In this episode, I’m talking to Dylan Jahraus of the Ultimate Etsy Course. She is sharing how you can optimize your Etsy store to get more sales. 

Becky Beach: [00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to the Becky Beach Show. I’m Becky Beach and today’s guest is Dylan Jahraus. She’s the founder of the Ultimate Etsy Course. Welcome, Dylan.

Dylan Jahraus: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Becky Beach: Oh, yeah, me too. I’m such a big fan of your YouTube channel. I just love watching it. So let, let us know, like, what, what is it that like, what is it you do exactly?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. So, uh, I’ve been on Etsy for, oh my goodness, eight years. Um, but my background is corporate e commerce, so it’s about 13 years in e commerce and, um, I basically now teach Etsy sellers how to scale their businesses. And we just launched an Etsy software a few months ago. So [00:01:00] deep into all things Etsy scaling, but I also sold on Amazon and Shopify.

So, um, really online sales is, is my cup of tea.

Becky Beach: Oh, that’s amazing. So let us know more about that app that you create. That sounds really interesting. I might want to get that.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s called ETSEO. E T S E O. And I found, I mean, we’ve have about 4, 000 sellers we’ve worked with, uh, in our coaching program.

And I found that SEO is one of the most time consuming things for people. And it, and it is really one of the biggest learning curves for most people as well. So, um, this, this software basically does your SEO for you. You just upload a picture of your product and digital products work great. Just be like your thumbnail photo, and it gives you your full title, description, tags, alt text, everything you need.

Becky Beach: Wow, that sounds really incredible. Like, I do use an Etsy, like, tool, but it doesn’t sound like it would do that. Like, I love that. Thanks,

Dylan Jahraus: yeah.

Becky Beach: So what would you, what would you say to people out there? They’re like, I [00:02:00] don’t think I could do an Etsy store. It sounds too hard. Like, what would you say to those people?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah, I mean, Etsy, I would say it’s still the fastest and easiest place to build a brand right now, um, especially compared to having your own website. So it’s a pretty low barrier to entry. They do most of your marketing for you versus having your own website. You know, they, they do bring customers to the platform and you don’t have to have a.

You know, really unique, fantastic idea. You just really have to think about how can I solve a problem? How could I help people save time or make money and just get one listing up? Just start with one listing.

Becky Beach: Yeah, when I first started a store, it would, uh, it wouldn’t make me do a listing. I could just start the store and then I had no products.

But now in order to start the store, you do have to have a listing.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. Yeah. And I tell people just put like a picture of your kids or something on there and then put it into a draft. Um, real quick, if you just want to get it started, uh, you don’t have to have like a actual product ready to go and sell, um, to get it [00:03:00] open.

You can just do that hack, but. Yeah, just start with one product and I’d almost guarantee this will not be the products that you’re known for a year from now. So just Fail fast, fail forward and start testing.

Becky Beach: So what kind of products, um, like sell the easiest on Etsy?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. So it’s interesting. We work with people who sell everything you can imagine from, you know, 99 cent digital download up to a 15, 000 table.

And everything. Oh, wow. Yeah. Everything in between. Uh, I would say it’s, it’s really about your, your strengths and your goals. So, um, are you good at graphic design? Are you terrible at graphic design? Are you, uh, do you have like a handmade craft or do you have a piece of equipment that could be giving you a competitive advantage, like a laser or something?

Um, I would say look, start with like what you’re good at, uh, to shorten that learning curve. Uh, and then if you’re helping someone save time, save money, or [00:04:00] make money, or solve a pain point, that’s always a good, safe type of product to start with.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah, I totally agree because I have an Etsy store that I’ve had for several years now.

And I think I almost have like 500 sales. Like it, it is kind of grueling to get sales, at least for me. Like, what do you recommend an easier way to get sales for people?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. So, um, a couple of things. One is quality over quantity. So taking a look at the number of listings, like I have a, uh, a seller who does digital products.

Um, she did 117, 000 last month with low price. Yeah. And she did over half a million last year. She’s only a couple of years old on Etsy and the thing about her shop, their low price point, she doesn’t have a lot of listings. It was under a hundred listings for quite a while and it was quality, quality over quantity.

