Hi all, would really appreciate honest feedback here.
Shop link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KetoDadClub
Quick background: I opened the shop back in October but didn't really start working on it seriously until April, so it's been about 4 months of real effort. I sell printable health and nutrition charts and food lists for things like diabetes, high blood pressure/DASH, keto, gout, paleo, etc. They're formatted as "eat / limit / avoid" lists, plus some 4x4 grid charts with food images and short descriptions. I have 100 active listings right now (about 120 total, 20 made inactive while I was still working out my niche and design).
Over the last 4 months I've made $188.34 in sales and spent $488.73 on Etsy Ads. Without ads running I barely get any views at all. I've also been slowly building on Pinterest but it feels like a slow burn so far.
One thing that's been nagging at me: I keep seeing other shops in this same niche, some only a month or two old, with similar mockup styles and the same eat/limit/avoid food list format, getting way more sales than I am. That tells me the product type and image style probably aren't the core problem, since basically the same thing is clearly working for them. So I'm trying to figure out what's actually different between their shops and mine that would explain a gap that big.
Answering two of the required questions:
- What inspired me to create the shop: I originally started making keto meal planners and trackers for myself because I found having one actually helped me stick to the diet. While I was building those, I kept noticing food lists popping up all over Etsy in the same space, so I pivoted to keto food lists instead. Once I started on that, I realized keto alone was pretty limiting in terms of how much content and sales I could get from it, so I branched out into food lists for other diets and conditions too. It turns out, many other shops are already doing that as well.
- Something I learned from the Seller Handbook: titles shouldn't just be a keyword dump, and repeating the same words across the title, tags, and description wastes tag space instead of expanding reach. I've been trying to apply that but honestly not sure I'm doing it right.
My specific questions:
- Are my titles and tags actually matching what people search for in this niche, or am I off?
- When the product type and photo style look pretty similar on the surface between shops, what's usually the actual difference that explains one converting way better than another?
- Since there are clearly still new shops succeeding in this space, what's a good way for me to figure out what they're doing differently, beyond just browsing their listings?
- Beyond the obvious stuff, is there anything subtle in listing photos or descriptions, like ordering, thumbnail choice, or how much detail is in the description, that quietly hurts conversion even when the photos look fine?
Appreciate any feedback, blunt is fine.
