WHY I HIDE ETSY SALES STATS AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO

After reading this title you may be a bit confused.

First of all, what even are “Etsy Sales Stats”? Why should I care about them? Are maybe its just one of those mornings where you haven’t had your 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd coffees of the morning yet and you just honestly just glazed over it.

Let me explain :)

SALES STATS MATTER

To give a quick background, just in cases you are new to Etsy or just haven’t really paid much attention to them, Etsy posts the amount of sales a shop has on their home page. Etsy also gives shop owners the ability to let shoppers be able to see what exactly your sold items are.

For example, at the time of writing this article I have 205 sales on Etsy. If I made my sold listings visible you could click the “205” shown on my page and the listings for all of my sold items would appear.

WHY IS THIS BAD?

1. Gives your competitors a leg up

Keeping your sold listings visible lets your competitors in on your private information which is extremely valuable. Let’s say I sell bouncy balls and up till now all I or any of my competitors sell are plain color balls, yellow, blue, red, etc. However, after some experimenting I come out with a rainbow ball that quickly becomes my bestseller. I however failed to read this article and have kept my sold listings public.

BIG MISTAKE

Why?

Because Billy, from Billy’s Bouncy Balls knows about your shop because he is business savvy and researches his competitors and looks at your sold listings and sees out of you last 50 sales 35 were rainbow prints.

Well Billy is going to find a way to make Rainbow Bouncy Balls also and then boom you are not the only seller and now you are directly competing again with no advantage.

NOW let’s take a look at how this situation would turn out if you had hidden your sold listings.

Billy looks at your shop, sees you came out with a new listing. Sees it has a good amount of favorites but you cannot really judge how well something sells based off of that one number. Billy then leaves your page with no knowledge of how well you are doing and never makes a Rainbow Ball to compete with you.

Now try to tell me that you should keep them public.

2. Allows you to experiment with selling new products

No other website I have ever bought something on tells you sales totals. You do not go on Nike and see that they sold 3,000 pairs of their new shoe.

With keeping your sold listing stats private your potential customers will not be able to see if one of your items has sold 1 time or 1000.

Let’s discuss why this matters.

Let’s pretend you are a wedding stationary shop. For three years you have only sold stationary, invitations, thank you cards, etc. However, after three months of experimenting you have decided to sell hand blown cake stands. Pretty cool.

However, you make the rookie mistake of keeping your sold listings visible.

Now, Katie who is recently engaged happens upon your shop and looks at your stands, but also looks at your sold listings and … sees that your shop after being open for three years has yet to sell one stand.

People like to follow other people. To know that other people have done what they are able to do.

If Katie sees you have never sold a stand in your life, do you really think she’s going to be wanting to have your stand be the first one you sell?

NO!

The potential that you stands won’t be able to hold her 5 foot tall wedding cake and causes it to topple over during her wedding is enough to send her into a cold sweat and go with your competitor.

By keeping your sales history public you pretty much set yourself back to where you were when you first launched. People being uncertain if they can trust you.

What are your thoughts? Am I being crazy? Comment, share and let me know below!