So if you have a shop that’s, you know, low in sales, I’d really take a look at. Is every listing selling? Is there some fat that we [00:05:00] should trim? Because anything that’s just sitting there, it’s hurting your conversion rate. Oh, I didn’t know

Becky Beach: that. Wow.

Dylan Jahraus: Really? Yeah.

Becky Beach: I thought that, like, a lot of people tell me, Oh, you need to have, like, a hundred listings in order to get any, um, any traction on Etsy.

So that’s not, that’s not true?

Dylan Jahraus: No, um, I had a print on demand seller. She had less than 30 listings did over 20, 000 a month.

Becky Beach: So how interesting. Yeah, this is like, like mind blowing. Cause everybody that I’ve talked to always says, Oh, you need like a hundred listings, so I’ve been trying to have my VA post like tons of listings on my Etsy store, you know, at, uh, yeah, some of the, I do agree with trimming the fat.

Cause there are some products that aren’t selling like that’s such a great idea.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah, and those ones that aren’t selling, what it does is it gives your shop this negative quality score. So Etsy sees your shop as not being likable by, by people. So when you post a new listing, they’re not going to automatically push it to the top.

If you have a negative quality score, you’re automatically at a disadvantage when you put listings up. So yeah, trim the [00:06:00] fat for sure.

Becky Beach: Oh, I just love that. I’m going to, like, tell my VA to look for products that aren’t, you know, ranking and then have her, like, like, maybe Nixum or something.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s a good place to start. Now, if they’re optimized and they’re not selling Nixum, but if they have never been optimized, we want to try that first.

Becky Beach: Oh, how do you recommend optimizing the listings?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. So there’s so many components to this. Um, let’s start with getting traffic. So your SEO, that’s going to be really important.

Uh, SEO is in so many different places. It’s not just a title, but having customer centric SEO and not product centric SEO. So for example, let’s say you’re selling a printable. You don’t need to put like eight and a half by 11. Or the paper size necessarily in the title because that’s not really how people are searching for a solution.

Um, they’re really looking for the purpose of the product. What solution does it provide? So customer centric SEO, um, having thumbnails that really make it [00:07:00] obvious what your value proposition is, uh, for a higher click through rate and then optimized descriptions for mobile. So we want to make sure it’s really easy for people to purchase on their phones.

And they don’t have to ask a question before checking out. Those are just a few things.

Becky Beach: Oh, I just love that because over 25 years, I was a user experience designer and I did design for mobile first. So that is like really important to like, I never thought about that to make your Etsy, like, um, thumbnail to be mobile first.

Like that’s a really, really great insight because yeah, people do mostly shop on their phones. Like nowadays, like that’s what a lot of people are saying. Yeah. They have to shop on their phones. Like they don’t really use their desktop unless they’re at work, you know? So when people get home, they have a tablet or like a phone they play on, you know,

Dylan Jahraus: Totally.

Yeah. And when you’re in Canva, you know, you’re designing your thumbnail on a big screen. So sure. You’re going to add all these little text overlays and a little, you know, it just, honestly, it’s killing your conversion rate.

Becky Beach: Oh, so you recommend mostly [00:08:00] just have images and very, very sparse text then for the Etsy listing.

Dylan Jahraus: If you’re going to have any text, it has to be legible on mobile. Stay away from that fancy script that is difficult to read. People can’t understand what it says. It’s hurting the listing. So, um, text is fine, but make sure it adds value. For example, if you’re, you know, selling, um, a, a grocery checklist. You know, you don’t need to label what it is, grocery checklist.

It should be obvious what it is by the product itself. Oh,

Becky Beach: I love that, because you’re right. Because when you’re on your phone, it’s hard to see that really fancy script. Although it is pretty, but it’s kind of hard to read it. And the same goes for Pinterest. Like, you don’t want to put, like, scripts on your Pinterest pins.

But I never thought about the Etsy listings, too. Like, that’s, like, really mind blowing. I was like, wow, I didn’t, I didn’t even think about that.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. Yeah. So the images are so important. Um, if you can’t, if you can’t, uh, figure it out yourself, I would outsource that to a, a graphic designer or [00:09:00] VA.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah.

