How to Check Demand for an Etsy Product Without Paid Tools

Somewhere around the second week of planning a shop, most people hit the same worry: what if nobody wants this? The usual answer is to go looking for a research tool, and there are plenty, most of them paid, most of them built for shops that already have sales to analyze.

You don't need one yet. To find out whether people want what you plan to sell, you need an evening, a notebook, Etsy's own search box and a willingness to look honestly at what you find. This post is that method, step by step. It won't give you a precise answer, because nothing can for a shop that doesn't exist yet. It will give you a much better guess than you have now, and for a first product that is enough.

What you are looking for

Demand research answers three questions, and it helps to keep them in front of you so the evening doesn't turn into aimless scrolling.

First, do shoppers look for this kind of item at all? If nobody searches for it, even a beautiful listing will struggle to be found.

Second, what do they expect? Shoppers arrive with expectations about style, size, materials and price range. You don't have to match those expectations, but you do need to know them, because a listing that ignores them has to work much harder.

Third, where is there room for you? A gap might be a style, a size, a color, a material or a level of quality that is missing from the results or poorly served by them.

Everything below feeds one of those three questions.

Step 1: Search like a shopper

Open Etsy as a shopper, not as a seller. Type the words you think a buyer would use to find your product. The important word there is buyer. Makers have their own vocabulary, and it's often not the one shoppers type. A ceramicist might call a piece a "trinket dish"; the person looking for it types "ring dish" or "jewelry dish".

As you type, Etsy suggests searches under the box. Those suggestions are clues to what other shoppers type, and they are free. Write down every suggestion that fits your product, then try a different starting phrase and do it again. Three or four starting phrases usually give you a list of a dozen or so.

In the book, Dana at Copper Fern Studio starts with "ceramic dish" and notes the suggestions, then tries "ring dish", "jewelry dish", "trinket tray" and "small ceramic plate". By the end she has a list of phrases buyers seem to use, and that list later becomes the starting point for her titles and tags. Yours will too, so keep it somewhere you'll find it again.

Step 2: Study the first pages of results

For each of your main phrases, look at the first two or three pages of results. Don't just scroll; take notes. For around ten listings, write down what the item is in a few words, the price as shown that day, the style (colors, materials, finish), what the main photo shows (the item alone, in use, held in a hand, a lifestyle scene), whether the shop seems to be a small maker or a larger operation, and anything that stands out, good or bad.

You are not copying these listings and you are not ranking yourself against them. You are learning what the market looks like from the shopper's side of the screen, which is a side you've probably never looked at carefully for your own product. Ten listings is enough to see the pattern. Thirty is procrastination.

Step 3: Read the reviews for clues

Open a few listings that look popular and read their reviews. This is the step people skip, and it is the most useful one, because reviews are buyers telling you what they care about in their own words.

Look for repeated themes. Do buyers praise fast shipping, careful packaging, a size that was just right, a color that matched the photos? Do they complain about items arriving smaller than expected, colors being off, slow replies, flimsy packaging?

Every complaint in another shop's reviews is a chance for your shop to do better. Every compliment tells you what buyers value enough to mention. Write both lists down.

Step 4: Look for the gap

Now step back from the notes and ask a few questions. Is there a style you like that was hard to find? Is there a size, color or material that buyers ask about in reviews but few shops offer? Do most of the listings have weak photos or thin descriptions? (That on its own can be a gap: a well-photographed, clearly described version of a common product stands out more than you'd think.) Is there a type of buyer nobody seems to speak to directly, such as people buying a gift for a new teacher, or people furnishing a small apartment?

Priya, who runs Paper Lantern Prints in the book, found that most printable planners in her results were busy and colorful. She liked calm, simple designs with a lot of white space, and saw few of them. That became her angle, and it came from twenty minutes of looking rather than from a tool.

Finish this step with your angle in one sentence: "Like the others, but ___." If you can't finish that sentence yet, that's useful information too.

Step 5: Look beyond Etsy

Shoppers don't only live on Etsy, and neither should your research. Spend a little time where people talk about your kind of product for free: social media posts and comments about the craft, Pinterest boards where people collect ideas (what they save tells you what styles they want), craft forums and groups where makers and buyers talk, and local markets and shops if you can get to them, to watch what people pick up and ask about.

You are listening for three things: the words people use, the problems they mention, and the styles they keep coming back to. Add them to the notebook.

Reading the signals

There are no hard rules here, only signals, and you have to use your judgment.

Signs that buyers exist: many shops sell similar items, several listings have plenty of reviews, Etsy suggests several related searches, and people mention the item as a gift idea elsewhere.

Signs to be careful: you can find almost nothing similar at all. That can mean you've found a gap, but it more often means few people search for it. At the other extreme, a huge number of near-identical listings at very low prices suggests a crowded space where it's hard to stand out without competing on price, which a small maker should never do.

Neither sign is a reason to give up. A crowded space needs a clear difference, which is what your angle sentence is for. An empty space needs some evidence that buyers exist, which is what the next step is for.

Test before you commit

The cheapest research is a small test. Before you buy supplies in bulk, make a few items and list them. For digital products, make one design and list it. Then watch for a few weeks. Views, favorites and messages are all signals, even before any sales arrive, and they cost you almost nothing to collect.

You can also test on people you know, as long as you remember that friends and family are kind. "Would you buy this?" is a weak question; everyone says yes. "What would you expect to pay for this?" and "Who would you buy this for?" are better, because they make the person picture a real purchase.

Write it all down

Memories blur, and research you can't find later is research wasted. Keep everything from this evening in one place: the phrases and suggestions, the ten listings, the review themes, the gaps, what you saw outside Etsy, your angle in one sentence, and your decision: go ahead, test small first, or set the idea aside, with the reason. You'll come back to this when you write titles, when you set prices, and when you're wondering in month three whether to add a product.

Do this today

Pick your one product idea and give it the evening. Three starting phrases in Etsy's search box, ten listings with notes, the reviews of three popular ones, and your angle in one sentence. If the sentence comes easily and the signals look healthy, you have your first product. If not, you've saved yourself a batch of supplies, which is exactly what research is for.