If you’re looking to enhance your Etsy seller strategy and maximize your chances of selling your products like hot cakes, it’s worth looking into niches. If you’ve read any of our other articles, you’ll be familiar with how important niching down is for your performance as a seller. And if you’ve hoping to diversify your portfolio with a new niche, we’ve got you covered.
One of the markets to sell on Etsy is the handmade glass niche.
Let’s do some digging into this opportunity to uncover what it’s all about, what’s popular, and how you can make an entrance with confidence.
If you’re considering entering a new Etsy niche, one of your first concerns should be the size of the market. The niche size will determine how profitable you can expect to become and can help you make some basic predictions. Naturally, larger markets are more attractive as they offer more opportunities for growth and go hand in hand with a wider group of buyers.
When it comes to the handmade glass niche, we started our research on Etsy. We typed in the keyword “handmade glass” to discover that the platform displayed more than 500,000 listings. This is a great start as it indicates that there are a ton of products on offer, suggesting that there’s also substantial demand. We came across a rich diversity, including handmade glass tables, beads, sculptures, earrings, figures, handmade fused glass art, and more.
But we can’t leave our theories without any factual backup. This is why we continued our analysis on Sale Samurai. Using the Basic Search function, we examined how popular niche-related keywords were among buyers via the search volume metric. We also checked to see how competitive these keywords are.
All of these insights demonstrated that the handmade glass market is undoubtedly worth investigating.
Here are some of the most popular keywords along with their search volume and level of competition:
As you can see, there is interest from buyers for handmade glass products on Etsy. But most importantly, there are keywords that have low competition. This means that if you were to enter the niche, these keywords could help you rank faster and increase your listing’s visibility.
All of this can ultimately result in more sales. But how about profits?
To determine how profitable a niche is, it’s best to observe the average, lowest, and highest prices in the market. This will help you get an idea of the pricing strategies you can set and the earnings you can expect. Why? Because these are the three points of reference that you need to be aware of at all times.
Going lower than the lowest price usually means that you won’t make any profit from your sales.
The average price in the niche is something of a golden middle, where you’re competitive and attractive, yet profitable.
And the highest price is the one that you can get close to but never exceed. Going over it will mean that you no longer enjoy any competitiveness and your product is probably too expensive for your target audience.
So what do these prices look like in the handmade glass market? The minimum price in the niche is $1.45, the highest is $150, and the average is $33.25. You’re probably thinking that pricing your handmade products around $150 is not bad at all. However, be careful. If you’re new to the niche, it’s a better idea to set your prices somewhere around the average. This way, you can quickly attract more buyers, earn some positive reviews, and afford to increase your price eventually.
From our research into the market size above, we uncovered some interesting keywords along with their search volumes. From this list, we can conclude that the most popular handmade glass products on Etsy are handmade glasses.
However, browsing on the platform, we also came across a number of different listings that have generated impressive sales.
Some of these include handmade fused glass coasters, hand-blown glass jewelry, handmade fused glass art sculptures, and others.
Let’s now look at a real-life example to get a better idea.
One particular listing caught our attention. The “Handmade Fused Glass Art – Cornflowers Curve” product sold by PamPetersDesigns has scored more than 16,500 sales at a price of $30.16.
We checked out the Etsy shop to discover that other, similar products created by the seller were also doing impressively well. The seller uses different colors to create similar handmade glass art products that are appealing to Etsy shoppers.
So what makes this listing so successful? We researched it on Sale Samurai to find out. For starters, the seller has utilized the full 13 available tags for the listing. The listing strategically targets keywords that are relevant to the audience and come with a lot of search volume. Some of them include “gift for her”, “gift”, “painted glass”, “ornament”, “and others. The product description has been written well to explain the creative process and introduce the seller to potential buyers. The product’s highlights reveal the material used and verify that the product is handmade.
The listing also has a specific target audience – people looking for a gift for a woman or a girl. It’s priced near the niche average, which makes it a real catch for most shoppers interested in such items.
So, what can this in-depth analysis tell you about your entrance into the niche?
If you’re ready to make the first step and add something new to your portfolio by creating handmade glass products, we fully support you. But before you do that, we’d like to share with you some valuable and useful tips that you can use on your journey.
This advice will help you make a strong entrance into the market, with a strategically created listing, which is fully optimized for success.
When it comes to selling products on Etsy, you always want to confirm that there’s buyer demand. This is especially important when creating handmade goods. It takes so much time, effort, and creativity to produce something as beautiful as handmade glass beads, earrings, rings, or tables. No matter what the product is, make sure that there is enough search volume for related keywords.
Our research into the niche shows that there are plenty of keywords that receive high search volumes but still have low competition. Try to rank for these keywords. It will make your product more discoverable for Etsy shoppers.
Don’t forget that Etsy allows you to use up to 13 tags for every listing that you create. These tags or keywords are essential for your visibility on the platform, as we already mentioned. But be clever about the tags that you use. For example, don’t just use tags like “handmade glass” or “handmade glass beads” (if it’s beads that you’re selling).
Think about your audience. For example, if your product is appropriate for a gift, use gift-related tags. If it’s expected to be popular during a specific season, use season-related keywords. If you’ve designed it for a particular age group or gender, use such tags to help the right buyers find your products.
We touched upon this in the previous section. However, it’s important enough to deserve its own spot in this article. Make sure to properly target your listing with a particular audience in mind.
The choice of an audience can be whatever makes sense for your product or product type.
For instance, you might be interested in selling to financially stable married couples or homeowners with a garden, where they can put your beautiful handmade glass ornaments.
Price is a real deal maker on any eCommerce marketplace. Etsy is an extremely competitive platform for creators of handmade, authentic products. It’s only natural that price will play a vital role in the decision-making process. Choosing a pricing strategy is up to you and depends on your ultimate objectives. If you’re interested in scoring a few sales on a larger margin, you could overprice your product and hope for the best.
However, if you’re after consistent sales, loyal customers, and stable profits, our advice is to price your product close to the niche’s average.
Last but not least, think about offering free shipping. Everyone loves to receive something free and free shipping certainly feels like a well-thought-of gift on Etsy.
However, there’s one thing to consider. Handmade glass items are usually extremely fragile. Offering free shipping gives extra peace of mind to your buyers. It shows that you’re certain that the product will arrive unharmed.
The handmade glass market on Etsy is, without a doubt, full of opportunities and fruitful gains.
But before you enter it, you must first create a solid strategy.
The best way to do so is by relying on accurate, real-time insights into the niche and your competitors.