Day 1: Look at the Past to Plan for the Future

It’s never too early to start planning for the holidays. Now that you’re back from break/holiday, it’s time to hit the ground running! Historically the busiest time of year for Etsy sellers, there are plenty of tasks you can complete now to get ahead of your competition and ensure a smooth shopping experience for your customers. Dive into your sales from last year, research what may be trending this holiday season, and plan to launch your holiday products by October 1st.

This four-day course is designed to give Etsy sellers a clear roadmap to prepare for Black Friday and the remainder of the holiday season. Sellers who start thinking months ahead give themselves time to enjoy the holidays without stressing about their business. Follow along and see how taking the time to plan now helps your shop succeed when it matters most.

Let's jump right in with Day 1: Look at the past to plan for the future

View your past performance

The first step in your holiday planning is to take a look back at how your shop performed during Q4 last year. When did your sales peak? Which products brought in the most orders? Use eRank’s Shop Info to view your shop’s overall sales history for the past 12 months. This is a good indicator of when you need to have your holiday listings up and ready for purchase.

Click the “Listings” tab below your shop stats in Shop Info to see an overview of the active listings in your shop. Sort by Estimated Sales or Estimated Revenue to learn which listings are your top performers. Are any of them your holiday-themed listings, or are they year-round best sellers? Make a note of which listings you want to focus on or those that you may want to freshen up.

Have your holiday listings expired or sold out? Head over to the Listings page and select “Expired” or “Sold Out” to find those listings that you want to revive or relist for the upcoming holiday season.

You can also dive into your order stats via your Etsy Shop Manager Stats page. Select the past calendar year (or choose a custom date range) to learn when your busy periods were. Here you can also toggle between views, conversion rate, and revenue, giving more insights on your shop performance over time.

Research trends from last year

After you’ve learned when your busy period typically is and which listings you want to work on, the next step is learning what shoppers are searching for. Seeing what is popular among shoppers helps you learn how you can fit your products into those trends. Use Trend Buzz to learn what’s on the rise now, and what was popular last year. 

Taking a look at the popular keywords in October 2025, we can see the types of products and styles that saw a significant amount of searches. Clothing such as shirts and sweatshirts dominated, but “mushroom,” “christmas png,” and “ornaments” were trending as well.

Jumping to November 2025, we can see more traditional holiday-themed keywords rising in search. Products such as “stockings,” “crochet blanket,” and “locket” ranked high, as did broad keywords such as “personalized gifts” and “gifts for him.” 

💡Etsy sellers should aim to use a healthy mix of broad, high-search keywords with more specific, niched-down phrases. Niched-down phrases are those targeted to your specific product and ideal audience. They generally have higher purchase intent, because shoppers have a clearer idea of the product they are looking for. It is difficult for small or new shops to rank for broad, generic, high-competition keywords such as “gift for him,” because larger, older shops have stronger data and sales history.

While perusing past (and present) trend data, click the star icon next to any keyword to save relevant phrases to a Keyword List. Then you can explore their statistics and search history later. Try to keep your target audience front of mind when researching trends; not every trend is going to work for every shop! Each Etsy shop is different, and what works well for one may not translate well to another.

Research trends from this year

Toggle the timeframe in Trend Buzz to “Yesterday” to see what keywords are popular right now. Pop culture trends and current events sometimes have an impact on hot keywords. Etsy marketing emails and targeted search suggestions also impact these results, so they may not be relevant to your niche. For example, three of the top four searches in this June 2026 screenshot contain the term “pattern.”

While you may not sell patterns in your shop, it is worth looking at the overall theme. Shoppers are searching for patterns, which indicates they themselves are probably makers. Do you have items in your shop that makers may appreciate? One of the other trending keywords is “monogram.” Ideas for products that may appeal to makers may be monogrammed project bags, monogrammed project journals, or stitch markers with initials.

Learn more about the trends shaping this upcoming holiday season with the eRank blog post Where To Find the Best Holiday Trend Reports for Etsy Sellers in 2026.

Use this tactic of mixing trends to see how you can incorporate trending keywords into your listings without straying from your own niche. It’s important to stick to your niche and offer products that your target customer will love.

Today’s Tasks:

• Learn when your holiday sales peaked last year
• Find the listings that sold well for your shop last year 
• Save five trend-related keywords to a Keyword List for further exploration