There’s a lot of people on like Fiverr you could talk to or Upwork and they wouldn’t be able to do it.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah, it’s a pretty low dollar per hour thing you could outsource if you need to, um, but it’s worth it. It’s, you know, it’s at least worth testing someone else’s skill against your own, maybe.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah, that’s, that’s so awesome.

In my store, my top selling product is this final wishes planner. And that one does the best and, uh, and yeah, in my, my listing, I don’t have any, any like cursive or anything on the mock up and it just shows the final wishes planner and that one’s doing the best it seems. So what, what kind of products usually do, do the best like for, uh, as far as printables are concerned that you’ve seen?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. So I always recommend looking for printables that really create a solution. So, um, and also that have the ability to be bundled very easily. So, um, a lot of our sellers who do more, I would say, uh, customized or niche specific homeschool, uh, [00:10:00] home education type of things. Like I have someone who does calculus.

Worksheets and, you know, math from like, you know, kindergarten to high school, um, tons of bundles and things with these math worksheets. Um, I’m seeing a lot do well with, uh, like homeschool handwriting sheets, tracing sheets, kids activities, um, but then also like the invitation market and the event space.

So with that, you know, you can, you can have the printable invites, the thank yous, the. Um, cake toppers, you know, there’s so many things, the water bottle wraps, the chip things. Um, yeah, so those have a really nice ability to be bundled for a higher average order value.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah, I still love that because a lot of the prices on Etsy are just so, so low.

Like I have to price things at like a dollar and change in order to see any results. Like, uh, any, do you have any clients that, that will charge higher prices but still get sales?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, the, the goal here I would say is really becoming the market [00:11:00] leader as a lower price. So you’re ranking at the top of search and then pulling the lever on price because you’ll have great reviews.

You might have a bestseller badge. You’ll already have momentum. So, um, that’s the time to then raise your pricing.

Becky Beach: Yeah. So what, what do you say about ads? Like do ads help your clients at all?

Dylan Jahraus: So I am kind of anti Etsy ads. Oh,

Becky Beach: interesting. Why is that?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah, we, I, you know, I found that it’s just, um, really easy just to light your money on fire there.

Uh, and just, you know, you don’t get that money back. Um, there’s so many other ways to get traffic outside of ads. In ads are assuming a couple of things they’re assuming there’s product market fit, right, which that’s a very expensive experiment. If you don’t have product market fit to find out by spending money, you know, 50 bucks to drive people to it where they don’t buy to then realize, oh, people don’t even they’re not even attracted to this.

Um, ads also are [00:12:00] really reliant on you having appropriate SEO. So if you haven’t locked in and dialed in your SEO. You know, the idea that, Oh, I’ll just do ads instead of learning SEO. Well, ads rely on your SEO to be accurate. So, um, there’s other places I would do ads like Facebook and, you know, meta over Etsy.

Becky Beach: Oh, definitely. And you have an Etsy tool called at SEO. So we’ll mention that in the show notes. Yeah, that that’s just not such a great idea to that does make sense to have your SEO optimized before you run ads because you’re right. Because if you run ads, you’re just like throwing money in the toilet.

You know what might as well be doing that, you know, because if you’re not optimizing for SEO.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So ads, um, I would rarely, rarely recommend Etsy ads, you know, uh, especially with any physical products where there’s a cost of the product involved, you got to be really careful you’re not losing money.

Becky Beach: Oh, definitely. So what else would you say, say to like, when there’s a mom out there and she’s thinking about starting an Etsy store, like what, what, what do you [00:13:00] think, uh, will be the hardest challenge that she could, um, she could face?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah, I would say. The longer you wait, uh, the higher the opportunity cost.

And a lot of moms, you know, we, I have two little boys, um, three, yeah. Um, three and seven. And I started my shop, uh, when I was pregnant with my first. So I’ve raised these boys with Etsy and it’s so easy to be waiting for the right timing. But as a mom, like there will never be the right timing. Like it will just never, um, there’s always a new activity.

There’s always. You know, something coming up, the kids are sick, and it’s always going to be easy to put off your own business. So I would say, really learn to thrive in imperfect conditions. Be okay with the idea that done is better than perfect, because you need to get the reps in. And your first listing won’t be perfect no matter what if you put 10 hours in or one hour in still probably won’t be perfect.

