Selling at a craft fair means the buyer is standing in front of the finished piece. Selling on Etsy means they're deciding from a photograph on a phone screen, with dozens of similar-looking listings one scroll away. It is a genuinely different skill, and most of what determines whether it works happens before a single item is made.
What sells on Etsy versus what sells at a fair
Etsy buyers are searching for something specific — "personalised family name sign", "nursery name plaque" — rather than browsing a table. That changes what's worth listing. A one-off design that looked lovely at a fair might get zero searches online. A design that photographs clearly and matches how people actually search does well.
What tends to work: personalised items (names, dates, house numbers), items with an obvious use (nursery decor, wedding signage, pet portraits), and things that photograph in a clean, well-lit flat lay.
What tends not to translate: highly seasonal one-offs with a short shelf life, and anything that relies on seeing it in person to appreciate the scale or texture.
Licensing, before you list anything
This is the step people skip and regret. Selling items made from any stencil — ours or anyone else's — needs a commercial licence if the design isn't explicitly sold as license-free for resale. Our licences start at £6 for a single design or £39 for the whole library, one-off with no royalties, detailed on the licence page.
Etsy has been known to ask sellers to demonstrate rights to designs used, particularly for shops that scale up. Keep your licence confirmation somewhere you can find it.
Photography: the actual product on Etsy
On Etsy you are not selling the physical item directly — you are selling the photograph of it. A beautifully made sign with poor photos will be outsold by an average sign shot well.
- Natural light, no flash. Shoot near a window, ideally on an overcast day for even light without harsh shadows.
- A clean, uncluttered background. A plain wall, a wooden surface, or a simple styled setting. Busy backgrounds compete with the product.
- One straight-on shot, then context and detail shots. First image: the whole piece straight on, since that's what shows in search results. Then an angled shot, a close-up of the stencil detail, and a "lifestyle" shot showing it in use — hung on a wall, on a shelf.
- Consistent styling across your shop. A recognisable look, even simple, makes a shop feel considered rather than a jumble of one-off photos.
Photograph in batches with the same setup. Set up your light and background once, photograph everything made that week in the same session. Consistent lighting across listings makes a shop look professional with very little extra effort.
Writing a listing that gets found
Etsy search matches on your title, tags and category — not on how nice your description sounds. The title should read naturally while including the actual words a buyer would type: "Personalised Family Name Sign | Wooden Wall Art | Custom House Sign" rather than something purely brand-flavoured.
Use all 13 available tags. Include size-related terms, occasion terms (housewarming, wedding gift, new baby), and material terms (wood sign, hand painted). Overlapping and repeating relevant terms across title and tags, rather than trying to be clever, is what actually surfaces in search.
Pricing for an online shop
Etsy pricing needs to absorb costs a market stall doesn't have: listing fees, transaction fees, payment processing, and often postage that you either build in or charge separately. As a starting formula:
(materials × 2) + (time × hourly rate) + Etsy fees + packaging, then round to a price that reads well. A sign that costs £4.50 in materials and 40 minutes to make, priced at £20 for a craft fair, often needs to sit closer to £24–26 online once fees and packaging for postage are factored in.
Free shipping baked into the price (rather than charged separately) tends to convert better, even though the buyer is paying the same total either way — it's a well-documented quirk of how people evaluate online prices.
Packaging and shipping wooden or painted items
Painted and stencilled surfaces are more vulnerable to chips and scuffs in transit than most craft items. Wrap in tissue or bubble wrap directly against the surface, then a rigid outer layer — cardboard corners or a snug box — so the item can't shift and abrade against packaging during transit. A single scuffed corner in a review photo does more damage to a shop's reputation than the cost of proper packaging ever will.
Test your own packaging. Post yourself the first item, or have a friend open one, before your shop goes live. It's the cheapest quality check available and catches problems before a real customer finds them.
What Etsy adds that a craft fair can't
The genuine advantage of Etsy over fairs: it runs while you sleep, reaches buyers you'd never meet in person, and Etsy's own search brings people already looking for exactly this kind of item — no footfall required. The trade-off is competition; you're one listing among thousands rather than the only stall in the room.
A realistic first month
New Etsy shops rarely sell quickly — search ranking builds over time, and a shop with zero reviews is a harder sell than one with even a handful. Expect the first few sales to take weeks rather than days, often to people who find you through a specific, well-tagged listing rather than general browsing. Consistency in listing new items and keeping photography quality up matters more in month one than any single perfect listing.