In the last month I have given the new Etsy search ads a try, and was quite pleased with the results. I had a reader recognize my work in search result ads - they wrote to me and asked, "how effective are those Etsy ads? Are they worth the money?"

My answer: yes and no. It completely depends on how you use them. I waited so long to try them because of the very negative feedback regarding ads in Etsy forum threads. "A waste of time, " people were saying, "you're better off spending that money on renewing listings."

Then I would do searches on Etsy, and see ads that were completely irrelevant to what I was searching for. What are the chances that I would click on a listing that has nothing to do with what I was searching for? Zero.

That's when I realized that for the most part, search ads weren't working for people for (at least) three reasons:

1. They were promoting too many items
2. They were using too many tags
3. Their tags were largely irrelevant (ties in to reason #2)


So, with Valentine's Day around the corner, I decided to do a very focused, one week, $5 ad run on Etsy. What I did:

1. Limit my promoted items to 4
2. Limit my tags to 5
3. Make sure every tag applies to every item

Focusing my promotion on just a handful of items concentrates the limited impressions that $5 pays for on just a few items, instead of spreading those impressions across many featured items.

Additionally, limiting your number of promoted items allows you to need fewer tags, and allows those tags to be more relevant. 


For example, I could have promoted my entire line of 2012 Valentines, using tags like, "red", "paper goods" "Valentine's Day", "stationery", "cards", "hearts", "love", etc. All of those tags would have been relevant, but they're not specific enough.

Anyone searching for stationery or Valentines could have seen my ads in search results, but what I have to offer may not have been what they were looking for. Super vague and all-encompassing tags like "paper goods", "stationery" or "greeting card" result in wasted impressions. Instead, using tags like, "Paper cut Valentine" or "Paper cut card" is much more specific - people who use those search terms are much more likely to click on my items, heart them, and buy them. I gave them exactly what they were looking for.

Here were my results:

$ spent: $14.93
impressions: 17,604
views: 225
favorites: 13
orders: 5

This means that for every ~78 people that saw my ad, one person clicked. For every ~17 people that clicked on my ad, one person "hearted" it. The best part? For every 2.6 people that "hearted" my item, one person bought. To me, that's fantastic. That is the benefit of very specific tags - it gives people exactly what they were searching for. My normal ratio is 39 hearts for every 1 sale.


The bummer part? My items don't cost a lot. I sell greeting cards, retail valued at $4.50 - $12 each. I spent $14.93 to advertise, and got $50 in sales as a direct result. Etsy traces the sales, and so those 5 sales were a direct result of the ad. I can see people who sell more expensive items getting more bang for their buck.

All-in-all, I spent $15 for three weeks of search ads, resulting in a little over 17,600 impressions. Considering that many blogs offer advertising starting at $30 per month, this doesn't seem bad to me, especially considering the click-through rate was so good. I've been on blogs before that bring in tens of thousands of views a month, but the ad only brought a little over 100 people to my shop, and maybe not even any sales (I couldn't track the sales from other sites).

I would do it again, especially for a big holiday. I don't know if I would do this regularly, but for very specific events, targeted at certain people or certain occasions, I'd do it again.

Are you a reader with a question? You can email me any time at Ashley@IndiePrettyProjects.com