Etsy sellers are known for their passion and creativity, which makes it the perfect platform to sell print-on-demand products.
Whether you’re an artist looking to make your passion a full-time job or an entrepreneur interested in adding a new revenue stream, Gooten’s integration with Etsy helps you scale your business by completely taking care of order fulfillment, high-quality production, and shipping to your end customer.
Gooten's Etsy Print-on-Demand Guide: Table of Contents
Why Choose Etsy as Your E-commerce Platform
Etsy is an eCommerce website allowing business owners to sell handmade or vintage items, including print-on-demand products. Etsy offers a free and $10 per month plan, enabling you to send notifications when products are back in stock, get your own URL at a discount, and get more listing credits, bumping your products to the top of customers’ results.
With both plans, you pay listing and transaction fees and offsite advertising fees, all of which Etsy charges for every sale. Etsy also offers discounted shipping and postage for their customers, along with a customer reviews feature.
Print-on-demand business owners can sell on Etsy, but according to the Etsy policy, you’ll have to disclose in your store listings that you are working with a production company and must use your own designs. All sellers must meet seller service level standards to sell on Etsy.
With Etsy, you can publish two variations per product per listing, 13 tags with each product, and 10 photos per listing. Gooten’s integration with Etsy meets their requirements while helping you build your business.
Make Etsy Registry Work for Your Print-on-Demand Business
How to Sell on Etsy with Gooten's Integration
Sign up for Free
The first step is to create your Gooten account. With Gooten, there are no setup or monthly fees; you determine your pricing and keep your profit.
When you log in to your account for the first time, you’ll land on your “Home” page. The Home page guides you as you get setup with Gooten!
Connect Your Shop to Gooten
If you used Gooten before to create your products in the Product Hub or to connect your Shopify store, getting started with our Etsy integration will be a piece of cake. The process is essentially the same.
After you’ve created your account, the next step is to go to the Product Hub.
From there, click on the Etsy tab. Once you submit your store name, you can connect your shop to Gooten.
Add Your Business Information
After connecting your Etsy store, navigate to the “Settings” page within Gooten and fill out your business information. Gooten needs a credit card on file to secure the account, but other billing options are available.
Design, Create, and Publish a Listing
Once your Etsy store is connected to us, you can start creating and publishing your products.
You should reference the print specs on the product’s catalog page while creating your design files. Gooten accepts .png or .jpeg files in RGB format with 300 DPI.
Watch this tutorial for help with that part of the setup:
Connect an Existing Listing to Gooten
If you already have an Etsy listing in your store that you want fulfilled through Gooten, you can easily link it for automated fulfillment.
Check out this short tutorial video on how to link products:
Now You're in Business!
You can start selling once your listings are published and connected to Gooten! Orders will automatically flow into Gooten for all products you’ve connected.
You’ll be able to see all of your orders and manage them on Etsy and the “Orders” page in Gooten.
Etsy Essentials to Keep in Mind
A large e-commerce platform like Etsy has several guidelines you should be mindful of – from the number of tags you can publish to your store to the number of photos you can have under each listing.
Here are tips on working around some of those limitations:
- The maximum number of tags you can publish for each listing is 13. Tags serve the function of keywords, so the more tags you have, the bigger the chance that more customers will find your listing. We recommend consistently publishing all 13 and choosing them carefully.
- You can only publish up to 10 photos to each listing, so choose wisely. If you create a product containing more than 10 mockup images in Gooten’s Product Hub, only the first 10 will be pushed to your store due to the maximum number of images you can post under a single listing on Etsy.
- If you already have product previews in your store and don’t want to replace them with our mockups, you can turn off the option of publishing them to your store on the Save and Publish page in the Product Hub.
- Etsy allows two variations per product, meaning that you can offer up to two product options within a single listing. For example, you’re selling a T-shirt and offering various sizes and colors. Those would be specified in variations. Note that Gooten allows up to 3 product options, so if you add all three in the product creation process from our Product Hub, one won’t be transferred to your Etsy store.
Marketing on Etsy
You can do many things to set yourself apart from the competition and drive traffic to your shop. Getting the attention of nearly 82 million active buyers on Etsy depends on having the right strategy to reach sustainable growth.
Focust on How You Name Your Listings
Giving your listing an easy-to-find title is essential! Don’t be afraid to use keywords, attributes, and tags to show off your products. Do some research, check what comes up once you search for the product you’d like to sell, and find out how to make your product stand out.
Use as many 140 available characters as needed to add relevant keywords to your listing’s title, and start with the most important ones. You can always add additional information to your tags or description. Experiment with different keywords and tags occasionally, and make them all matter – you only have a limited number of fields.
Use SEO Results to Your Advantage
Your chance to pop up in more search results is increased by using more than just generic words in your title – spice it up a bit and bring it closer to your customers by describing what’s unique about it and your artwork.
Be bold and use strong keywords to boost your visibility. Relevant keywords will bring your listing higher on the results list once your customer types in a few words describing what they’re looking for.
6 Etsy SEO Tips for Your Print-on-Demand Store
Don't Skip Important Details
Start with completing the category for your listing – it’s a requirement for a good reason. By selecting appropriate categories and subcategories, your item will appear in the search results as if you’ve added them as tags.
Use compounds when writing tags – remember, you’ve only got 13 of them to add to your listing and make it appear in the search results. Each tag can have up to 20 characters; make them worthwhile! If your design is related to a bachelorette party, a baby shower, or a gift for them, tag it like that so your buyers can easily find it.
Put some thought into product previews – why only show a mockup of a dog bandana without your dog wearing it? Take your pet for a walk and snap fantastic shots with your custom-made design!
Include a detailed but short and simple description of the product so your customers can feel it’s in their hands. Present your product the best way you can, and remember they can only see it on-screen, not feel it. Portray the feel of the fabric, and why not – direct them to another product in your store that would go perfectly with it!
Stay up to Date with Current Trends
Make sure you’ve got products currently in demand – if it’s summer, switch the main products on your page from hoodies to t-shirts. Make Christmas tree skirts and stockings the most visible during the Christmas season. Add all the Occasion attributes applicable to your products.
Offer your customers the freedom to customize your product! With Gooten, it will only take a moment to create, and with our worldwide network of high-quality print vendors, their orders will promptly be delivered. Fulfilling a request such as that will delight your customers and increase sales.
Connect with Gooten
Do you run an Etsy shop? Are you looking for a reliable print-on-demand provider? Contact us today to get the ball rolling.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2021 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.
