The most special moment in any couple’s life is their wedding day. The trend for wedding items, however, is slowly moving away from high-street retailers and boutiques to handmade wedding items that have a more bohemian and personalized feel. Just because it’s white doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be unique. And Etsy delivers.

In fact, Etsy offers brides a wide variety of wedding apparel and accessories to make their day even more memorable.

So, if you are a handmade Seller who’d like to get into the wedding niche, this post is for you.

How big is the market for handmade wedding apparel and accessories on Etsy?

It’s important to ask yourself how big the wedding market is on Etsy before you dedicate your time and effort to creating your handmade items. We have good news though. The market is big. Starting with the obvious search for “handmade wedding dress”, we found that there are around 45,960 results on Etsy. This immediately signals to us that there’s potential in this niche.

Other important signs of this niche’s success include the fact that the following keywords get the corresponding resulting search volume on Etsy:

• Wedding dress: 26,174
• Wedding dresses: 26,130
• White dress: 3,258
• Lace wedding dress: 1,129
• Boho wedding dres: 1,129
• Sash wedding dress: 111
• Silk wedding dress: 110
• Chinese wedding dress: 37
• Regency wedding dress: 36
• Quirky wedding dress: 35
• Bridal dress: 33
• Bridal gown: 30
• Woodland wedding dress: 23
• Wedding gown: 20
• Comfortable wedding dress: 18
• Embroidered wedding dress: 18

It’s evident that the broadest searches for “wedding dress” and “wedding dresses” get the highest search volume. But Sellers shouldn’t be discouraged to see that “embroidered wedding dress” gets an Etsy search volume of just 18. Why? Because the average price of these items is $468.08. Multiplying the lowest search volume of 18 by the average price, and if the lowest number of items were sold, we get $8,425.44 by looking at the bare minimum.

There’s great potential in this niche because items enjoy high search volume, but also go for quite a buck. This means that your handmade wedding dress endeavor will reach profitability much quicker than other niches made up of low-priced items, regardless of bigger demand.

Moreover, apparel is not the only item type that you should pay attention to. There are also multiple handmade wedding accessories and jewelry that you can take advantage of. With the help of Sale Samurai’s “Search” module, we typed in “handmade wedding jewelry” and were able to determine the following search volume:

• My handmade wedding co: 121
• Bridal jewelry: 40
• Wedding jewelry sets: 35
• Wedding earrings: 32
• Wedding jewelry gift: 23

The average price for these items is $292.96. Once again, this means that even if you were to go for the lowest common denominator and make something in the region of 20 sales, you’d still be walking away with around $5,859.20. That’s pretty impressive.

How profitable is this niche?

Profitability takes into account a number of different factors. These include:

• The cost of the materials used to create your product
• The time it takes you to make it
• Shipping costs
• The Etsy listing fee of $0.20
• Whether you’re implementing a discount for your listing
• The cost of the transaction fee processing (around 6.5%)
• And others (such as ads if you’re not only counting on organic results).

However, if we were to roughly work out what one Etsy star Seller is doing right to make sales, we’d get the following:

Barzelai is an Etsy Seller that sells “Graceful and delicate show stopping boho wedding dress with dreamy combination of fabrics, heavenly silhouette & divine handmade embroidery”. This listing goes for $730. On the whole, Barzelai has made 2,765 sales and this means that they would ultimately walk away with $1,711,339.00. This is nearly two million dollars if that is the shop average price.

Yes, we would have to deduct several costs from this but it should immediately tell you that the niche is profitable and that there’s huge potential for development here.

What are some of the best-selling merchants and listings doing right?

To give you an idea of what the best-selling Etsy merchants are doing to their listings to make sure they get such high profits, we go back to the example above and focus on Barzelai.

Descriptive titles

Starting with their title, we see that they’ve been highly descriptive indicating “Graceful and delicate show stopping boho wedding dress with dreamy combination of fabrics, heavenly silhouette & divine handmade embroidery”. They’ve used up 139 characters out of the full 140 limit given and they have neither keyword stuffed, nor used unnecessary keywords to fill up space.

