you about some qualifying conditions. But what I also want to then say is, okay, if it can really help shop owners. I already said that we don't see many of them doing this at Least in the, you know, the thousands and thousands and thousands of profiles that we've scraped and scanned through. And so, A, it doesn't seem like sellers are potentially capitalizing on this, right, these shop owners. And then B, what we find fascinatingly is that we actually went and surveyed sellers. We didn't survey Etsy shop owners specifically, but we surveyed plenty of other freelancers. And what we find is that sellers actually tend to charge the less, the least for products that they enjoy making. So again, I said that, hey, you really enjoy making this product, buyers are going to be right, customers are going to be willing to pay more for it. But what we're finding is that for that product you really enjoy making, you're charging less. And so you're actually perhaps missing out on potential profits, at least relative to how prospective customers are perceiving the quality of your products. And so we get this super fascinating asymmetry, right, where, hey, signaling enjoyment will make buyers more willing to pay for your product. But actually you're charging less for these same products that you really enjoy making. And we think that's because it feels less like work. Right now, making this product that is super enjoyable to do, you're getting this intrinsic compensation through the joy of doing it. And so now you're not saying, hey, I don't need as much financial compensation because I already got so much sort of value intrinsically out of just creating this enjoyable thing. And so sellers might actually be underpricing some of their most their products that have the highest production enjoyment. But again, this all hinges on communicating this to prospective customers, right? You can't just say, oh, I really enjoy making this, I'm going to charge more. No, customers have to be very, very aware that this is something that you really enjoy making before you go and just jack your prices up, which isn't our recommendation.
- [32:20]
A
I think that is so fascinating. There's like so many subtopics to this that are interesting. Okay, Professor Zane, do you have an opinion about, you know, you've scraped a lot of profiles and if you don't, don't worry because I'll toss out a few ideas and then you can correct me. Okay? This is a lesson for the listeners because everyone's coming from a different, a different place. Etsy is. This might, might, might be obvious, but to some people it's not. It's a marketplace. So the whole advantage is you don't have to drive any traffic. All you have to do, just like an art show, an art fair, is show up with your stuff, put it There and then the customer is going to search in the search bar for exactly what they're looking for. And I'm oversimplifying this, but if your, for example, your product title matches what they search, you would then show up in the search results for that search. So the first thing I want to ask you is most shoppers are not interacting with the actual profile itself. They're almost exclusive, exclusively interacting with one listing. So they go in and they're going to see just what you have there. Do you have an opinion about some ways that a seller could convey that message of their product enjoyment just within the listing? If people aren't really going to go over and look at the whole shop, look at the bio, look at the banner and that kind of thing?
- [33:38]
B
Yeah, I think the simplest is to say, hey, I really enjoy making this product. Right. And again we don't even see sellers doing that. So text based. Yes. But on top of that if you are going to go even just with this text based approach, the key is can you make your high enjoyment of producing this product relative to say another product you produce or relative to a competing product that you know of or something. And so you again want to do something to make this signal of enjoyment really stand out. And so instead of just saying hey, I really enjoy this, you know, making this product, can you somehow benchmark that against other products? Or maybe you say something like hey guys, you know, new product. And this is actually the most enjoyable thing I've ever created. Right. And so now you are benchmarking against sort of all of your right previous creations, so to speak. And so again if you can find some way to sort of really concretize this, this signal of enjoyment in customers minds of they're not just saying this willy nilly. Right. But they're truly must have enjoyed this. So that's, that's one is can you create sort of a, right, a benchmark or a comparison and make this enjoyment relative to that?
- [34:59]
A
So here's what I do have. Another, another.
- [35:02]
B
Go ahead.
