Are you an Etsy seller looking to tap into a new and profitable niche? Downloadable home decor items might be just the choice for you.
In the digital era we live in, home decor is no longer just about physical items. It’s about adding a personal touch to every corner with customizable options.
If you’re eager to explore the booming market of digital home decor, keep reading. Below, we explore everything from printable wall art to custom design templates. Best of all, we offer tips on how to turn your creative spark into a sustainable and flourishing online business.
Our journey begins with a sneak peek into the digital home decor segment on Etsy.
Understanding the size and scope of the market will enable you to answer one key question – is this space worth your time and effort?
The essential metrics to look at include the number of listings available and keyword search volumes.
Here’s what we found.
When discussing downloadable home decor, there’s one important detail to note.
There are plenty of wording options that sellers can choose when creating their listings. For example, you can come across products named “digital home decor”, “downloadable home decor”, “printable wall art”, or “customizable home decor”.
By typing these phrases into Etsy’s search box, we identified the following:
Right off the bat, it’s clear that “digital home decor” is the most well-developed domain, with more than 9 million listings ranking for the keyword.
An interesting discovery is that “customizable home decor” only generates around 86,000 results. In addition, the displayed listings are both digital and physical. For this purpose, we’ve excluded this phrase from our research below.
Next up, we explore the keyword search volumes of different phrases. This metric provides insights into the search behavior of Etsy shoppers.
It’s one of the most important pieces of data that demonstrates what products customers are interested in.
Using Sale Samurai’s features and capabilities, we took a deep dive into niche-specific keywords.
Surprisingly, the phrase “digital home decor” only accumulates 26 searches per month. This is a far cry from our expectations due to its incredible competition level of 9,981,802.
A potential explanation for this discrepancy is that sellers are not optimizing listings solely for “digital home decor”. Instead, they’re taking advantage of sub-niches and specific themes.
For instance, some wave-creating segments in the home decor space overall include:
Next to each keyword, you can see its monthly search volume.
As you can see, searches for these products are in the thousands. When selling digital home decor, a strategic approach would be to optimize your listings for one of these themes.
This data is also valuable when identifying trending motifs and patterns for your product. For example, boho patterns are likely to create an appeal throughout the whole year, while festive patterns are a great seasonal option to explore.
Looking into the other niche-related keywords, we uncovered that “printable wall art” receives a lot more interest than “digital home decor”, with a search volume of 2,346. Moreover, it also comes with much less competition (2,616,182 as opposed to more than 9,000,000).
This makes the phrase much more preferable due to its higher ranking potential.
Similarly to the previous example, we identified several lucrative themes in this niche:
Although the search volumes in this list are much lower than those of popular home decor themes, these phrases should not be underestimated.
Why? Because they represent sub-niches specifically in the printable art domain. Instead, the home decor themes from above can be both physical and digital. We only used them to showcase a gainful strategy – mixing “digital home decor” with trending niches in the broader home decor category.
Last but not least, “downloadable home decor” turned out to be a keyword with a dead end. According to Sale Samurai, the phrase doesn’t generate any searches.
So far, we’ve confirmed that digital home decor and printable wall art are markets with substantial potential. They are popular among consumers and are well-developed, creating space for competition.
But with so many different designs and patterns to choose from, how can you make the right choice as a seller?
The best way to do so is by examining the popular tags used by other Etsy shops.
In this case, the following tags dominate the market:
Oftentimes, the popular tags in a niche expose a lot about attractive sub-niches and themes. However, we can only see one tag that relates to a narrower market – Christmas wall art.
All other tags are centered around the main segment – digital home decor or printable wall art.
Nonetheless, these discoveries are essential. They provide you with the exact words that can help your listing rank higher and attract more traffic.
To pinpoint the themes and patterns that are likely to make your digital home decor sell like hotcakes, we went on a scavenger hunt for sub-niches that dominate the market.
We performed this part of our research using a combination of Sales Samurai and Etsy.
Our findings suggest that four main sub-niche categories rule the digital home decor arena – specific audiences, lifestyle, location, and purpose.
Here are the fine points about each one:
Now that you’re confident about the digital home decor market’s profit-making capacity, you’re probably excited to enter the scene.
But before doing so, it’s crucial to be aware of the lowest, highest, and average market prices.
This will help you craft a winning pricing strategy, rewarding you with the sales volumes and revenue you’re after.
In the digital home decor, the prices you must know about are as follows:
Naturally, the minimum and average rates are not very high. But this doesn’t mean that these products are not profitable.
After all, your production costs are zero, as your investment is entirely related to work hours. From that perspective, your returns can be significant.
Now, let’s compare our market discoveries to real-life top-performing listings.
The “Custom Home Portrait, Home Painting, House Portrait, Watercolor House Painting, Custom Home Portrait, New Home Gift, Housewarming Gift” listing is one of the bestsellers in the digital home decor niche. It’s sold by ThePlutonArt for $35.93 and has accumulated around 200 product reviews. Overall, the shop has nearly 4,000 customer reviews, proving its success.
The seller has strategically optimized the title for keywords related to one of the popular themes we mentioned above – gifts. But that’s not all. The listing also features words like “custom”, “home”, “watercolor”, “new home”, and “housewarming”. All of these words further boost the likelihood of higher visibility.
From a price perspective, the seller positions the listing closer to the highest price in the market.
Although this is not a recommended practice for new entrants, a shop with roughly 4,000 reviews can certainly afford to take this approach.
Another example is the “Mid Century Modern Art Print, Set of 3, Neutral Modern Wall Art, Digital Download, Boho Art Prints, Green, Black Rainbow Printables” listing. Part of the SoftNSoft shop, this product sells for $4.80 (a much lower price than that of the previous example).
The time alone has attracted around 100 product reviews, while the shop has almost 4,000 client reviews.
Here, the seller has also positioned the product in one of the attractive sub-niches – boho. As opposed to the first example, the price here is closer to the market average. One explanation is that the listing is relatively new and only has around 100 reviews.
Using all of the insights from above, you’re equipped to produce an efficient and successful sales strategy.
Here is a summary of tips and tricks that will help you achieve this:
If you’re looking for a profitable and high-potential niche to penetrate, digital home decor can offer intriguing opportunities. However, due to the aggressive competition in this saturated market, it’s essential to prepare in advance.
Use Sale Samurai’s modules to pick your sub-niches, audience, patterns, prices, and designs.
Armed with real-life insights, you can make informed decisions and always be one step ahead.