Publishing your art to Etsy

Etsy is where a lot of art buyers already look. You do not have to choose between your own store and Etsy — artCart can publish the same artwork to both, and Etsy sales still land in your own Etsy shop and your own bank account.

How the connection works

Rather than one shared connection for every artCart seller, you register your own free Etsy app and connect it here. Listings are then created directly in your shop under your own Etsy account — artCart never sees your Etsy password, and nothing about the connection is shared with any other seller.

Setting it up

1. Go to etsy.com/developers/register and register a Seller App — not a "Personal App", which is for a different use case and needs a separate review. A Seller App is instant, self-serve, and tied to your own shop's data only.
2. When it asks for a Callback URL, enter exactly https://artcart.ai/etsy_oauth_callback.php — this has to match byte for byte, so paste rather than retype it.
3. Etsy hands you a Keystring and a Shared secret. Enter both under Settings › Etsy and save.
4. Press Connect to Etsy and approve the connection on Etsy's own screen.

What physical prints need before they can publish

Etsy has to know how you will ship a print and how long it takes you to make one. Both are picked under Settings › Etsy:

Digital downloads need neither of these — just a download price set on the artwork itself.

One shipping-profile snag worth knowing in advance: if your shop's shipping profile is a weight-based ("calculated") one rather than a flat rate, Etsy also needs a domestic shipping option configured on that profile before it will accept anything. If a listing fails with "Invalid Shipping Data", that is what is missing — fix it once on Etsy under Shop Manager › Settings › Delivery settings, and every artwork after that publishes cleanly.

Publishing

Two ways in:

• Open a single artwork and press Publish to Etsy.
• Publish several at once from Etsy listings, which lists everything eligible and not yet on Etsy.

Either way, artCart fills in the title, description, price, size options and photo from what is already on the artwork — nothing to re-type.

Finish previews

A photograph of the artwork is not the same thing as a photograph of the product. For each artwork, Etsy listings can generate a preview of it as an actual object — a wrapped canvas turned slightly so you see the depth of the stretcher, a print face-mounted behind acrylic, or a matted print. Tick the finish you want and the picture is built for you.

You only get the finishes your artwork's own size set actually offers, so you cannot advertise a canvas you do not sell. Previews are stored, so they cost nothing to keep and are attached automatically whenever that artwork is published.

Regenerate rebuilds one. A stored preview is a snapshot of how the mockups looked the day it was made, so if the previews have been improved since, an older one keeps its old look until you rebuild it.

Choosing which image Etsy shows first

Etsy's first image is the one buyers see in search results, and it does more work than all the others put together. Tick Featured on Etsy under any preview to make that the listing's first image; the artwork's own photo moves to second, and the rest follow behind. Only one preview can be featured at a time — ticking a new one unticks the old.

Untick it entirely and the artwork's own photo leads again, which is the default. Any previews you have not featured follow behind in the order they are listed on the page.

Taking a draft back off Etsy

Under Etsy listings › On Etsy, a listing still sitting as a draft has an Unpublish button. It deletes the draft from Etsy and returns the artwork to your Unpublished list, ready to send again once you have changed whatever needed changing.

Drafts only, deliberately. A draft is one nobody outside your shop has been able to see, so taking it back costs nothing. A listing you have already activated may have views, favourites or orders against it — deactivate or delete that on Etsy itself, where you can see what you would be losing.

If the button is greyed out with a note about permissions, your connection predates this feature. Etsy grants permissions when you approve the connection and refreshing never widens them, so press Connect to Etsy again under Settings › Etsy. Reconnecting keeps your listings and settings.

Why everything lands as a draft

Every listing artCart creates on Etsy is a draft, never active. That is deliberate: Etsy's category, tagging and content rules are Etsy's own, and a listing worth a second look before it is public is a normal part of selling there — not a flaw in the automation. Open it on Etsy, check the category and photos, adjust anything that needs a human eye, then activate it yourself.

What to do first

1. Register a Seller App and connect your shop under Settings › Etsy.
2. If you sell physical prints, pick a shipping profile there too.
3. Publish one artwork you know well, and review the draft on Etsy before activating it — this is where you will catch anything that needs adjusting.
4. Once that looks right, publish the rest from Etsy listings.

If that first draft is not right, Unpublish it, fix the artwork, and publish it again — that is what the button is for.

Next: your Etsy prices do not have to match your artCart prices exactly, but they should follow the same logic — see how to price AI art prints.