How to tag a digital download on Etsy

Thirteen tags. Twenty characters each. That is the whole budget. “Instant download” is one tag, not a personality. Repeat the product once. Spend the rest on words a buyer would type that did not fit the title.

Tags are not decoration and they are not a place to hide a second title. Sellers burn the list on “unique,” “beautiful,” and three spellings of “printable.” Those slots do not come back.

The cap is real

Etsy truncates a tag at twenty characters. “Wedding invitation suite” is twenty-four; it will not save the way you typed it. Count. “Wedding invitation” is nineteen and lives. “Instant download” is sixteen and deserves one slot because people still type it.

What a tag is for

A tag catches a search the title did not. If the title already says wedding invitation, a second tag can be printable invite or 5x7 invitation, not the same phrase again. Do not tag a seating chart with “planner pages” on the chance someone wanders by.

Do not put your shop name in a tag. Do not put “etsy” in a tag. Do not stuff a competitor’s trademark. Personal-use printables do not need “commercial use” unless you actually grant it — and most of you should not.

A working set

One product noun. One format (printable, pdf, 5×7). One style. Instant download. Two or three pieces of the suite. That is already eight. The last five are for the words you almost put in the title and then cut.

Paste a draft into the scorer if you want the thirteen counted and trimmed to the cap.