How to Hide Your Etsy Shop Sales History (& REASONS WHY)

Your Etsy sales history can be very valuable for learning your best products and what your customers want to buy. However, when that information is public by default your competitors

How to Hide Your Etsy Shop Sales History

Hiding your sales history on your Etsy shop is actually very, very easy.

You can hide your sold listings page from your shop by following these two steps.

  1. Go to Shop Manager > Settings > Options.
  2. Scroll down to the Sold Listings section at the bottom of this page.
  3. Under “Want shoppers to be able to see these?” select the button for “No, hide them.”

That’s it! Those steps will hide your Etsy sales history from anyone being able to view it. You will still be able to view the page and see what has sold over time, but buyers won’t be able to click the number of sales on your public shop homepage.

Reasons To Hide Your Etsy Sales History

So why exactly would you want to do this and hide all your sales from everyone? There are a few reasons to hide all of your Etsy sales history from public view:

Past sales are not the best way to judge an Etsy shop.

Even customers will sometimes browse past sales on a shop if it is available, but if your work has improved over time then they may not be getting the best look at your shop.

Sales are only one indication of success on Etsy and it’s not always the full picture. The seller may also have a website where other products are more popular for example. Or you may have had to take a hiatus on your shop and decided to return and revamp your offerings. – which your sales history won’t reflect.

Hiding your sales history and only showing the number of sales you have gives the social proof you need without oversharing too much information.

People may want something you no longer sell.

Unfortunately by showing your sales history you are also opening up your shop to show things that you have sold in the past but may no longer offer. People will wonder why you don’t sell it any longer or why you don’t have that specific offering even if you have multiple similar listings available.

People can be very finicky when buying things online and seeing something they want that is not available can turn them off from your shop forever.

It’s not as valuable as reviews.

Your shop history and seeing what has sold is not the most important thing for potential customers to see. It’s great for them to know that you have other sales, but for new customers your reviews will be much more important.

Instead of showing off your sales history you’ll want to focus on other things like getting more reviews on your shop.

When you don’t, you are helping your competition.

Everyone snoops on their competition, myself included. It’s intriguing to know what other people are selling and what products are popular. When you see a shop with lots of sales and then the history shows 2-3 products over and over then you know they are popular.

But this unfortunately means your competitors can see your sales too. I’ll talk about the problem with Etsy competition later on in this post but just know that showing your sales history means other Etsy shops will rip off your designs.

Hiding your sales history means hiding the secrets to your success. It slows people from focusing on your shop and hopefully redirects you from competition snooping to focusing on how to make your own shop better.

The Problem With Etsy Competition

I’ll be honest, the problem with Etsy is that many people on the platform are not creative enough to think up their own products. Many just want quick money and have no problem with ripping off other sellers by copying their products directly. When they can see what you are selling the most in your shop it’s easy for them to rip off your top products and even under cut your prices to steal your sales.

Unfortunately there is no real recourse on Etsy when this happens. You can ask them to take it down or pursue a more formal takedown process that is much more work and doesn’t usually succeed. The sad truth is the Etsy competition is cut throat and succeeding there means you will have to deal with people stealing your work.

The best option for dealing with Etsy thieves is to be proactive and give them as little information as possible. By hiding your sales history they will be unable to determine which of your products are making up the bulk of your sales. You will likely never full stop people with no morals from stealing and reselling your items, but doing things like hiding your sales at least slows them down.

How To Start An Etsy Shop

If you’re not on Etsy yet, it’s a great platform to start on and learn how to sell digital products.

If you want to start an Etsy shop in order to earn part time or full time income then this tutorial for beginners will help you get started! I know a lot of people who have never sold online before can feel intimidated which is why I created this tutorial on how to set up an Etsy shop step by step. It is very easy and seeing someone else do it makes it feel much easier!

You can start your shop with this link for 40 free listings to jumpstart your shop without having to waste money on those first listings.

Additionally, here are some posts about starting and growing an Etsy shop that may help you:

Mary is the founder of Pennies Not Perfection where she shares her journey to build wealth through online income. She quit her day job in 2021 after she paid off her debt and doubled her 9-5 salary.

Mary's favorite free financial tool is Personal Capital. She uses their free tools to track net worth and work toward to financial freedom.

Her favorite investment platform is M1 Finance, where she built a custom portfolio for free with no fees. She shares her portfolio growth and savings progress every month on YouTube.