Should you leave your seasonal items up in your Etsy shop year round or deactivate them?

Every Etsy shop owner will question this at some point in time. So here is a little peek into my Etsy shop world and what I do with my offseason items. It’s pretty simple, actually.

I never deactivate items from my shop unless I can no longer sell them. Here’s a few reasons why you should leave your items up all the time:

1. Less competition. Customers buy off season items on Etsy every day. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sold a Christmas wreath in January or an Easter wreath in the middle of the summer. Many sellers do remove seasonal items so if someone is searching you’ll have less competition. With listing fees so low on Etsy (just $0.20 every four months) it isn’t a huge expense to leave items up. Why miss out on potential sales?

2. Your listings are like a “portfolio” of what you can make. Even if a customer isn’t currently looking for an Easter wreath they can request something similar for the season they are currently shopping. Potential buyers can look at what you have made and be confident in your abilities because they see the range of what you can do. 

3. They add to the total number of listings you have available. There is no hard number of items you should have in your shop for maximum visibility. Many sellers will tell you that having 50 listings will get you seen more. Or even 100. But it’s all anecdotal as Etsy doesn’t tell us. Think of listings like fishing lines – the more you have cast out there the better your chances of catching a fish with one of them. The more listings you have the more ways that customers have of coming into your shop and seeing what else you have for sale. 

4. Increase the amount of time shoppers spend on your site (and the chances that they’ll buy from you!) The more listings you have the longer shoppers may spend browsing your items. If you only have a couple listings for them to look at they’ll bounce pretty quick. But if you have more they might stick around longer. And statistics says the longer they’re in your Etsy shop, the greater the likelihood of them making a purchase. 

5. Previous year’s seasonal items often sell before current year’s collection when it comes time for the season to begin. This is likely because those “older” items are fully ingrained in Etsy’s search algorithm. New products take a few weeks to find their place and could be harder to find initially. Not to mention that I’m often a little late to the game when it comes to getting started on the next season. Ideally I try to get my seasonal listings up 60-90 days in advance of the holiday but sometimes life gets busy and that doesn’t happen 😉 So if you have items leftover from the previous year you’ve got a good head start!

One thing you can do is to rearrange your shop after the season is over and move these items to the back pages of your shop. That way they’re available but not as visible as more current items. I also rearrange my shop sections and featured items so that only the current seasons are towards the top. (To rearrange listings on desktop click to “edit” your shop and then click “rearrange items” on the right, just above your items.)

TL/DR – Leave everything you can sell up in your shop year round. Customers can’t buy it if it isn’t listed, right?!

You can see everything I have for sale in my Etsy shop here -> BEAUTIFULMESH ETSY SHOP

If you’ve ever had a listing sell off season let us know in the comments below!