How Many Shops on Etsy , How Many Shops Are There on Etsy

How Many Shops are Currently On Etsy? 

I do a lot of Etsy shop critiques and a lot of people have asked me how many shops there are currently on Etsy.  There is an easy way to figure this out, and so I'll show you. However, this should not be what's worrying you if your sales are slacking or you aren't selling.   None the less, this is how I do it.

I go to this link: https://www.etsy.com/search/shops

This will take you to all of Etsy shops. If you want to see them, you can see them based on relevancy, or alphabetically.

This is the screen you will get, it will say "Browsing All Etsy Shops"

LuckyKaeruFabric and FabBeads are on the top of the Relevancy search out of all the shops. Pic: Etsy

Now the key is to find out how many pages there are, so I scroll down to the bottom of the page to see how many "pages of Etsy shops". You will find the number at the bottom like this:

It says there are 1250 pages of Etsy shops.

 Now you do some simple math, there are 1250 pages that I can see on my laptop. Each page shows me approximately 10 shops. So , in a nutshell I take this simple calcuation:

1250 Pages of Etsy shops
x 10 Per Page that I can View
---------------------------------
12500 Etsy shops as of today 3/23/14

Surprise!  This would not be what I thought. I would have thought for sure there were hundreds of thousands of Etsy shops.....

Little to Nothing in Some Shops, Or Seasonal Shops

For some people who open Etsy shops, they jump in without taking the time to market themselves and get easily frustrated and close up shop by simply slowly letting their items expire.  It takes some work!  In my case I put my shop on HOLD in the summer when I'm traveling so I wonder if my shop would even show in the total shops number? Probably not if it is inactive.  I scrolled thorough a few pages and the least number of items that show in shops is 1.  I only checked a few pages but didn't see any with a "0".  So really I'd say a good portion of these Etsy shops have low item counts in them. Look at the variations from a random page:

Variations on Etsy, form 1 item to 100's items shop owners may have little or more in their Etsy shops. Pic: Etsy

So What Does All This Mean?

Although it may seem that Etsy has a lot of shops and users, and million of items for sale at any given time, this is not what you should focus on. You should focus on spending time in your shop and doing the best you can to make your items the best they can be.


Use the best tags and titles
Use the best pictures
Are your Prices Fair
Are you networking outside of Etsy?

Even Etsy realizes the need for social networking that's why it's easy to integrate your Facebook and Twitter into Etsy's home page. People who use Pinterest will see little P's by the items so they can easily Pin the items in yoru shop.

Remember that Etsy gives you the platform aka storefront but you must do the rest. A good shopkeeper is always working in their store. I need to spend more time in mine!