Seamless Etsy Shop Setup & Linking Your Canva Designs To Etsy
I'll run through every essential step of setting up your shop. And once your shop is open, I'll teach you how to deliver your Canva design to your customers automatically.
01 - Create Your Etsy Seller Account
Click this link to get 40 free listings when you open your Etsy shop.
Once you’ve signed into Etsy, simple click your profile on the top right and then “Sell On Etsy”.
After you arrived to this new page, click “Get Started”.
You will then see a few pages that gives you more information of how to sell on Etsy:
02 - Set your shop preferences
You can set up your shop country, language and currency in this page.
03 - Choose Your Etsy Shop Name
Having a memorable name for your Etsy shop is important. Spend a little bit of time to come up with one that fits these suggestions:
- Make it memorable and easy to spell: Choose a name that is catchy and easy for potential customers to remember and spell. Be mindful when using difficult words or words that have different spelling in different countries.
- Keep it relevant to your product/niche: A name that reflects the products or services you offer will help customers understand what they can expect to find in your shop.
Keep in mind that you can change your shop name up to 5 times before having to contact Etsy support. So don’t worry if your shop name is not perfect. There are plenty of successful Etsy shops with average names.
Generate Catchy Etsy Shop Name
I'd recommend using tools like ChatGPT or Namelix to generate Etsy shop name quickly:
How To Check Etsy Shop Name Availability
The most reliable way to check the availability of the name you want to choose is to click “Check Availability” in the shop creation process.
Online checking tools may not be reliable because Etsy shops (active or inactive) or usernames are all unique. Checking on Etsy for "shop name containing ..." is also not the best method as inactive shops or usernames won't show up.
You’ll see this screen if the shop name is not available. Etsy will give you some suggestions of how to modify the name in order to fit the criteria.
And if your name is available, you will see this screen:
04 - Add Listings To Your Shop
You need at least one listing to open your Etsy shop, but the listing doesn’t need to be your final product.
For the purpose of the quick set up guide, lets’ put a fake placeholder listing so you can open your Etsy shop first. Here’s what you need to include before you can publish the listing:
- Include one photo - Download a photo from open-source image websites like Unsplash
- Title
- About this listing
- Category
- Description
- Price
- Shipping
You can simply put “test” in title and description, and choose random information for the rest of the fields
At the bottom, you can choose “Get started with simple policy” for now. You can change it after you open the shop.
After your shop is opened, you can add fill it with actual listings. So when you see this screen, you can click “Do this later”:
05 - Set Up Etsy Payment & Billing
Now it’s time to set up how you’ll get paid and how you’ll pay Etsy.
In this section, Etsy needs to know your card details, bank details, shop address, tax filing status, etc. It’s a mandatory step and cannot be skipped.
For any new Etsy shop, you are required to use Etsy Payments when opening your shop. Etsy Payments is Etsy’s own payment processing system that accepts most payment options from customers like credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, and instalment payments from companies like Klarna.
If Etsy Payment is not supported in your country, unfortunately it’s not possible to open an Etsy shop at the moment. Click here to see the list of supported countries. Etsy says that they are expanding the countries that support Etsy Payments.
06 - Open Your Etsy Shop (Congrats!)
Congratulations! You have now opened your Etsy shop! Your new Etsy shop can be reached with these two url formats:
- https://etsy.com/shop/yourshopname
- https://yourshopname.etsy.com
07 - Customise Your Shop
Now that your Etsy shop is opened, you should spend some time to set up the essential parts of your shop so that customers will have a good experience. Here are some of the main sections you should complete:
- Review and adjust shop policy
- Set up accurate shipping profiles
- Brand your shop by uploading shop icon & shop banner
- Add about section
- Add shop announcement
08 - Fill Your Etsy Shop With Optimised Listings
The final step of this guide - and probably the most important step - is to fill your shop with high quality optimised product listings. Use the duplicate listing and quick edit functions to speed up the process.
Review day 3's lesson for creating high converting listing photos and descriptions.
How Many Items Should You Have To Start Your Etsy Shop
For digital product shops, I would recommend having at least 20 products when starting, and plan to add more consistently to target specific customers. Many new Etsy sellers fall into the trap of starting with only 1-2 products which can really hurt the reach of their Etsy store.
If you are struggling to add new products, think about variations in style, color, size, etc to increase your product listings. Putting a few products in a bundle is another good option to add more listings.
Having more listings can help you broaden the reach of your shop. Each listing is an opportunity for you to target more long-tail keywords. It also gives you opportunity to satisfy the specific needs of your target customers.
In most cases, because customers need to edit the Canva templates themselves, we can’t just attach the finished file to the Etsy listing.
Instead, we need to give them a link so they can access and edit the design in their own Canva account.
Get Shareable Canva Template Link
Canva allows you to share a ‘template link’, which allows customers to click the link to make a copy of the design to their own Canva account.
To get the link, click ‘Share’ on the top right and then ’Template link’ to copy the link:
Create PDF With Template Link
As you can’t attach the template link directly on Etsy, you need to put the link in a file to upload to your Etsy listing. You can create a PDF file which includes the template link and other details like your shop name, how to use the template, links to printing services, etc. You can then attach the PDF to your Etsy listing.
To save you time in creating the file, I’ve made a template that you can copy and edit:
- Start by copying my PDF template to your Canva account.
- Replace the placeholder text (Link of the template) in the PDF template with the name of your design.
- Get the template link of your own design from Canva.
- Highlight the name of your design in Step 2. Click the link icon above the highlighted text to put in your template link.
- Download the PDF from Canva and attach it as the attachment to your listing on Etsy.
Attach PDF To Etsy Listing
At the bottom of your Etsy listing, you can add your attach your PDF file in this section:
When a customer places an order for that product listing, Etsy will immediately send them the link to download the file. They can also access the download page at a later time in their ‘Purchases and Reviews’ page.
Delivery Of Non-Editable Digital Downloads
If your digital products don't require customers to edit them, for example a blank printable checklist like this one, then you can attach the file directly to your Etsy listing. The limit of each file is 20mb, and you can upload a maximum of 5 files.