- [35:03]
A
Well yeah, because my brain is just like spinning with ideas. So here's what I'm thinking. The vast majority of shoppers will not actually read the product description and frankly on the app Etsy doesn't even make easy to find. So anything that you really want a customer to know you need to put in your photo gallery, guys. So the first thing I'm thinking is you could use your listing video. You get a 15 second silent video. I do think that it's important to, when you can if you have a physical product, use that. I'm going to hold up my bottle here or I'll hold up my lip gloss. Use that space to show it three dimensionally because people want to see the depth and the angles and things like that. That would be the number one priority. But you could, if you were, for example, some people just do maybe like a slideshow for that video. And if you were doing that, you could then use video footage or photo to show your enjoyment. But the other thing is actually what I think I would do, you get 10 photos, use one of them to be like, and here's the cool thing, you could do this. I was first, I was thinking this is going to have to be a handmade product. No, it could be for digital, it could be for handmade, it could be for vintage, it could be for anything. You could literally just have a, have a graphic card placed in your photo gallery that says, this is my most favorite design I've ever created. Print on Demand as an example. I've never had more fun creating a T shirt design than this one. I hope it touches you as much as it touches me, you know, whatever it is. And then if you could have a picture of yourself sitting at your laptop with like a big grin on your face, you know, something that really like, you know, resonates with you and vibe with you and it could be for, I think any niche that you're or product you're creating in. And I do think there, I want to, I want to assume pull out here what Professor Zane says. You can't just do this in every single listing trying to convert people. You need to be very authentic about it and so you need to pick the one that it's actually true and that is how you position it. And hopefully then you can kind of bump that price up a little bit and convey that. What do you think about those ideas? Professor Zane, any thoughts?
- [36:52]
B
Yeah, I think it's great. I think you nailed it. I love your approach to this. And yes, we know. Right. And you know better than I in the Etsy shop space that don't bury it down in your text description, people aren't going to get there. So anything you can do to highlight it front and center like you said? Yeah, I love it. I don't really have any, any additional recommendations. I think you hit on that, that relative component there. Right. It's my most favorite design I've done to date. And yes, don't do it for every product. Right. Then you're going to lose that authenticity. Very Very quickly. Yeah, I think you nailed it, Lizzie. I love it.
- [37:26]
A
Y'All. I don't know about you, but the legal stuff surrounding business really intimidates me. It's not fun, it's not easy, and I generally just want to shove my head in the sand like an ostrich and hope it will go away and nothing bad will ever happen. But the truth of the matter is that we are business owners now and that is so cool and it takes so much courage and effort and it would be absolutely devastating to lose it all and more like maybe even our homes or our family's well being because we didn't take a few precautionary steps in the front end to set up our business correctly. So whether you're just getting started on Etsy or you've been selling for years now but never quite got around to the legal setup, I want to make sure you know about attorney Paige Hulse and her creative law shop. Paige used to be an Etsy seller just like us, which I freaking love because she gets us. She understands the nature of our business and the Etsy platform so well, like so much better than, you know, some local attorney who maybe understands like, you know, general law. She's the one person that I trust for myself and that I trust to take care of you guys for like any entrepreneurship needs, like, or by the way, equestrian as well. If you happen to be a horsey person like she and I are, she's got a specialty there as well. So first off, I want you to know about some free resources. Paige was on the podcast three times so far. So if you look for episodes 36, 61 and 86, great free advice there. You can learn some of the basics from her of how to protect your business, how the way you need to set it up correctly. She's an absolute doll and she's smart as a whip. And also like, you're going to love the easy way that she breaks down, like complicated legally. It's like I can actually, I can actually focus on what she's saying and not go blank because it's so technical. You're going to love her. And also this is really important. I want you to know that she's available if you, especially in the United States, of course, like if you run into legal trouble or if you need to register a trademark or you some other issue with your business that requires legal advice. You can just search for Paige Hulse Law. Hulse is spelled H as in horse, U L S E. And I'll also Have her sites, you know, of course, linked in the