Which Listings Are Carrying Your Shop

Ask most sellers what their best item is and they will name the one they like making. Ask what their best selling item is and there is often a pause, because nobody has looked. It is worth looking, and it takes an evening at most.

Go back over the last three months of orders and write down what actually sold, not what you listed. Count each item, and beside it put what you were paid. Two columns, nothing clever. What comes out of this is almost always lopsided: a small handful of items are doing most of the work, and a long tail is doing nearly none.

That is not a failure. It is how nearly every shop behaves, online or on a high street. The mistake is not having a long tail, it is not knowing which end you are standing at.

Once you can see it, three things become obvious. The first is what to make more of, which is the easy one. The second is what to photograph better, because occasionally a thing sells badly for no reason except that the picture is doing it no favours, and that is cheap to fix. The third is the uncomfortable one, which is what to stop offering. Something that takes you an hour, sells twice a year and prices badly is not a product line, it is a hobby that lives in your shop.

Watch out for one trap. The item that sells most is not always the item that earns most, and if you have ever worked out what a single order really costs you, you already know why. Do the count on money as well as on volume, and be ready for them to disagree.

Then leave the rest alone. You do not have to delete the tail. You just have to stop giving it the attention that belongs to the front.