From simple hairpins to elaborate headpieces, handmade hair accessories on Etsy are transforming everyday tools into stunning works of art.

These unique creations not only add a touch of elegance and personality to any hairstyle but also open up a lucrative niche for talented artisans.

Curious about the booming business of handcrafted hair accessories?

Below, we explore the size, scope, and profitability of this space on Etsy and uncover some of the most promising hair accessories to target as a seller.

Understanding the hair accessories market on Etsy

As a booming platform for anything handmade, Etsy is host to a colorful diversity of hair accessories.

While this vast market is intriguing on its own, it’s also extremely competitive. This creates a pressing need for artisans to explore other, more creative avenues to securing sales.

But before we get into the details of the most attractive sub-niches to target, let’s understand the basics of hair accessories as a whole.

Using a combination of Etsy and Sale Samurai for our research, we uncovered insights on the following key market metrics:

• Listing saturation
• Competition
• Keyword search volumes

Here’s what we found.

Listing saturation

When assessing a market, one of the most important pieces of information to analyze is listing saturation.

This metric demonstrates how many other listings are positioned in the space you’ve set your eyes on.

It’s a key factor for determining the size of the niche and deciding whether there’s room for new entrants and room for growth.

To find out the listing saturation of the handmade hair accessories category, we performed a simple search on Etsy.

We typed in “hair accessories” to receive more than 1,000 products in the results.

This signals that this product type is popular among shoppers and triggers interest.

However, it also suggests that the domain is highly competitive, with thousands of sellers striving to grab a piece of the pie.

Competition

To confirm whether our theories are correct, we next inspected the competition levels in the market.

Using Sale Samurai, we performed in-depth research on the main keyword “hair accessories”.

In a matter of seconds, the tool revealed that the competition level for this phrase is 1,226,307.

This tremendous number represents a highly aggressive space, especially given the fact that the listing count is only in the thousands.

But to truly conclude whether hair accessories can be a profitable venture, it’s fundamental to look at the consumer behavior on the platform.

Are buyers actively browsing for these items?

Let’s find out.

Keyword search volumes

The search volume of a keyword indicates how many times Etsy users have browsed for products using specific phrases on a monthly basis.

According to Sale Samurai, only 133,972 individuals perform searches on Etsy using “hair accessories” per month.

This is an incredibly low number, making the potential of this space questionable. What’s more, it’s incomparably lower than the competition level, which is over 1 million.

All of these discoveries lead to one conclusion – niching down is vital for sellers looking to turn their hair accessory passion into a money-making side gig.

Luckily, from the data provided by Sale Samurai, we were able to identify the sub-niches that deserve your attention as an artisan.

We did this by exploring the most popular tags and keywords in the market.

Here are our revelations.

Most popular tags and keywords

Tags and keywords are crucial for listing optimization on Etsy. They help sellers position their listings in front of the right audience, capture attention, rank high, and score sales.

Keywords are actively used across titles and descriptions, making them visible to shoppers. On the contrary, tags remain in the back end and are predominantly used for the sake of Etsy’s search algorithms.

Using Sale Samurai, we extracted the following top-used tags among hair accessory listings:

• gift for her – 511,654
• handmade – 504,062
• gift – 503,207
• hair accessories – 131,650
• gift for women – 127,023
• hair clips – 111,738
• hair accessory – 43,632
• hair clip – 37,340
• hair claw – 37,340
• hair scrunchies – 25,475

Next to each phrase, you can see its monthly search volume.

This list is incredibly valuable as it offers insights into the types of audiences, product types, and features that top-sold hair accessories are related to.

For instance, it becomes clear that these items are often promoted as gifts for ladies. We can also see some of the dominating accessory categories, like clips, claws, and scrunchies.

When it comes to keywords, we unearthed the following high search-volume options:

• updo hair accessories – 76,171
• diadem hair accessories – 51,477
• elf hair accessories – 48,346
• curly hair accessories – 47,098
• cute hair accessories – 40,452
• clip hair accessories – 40,380
• boho hair accessories – 40,355
• dior hair accessories – 39,674
• grecian hair accessories – 34,754

From this list, right off the bat, it becomes apparent that “updo hair accessories” and “diadem hair accessories” generate the most searches.

We offer an in-depth analysis of these two sub-niches as potential gold mines for those looking to tap into the hair accessory space.

Before we decide if this is a promising direction, let’s examine how some of the best-selling products are achieving success with the broad keyword “hair accessories.”

One of the top performers is “Best Hair Accessory for Updos, hair clip, fork, hair pin, hair accessory, stick, comb, simple, updo, wedding, prom, easy, Updoit versatile” by TheUpdoIt.

At a price of $15.79, this listing has received 1,348 customer reviews, contributing to the shop’s total sales exceeding 8,000.

A glance at the title shows that the seller has strategically optimized the listing for must-have keywords. These include “hair accessory for updos” (a sub-niche we pinpointed as popular), hair clip (another top-used phrase), “hair pin”, “fork”, “wedding”, “comb”, and others.

Through the vast range of available terms in the title, the artisan is targeting a broad customer group. This enables them to reach more people, attract traffic, and convert it into sales.

These techniques are some of the proven best practices that the majority of successful Etsy creators utilize to enhance their performance.

Now that we’ve laid out the basics of hair accessories as a broad market, let’s take a sneak peek into two of its potentially rewarding sub-niches – updo hair accessories and diadem hair accessories.

Updo hair accessories

With the help of Sale Samurai, we investigated the search volumes and competition levels of the keyword “updo hair accessories”.

As it turns out, the phrase has a monthly search volume of 76,171, which is way below that of “hair accessories” (131,650).

However, the competition level of this sub-niche term is only 5,141.

This means that the interest towards updo hair accessories is much higher than its level of competition.

Such niches are great examples of honey pots worth dipping your fingers in. They represent money-making opportunities like no other. For new entrants, these spaces are easy to compete and grow in, and can be a great stepping stone for gaining more popularity.

Diadem hair accessories

A similar scenario can be seen in the realm of diadem hair accessories.

According to Sale Samurai, the Etsy search volume of this phrase is 51,477. At the same time, the competition level is only 4,146.

In both sub-niches, the shopper interest is lower than that of “hair accessories”. However, what’s important here is that the competition is not even close to that of this broad keyword.

This discovery is essential for both new and experienced sellers as it points towards an important rule.

Analyzing a market in order to create a bullet-proof sales strategy requires a multi-layered approach. It’s not sufficient to simply examine one of two keywords from the category you’re considering.

Instead, it’s critical to make comparisons, think creatively, and always make decisions based on data rather than intuition.

Wrapping up

Our exploration into the world of hair accessories on Etsy reveals that there is plenty of room for growth, sales, and profits in this domain.

However, we also discovered that targeting the broad “hair accessory” keyword won’t be enough. In order to stand out from the crowd and make your stunning handmade gems appreciated, it’s necessary to niche down and position your products in narrower markets.

Through research, we identified updo hair accessories and diadem hair accessories as two appealing options.

However, there are plenty of other alternatives to choose from.

By using Sale Samurai, you can gather all of the data you need to make strategic decisions and pave your way to success.