show notes for you guys. And most importantly, I want to make sure you know about her Creative Law Shop because it can save you boatloads of money. It's literally like a template shop for like legal documents, the kind of things that we need all the time. So in many instances you can just purchase a legal template from Paige directly from her site that will protect your business for a fraction of the price that you'd pay for hiring an hourly attorney. And it's going to be written a million times better than something free off of the Internet. Like the stories she's told me about trying to defend people who grabbed a free like contract of some kind off the Internet because they didn't want to spend the money and then like it cost them everything, like they thought they were safe. But those templates are not written well and they're not written specific to like the Etsy entrepreneur. So she has so much in there. You can get everything from your LLC contract, which is super critical. A multi person llc, agreements for partnerships if you work with more than one person in the llc, special provisions for your Etsy shop policies if you really want to cover yourself there, affiliate agreements, influencer contracts, photography releases and so much more. There's literally over 80 contracts available, plus additional free resources. Her blog is incredible and there's a lot of educational tools like some even for purchase if you want to take like a course learning some basic business law stuff. So check it out. If you need to order something from the Creative Law Shop and you want a bit of a break on the price, you can use my coupon code smiley10. That's all lowercase S, M, I, L, E, y and the number 10 and you get 10% off and hopefully that will help. So just go to shopcreativelaw.com and there are a ton of resources waiting for you. My hope and prayer is that you'll never need to fight a legal battle. But just like we have fire insurance and car insurance for a reason, setting up your business the right way now can save you from a lot of pain later. So I really trust Paige to help you out. Well, I love it. I think it's really interesting research and I mean, I just wish I like, wish I could sit in on your class for a semester and hear how you got there because I can't imagine how that was measured. And I do think that as a general rule, Etsy sellers do not put enough of themselves into their listings and their shops to create that human connection. I Mean, we've been seeing just through the Etsy research and trends that the last couple years especially, people are getting away from people consumers are getting away from the sort of microwave fast, you know, fast fashion products. They are so obsessed right now with like a handmade, real, authentic, done by a human being product. And we're not doing enough to leverage that. We're not doing enough to, to convey are part of that. And the public loves a really beautiful Etsy seller story. They love seeing behind the scenes into your totally messy workshop that you think nobody wants to see because it's messy and it's not sexy. But you're sitting there and your kids are at your feet, or your dog or your cat is sitting on your table and you're just working away and people eat that up.
- [42:30]
B
And again, right. To make this connection between like what you're doing out here in the marketplace, boots on the ground, and what I know of the academic research that exists. You're doing all of the things we know work well, right. So I studied like production enjoyment. My co authors and I, we singled, we, we zoomed in on that, right, as one thing. But if you look across all of this work that's been done, we know that conveying love behind a product really helps. So as you said, right, it's, it's about like, you know, really feeling like my handmade love went into this, right. Which is sort of almost deeper than I just enjoyed making this. And so I think you get at like this is a labor of love, right? Yeah. Show that dirty shop, right, with your cat walking across like your workshop table. We also know that consumers reward effort. And so again, if you can combine this notion of, hey, I really enjoyed making this thing, but also making it understood that, you know, I also put a ton of effort into this. Like as you start layering these cues on top of each other, it should only work better and better. And then, yeah, we're, we're story making machines, right? We love stories, all those narratives, like you said. And so there's no one size fits all and there's no sort of perfect potion that I can sit here and recommend of, you know, put like two parts effort and one part enjoyment and one part love into it. That's something that sort of is trial and error and it's going to be based on your specific product and so on. But broad strokes, yes, we know that things that really sort of all center around this idea of authenticity and making it feel like it wasn't just popped out of a machine that you pushed a button on, it's going to work wonders.
- [44:15]
A
I think it's so interesting. I love your research. As we kind of wrap up, do you have any other last thoughts or tips that you want to pass on to our Etsy sellers who are learning how to position themselves more authentically in the marketplace?
