#133 How Long Does It Take to Get Your First Sale on Etsy?

you open your Etsy shop and then you're just kind of waiting.

You're refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, hoping that that first sale comes in.

And the annoying thing is, then you go on social media and you see another new shop celebrating that they got their first sale in three days.

And it leaves you feeling like, well, how long does it take for me to get my first sale? There is no reliable rule that says you should get your first Etsy sale in two days or five days, 30 days.

That just does not exist.

Two shops can be open for the same amount of time and have two completely different amounts of relevant traffic, for example.

I personally wouldn't be judging your shop based on how much time you've been open, but I would judge whether enough suitable customers have come through your door and had a chance to buy yet.

So when someone says to me, Steph, like my shop has been open for one month, why haven't I had my first sale yet? My initial thought is, okay, great, but that actually doesn't tell me anything about the shop itself.

One seller might have actually bought an existing audience with them.

So actually they might be sat there with a email list of like a thousand people or social media following or whatever.

Let's say they have a following of a thousand people, right? And shop B might be very different.

Shop B might have opened with zero audience and very little in terms of visibility.

So therefore saying, oh, my shop's been open for one month, whereas my first sale doesn't really work.

Equally, a shop that has had 500 visits, okay, is not gonna be the same as a shop who has had maybe 10 visits.

So therefore you can kind of see comparing these two is pretty useless because we can't do it on a time basis.

So the first question isn't how long has it been since my shop's been open and I haven't had my first sale? The question should actually be, has anyone really had a chance to buy from me yet? So before you panic, I want you to check this.

Start with whether relevant people are actually finding the products that you've listed.

If hardly anyone has visited your shop yet, you don't actually have enough of strong evidence to say that the product itself is the problem.

The next question is then actively asking yourself, okay, so when someone is typing in a query in the search bar, is my thumbnail image, is my title, is even my price giving people enough of a reason to click on my listing? Then once they arrive, can they quickly understand what the product is, what they are actually gonna receive and why it's worth buying? and don't forget what you have to factor into this too is that newer shops also have less trust built up over time there is a reason why you have those five stars next to your etsy shop next to your etsy listings okay and if you are new you're not gonna have that so ultimately you have to factor that in as well so what i mean by this is you have this little flow you have found you have click and you have buy.

Okay.

Your job as a new shop is not to question, oh, I've been open for X amount of time.

Why haven't I got sales? No, it's to look at each one of these bits.

Okay.

Because if something is broken in any of these bits, it means you are not going to get sales.

So that is where you need to look first.