A question posed within a BNR thread I am actively following from the Busy Moms of Etsy Team was about relisting and renewing. So I thought I would provide what little knowledge I have in the hopes that others will add to it in the comments section.
Some upfront clarification – there is a difference between relisting and renewing. Renewing is when you take your current listing, and pay $0.20 to renew it as if it is a new listing. “Relisting" is, as its name suggests, re-listing a sold listing so you can keep selling more quantities of the item you have, or a similar item to the one that just sold. I think it can also be extended to include creating a brand new listing for a variation of a product you may have already listed.
The general concept behind the renewing game is that the search function on etsy displays returned results that meet the search criterion, by "listed on date". This is to help keep the "freshest" products up front and center (and also to create an opportunity to earn revenue from renewal fees). The same concept is applied for categories; newer listings would show up earlier on items listed for a category page.
So say someone searches for "nursery prints". All the listings who meet this search criteria will show up but a seller who relisted a sold item, or renewed an existing item today is going to show up earlier in the resulting pages than mine, since I created my listing yesterday. Although my listing is likely to be more current, the fact that another seller renewed their listing places them sooner in the results displayed.
And I do not know the exact number of average pages (nth page) someone goes through before they abandon their results, but if you do not renew, you may find yourself on page 6 or 7 for a popular search term and the likelihood of someone even seeing your products drops significantly after this nth page.
The pro for renewing listings:
You are a part of the Etsy market of buyers and sellers. Whatever advantage you can get, you weigh the cost of it, and then make the decision if you'd like to leverage that advantage albeit something you need to pay to use. This is the biggest, if not only, pro of renewing - it gives you an advantage over those who do not renew. It brings your items up earlier in the search results. Although, if your items are not appealing or relevant, or if the photos do not draw the buyer to click on your listing, its intended purpose would not be fulfilled anyway.
The exposure you get from a buyer who does click on the listing, is the product exposure, and also the store exposure. I have been able to tell via Google Analytics, where I renewed my more popular and eye-catching listings, brought traffic to my store, and saw different prints or additional prints being purchased.
The con for renewing listings:
Unless you have a clear strategy for using the renew function, you could become renew-happy and burn your profits away. (As a side note, I do not count my renewing fees as part of the cost for my prints. I account for it as a marketing expense – if you think about it, it’s just like search engine marketing where you pay for a better position for a search. Difference being that it is on a smaller scale and within the etsy.com site.) I think it used to be that you would lose the hearts and views on the listing but I know that restriction must have lifted because I renew listings and I have not lost the hearts and views, only if it is sold.
My thoughts on this topic:
In thinking about how I can combine the best of both worlds, I questioned the concept of renewing. If you can create new listings at the same price, why not create a new listing of a product you have, maybe offer it in a different color or slight variation of it, and even tag it slightly different so in terms of exposure, your listings show up for different searches, beyond the measly 14 tags provided. Now my prints lend themselves to this strategy. But for those who create one-of-a-kind, or have a slower production cycle than I do, they can play around with the styles of photos. When taking photos of the item, consider different backgrounds, staging, angles, etc, then just list the same product using different mix of photos.
Now this concept is not 100% validated yet but when I look at my product lines, I find it amazing that a print in a different color combination I listed (despite using the same design I have had forever and just providing different colors) can begin to get so many more views and hearts than the original. I would never have known that if I kept renewing the same listing.
Hope this is helpful and please feel free to debunk my hypothesis, question it, indicate any additional information (or just say hi!) in the comments section and I will update this post.