- [44:29]
B
Sure. Well, I'll just. Actually, I'll qualify. I'll tell you the conditions that this signal of production enjoyment work best under just to make it known that it's not just a blanket sort of tactic that can be used. And then I'll zoom out there, but first I just want to make it known. We found that this is especially effective for products that seem like there takes some skill to create. And so if it's something, for example, where again, it's just like the push of a button and this thing, you know, is produced, well, then it doesn't really matter how much you enjoy pushing a button to have this thing pop out, because there's not much. There's not much room for me to right conclude how much, how high quality that is, which, again, I said is the mechanism through which this benefit of production enjoyment works. And so it should be something that seems relatively skillful to make. And so again, if it's something that's handmade and actually takes some time to craft, or if it's a design, again, thinking about, hey, I didn't just design this using AI, for example, but I actually really thought about the ergonomics behind it or this design and how it matches with, again, my target audience. And so I just wanted to make that known. Again, it's not a blanket tactic that can be used, but if you feel as though you are working in the skillful space and can convey that as well, it works best. So I just wanted to make sure I threw that out there, but then, yeah, backing up, I'd say, again, just anything you can do to basically understand who your target market is, understand them better than anybody else, any of the, you know, other shops out there, and then just make sure everything you do is in service of those individuals and what they're going to respond to. And so if you have this idea to get, you know, sort of really out of the box and clever or cute in some way, I'd say awesome. But also do a check mentally and say, hey, is this resonating with my target audience? Is it, you know, potentially actually something that is going to turn them off or not? And so never lose sight of that because again, day in and day out, we still see examples across the marketplace, big and small, of people losing sight of that and, you know, ending up bankrupt or in a bad place. And so just never forget that. Which is silly, but it's something that unfortunately happens.
- [47:01]
A
No, I think, you know, Etsy sellers all come from all different, you know, levels of experience and I, I think it's important to reiterate ideas like that because again, they may have just watched 10 TikToks and then went and launched an Etsy shop and they haven't gone into the homework yet of how to make it work. And, and most of the time they'll have to do that at some stage. So it's good, it's good to have reminders like that I'm going to link your research so that people can go check it out. I think that there's going to be plenty of people listening who are going to want to dive into it more. It's very interesting. It's not going to apply to every single seller and it doesn't have to. And that's okay because the whole idea is for the people it does apply to. It's a way to stand out and every single one of us needs to figure out what that point is and it's going to be different for every single niche, every single seller. Professor Zane, thank you so much for being willing to take time away to share with us. We're extremely grateful to you. What a fascinating conversation to have. I hope that more can happen in the future. Where are the best places for people to find you and connect if they had any questions or, I don't know, wanted to come to Lehigh or anything else?
- [48:07]
B
Yeah, I'll just point them to my page on Lehigh. So if you actually just sort of search my name, Daniel Zanelehi, you will find my site. My email address is there. So I'm happy to sort of field questions that way and then, yeah, Lizzie, I'll give you, I guess, an on the air invite if you ever want to come talk in my classes. That would also be awesome. You know, you can pick the brains of all these undergraduate students or master students and understand where they're coming from and I think maybe that'd be helpful for everybody, so I'll throw that live on air too.
- [48:41]
A
Well, I was actually going to ask you after the, after we finished recording because I didn't want to put you on the spot. But if you would ever like for me to come chat, that would be a riot. I mean, I geek out so hard about teaching Etsy and I'd love to. I'D love to help any way I can. That's a blast. Thank you so much. I'm really excited, but we've had such a good time with you today. I will go ahead and link your profile so people can shoot you very kind and succinct emails if they want to follow up. But I literally have the best audience and people on the Internet, so I'm very confident you'll have fun conversations. You guys, thank you for hanging out with professor and myself for the past 45 minutes or so. You know it's always just a privilege to be with you and be in your earbuds. I love you so very much. And until next week, go make something awesome. Take care guys. And that's a wrap on this episode of how to Sell your stuff on Etsy. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. If you're looking for more resources, head on over to howtosellyourstuff.com where you'll find podcast show notes, all the links from today's episode, the blog, courses, coaching, and more. If this episode was helpful to you, awesome. The greatest compliment I can receive from you is a rate, review and subscribe on this podcast. Not only will it allow us to connect again on a future episode, it lets me know I'm providing you with value and helps other people find this content more easily. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support. Have a great day and see you next time.