"Is Etsy still worth it in 2026?" gets answered a lot online with opinions and screenshots from a single good (or bad) month. We can do better than that: our Etsy shop has been live since 2022, and we tracked its views, sales, revenue, and conversion rate every year since. Below is the full 3-year picture, including the exact point where the trend line bends.
The full dataset: 2022-2025
|
Year |
Views |
Units sold |
Revenue |
Conversion rate |
Active products |
Avg. price |
|
2022 |
10,975 |
314 |
€817.06 |
2.86% |
48 |
€2.60 |
|
2023 |
17,110 |
689 |
€1,248.37 |
4.03% |
59 |
€1.81 |
|
2024 |
20,385 |
894 |
€3,522.92 |
4.39% |
96 |
€3.94 |
|
2025 |
30,469 |
1,116 |
€7,717.03 |
3.66% |
132 |
€6.92 |
Every number above comes directly from our own Etsy Shop Manager stats, matched to our own sales records. Conversion rate is calculated as units sold divided by views for that year.
Three distinct phases, not one flat trend
Zoomed out, this looks like steady growth. Zoomed in, it's actually three very different years.
Check out our products
Phase 1 (2022→2023): finding demand by racing the price down
Our shop opened in 2022 focused almost entirely on SEO and marketing templates. In year two, units sold jumped 119% (314 → 689), but revenue only grew 53% (€817 → €1,248), because average price actually fell, from €2.60 to €1.81. That's a classic early-shop pattern: undercutting price to win reviews and Etsy search visibility before a catalog or a reputation exists yet.
Phase 2 (2023→2024): the real turning point
This is the year the numbers stop looking like "more of the same" and start looking like a different business. Revenue jumped 182% (€1,248 → €3,523) while unit sales grew only 30% (689 → 894). The entire gap came from average price nearly doubling, from €1.81 to €3.94.
Two things happened at once that year: the catalog expanded from 59 to 96 products, and we added new categories beyond SEO/marketing templates, language learning charts and personal-development planners. Higher-value, more developed products started replacing the volume of low-price SEO cards that had driven Phase 1.
Phase 3 (2024→2025): record traffic, but conversion started slipping
2025 produced our highest-ever numbers on paper: 30,469 views, 1,116 sales, €7,717.03 in revenue, all-time highs. But look at conversion rate instead of the totals: it actually dropped, from 4.39% in 2024 to 3.66% in 2025. Views grew 49% and sales grew only 25%, meaning a smaller share of visitors converted than the year before.
That drop lines up with a specific, dateable event: changes to both Google's and Etsy's search algorithms around September 2025, after which our on-platform traffic and its quality noticeably shifted. Growth in raw traffic masked a real decline in how efficiently that traffic was converting, right up until it didn't.
Where the traffic actually came from, every year
Across all three years, the traffic mix stayed remarkably consistent: Etsy itself supplied roughly 81% of our visits (on-platform search, browse, and Etsy's own marketing), and everything we did ourselves, direct links, social media, occasional ads, brought in the remaining 19%.
That 81/19 split held steady from 2022 through most of 2025. What changed wasn't the ratio, it was the value of the 81% Etsy controls. When Etsy's own algorithm shifted in September 2025, four out of every five visitors we relied on were sitting on a channel we don't control, and it showed immediately in the conversion numbers above.
What this data doesn't prove
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This is one shop, in one product category (digital templates/printables). The trend won't necessarily generalize to every Etsy niche.
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The catalog nearly tripled in size over these 3 years (48 → 132 products), so some of the traffic and revenue growth reflects a bigger store, not just a bigger market.
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We can't fully separate "the algorithm changed" from "our own catalog and pricing matured at the same time." Both were happening simultaneously in 2024-2025.
What we're watching going into 2026
Given the Phase 3 conversion drop, we're paying closer attention to how much of our growth still depends on Etsy's own search and internal marketing versus the traffic we generate ourselves, and looking for ways to grow that 19% we actually control.
FAQ
Is Etsy still worth it in 2026?
Based on our 3-year data, Etsy produced real, growing revenue every single year from 2022 through 2025. But conversion efficiency peaked in 2024 and declined in 2025 following algorithm changes, so "worth it" now depends more on how much you're willing to depend on a traffic channel you don't control.
When did Etsy's algorithm actually start affecting sales?
Our data shows the clearest inflection point around September 2025, when both Google's and Etsy's search algorithms changed and our conversion rate dropped for the first time in the shop's history despite record traffic.
Does more traffic always mean more sales on Etsy?
Not necessarily. 2025 had our highest traffic ever (30,469 views) but a lower conversion rate than 2024, proving that traffic volume and traffic quality aren't the same thing.
How much of Etsy traffic is actually within a seller's control?
In our shop, about 19% consistently came from channels we control directly (direct links, social, ads); the other 81% depended on Etsy's own search and internal marketing.
