Hi there,
Welcome to the Starter series for Etsy sellers from Automate Your Hours. In this 6-lesson series you'll get one recipe at a time: what it does, how to tell it's working, and what to do when it isn't.
First, here's your download, The Hours-Back Starter Kit for Etsy Sellers:[LINK: lead magnet download: the 6 starter recipes (Sheet templates + blueprints)]
Today: turn spreadsheet rows into Etsy draft listings.
If you already keep product details in a spreadsheet, you're probably typing the same title, price, quantity and tags twice. This recipe connects a Google Sheet to your shop through Make's free plan. Each new row becomes a draft listing. Nothing goes live until you open it in Etsy and publish it.
You connect your own Etsy shop to your own Make account. Automate Your Hours never sees or handles your Etsy login. No recipe sends Etsy data to Kit (or any mailing list), and none messages buyers automatically.
What you'll need
- A Make account on the free plan. Make Free gives you 1,000 credits a month[price-check] and appears to allow only 2 active scenarios, according to a Make community forum report (not a Make pricing or help page). If you plan to run several of these recipes at the same time, that 2-scenario limit could matter. This one uses about 30 of 1,000 credits a month run on demand (estimate, if run alone), and it doesn't need a switched-on scenario if you run it on demand.
- A Google Sheet (copy our template)
- About 25 minutes for setup (our estimate)
How you'll know it's working
Add one practice row with "test" in the title and click Run once in Make. Within one run, a new draft appears in Shop Manager under Drafts, your active listings haven't changed, and Make's run history shows no errors. Then delete the practice draft.
The three things most likely to trip you up
- Nothing happens when you add a row. Usually there's a blank row above it. Delete blank rows and always add at the bottom.
- A category error. The taxonomy_id column is empty or wrong. Copy the ID from Etsy's category list.
- Rate-limit errors, or credits running out. The schedule checks too often. Run it on demand (click Run once after you paste rows), or hourly at most. Never more often than every 30 minutes. Make charges 1 credit every time it checks your Sheet, even when there are no new rows.
Time saved: about 40 minutes a week, Estimated. That assumes 5 new listings a week, about 8 manual steps each, about a minute per step. Photos and your final check stay manual. Fewer listings means a smaller saving.
[TEST STATUS: Not yet tested. Replace with "Last tested: {date} (live-tested)" from the PASS log before this sequence goes live.]
Full steps, the column map and the complete troubleshooting table are on the recipe page: Open the recipe
Next lesson: let an AI step in Make draft each listing description from facts you type in, and check every word yourself before you use it.
Talk soon, Jesse at Automate Your Hours
P.S. What eats the most time in your shop? Tell me at hello@automateyourhours.ai. It helps decide which recipes come next.