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Sample audit

What the audit looks like, run on a shop that does not exist

Northbank Paper Co. is invented, and so is every figure attached to it. The shop is fictional on purpose: publishing a paying seller's audit with the name removed still exposes them, because the before and after titles alone would find the shop in Etsy search. What is real is the structure. The sections, the method, the standard of evidence and the spreadsheet are exactly what you receive. Four of the eleven sections are below in full.

Download the sample as a PDF8 pages, no email required
Shop
A digital download shop, 52 listings, 74 days old
Scope
Every one of the 52 active listings, all 226 unique tags, a 16 listing quality sample, 9 competitor shops and 46 keyword seeds.
Sources
Etsy shop and listing pages (live), Etsy search results (live), eRank Shop Info, eRank Competitor Top Tags, eRank Keyword Tool (Etsy / USA).
Dated
August 2026
Status
Specimen. Fictional shop, illustrative figures, real report format.

The one line version

This shop is not failing, it is invisible. The products are built properly, the photography is competent and one favourite arrives for every three views, which is a rate most established shops never reach. The problem is upstream: 198 of the 226 tags in this catalogue point at searches nobody performs, so 455 of 651 filled tag slots are doing no work at all.

01

The verdict

The shop opened 74 days before this report. In that time it published 52 listings, which is roughly one finished product every 34 hours, each with a resume, a cover letter, a reference page and an instruction guide, or a fully laid out reference sheet. Across a 16 listing sample the shop averages 8.2 photographs per listing, 10 of the 16 carry a video, and every single one has a structured description with labelled sections. That is better listing craft than most shops manage in their first year.

It has also earned 41 favourites from 118 lifetime views. That is a favourite for every three views, a 34.7 percent rate. Shoppers who find these products like them. Almost nobody is finding them.

The problemThe number that proves itFix effort
Tags point at phrases nobody searches198 of 226 unique tags score under 20 monthly searches; 455 of 651 filled slots wasted (69.9 percent)Low
Priced so low the listing reads as low value, and no discount badge appearsEvery listing sits between 2.85 and 4.20 USD. All 33 front page rivals for the main term run a discount, median 60 percent off a 15.60 USD list priceLow
Missing the terms that describe what is already on sale53 keyword phrases worth 16,940 monthly searches, on products already in the catalogue, appear in none of the 226 tagsLow
Titles leave a fifth of the indexable space unusedAverage title 109.3 characters against Etsy's 140; 21 of 52 titles under 110; one listing has zero tags at allLow

Tag discipline

96.3 percent of available tag slots are filled, and not one tag exceeds Etsy's 20 character limit. The habit is right. Only the word choices are wrong, and word choices are the cheapest thing in the world to change.

The favourite rate

41 favourites from 118 views. Do not touch the photography, the product design or the price positioning of the individual files. The evidence says people want these.

Description structure

All 16 sampled listings carry labelled sections and run between 1,284 and 2,806 characters, averaging 1,974. Competitor descriptions in the same sample run 1,762 to 2,731. This is already at market standard.

02

Shop snapshot

NumberValueRead
Active listings52Ample. One competitor has 44 listings and 98,412 sales. Catalogue size is not the constraint here
Lifetime sales0The number this report exists to change
Lifetime views118Roughly 1.6 views per day across the entire shop. This is a discovery problem, not a conversion problem
Favourites41One favourite per three views. Unusually strong
Shop admirers0Nobody has followed the shop. A free channel sitting idle
Reviews0No social proof yet, which suppresses click through on every listing until the first few arrive
Price range2.85 to 4.20 USDBelow every front page competitor. On Etsy a price this low reads as low quality, not as a bargain
Listings on sale0 of 52All 33 front page rivals show a struck price and a percentage badge. This shop shows neither
Tag slots filled651 of 676 (96.3%)Good discipline. One listing has zero tags
Unique tags226Of which 28 have measurable search volume
Average title109.3 characters30.7 characters of indexable space unused on the average listing

The signal hiding in the top ten

Six of the top ten listings by views are cheat sheets and interview guides. Those products are 17 of 52 listings, a third of the catalogue, and they carry 64 of the 118 views, well over half. On a per listing basis a study product pulls 3.8 lifetime views against 1.5 for a resume template, roughly two and a half times as much. The shop is organised around resumes, with 35 listings filed under Career and 17 under Study. The data says the smaller half is doing the heavier lifting, and it is doing it while competing against a fraction of the sellers.

03

Tag and keyword analysis

This is the section that matters most, because it is the cheapest to act on and it is the reason the traffic is not arriving. Etsy's 13 tag slots are the primary relevance signal for a listing. A tag pointed at a phrase nobody types is functionally an empty slot.

MeasureValueRead
Fill rate651 of 676 (96.3%)Strong. Only 25 slots empty across 52 listings
Unique tags in use226A wide vocabulary, which is good practice
Tags over 20 characters0Perfect. Not one tag would be rejected by Etsy
Tags with measurable volume28 of 226 (12.4%)The problem, stated as one number
Tags scoring Unknown or under 20198 of 226 (87.6%)These cannot bring traffic because the searches do not exist at measurable scale
Slots occupied by those tags455 of 651 (69.9%)Seven in ten tag slots are doing no work
Listings with zero tags1One listing has no tags at all despite 5 views and a favourite
Capitalised tags117 instances across 14 listingsCosts nothing in ranking, Etsy is case insensitive, but it signals abandoned batch edits

The keywords this shop sells but is not tagged for

Cross referencing all 226 tags against a pool of 3,488 keywords built from 46 eRank seed searches gives 53 phrases that describe products already sitting in the catalogue and appear in none of the 226 tags. Together they are worth 16,940 monthly searches the shop cannot appear for. The largest of them is the most ordinary word in the niche.

