I like blogs… a lot.

I have 16 different “niche” blogs covering topics ranging from anti-aging to fashion.

Sure, a blog for an Etsy seller is going to be a little different than a niche blog promoting affiliate marketing offers and/or making money with Adsense.

However, the basic principles for grabbing free traffic from Google and maintaining reader interest are the same.

Here’s 3 of the biggest mistakes the vast majority of Etsy sellers are making with their posts.

Want a competitive edge? Take this advice to heart.

Big Mistake #1: Not Targeting Keywords and Sending Their Hard-Earned Blog Traffic to Competitors (Seriously?)

If you want to get more relevant traffic to your blog from Google then you should target the keywords that your potential customers are searching for. Click that link for the lowdown on how to do that.

I see plenty of blogs making these kinds of blog post mistakes. These do nothing for  your stores sales or traffic and can even hurt your promotional efforts!

• Promoting competitive stores by running “features.” Sure, no problem with this as long as its maybe a cross promotion or some kind of win-win situation. Maybe you’re just doing this to be nice, and that’s cool too. But if your goal is to use your blog to get your own store more traffic, you’re definitely shooting in the wrong direction!
• Talking a lot about their life or irrelevant news events (especially political or religious topics)… Not trying to be rude, but people just don’t care (sorry). If you’re sharing your opinion on religion or politics you could even hurt your business by LOSING customers. If you really have to do this, make a separate blog.
• Other kinds of noise that shouldn’t be on your stores blog.

Some Insightful Advice for Building an Interesting Etsy Blog with A Big Following

You’ve heard of the saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Blogging is the same! If you don’t have GOOD anything to blog about don’t blog at all!

I’ve seen some of the very best blogs drop 1 post every 2 weeks. This is the only blog I’ve ever seen in my life that gets a consistent 100+ comments for every post, which is pretty impressive.

But he doesn’t post every day! What’s his secret?

The posts, even though few and far between, are high quality.

Focus on quality, not quantity!

Like I mentioned before, don’t crowd your blog with noise when you don’t have anything to write, it will dissilluison your visitors – keep quality as high as possible.

Here’s a couple ideas on what to write.

• Contests your shop is having (a contest centered around blog participation through commenting is a good one!).
• Sales your shop is having.
• Announcing new items.
• Tips/Tricks your readers will find useful.
• Your comments on anything interesting/controversial (keep the topic relevant, however). Don’t fall into the easy trap of making silly posts about Etsy forum drama (read: unprofessional).

It can be really difficult building a successful blog when your main focus is on commercializing it, but keep at it and you will get traffic and you will make more sales.

Big Mistake #2: More Blogspot Blogs Than You Can Shake A Stick At

I’ve never seen so many free blog hosts in my entire life before I visited the Etsy forum. It seems like pretty much EVERYONE is on a free blog host.

*WHY?*

If you’re currently using a free blog host, switch to your own domain.

Having your own .com domain name is MUCH more professional than being on a .blogger.com hosted domain.

• Your .com looks a lot slicker on your marketing materials.
• A .com is easier for your customers to remember.
• You actually own the domain, it doesn’t belong to another company.
• You can sell it (if you wanted to sell your business in the future).
• It protects your companies trademark in a way (but doesn’t replace registering your trademark)
• Host your blog on Wordpress, you have thousands of plugins and themes to play with.

Okay, I know a lot of you will cry about the price.

But if you use my super-duper frugal coupon method its actually pretty cheap!

Go to dreamhost.com, use the MAX97 coupon code and get a years worth of hosting for $22.40 – just $.06 cents a day. This is what I did when I first started internet marketing with my first website in 2006.

Dreamhost also has “One Click Install” for Wordpress which makes installing it a breeze.

Use the latest coupon code of the month for Namecheap and you’ll get your shops name secured on your own domain for less than $9.

Just to let you know, I’m in no way affiliated with Dreamhost or Namecheap – this is just an honest tip.

Big Mistake #3: “Where’s The Pretty?”

Is your header still the default text header? Yikes!

Logos: Important for branding, does your shop have a logo?

Get the grahpic logo and header in there that promotes your stores brand. Make your blog theme pretty, but not noisy – attractive but readable.

If you’re like me and not a very technical person it’s pretty easy to hire someone to do these things for you from the DigitalPoint forums for just a few bucks. I sometimes pay theme designers to put in my header graphic and change the colors to match the graphic for around $10 to $15 bucks.

Don’t have a logo for your shop? Double yikes!

I’ll be sharing a post here in the next couple days how I had multiple logos to choose from (8-10) from many different designers all for under $50. Alternatively there’s plenty of Etsy graphic designers to choose from.

I hope this post helps you in some way.

I’ll be sharing more tips soon.

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