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How to Increase Sales on Etsy During the 2023 Holiday Season

Updated on March 2nd, 2023
Holiday craft gifts to sell on Etsy

The best time to start advertising your products for the holidays on Etsy was Jan 1. The next best time is now.

2023 could be a particularly tough holiday season, especially if you run a small business on Etsy. This article outlines some strategies on how to increase sales on Etsy and be prepared for the increase in sales.

Make Holiday Themed Items

Guest book turned holiday album on Etsy
Guest book product converted to holiday photo album

Most products can be themed for any specific holiday giving you so much potential for new sales. For example, this seller took their interesting guest book product for weddings on Etsy, cloned it, and called it a “Christmas Photo Album” with imagery to match.

While Christmas is the most popular holiday that will be covered in this article, any holiday will do. You can make products for holidays even as specific as Tongue Twister Day or Clean Off Your Desk Day. There are many so many odd holidays you can make specific products for!

Include the Holiday Themes In Your Product Description and Photos

While making holiday copies of your products is one way to draw attention, you can actually do it in fewer steps: simply include the holiday name in your product description. People will search for products related to the specific holiday but you will only have a chance of showing if that holiday is mentioned in your product description. For example, an axe maker could describe their product as a “personalized carbon steel handle axe for Christmas.”

In addition to descriptions, updating your listing photos to be holiday-themed will help them stand out from similar items in the same category. If you plan ahead when creating your product photos, you can shoot your various holiday photos way ahead of time.

Inventory Management

Hopefully, your sales will spike during the holiday season so it’s best to get an accurate count of what you have in stock. The earlier you can prepare before the holiday season the easier and less stressful processing orders will be. There is nothing worse than having to quickly run out to get more materials and make your products hastily to fulfill unexpected orders.

Special Offers

Next, to help get in front of more users during the holidays and increase sales on Etsy, we aim to please the their search algorithm with two offerings to help you stand out amongst the crowd (don’t worry, you won’t need to sacrifice anything):

  • Run a constant sale: Put your products on “sale”, but raise your prices to ensure you are not losing out on income with each sale.
  • I cannot stress this enough: Offer some sort of free shipping. Whether that means only within your country or only after a purchase of $35, just make sure to offer it in some form. Once again, raise your prices to accommodate this to avoid your margins being too low.

Speaking of shipping… Here are the holiday shipping deadlines for shops located in the United States.

Offer Expedited Shipping to Increase Sales on Etsy

Nothing says “I love you” quite like “I procrastinated”. If you offer free shipping in your shop, I’m assuming you are choosing the cheapest option. So what you will need to do is to give people the option of upgrading their shipping. You can either create a new listing for just this purpose or ask people to message you for a custom offer.

Get Festive Packaging

With a flurry of new customers comes the chance to spread the word about your shop. By uing festive packaging, you can help save your customer the time of wrapping making them happier with you and your store. This will make people remember you and will be your customer’s deciding factor when looking to place with you instead of the competition. Here are a few different ways you can do this.

On the outside of each order’s packaging, hand write a thank you note with the customer’s name. Also, shower the envelope with stickers because who doesn’t love to see that insanity arrive in their mailbox? During the Christmas season, switch up packaging colors to red and green. My stickers follow suit. I purchase my themed stickers from the seasonal kid’s crafts section of Michaels.

Be sure to read our article on 15 packaging ideas for small businesses!

Include Secret Free Goodies

This is the classic under-promise and over-deliver. When people are purchasing an item from your shop and receive a package with extra goodies, it’s like two good things happened that day instead of one. Here are some ideas you can include as a free goodie with their order.

  • Stickers that you have designed.
  • Candy – because sugar is awesome, but also remember people have allergies.
  • Supplemental material. If you are selling a book, you can include additional material for free.
  • An accessory to your item. An example of this is if you sell candles, include free matches. If you sell bathrobes, throw in a free eye mask. If you sell picture frames, surprise them with all the hanging hardware. You get what I’m saying.

For all those people sitting in the back, I’m going to say it again: raise your prices if you forgot to account for packaging.

My parting piece of advice this holiday season is to say no if you have to

As those previously stated deadlines are approaching, and your customer is asking for something dangerously close to the cut-off, be blatantly honest. You can get things out the door as fast as possible, but once it’s in transit, that’s about it. Make sure the customer’s expectations are clear and return the favor to them. If there is a serious chance it might not make it in time, they deserve to know.

Good luck during the holiday season and we wish you the happiest of holidays!

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