Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Etsy Search Ads

As many of you may know, Etsy started a new promotion gimmick called Etsy Search Ads. The premise is that when someone performs a search on Etsy, items related to that search would show up at the top of the search results for those shops/items that purchased search ads. Sounds good, right? So, I thought I would give it a try for a week and see what happened.

The results are in - with 11 hours left on my week, I have received 3,209 "impressions". In other words, an ad for one of my items showed up 3,209 times. Out of that, I received only 6 views - no favorites and no orders. Conclusion - I don't think it is worth it, at least not for me. Perhaps, others found it more productive. If you have tried the search ads, I would love to hear about your results and conclusions!

At least I gave it a try!

Here are some lovely Treasuries from people who were kind enough to include items from my shop. Thank you so very much!





Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

18 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review. With money so tight, it's hard to know where to put your efforts!

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  2. I gave it a try too and unfortunately stopped my ad's early.

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  3. I wanted to wait and see what others found before jumping in. Thanks for the report back.

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  4. I tried the ads out too for this week. Here are my stats:

    Spent
    $3.41 USD
    Impressions
    3,568
    Views
    47
    Favorites
    5

    In the beginning I was promoting all the items in my shop with a bunch of keywords, but after a few days I decided just to focus on the 5 zines in my shop. If you only promote a small amount of items, you only have to pick 5 keywords. Downsizing like this helped my keywords be more relevant to the 5 zines I was promoting. 75% of the views and favorites came after this change, so I am going to give ads another week to see if I can make some sales.

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  5. good to know that!!
    and the treasuries are really beautiful!
    hope you´re having an awsome day!
    Kandy

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  6. Thanks for the information on the ads... lots of talk about them. Lovely treasuries!!

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  7. The ads are getting bad reviews on the business team forum, too

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  8. I`ve read on a number of different blogs that the paid for ads just don`t seem to work... sorry it didn`t work out for you but thanks so much for sharing the review so we can all think twice before going down that road! Less Money for materials otherwise! eep

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  9. I've had 3827 impressions with 14 views, 0 favs, 0 sales. In the beginning, I thought the more keywords I used the better but have since heard the opposite. So a few days ago I cut my keywords down to about 12 and I have actually received more views. I'm going to try tweaking it for one more week and if it doesn't improve then I'm done with it.

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  10. I didn't try them yet. I waited to see other what other people will say about this ad before I jump in.
    Thanks for sharing!

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  11. definitely helpful! Sorry it wasn't more productive!

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  12. thanks for the info, a shame it isn't worth while!

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  13. Thanks for the insight. It will make me think twice before deciding.

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  14. Thank you for the review. With so many changes it is difficult to know anymore which works.

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  15. I dont think anyone has had much success with these ads. well except etsy's pocketbook.

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  16. Thanks for the review, I'm glad I waited.

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  17. I did the ad for a small period. Cost me 2 bucks, and I got like 3000 impressions or something and like 8 views.

    I think this will be VERY hard to judge/evaluate because Etsy is picking our keywords. The key to an ad being successful is targeting that ad to your market. And we aren't really allowed to properly target our ads unfortunately.

    SUPPOSEDLY if we tweak our titles and tags we will get more effective tags for our ads. But I did adjust my shop and still didn't get good tags for my ad :((

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  18. uniquecozytreasures- I haven't tried the ads. We pay a small fee to list items so if some pay to get their items to come to the top of the search, those that don't may never have their products seen. I doubt I will support such efforts by etsy to starting running like the search engines do. It sounds like another gimmick for etsy to raise more cash. Hummm.... Kinda irritating.

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Love to read your comments!