Good morning!
I just wanted to write a quick post to recommend an app I’ve been using for my Etsy shop – Vela.
Etsy apps are one of those things that:
1) I didn’t know existed until months after I opened my shop and
2) Keep forgetting they exist even now.
Etsy apps are not on your phone – they are desktop applications. (although some do have a mobile app that works with it).
You can find the list of Etsy approved apps here.
I want to recommend Vela because it has made my life a billion times easier when it comes to editing my listings. Thank you to my co-admin Fliss Hill for recommending it to me.
Vela allows you to select multiple listings to edit and it’s FREE! You can select a few specific listings or a whole category in your shop.
It will provide a list of them with several options for editing on the left.
- Titles
- Descriptions
- Categories
- Photos
- Tags
- Materials
- Section
- Price
- SKU
and soon they are adding the new attributes brought out with the latest Etsy updates.
Each of these features has helpful tools at the top where you can bulk add information into your listings. For example you could write a paragraph about Christmas post and have it add it to the end of every single description in your shop. When Christmas is over you could easily wipe it off again. That’s something I am definitely going to do.
I find it so much easier working on one task at a time. If I have 20 listings I want to edit it is far quicker for me to do all their titles before moving on to the next step. It really speeds things up rather than chopping and changing what you’re doing all the time.
Tips for using Vela that I’ve learned since using it:
- When you’re editing some listings – move them to drafts on Etsy first. The reason for this is so you can save your progress regularly and it won’t look strange to the buyers whilst you’re editing. If all of a sudden you’ve included a new option in your descriptions but didn’t get round to adding it in the variations yet it will confuse people.
- Sync updates often. As you’re editing your listings there is a little button in the top left of the screen that says “Sync Updates”. This is what makes your changes go live on Etsy. Don’t make the agonising mistake of forgetting to press this often as if you hit “back” by accident you will lose all of your progress. I’ve had to edit 96 titles all over again from doing this. It wasted 3 whole hours. Now I hit that sync button every 3 titles/descriptions/edits that I make.
- If you’ve added new listings and they don’t show up in Vela yet, open up an existing listing and hit “Sync Updates” – it won’t do anything but refresh Vela’s information on your shop and your new listings will now show up.
TOP TIP! – Vela is an editing suite and not a listing platform. You can’t create new listings from scratch you can only edit existing listings. If you’re planning to list a bunch of new products try this!
- On Etsy “Add a new listing.”
- Put a couple of words in your title to describe your product. E.g. Butterfly Necklace
- Save as draft with no other fields filled in, just the title with a couple words.
- Repeat for as many listings as you want to add.
- Go to Vela and then browse the Drafts category on your dashboard and then you can bulk edit all of your drafted listings in one go.
- Sync Updates
- Go back to Etsy and select all your draft listings that you’ve finished editing on Vela and hit “Publish” to make them go live on Etsy
The best way to understand Vela is to try it out and be amazed and weep at it’s awesome power 😉 I would highly recommend doing it if you “know your titles/tags/descriptions” need work because it can seem such a daunting and time consuming job but this will speed it right up!
It takes a little getting used to, but Vela is well worth it and I would recommend it to every man, woman and their dog.
Please comment below if you’re using Vela and also let me know if you’ve got recommendations for any other Etsy apps I should try!
Thanks for reading
Jennifer xx
Help With Etsy - Things I learn along the way! 