Missing keywordMonthly searchesWhy it matters
resume5,912The single word. Absent from all 226 tags. There are 35 resume templates in this shop and not one of them is tagged 'resume'
resume templates1,703The plural. Etsy treats it as a distinct query. The shop uses the singular 26 times and the plural never
digital templates1,042Broad category term that fits every one of the 52 listings
sorority resume671Highly specific, low competition, and the shop already sells three student and fresher templates that would serve it
resume template 2026512Year stamped queries are how buyers filter for current formatting. Neither year appears anywhere
rush resume441Buyer intent at its purest: someone who needs it tonight and will not compare prices
cv362Two characters, 362 searches, absent
teacher resume318No teacher template exists yet, and it is a major profession the catalogue skips

Eight of 53 shown. The full list with volumes ships in the Tag Gap Analysis tab of the accompanying spreadsheet.

Twenty seven listings on one coin flip, one on a term that would work

The shop's most repeated tag appears on 27 of the 52 listings. It carries 468 monthly searches against 3,914,027 competing listings, a difficulty score of 100, which is to say every digital listing on Etsy already carries it. Meanwhile a phrase carrying 749 monthly searches against 16,204 competitors, difficulty 67, appears exactly once in the entire catalogue. That single swap, repeated across the 35 resume listings, is a better hour's work than a month of new product design.

04

Title analysis

Etsy allows 140 characters in a title and indexes all of them, weighting the opening phrase most heavily. Space left empty is relevance given away.

MeasureNowRewrittenChange
Average title length109.3127.1plus 17.8 characters
Shortest title71116plus 45
Titles under 110 characters21 of 520 of 52all recovered
Titles under 80 characters4 of 520 of 52all recovered
Total indexable characters5,6846,609plus 925

Before

ATS-Friendly Software Engineer Resume Template | Modern CV (Digital Download)

After

ATS-Friendly Software Engineer Resume Template | ATS Resume Template Word and Google Docs | Editable 1 and 2 Page CV with Cover Letter

The shop's best performing listing at 19 views, using 76 of 140 characters. The rewrite keeps the seller's own product name in front, then claims the ATS, Word, Google Docs, cover letter and STEM terms it was already entitled to.

Before

C Basics Cheat Sheet | Beginner Coding Reference Guide | Printable PDF | Instant Digital Download | Study Guidance

After

C Basics Cheat Sheet | Printable Coding Cheat Sheet PDF | C Programming Quick Reference Notes | Computer Science Student Study Guide

This listing has five views, one favourite, and zero tags. Not a weak tag set: none at all. The rewrite gives it a title and the spreadsheet gives it 13 tags. This is the single highest return edit in the whole catalogue.

The other seven sections

Everything below ships with the real thing

These are named and withheld rather than filled with invented detail. Sections five to eleven are the parts that only mean anything about a specific catalogue, so writing them out for a shop that does not exist would pad the sample without telling you a single true thing about the work.

  • 05

    Listing quality

    Photo count, video presence and description length measured against a sampled competitor set, plus the eight photographs every listing in this category should carry.

  • 06

    Competitor benchmark

    Nine shops chosen for comparability rather than for being impressive, including one that opened fifteen days later and has already outsold this shop, with the live search test that explains why.

  • 07

    The seasonal window

    Fifteen months of search volume for the shop's head term, the two annual peaks, and why the republishing date decides which of them this catalogue can still reach.

  • 08

    Pricing and conversion

    Displayed prices against front page rivals on the same browsing session, and the case for raising the price rather than cutting it.

  • 09

    Growth strategy

    Which categories to build out next, with the volume signal behind each, and the traffic levers that do not depend on Etsy search at all.

  • 10

    The 30 / 60 / 90 plan

    Every action in order, each with the reason it earns its place and an honest estimate of the hours it takes. The first month is copy and paste from the spreadsheet.

  • 11

    Method and sources

    Where each number came from, and the limits worth stating plainly: what is an estimate, what was sampled rather than censused, and what was measured live.

The spreadsheet that ships with it

  • Shop Snapshot, the headline numbers
  • New Listing Copy, a rewritten title, 13 validated tags and a full description for all 52 listings
  • Priority Fix Order, the same 52 ranked by traffic already carried, so the highest return work happens first
  • Tag Gap Analysis, every missing keyword and its volume, summed

Every tag in the spreadsheet is validated in code: exactly 13 per listing, none over 20 characters, no duplicates within a listing, and every single word tag checked against a measured search volume before it was allowed a slot.

Want this run on your shop?

Same eleven sections, same spreadsheet, run against your own catalogue with your own numbers.

How many listings do you have?
Total49
Turnaround
5 working days
Availability
5 slots a week
Payment
Ko-fi, card or PayPal
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