Why am I getting no views on Etsy?

If you're getting no views on Etsy, I promise it isn't the algorithm punishing you. It genuinely doesn't care about you that way. It's a machine waiting to be shown what people already want, and right now it can't read your shop clearly enough to show it to anyone.

Etsy search works in two stages. Keywords get you into the results. Shopper behaviour decides where you land. Your title, your tags and your first photo are how you get into the room at all. Then clicks, favourites and sales decide whether you move up it.

So before you blame your luck, fix the three things the machine actually reads. I'd take them in order, because the first one does the most work and each one feeds the next.

Start with your title

The comma wall is the thing I see most. Personalised gift, custom gift, handmade gift, gift for her, birthday gift, mum gift. Twelve commas deep and not one bit of it reads like anything a human would say out loud.

A good title leads with the exact plain words a buyer types, in the first few words, and then reads like a real sentence after that. Something like "Personalised Birthday Card for Mum, Watercolour Flowers, A5" tells the machine what you sell and tells the shopper the same thing in the same breath, which matters because both of them are reading it.

Those first few words carry the most weight, so don't spend them on your shop name, and don't spend them on "handmade" either. Everything on Etsy is meant to be handmade, it tells nobody anything. Spend them on what the thing IS and who it's for.

I sold on Etsy for years myself, quilts and bags made from cotton I imported from America, and I wrote my share of terrible titles before I worked any of this out. You're not behind, you're just at the bit everyone starts at.

Pick 13 tags a real person would actually type

Use all thirteen. Etsy gives you thirteen chances to describe your listing in a buyer's own words, and leaving any blank is just declining free entries into search.

The thing that catches nearly everybody is filling them with single words. Gift. Handmade. Blue. A single word is competing with millions of listings while matching nobody's actual search, because nobody types "blue" into Etsy and hits enter.

Each tag should be a proper phrase someone would genuinely search, and the easiest way to find them costs nothing. Go to Etsy's own search bar, start typing what your product is, and write down what the autocomplete suggests. Those suggestions are real searches that real shoppers ran. That's your list, straight from the source.

Then spread them across different ways of finding you: the occasion (new baby gift), the recipient (gift for teacher), the style (cottagecore kitchen decor), the material, the use. No near-duplicates, because "tote bag" and "tote bags" is one idea wearing two tags, and you've just wasted a slot the machine would happily have used for something new.

Your first photo is a thumbnail before it's anything else

Nobody sees your first photo the way you see it, full screen with all the lovely detail visible. They see it the size of a stamp, in a grid, next to forty other stamps. That's the whole audition.

So the test is easy and a bit brutal. Shrink it right down on your phone and squint. Can you tell what the product is instantly? Does it stand out from a row of similar things, or does it disappear into them? If the product is small in the frame, or the background is busy, or the light is dull, it fails at stamp size even if it's gorgeous at full size.

Get close. Fill the frame with the product. Use daylight from a window rather than a lamp, and photograph at the time of day your window actually behaves. Mine is only right for about an hour, which does slightly run my schedule, but it beats editing bad light afterwards every single time. Save the styled lifestyle shots and the detail shots for photos two to ten, where the people who already clicked get to fall in love properly.

What to check, in order

• Title first. The buyer's plain words in the first few words, written like a sentence, no comma wall.
• Tags second. All thirteen, real multi-word phrases pulled from Etsy's own search bar, no near-duplicates.
• First photo third. Passes the stamp-size squint test on your phone.
• Then leave it alone for a few weeks. Etsy needs time to test the listing in front of shoppers, and if you change everything weekly it never gets to learn anything about you.

And please stop renewing early hoping to climb. There's only a small, short recency nudge in it, so all you're really doing is spending listing fees to feel busy.

One more honest bit, because I'd rather you hear it from me than work it out the hard way. Even with all three fixed, you're still relying on a search box to introduce you to strangers, one at a time, every day, forever. Views go up, views go down, Etsy changes something and you start again from the bottom of the room. The sellers who sleep well are the ones who stopped needing the search box to be their whole supply of customers, because they built an email list of people who already know them and come back on purpose. When you own the audience, a quiet week in search is a wobble instead of a crisis.

That shift is the thing I actually teach, and the first step is the Handmade Launch List, which is free, at the end of which people can find their way to you without going through search at all. No pressure though. Fix the three things above first, that alone will move you.

Get found by the right person, then give them an easy yes. That's the whole job, in that order