When it comes to selling on Etsy, you essentially have a decision to make about the strategy you are going to use for selling. Are you going to be someone who follows the trends, or are you going to take the evergreen route? There are pros and cons to both.
Let’s break it down:
trendy
Trendy basically just means something that comes and goes. When you are on trend, you are going to have to be much more involved in the comings and goings of other Etsy shops or what is going on around you. That might take more work, but you are also going to be attracting the ‘buyers’ by staying on-trend. In other words, the high consumers who are more likely to give you their money. To stay on-trend is to constantly know what the people want, and it’s constantly hoping you get it right.
So, just like the stock market, you can make a lot of money, but you have to be ok with the fact that you might also lose a lot of money. You won’t always get it right, and there will be risks there.
evergreen
An evergreen product is a product that never changes. If you sell dresses, your evergreen product is going to be the black dress. A pro to focusing on your evergreen products is that people tend to buy those products. Sometimes, people will click on the trendy things and add them to cart, but ultimately decide to go with the same route.
With a high selling evergreen product, my suggestion is that you put a lot of love into that listing, and when you get it high up on the front page of a keyword, make you ALWAYS have inventory of that product so that you don’t have to take the listing down and lose that coveted spot. This is what I did with my own Etsy shop and it proved the main breadwinner for me out of everything I sold.
my experience with trends:
For our shop, when we also would buy trendy fabric, but we did it on a seasonal basis and would do a launch for each season. One thing I learned through trial and error with these trendy products, it’s better to buy less and sell out of that seasonal, trendy item than to overbuy. If it’s a home run and you sell out, awesome, you made some customers super happy. If you overbuy and it’s a total dud, it’s going to be even more of a dud next summer when you try to sell it again.
Having multiple products up in your store that is no longer on-trend (but were at one time super trendy) can even go so far as to date your shop.
how do you know what's on-trend?
There are a lot of sites that can help you with trends, but one I use a lot that can be really helpful for this is e-rank. I would suggest finding things that are up and coming or increasing in the search rather than something that is already fully-fledged trendy. That will give you a little more runway with the product.
I would also recommend looking up trends on Google keyword planner which is a free tool you can use if you have a Google account. Pinterest predicts is another great one that will allow you to download the whole sheet of what is currently trending or upcoming on Pinterest.
If you see something that is growing year over year, take advantage of that. For example, digital planners have grown in popularity since 2018. If you sell something that can take advantage of that trend, go for it. Invest in that. Your returns are most likely going to be pretty set.
Whatever shop you have, there are upcoming trends. See what they are and use them to your advantage.
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