Handmade Jewelry for Your Valentine How to Search on Etsy

If I told you there are about 750,000 Etsy shops selling 4 million pieces of jewelry, what would you think? Well if you are someone shopping for a Valentine's Day gift of jewelry, you might decide this is way too many shops and pieces to sort through. While that may be true in theory, it is not true in fact.

Etsy allows you to narrow your search down by using keywords. In this case the keywords are Valentine jewelry handmade, because you want that special piece that only can be created by hand. This will narrow your search down to 32,827 pieces of jewelry. I realize this is still a lot of searching but you must have something in mind.

Not only am I going to tell you how to further narrow this search down, I am going to show you some fabulous handmade jewelry you can buy on Etsy for that special someone.

Photo: Glass Heart Necklace by GlassEnamelbyJulie

I Will Tell You How

While I realize that not everyone wants to buy their sweetheart a piece of jewelry with a heart on it, I am concentrating on hearts because Valentine's Day is a special day to express love a special way and there is nothing like a heart that says love.

However, I am going to include other types of jewelry, just in case hearts are not your Valentine's cup of tea.

Back to narrowing your search. We had close to 33,000 pieces of jewelry using Valentine Jewelry in Handmade as our keywords. So lets say you want jewelry with hearts, then you continue to narrow your search by adding heart to your search. Now you have Valentine Heart Jewelry in Handmade.

Voila, we have narrowed our search to 9,165 pieces of Valentine Heart Jewelry. Perhaps you have a special color heart, red, a birthstone, a stone your sweetheart likes. Well add that keyword.

For example, let's say your sweetheart does like red heart jewelry. We are now down to 2,458 pieces of jewelry.

Suppose your valentine was born in February and amethyst is her birthstone. We now have 92 pieces of jewelry to choose from.

Do you see how I narrow down the search to exactly what I want in a piece of jewelry? All you have to do is decide what you want and use all the keywords to describe it.

Here is what I put in and the total that came up: Valentine amethyst heart jewelry in handmade 92 items.

You do not have to stop there. We can further narrow by metal using Valentine amethyst sterling silver heart jewelry in handmade and now we have 40 pieces to choose from.

Having fun yet?

Photo: Amethyst Sterling Silver Heart Earrings by designsbycher

You Do Not Have to Purchase a Heart

Suppose you are not interested in buying your valentine a heart, but you still want a piece of handmade jewelry. Etsy is still the place to go.

Using the search advice I have already given you, you can search for any piece of jewelry that you want. Even if you do not want a heart you might still want something red to symbolize a heart or the Valentine's Day color.

If you want a handmade beaded bracelet with Swarovski crystals. You should try Red Beaded Bracelet with Swarovski Crystals in Handmade. Putting those keywords in search turned up 367 bracelets.

To narrow that search down we could add sterling silver, because you might want some silver in the bracelet. Adding Sterling silver resulted in 106 bracelets

Photo: Red Beaded Bracelet with Sterling Silver and Swarovski Crystals by HotPieceofGlassBeads

But Sometimes Things Go Wrong

I want to be completely honest with you. Your search depends upon the seller using the correct keywords to describe the piece.

In my search for the red bracelet a pair of red Swarovski crystal earrings came up. I looked at the title and it said "A Matching Bracelet is Available." So since all the keywords that we put in our search were also in the title of these earrings, they showed up in our red bracelet search.

This is not really a mistake on the seller's part, just a quirk in the Etsy search or in any online search. A search engine does not know that there is no bracelet in that listing, just that bracelet is in the title so it is picked up in a bracelet search.

Naturally, these situations will add to the number of pieces of jewelry that you will have to search through to find the red bracelet you want, but in the scheme of things the keyword search can narrow your choices enough so that you do not have to go through thousands of items to find what you desire even though a few irrelevant items slip through.

Your choices depend upon your ability to narrow your search, so think very carefully about what type of jewelry you are looking for and put in the search box every keyword that describes the piece you want to find.

Photo: Card designed and created by BethiesCards

Photo: Fine Silver Triple Heart Jewelry Pendant by HGWjewelrydesigns

It is tempting to try your own hand at an Etsy shop. Let me tell you it is hard work. However, should the temptation be enough to try, here is some advice.