Between crafting your products, keeping up with convos and adding new products, your Etsy store keeps you busy. Sometimes, there is so much to do! While you may be tempted to handle everything yourself, it won’t be long before burn-out sets in or you become frustrated at juggling too many tasks at once.
There are many aspects of running your business that can be done automatically, saving you precious and valuable time. We all know that having more time is a good thing! Let’s look at the automation features available for making your shop run more smoothly, with less help from you.
Automate your Store
There are many ways you can automate every-day tasks necessary to running your Etsy shop.
Use Etsy’s Built-in Features: Etsy offers built-in tools that allow you to automatically connect with buyers. You’re able to create a message to buyers, which automatically sends a message when someone purchases your item. Inside your Etsy shop, choose ‘Shop info & Apperance.’ At the bottom of the page, you’ll see a section for ‘message to buyers.’ You may add any information that you like here. Consider adding a thank you for purchase, estimated shipping times, your return policy or contact information.
Relist with Ease: Relisting sold items can be time consuming, especially during busy selling times like the holidays. Luckily, there are several applications you can use to make relisting sold items easier.
- Uncle Gravy- Uncle Gravy is testing an automatic relisting feature that relists sold items that you specify. A trial of the program is free; however, if you like it, a flat $10 buys a subscription.
- Stitch Labs- Stitch Labs offers a multitude of tools for Etsy sellers, one of which is an automatic relisting feature. Stitch connects directly to your Etsy shop, making it easy to track inventory and sales. You choose which items to relist. When those items sell, Stitch automatically relists them. You’ll also receive an automatic packing slip that generates with each order, saving you time when it comes to packaging and shipping.
- Auto Relister- Auto Relister is an application for Android smart phones which automatically relists your sold items. You can also schedule item renewals with this program. While the app is currently only for Android, a PC version may be available in the future.
Edit Easier: There may come a time when you need to edit multiple listings in your shop. Perhaps you need to add or change tags, pricing, product categories or titles and descriptions. If you have several pages of listings, editing each listing individually can take hours. Consider these tools to help you batch edit your listings:
- Craftopolis – Craftopolis is an Etsy shop owner’s savior! This site offers the ability to edit multiple items at one. You can change price, titles, descriptions and tags. Simply open the application and choose the listings to edit. Once you’re done with your edits, the program changes them all at once.
- Etsy on Sale – Etsy on Sale allows you to bulk edit tags for your shop listings. You can remove outdated tags or add new tags for specific products, or all of them. This is especially handy when adding seasonal tags for Etsy-promoted sales, like ‘Free Shipping Etsy’ to promote holiday sales.
- BETSI – Designed by Blugrin, Bulk Etsy Tool Simple and Intuitive (BETSI) is a brand-new application which allows you to batch edit tags, materials, categories and sections. Sellers may also activate, delete and renew with BETSI. The program is in beta and will be released soon; you can sign-up on the website to be notified when the application is live.
Automatically Renew:
Renewing is an effective form of marketing for some Etsy sellers. When you renew a listing, it boosts your product into the ‘newly listed’ category which can be found when someone searches for an item like yours. It also bumps your product to the top of your category which can help improve visibility for a short time.
Renewing costs 0.20 cents a pop, so many sellers set a daily or weekly renewal budget and mark it as advertising cost. Staying on top of renewing can be time consuming; however, there are a few cool tools that make the process very easy:
- Statsy – Statsy Clockbot allows you to automatically renew products you choose, when you choose. Simply sign in and schedule the products you’d like to renew and when you’d like to renew them. Even better, Statsy Clockbot is free to use.
- Etsy on Sale - In addition to the automatic relisting feature, Etsy on Sale also allows automatic renewing. You’re able to hand pick products to renew and schedule the best time for renewal. New users receive five credits to use toward the automatic renewing feature.
- Uncle Gravy - Sticking to a renewing budget is a little easier with Uncle Gravy’s automatic renewing tool. You’re able to select products to renew, a time to renew them and a budget to stick to. The renewal tool stops once your budget has been reached.
Faster Photo Editing: You already know how important great product images to the success of your Etsy shop. Obtaining beautiful images on the coveted white background can be tricky. Once you achieve better pictures, it takes time to replace the old images with the new. When you have multiple listings in which to replace pictures, it can be a never-ending task.
FotoFuze is a new online photo editor that takes your current product pictures and transfers them to a beautiful white background. You can choose which listings you’d like to replace pictures for and adjust the look of your pictures to make sure they are just right. When you’re done, FotoFuze automatically replaces old images for your listing with the new pictures.
Automate Social Media
Staying on top of social media networking and advertising can take hours from your day; especially if you frequently waste time browsing or engaging in non-business related networking. Companies with flexible budgets may hire a social media manager to add frequent updates to the company’s blog and social media pages. However, if your budget doesn’t include funds for an employee, consider automating your social interactions to free up your time.
In addition to saving time, you can also organize posts and links and schedule them in an efficient manner. Instead of going to each social media page to post new listing links or blog/social media content, you can schedule it all with an automating system. Remember; however, that while automation is great, personal social networking is better. Do take time each day or each week to personally interact with your blog readers or social followers—personal connections always feed a growing business better!
- Use RSS - Etsy allows you to connect to Twitter and your blog via RSS. This allows people to follow your updates listings via social media. By establishing RSS, you automatically promote your new items without having to lift a finger. To set up RSS for you Etsy shop, type the URL www.etsy.com/shop/EtsyStore/rss into your web browser. Replace ‘EtsyStore’ with your shop name. Next, go to www.ping.fm. This website allows you to add your RSS link to the most popular social media where you have accounts. Each time you add new products to your Etsy shop, it will automatically feed a link to your social networks.
TwitterFeed.com is another resource for incorporating your RSS feed. Simply sign up on the website and add your RSS link. A new tweet will go out to your followers each time you add a new product.
- Hootsuite - Hootsuite is like a mini social media manager in digital form. This website allows you to schedule new content and Etsy listing to all of your social medial sites. The site also offers custom analytics so you can see how well people respond to your posts and content.
- Connect Twitter and Facebook - If you have a Facebook fan page for your business, you can automatically connect your Facebook updates to Twitter. Hop over to your Twitter account and sign in. Under apps, look for the Facebook Twitter app. If you have trouble finding it, surf here: http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/facebook. Once you’ve connected the application to Facebook, your updates will be tweeted to your followers.
Other Ways to Automate Your Shop
The internet is full of wonderful tools to use for automating just about any online business task you can think of. Some are especially simple to use, yet pack a powerful punch.
WiseStamp: It’s easy to use your email as a mini promotion for your Etsy shop. WiseStamp is an effortless email application that lets you add a link to your Etsy shop, your tagline or other information and a small photo bar that displays your newest listings.
Email Auto-Responder: If you communicate with customers via a personal email address, you can automate responses. Consider setting up a Gmail account under your business name. Then, add this email address to your Etsy shop store announcement or information page. Gmail allows you to set up an auto-responder that sends a message on your behalf. When a client sends an email, they will automatically receive one back from you. You can use the auto-responder to thank a customer for contacting you and letting them know when to expect a response.
Etsy Mini: Etsy mini is a free application that creates a mini shop for your Facebook page or blog. Inside your Etsy shop, look under the ‘promote’ section; you’ll see a link for setting up your mini page. This application is a great way to promote what’s new in your store. Once it’s set up, new listings will update automatically.
As new technology grows, you never know what’ll pop up next. Keep an eye on the Etsy Apps page for updated apps that will automate mundane and necessary tasks and make being a shop owner less stressful!