Using Market Intelligence

Market is where the studio shows you measured demand rather than guesses. It exists so that “what should I make next” has something behind it.

It is worth knowing how it differs from the keyword page. That page is a language model writing suggestions from a niche you type in, which is fast and good for phrasing. This page is collected data about what buyers are searching for and what is already on the shelf. When the two disagree, this page is the one to believe.

The four tabs

The number on each tab is how many items it currently holds for your shop. An empty tab means the data does not cover your niche yet, not that the opportunity is zero.

Keywords

The tab you land on, and the one most worth your time.

Keyword Opportunities is a shortlist: phrases with real demand where the shelf is not yet full. Each card shows a percentage bar, monthly searches, a competition badge, a trend arrow and a small coloured dot.

Keyword Research is the wider list behind it, sortable by search volume or by competition with the quietest first. Use this when you want to browse rather than be handed a shortlist.

Deep Analysis appears when a phrase has been studied in detail: how listings for it tend to perform, what buyers seem to be after, which product types suit it, and where in the world the interest sits.

Keywords and tags across the page are clickable. Selecting one opens the Assistant with that phrase already in the question, which saves retyping it and keeps the context attached.

Each keyword carries a small tag showing how long it has been tracked, “new”, a day count, or a month count. This is not a warning. Search volume for a phrase like “digital download” or “wall art” does not move much month to month, so an older reading is usually still a fair one. The tag is there so you know what you are looking at, not to tell you to distrust it.

Seasonal

What is coming, and when you would need to start.

The calendar shows each event with its buying window and a create-by date, along with niches and product types that suit it. When a create-by date is within three weeks, it is pulled to the top of the page as an alert, and it turns red inside a week.

Plan around the create-by date, not the event date. Work that sells in May was live in March, because listings need time to be found before the window opens.

Market Signals

Two lists. Trending now is what is moving at the moment. Evergreen ideas is the opposite and is filterable by category, covering home decor, education, professions, kids and nursery, travel, digital products, wellness, gifts, nature and aesthetic, each marked high, medium or low demand.

Evergreen is the less exciting list and usually the more profitable one. A trend has a ceiling and a date attached. An evergreen theme sells quietly for years.

Competition

For a niche: how much is already listed, what it sells for on average, and the tags those listings lean on. The bars are relative to the busiest niche on screen rather than to any fixed scale.

Read this as a gut check, not a verdict. A crowded niche at a low average price is hard to enter no matter how good the other signals look. A very quiet niche is either an opening or something nobody wants, and the rest of the page is what tells you which.

What the numbers mean

The percentage bar is a ranking, not a grade. It compares each phrase against the others on today’s shortlist, weighing demand against how clear the shelf is, then adjusting for direction of travel and how well the signal is corroborated. The top item is always near 100% because it is the best of what is available today. It does not mean the phrase is a certainty, and a 60% on a strong day can be better than a 95% on a thin one.

Competition is banded rather than exact: low, medium, high, very high. Low means the shelf has room. Very high means you are competing against established listings for the same words.

The arrow is direction over time, rising, steady or fading. A rising arrow on a low competition phrase is the combination worth acting on.

The coloured dot is how well corroborated the figure is. Green means several independent readings agree. Amber means fewer. Red means the number rests on a single reading and should be treated as indicative.

What is filtered out before you see it

The opportunity shortlist is deliberately narrow. Phrases are excluded if they draw fewer than about a hundred searches a month, if the shelf is already more than about half full, or if they do not match the niche and product types on your shop.

This is why the list is short. It is meant to be a shortlist you can act on rather than a database you have to sift.

How often it updates

Seasonal, Market Signals and Competition refresh weekly. Buyer search behaviour on Etsy moves over weeks, not hours, and a page that changed hourly would only invite you to react to noise.

Keywords works differently. Search volume is loaded in a periodic import rather than pulled live, so it moves in batches rather than continuously. Between imports the numbers stay as they were, which is why the tracking-age tag matters more here than anywhere else on the page.

How the Assistant uses this

The AI Shop Manager reads the same data. Ask it what to make for a season or a theme and its suggestions already account for what is rising, what is saturated and where you are in the calendar. This page is for when you want to see the underlying picture yourself rather than be handed a conclusion.

What is included

The personalised view is part of every paid plan. Free accounts see a partial view.

Getting more out of it

• Ignore anything with less than about six weeks of runway. This data earns its keep on what is coming. By the time a phrase is obviously hot, the listings that will rank for it were published weeks ago.
• Prefer a green dot at 60% over a red one at 95%. Corroboration beats a high score built on a single reading.
• Filter through your own shop. A real opportunity that does not suit your aesthetic is a distraction. The Assistant applies this for you. On this page you apply it yourself.
• Watch which ones you acted on. After a few months you will know which kinds of signal turn into sales in your shop specifically, which is worth more than any individual number here.

FAQ

Why is a tab empty? For Seasonal, Market Signals or Competition: the current data does not reach your niche. Broaden the niche on your product setup, or work from the Evergreen list, which is organised by category rather than by your shop. Keywords should not go empty — if nothing matches your shop it shows market-wide demand instead, labelled as such.

What does “market-wide demand” mean at the top of Keywords? That we could not match the list to your shop, so you are seeing the broad picture rather than a shortlist chosen for you. It usually means the niche on your shop profile is either very unusual or not written in the language buyers search in. A niche like “whimsical boho animal wall art” matches well. One like “my creative side project” has nothing to match on. The data is still real either way, it is just not filtered for you.

Is this unique to me? The underlying demand picture is not, since market interest is market interest. The filtering is: your niche, your product types and your shop’s history decide what surfaces and in what order.

Why does the top item always sit near 100%? Because the bar ranks today’s shortlist against itself. It answers “which of these first”, not “is this a good idea in absolute terms”.

Can I export it? Not today. The page is read-only.

How is this different from the keyword page? That page generates suggestions with a language model from a niche you type. This page reports collected data. Use that one for phrasing ideas and this one for deciding what to make.

Can I start a product straight from a card? Selecting a keyword opens the Assistant with it attached, which is the quickest route into a product today. Launching directly from a card is a planned addition.