The words “heavenly” and “divine” grab the audience’s attention because they’re descriptive and capture the imagination. What’s more, it tells the customer exactly what they’re going to get. There is absolutely no mincing of words here: if they say a combination of fabrics with handmade embroidery, that’s what the image shows and that’s what the customer will get.

Niche keyword usage

Further to this, the Seller hasn’t targeted the main and most searched for keywords “wedding dress” and “wedding dresses”. They’ve chosen a more specific approach targeting boho wedding dresses in particular. This keyword has a lower search volume (1,110) but is still an important feature of their strategy.

It ultimately boils down to the fact that you don’t always have to go for the highest search volume keywords. You can offer a more targeted approach and still get in front of an audience. All it takes is being smart with your research.

Customer-centric descriptions

Getting to the description, we see that the Seller has employed a friendly and warm tone of voice to indicate what this boho wedding dress comes with and its main features. They have indicated that they’re open to communication, which means friendly customer service that any bride-to-be would be appreciative of.

Stunning images

Even though they’ve used only eight out of 10 images as allocated by Etsy, the images themselves are stunning. They capture the dress from every possible angle, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Bold pricing

Finally, we come to the price. This particular item costs $730, whereas the average for handmade wedding dresses is around $468.08. This means that the Seller has charged around $200.00 over the average. While this is not standard practice, it’s key to evaluate their offering as a whole. It’s clear that the boho niche is popular and the Seller has targeted this explicitly.

The listing itself is ideally optimized and the Seller feels that the labor and material costs, in addition to the shipping and other minor Etsy costs and fees, are worth it.

This is captured effectively in the description and if one thing’s for sure, it’s that brides are looking for quality. Since this is likely to be a once-off purchase, they’re willing to spend a bit more than the average. However, they’re still getting a bargain because the costs of such dresses at high-street boutiques is going to be a lot higher. In this case, they get an original product at an affordable price irrespective of whether it’s priced above the average or not.

Our advice to Sellers

We’ve now come to the nitty-gritty of the wedding niche on Etsy. If you want to make a killing and absolutely nail down your listing, here’s what you ought to know:

Keywords

Keywords are your friends. In fact, they’re your best friends for listing optimization. Don’t hesitate to use Sale Samurai’s “Search” module to help you find the most potent and powerful keywords with high search volume, which you can then incorporate in your listing.

Price

Pricing around the average may be sound advice, but if you’re offering a high quality product, don’t hesitate to up your price depending on the time, labor, and materials you used to create it. Wedding items are typically a once-off purchase and brides are willing to spend a bit more for that better quality.

Photos

Etsy gives you 10 spaces for uploading images. However, if you don’t use up all of them, at least make sure your photos are more than top notch. For example, lifestyle photos, photos featuring models in a real-life setting – these are what will grab your audience’s attention.

Title

Be sure to maximize your title by using all of the 140 character spaces provided or as close as you can possibly get to this number. Don’t worry about using adjectives to describe your product. However, stay away from bland and boring ones.

Description

In the description, you’re talking to your customers, ultimately convincing them of what they get when they purchase from you. This is their point of contact with you so you should sound friendly, helpful, and answer as many possible potential questions they may have before they even approach you.

A nifty trick here is to look at the reviews and ratings of competing Sellers, see what the customers say, and then try to incorporate these comments into a cohesive description.

Tags

Etsy gives you 13 tags to help you optimize your listing and to ensure its algorithm crawls it better. Help the algorithm by using appropriate tags with high search volume keywords. Once done, be sure to choose the right category to place your items in. Otherwise, you risk not being found altogether.

Niche down

The wedding niche is huge. This is why going into sub-niches or micro-niches is essential. If you’re too broad, you’re not likely to capture anyone’s attention; instead, it will be diluted. Conversely, if you offer wedding items such as lace or boho, you’re on the right track.

Wrapping up

The wedding apparel and accessories niche has huge potential for success on Etsy. You simply need to offer high quality products that are priced effectively and ensure your listings are well optimized.

Brides-to-be are willing to spend a bit more on high quality products and this is evident in the pricing strategy discussed related to the star-seller mentioned earlier. As a result, offer quality items and optimize your listing. This way, you’re likely to go far in this niche.