'When am I ready to run Etsy ads?' is the question I have been asked quite a lot recently in my Facebook group (join here). 

This blog post is going to answer how to know when your shop is ready to start running Etsy ads. 

1. When you have a few bestsellers

You're ready to start running Etsy ads to shop if you have a few bestselling products. When you have 3 bestselling items, i.e. you have 3 items that sell over and over and over again, run ads on those 3 bestsellers.

Ads tend to work by bumping you up in the search results, so you're essentially paying to jump the queue.

Some Etsy sellers will use Etsy ads to bump their sales if they've had a slow week or they're not making any sales at all. They think that throwing money at the problem will solve it, but it doesn't. This could be because there's something not quite resonating with your target customer with that listing that needs improving first. 

It could be the pictures, the branding, your SEO, the price, or that it's just not the right time of year for your product. You need to optimise your listing before advertising it. You need solid evidence that your listing works, your target market works, and your item is a bestseller for you otherwise you'll just be flushing your money down the toilet.

2. Keep a close eye and increase accordingly

My advice to you if you're just getting started would be run ads on your bestselling items for $1 a day for each item. So if you're advertising 3 bestsellers, then it's $3 a day. If it\s 5 items, then it's $5 a day and keep a close eye on it. 

If something has made a sale from ads, I'll increase the budget for that particular item a little bit more. So, let's say I have an item that is a bestseller for me and I advertise it for $1 a day. It sells the very next day via ads so now I'm going to increase my budget to $1.50 per day, then it sells again, I'll increase it to $2 per day and I gradually increase the budget to give it more momentum. 

Keep an eye on your ads and each week make changes. If a listing isn't doing too well for the last 7 days then I would remove it from ads or reduce its budget. 

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3. Budget for ads

I've seen some great success from budgeting for my ads, and it's something I would recommend for you to try.

When I do my business budget each month where I check how the business did last month, and how much profit I made, I put aside some of that profit for my ads. I recommend that you put aside some money that you have earned and use it as your ads/ marketing budget for the month coming. 

Let's say your budget is £50 for the month (do not increase this over the month), you'll find that you're a lot more savvy with it. If you put endless money in it, then it's not really a budget, it's just money. Make sure you budget for your ads/ marketing and then review it at the end of the month. 

If you want to go deeper here, put your prices up for your items by a £1 each, and then for every one of them that sell put that £1 aside to be your ads budget for the next sale of that item. Immediately you are charging the ads budget to the customer which is a super savvy business move. 

If you'd prefer me to visually teach you this blog post, then you can watch it HERE.

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