How to Sell Furniture on Etsy

Selling furniture can be a great way to make a side hustle or full time gig with decent money, but sometimes your market isn’t always where you live! Even if you’re in a big market, it can be over-saturated and have many low sellers who don’t have the same quality of work (or buyers that don’t value your time and money in a piece).

Today I’m going to talk through how I sold my furniture pieces on Etsy, how I coordinated shipping and what to look out for.

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First dresser sold going from Wisconsin to Texas. Was definitely nervous about the mirror but it shipped wonderfully!

Create an Etsy Store

This part seems self explanatory. There are tons of great resources out there to help you set up a store if you don’t have one already. You will want to focus on picking a name and description that helps the buyer quickly tell what you do and sell. Learning SEO (search engine optimization) will be very helpful to put your store in front of the right buyers.

Create a Listing for your Furniture Piece

It’s pretty in-expensive to list a piece of furniture on Etsy, so the “buy-in” to giving Etsy a try is pretty low.

You will want to be as clear and descriptive as you can with your listing title. Be sure to include the features that make it desirable. For example, if your piece of furniture is “MCM” or “antique” or “vintage”, be sure to include those things. Along with things like color, finish, size, etc. Make it as easily discoverable as possible.

You want someone to search “Black MCM 5 Drawer Dresser” and Etsy know that your piece (and your potential buyer) is looking for your listing.

You want to make sure you pick an optimized listing photo. Make sure this is not only your best photo of the piece, but also a photo that makes someone think “wow, I need that in my home”. A good way to see what photos convert is to look at other sellers that have high sales and look at what they are using for their listing photos (and descriptions).

Be as detailed and specific as possible. State the dimensions (in more than one place, trust me, people will ask). How many drawers, paint used, color descriptions, etc. Try to make it as easy as you can for the buyer to make a decision.

Include detailed, well lit and staged photos. Likely these buyers are spending more than the average Facebook marketplace buyer. They want to see quality.

Another piece shipped to the west coast. She was heavy but sturdy, and arrived perfectly!

Should You Include Shipping in Your List Price?

This is always a question, and really up to each person. I personally found that including it the price made for a much better and easier conversion. I would price out shipping to the furthest possible destinations (for me California, Texas and Florida). My sales ended up being mostly west coast, but that doesn’t mean it will be for you.

You can get quotes for pieces on U-Ship to get an idea of what it will cost. I just baked a shipping price into my total piece. It made it easier for me (and less back and forth with a potential buyer). It also provides an up-front cost for the buyer, and physiologically can be more palatable for a customer. Think about how often you’ve had $50 in your cart, but had to pay $10 in shipping and decided to put it back. But think nothing about an Amazon purchase which has shipping already baked into the price.

How do You Ship Your Furniture?

The most obvious and intimidating factor of shipping is obviously the logistics of shipping. If your piece is small enough (or can be disassembled) you might be able to ship using USPS, UPS or FedEx.

But more likely than not, you’ll want to use someone like U-Ship.

This is what I used when I sent my furniture to my customers, and it was pretty simple to use. It is also pretty secure from a payment perspective, especially when using a new shipper/developing relationships with shippers.

To use U-Ship, you’ll want to create a listing. Put as much information as you can so that your shipper can give you the best quote (and you can all know what to expect from each other).

You’ll want to know the approximate weight, the dimensions and other important factors, like where it will be picked up (are you on a busy street, is it at a shop with specific business hours, etc). You’ll also want to determine whether you are expected to help move the furniture or if your customer will be expected to help.

In my best experiences, the shipper did all the work for both me and my customer. They wrapped the furniture in their blankets, didn’t need my assistance loading, and more importantly, unloaded without my customers need to assist.

Other experiences, I helped a little and my customers helped a little. This is not ideal and personally I look for shippers that can do it all on their own, but sometimes you have to take who is available.

It is important to look at reviews. Usually people are pretty good at giving honest reviews, and you want to make sure that you are picking someone with a good reputation.

What is great about U-Ship, and worth using the service entirely, is that they hold your payment for shipping in an “escrow” account that doesn’t get paid out until you confirm that the shipper actually delivered the piece (and your customer is happy with the condition of the furniture piece).

To me, that is worth it’s small fee that they take to facilitate the transaction and platform.

You can of course begin to develop relationships off-platform, however I caution that with people you have used a lot and can truly trust. Because saving a few dollars to then one day lose hundreds because a shipper walks away with your money (with no real recourse) can be truly painful.

Set Expectations on Shipping Times on Etsy

When you make your listing, I would put shipping times in the three to five week range from purchase. Depending on the shippers availability, they may not be able to get to you for a week or two if they have deliveries in other areas. You want to under-promise and over-deliver to your customer and also give you the ability to pick a more trusted (and likely more busy) shipper.

I hope this blog helped you, please let me know what other questions you may have and that I can address in another post!