You may be wondering if Etsy allows you to have a second shop. Yes, you can have two Etsy stores. But, there are rumors everywhere when it comes to this question, so I went straight to the source to answer this popular question!
I have personal experience running multiple Etsy shops. The only shop I ever had issues with was my The Women of AI shop, as it was brand new and took off with dozens of sales right away and got shut down due to the Etsy algorithm. It was up a week later. My other shops have never had issues.
Rules for opening a second Etsy shop
I searched to find Etsy’s official stance on what the rules and guidelines are for opening a second shop, but they don’t update their guidelines very often, so there wasn’t much.
I’m going to dive a little deeper into some of the other questions you may have (because I had them, too!) about opening another shop on Etsy.
How to open a second Etsy shop
To open a second Etsy shop, you’ll need a different email address than the one you’re using for your original shop. You are opening a new account, not adding to an old one.
Unfortunately, Etsy does not have an option to have multiple shops for one email. The best way to set this up is by having a different email address for each online business you have.
Here’s what Etsy says:
Can I have more than two Etsy shops?
The answer is YES! I have several shops. If you have different products or a separate niche, you want to keep them in separate shops.
Here’s what Etsy says on the issue:
Do I have to disclose my second Etsy shop?
Etsy does say you need to disclose your second shop in the public profile of your first shop and vice versa.
I’ve reached out to Etsy about this in the past, and their response was basically “as long as your shops follow our guidelines, you’re good”.
My thought is that Etsy used to check into this more often because people were trying to somehow game the system and list the same items twice in multiple stores.
Over the years, Etsy has realized that many sellers prefer to open niche shops for best results. This leads to many sellers having multiple shops.
The problems arise when one of the shops violates Etsy’s terms. If one of your shops gets shut down, they both (or all) can.
If you want to make sure all bases are covered, in your “About” section, include a list of your other shop names. However, most of what Etsy does is automated so my thought process is this: if you’re going to get shut down, they’re not going to look at your “About” section before they do it. *shrug*
Pros and cons of running multiple Etsy shops
While I 100% recommend opening a second (or third!) Etsy shop so you can expand your brand and offerings, there are some cons to it as well.
Pros
✔ Niche is key with Etsy! You don’t want a shop that has “all the things”. Having multiple shops means you can create products across several niches, without confusing your customers. Think of your niche audience.
✔ Etsy transcation fees are affordable and don’t go up just because you have multiple shops.
✔ You can learn what works really well for one shop, and use those tricks on your other shops. It’s a lot of work to build a successful shop, but you can do it!
Cons
✘ Logging in and out all the time is a pain. in. my. ass. If someone could invent a way to log into all shops at once and just toggle between them, I would love them forever and ever.
Pro tip: If you only have two shops, have one logged in via Chrome and the other logged in via another browser. This way you don’t have to constantly log in and out. 🙂
✘ You’ll need two sets of business cards, two different logos and branding color palettes (unless you share the palette across them all, which is fine), and an email address for each shop.
✘ If you use paid tools, you’ll pay twice as much because they usually only cover one shop.
✘ For branding purposes, you may want to have separate social media accounts as well, which is way too much work for me! I like to automate as much as I can. I don’t usually use social media to promote my shops, as I rely mostly on SEO for Etsy.
How to succeed on Etsy
There are many ways to succeed on Etsy, but it all comes down to consistency. If you consistently create new products and work on your Etsy SEO, you will be successful.
How do I know? Well, besides my multiple Etsy shops, I’ve taught hundreds of women how to create digital products to sell on Etsy successfully!
If I can do it, if they can do it, YOU can do it. But it depends on YOU. Are you ready to go all in? Only you can answer that. Etsy shops take work to set up and keep running!
The most important part is to have FUN with your shops! If you aren’t having fun, consider a different niche or product line. You should never be miserable while creating!
