Thursday, September 22, 2011

Etsy Search Ads


Etsy has a new way for you to get some more exposure. After the change to Relevancy as the default search, shop owners have had to work just a little harder to be found. Before you could renew your items and keep near the front of the search.

The new Etsy Search Ads promise a way to help get you some exposure. Though it seems at first glance to be based off of the Google AdWords and Facebook Ads model, the pricing is far more reasonable and there is no bidding for key words. It gives you the option of a lower dollar amount based on your renewals from back when that was the way to go.

I averaged about $6 a week with renewing so that is my base rate for the low tier. The rate of "ads" for the money is very nice as well. $1 will get you 1,000 impressions. When you set up your "ad" Etsy gives you a list of keywords based on your existing Titles and keywords. I opted to delete the very generic terms from my list but left a few somewhat generic terms. I deleted "glass beads" and left "necklace."

The best thing about the ads are that you can start and stop them at any time. Only time will tell if it is helpful or not but Etsy was smart enough to tie the ads to your stats so that you can see the results in real time. I plan to revisit this topic after it has been running for a while.

4 comments:

  1. Does this mean that renewing now no longer works at all - and one is forced to go the search ads route?

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  2. I purchased $5 per week of stuff from my shop, just to see if it would make a difference. The other ad's they post, the ones at the top, I don't think they worked so good. What did work was the special pages Etsy Did.

    Those were nice.

    sorry post so short, in a hurry..bye

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  3. The trouble I see is it's CPM. When I saw that, I kinda boggled. "Who *does* CPM? What the crap?!" I don't think it's an improvement over Google Ads *at all*. Google only charges you when someone actually clicks through to your store. Etsy charges you just to have the ad be visible, not even for it to actually do its job!

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  4. Google and Facebook both offer Cost Per Impression AND Cost Per Click. It is easier for Etsy to offer just the cost per impression. It may not be a perfect situation but look at it this way: If you get 100 people clicking on your ad you do not have to pay extra. That way your competition cannot go in and click your ads to drive up your bill.

    I say we just wait a couple of weeks and see what happens.

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