Every autumn the same question arrives in some form: is it too late to do a Christmas design? The honest answer is that it is late for this Christmas and not too late for a Christmas design, which are two different things. Here is how the timing works on our side, and why it matters more for a seasonal design than for any other kind.
Is it too late to submit a Christmas design? How far ahead seasonal designs need to be listed
A listing does not start selling the day it goes up. A first sale usually takes weeks, and months is common. Search needs time to learn where to show a new listing, and people shopping for a holiday start searching weeks before it.
So we work backwards from the day. Our rule is that a seasonal design should be live 90 days before its holiday. For Christmas that date fell in late September. For Halloween it was early August, which is why our comedy shop was publishing Halloween shirts in the middle of summer.
The rewrites start earlier still. If a seasonal listing is not being found, its title and tags can be reworked as much as five and a half months before the day, so that the new words have been picked up by search well before the buyers arrive.
What the timing looks like
Take a St Patrick's design such as our Skedaddle, St Patrick kicking out the snakes. Listed in January, it has the weeks before the day to be found, which is when people shopping for the holiday are searching. Listed in March, it has days. Days are rarely enough for a new listing, because search has not yet learned where to show it.
Seasonal designs are judged in season
A Valentine's shirt looks like a failure in September. It has had no views for months, because nobody is searching for it. Judge it then and you would throw away a design that was simply out of season.
We made exactly that mistake once. The first morning we sorted our listings by their numbers, a large share of the listings flagged for retirement were Valentine's and St Patrick's designs, read seven months after their day. Since then a seasonal listing is never retired for being quiet out of season. It is judged only in the 30 days after its holiday, when silence actually means something.
What happens to a Christmas design submitted now
A design submitted in October or November still has to be reviewed, made into products, given mockups and listed, and then it has the weeks before Christmas to be found. Some will sell this year. Most of what it does, it will probably do next Christmas.
That is where the eight months come in. We keep a partner's design listed for at least eight months after it goes live and pay its Etsy fees for that time. For seasonal designs there is an extra rule: if those months do not include a proper run at the design's holiday, because the holiday came too soon after listing or falls after the eight months, we keep the listing up at our own expense until that holiday has been and gone. A Christmas design that goes live in mid-November is carried through next Christmas, not taken down in July.
If you want to be on time
Under the same 90-day rule, a Valentine's design needs to be live by mid-November, and a St Patrick's design by mid-December. Both are reachable from here. Whichever holiday you pick, the design still needs what any design needs: a phrase people actually search for, wording nobody else is already selling, and artwork that reads at thumbnail size.
The honest part
Seasonal designs are concentrated bets: a few weeks a year when they can sell, and months when they cannot. Most designs sell little or nothing, seasonal or not, and this is not fast money. What you risk is the time it took to make the design, nothing more. The money side is on the payout example page.
If you have a Christmas idea, or a Valentine's one, which is the better bet to start on today, you can create a free account and submit it.