So we just want to be putting the reps in and just [00:14:00] remember like the timing will never be right, but there’s a huge cost financially. And to the options you’ll have in your future to waiting.

Becky Beach: Oh, yeah. I love that. Cause you know, done is better than perfect. And I so agree that if you’re just procrastinating like crazy and you’re just, you say, well, I’ll just get this done tomorrow, I’ll get this to the next day, well, what I say is no steps forward is two steps back.

So if you just don’t, don’t keep on, keep on going, you’re just never going to get there. And I started my business too. When I was pregnant with my son, Brian, he’s now nine years old. So I totally relate. You know, just the fire within you as a mom that you want to make your life better. You don’t want to work for somebody like you were, you came from corporate too.

And you know, it’s, it’s just so mind numbing to work for these other people that, that may even be toxic and treat you bad and make your life miserable. So I’m just so glad that I’ve ventured off and started my own business to spend more time with my child.

Dylan Jahraus: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s life changing, but you have to be, you know, have the courage to take that leap to start.

Becky Beach: Yeah, you at least got to get started. [00:15:00] You know, like you can’t just keep putting it off like that. It’s so, so true. Yeah. So let, let us know where, where can other people find you?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. So, um, I have a YouTube channel and I put a one, usually it’s two videos a week on there. Uh, it’s just Dylan Jarvis, J A H R A U S and, or you could do Dylan Etsy and you’d find it.

Um, and then Instagram we are on Instagram. We are very chatty in the DMS and I’m happy to take a look at your shop or. Our team is in there and they can take a look at your shop too. Um, so Instagram or YouTube are two great places.

Becky Beach: Oh, yeah. I’m looking at your Instagram. Now you got 75, 000 followers.

That’s great. How long have you been doing your Instagram?

Dylan Jahraus: Let’s see, two years.

Becky Beach: Oh, oh, wow. That’s great. Yeah. She has a lot of good content on here on how to, you know, scale on Etsy. How awesome. And her YouTube channel, you have a hundred, I mean, a hundred thousand subscribers, nice, you must’ve gotten one of those, those platters or what are they called, like some kind of.

Oh, you got one [00:16:00] over there. How fun. There’s some really amazing content. Highly recommend everybody check out her YouTube. And also Dylan has an amazing course. It’s called the ultimate Etsy course. That’s very appropriately named because it is ultimately awesome.

Dylan Jahraus: Thank you. Yeah. And with that, you know, we provide the one on one customized private coaching for you.

So it’s all personalized guidance for your shop. And it’s actually 24 seven coaching and then you get five coaching calls every week for a year. So it’s, you know, hundreds of coaching calls, um, daily access to me and the team. And we’re looking at your shop, your listings, give you product ideas. Giving you your next steps forward.

So it’s very personalized for you.

Becky Beach: Oh, yes. I’m looking at, at the, at the, I’m sorry. I’m looking at the ultimate Etsy course website and it says you can grow your Etsy shop with top eggs at the experts. That’s awesome. So you’ve helped over 3, 500 Etsy sellers. So this is definitely, it looks like an [00:17:00] amazing product to check out.

So I’ll have a link to Dylan’s course in the show notes at Becky beat show. com. Well, Dylan, what are some last words you have for anybody looking to start their own Etsy store?

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah, I would say just get started on. This is a great time of year to get started, right? We’re still in the first half of the year at the time of this filming.

So, um, get started, you know, get ramped up, try to just get 20 listings up and then listen to customer feedback. And if you need any help, um, just let us know and we can take a look at your shop.

Becky Beach: Oh, yeah. And also spring break is coming up. So for those that have kids in school, the kids will be home, you know, so maybe you can find some time to be able to start your store during, during then.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe

Becky Beach: take time off work.

Dylan Jahraus: Yeah, exactly.

Becky Beach: Well, this has been such an amazing episode. Make sure to check out the show notes at BeckyBeachShow. com and all of Dylan’s course and her Instagram and YouTube. Well, thanks so much again for being here today, Dylan.

Dylan Jahraus: Thanks, Becky. [00:18:00] This was so nice. Thank you.