How to List a New Item in Your Etsy Shop

Listing a piece in your Etsy shop is surprisingly painless — provided that you've composed your item title and description, captured a few gorgeous pictures of your piece, set its price, established your shop policies, and so on.

As you toodle around Etsy, you may notice the occasional listing whose title contains the word reserve. A reserve listing is simply a listing that a seller has posted for a specific buyer — someone with whom she's communicated previously. For example, if a buyer contacts a seller to create a custom piece, the seller posts the piece as a reserve listing.

You begin the listing process from the Your Account page:

1. Click the Your Account link along the top of any Etsy page.

   

2. Click the List an Item Now button.

   

   The List an Item page opens.

3. In the About This Item section, click the Who Made It? drop-down list and select the option that best reflects who made the item.

   Other drop-down lists will appear. Select options from those lists as well.

4. In the Categories section, click the What Is It? drop-down list and choose a category for your item.

5. Click the What Type? drop-down list and choose a subcategory.

   Choose as many subcategories in the What Type? drop-down lists as necessary to categorize your item.

6. In the Photos section, click the Add Photos button.

   The Choose File to Upload (PC) or File Upload (Mac) dialog box opens.

7. Locate and select the first image you want to upload, and click the Open button.

   Any images that you upload must be at least 570 pixels wide (the height can vary) and no more than 1,000 pixels wide or high. Note, too, that image files must be of the JPG, GIF, or PNG variety.

8. Repeat Steps 6 and 7 to add more images to your listing.

   

   Your listing can feature up to five images — and that's how many you want to include!

   To change the order in which the images appear in your listing, click the image that you want to move and drag it left or right. The first image in the list will be the thumbnail image that appears in search results. Make it a good one!

9. Enter a title for your item in the Item Title field.

   

10. In the Description field, describe your item in more detail.

    A preview of what your listing will looking like in Google search results appears below the Description field.

11. If you've created sections for your shop, click the Shop Section drop-down list and choose where to put your item.

12. Add tags for your item.

    

    Type a tag in the Tags field and click the Add button for each tag. You can add up to 14.

13. If you'd like, you can list materials used in your piece in the Materials text box in the same way you added tags.

14. Enter the item's price in the Price field, and if you're selling more than one, enter the quantity in the Quantity field.

    If you don't want to apply your shop's tax rate to this listing, uncheck the Apply Shop Tax Rates check box.

15. In the Shipping section, click the Load a Shipping Profile drop-down list and choose the shiopping profile you want to use.

16. Click the Preview Listing button to see what the listing will look like; then press the Publish button to make the item go live.