Etsy is a convenient place to shop for gifts and other things that you might like for yourself, but is there a way to put a wish list or a gift registry on Etsy to keep track of things and to let other people find gifts for you?
Etsy has a few ways that you can gather things that you might like to purchase, but it’s a little tricky so read on for the details.
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Table of Contents
- Does Etsy have a wishlist or registry feature?
- Can you make an Etsy wishlist or registry?
- Can anyone see my Etsy registries?
- How to add something to your Etsy wishlist or registry.
- Is an Etsy registry and wishlist free?
- How to share your Etsy wishlist.
- How to find someone’s Etsy wishlist.
Does Etsy have a wishlist or registry feature?
It doesn’t seem to be widely known, but Etsy does have a wedding registry, a baby registry, and a gift registry feature that registered users can take advantage of.
They’ve had the wedding registry for quite some time. I signed up for it just to see what it was about when they first rolled it out, and that was years ago.
The baby registry is more recent, and just came out a few months ago as I write this.
The gift registry is something that I didn’t even know was there, so I don’t know if that’s something new or if it’s been there all along and they just haven’t publicized it very well.
All three can be used to save products that you find on Etsy and mark as a favorite, and then you can share them with your friends if you are in the market for receiving gifts for an occasion.
Can you make an Etsy wishlist or registry?
If you’re a registered user on Etsy and you’ve signed into your account, you can create your own registry by signing up to start a registry and then adding things to your favorites.
To sign up for an Etsy registry, sign into your Etsy account and go to the registry page to create an official registry.
You’ll be prompted to add some information with your name and co-registrants if there are other people on your list, and then you can start adding products to your registry.
You can publish a registry once you have at least one item on it, or you can leave it private until you want to let it be available for other people.
The registry will show up in your personal profile, but nobody will be able to see it except for yourself until you do publish it.
Once you publish it, it will show up in your personal profile under your favorites with the collections that you have, and it will be identified with the name of the registry so that people can find it and you can share it with friends.
You can’t make an Etsy registry if you’re not a registered user of Etsy, because you have to have a registered account in order to save favorites on Etsy.
To get to the Etsy registry page to sign up click this link: Etsy registries.
Can anyone see my Etsy registries?
You can set your Etsy Registries to be visible only to yourself or to the public.
The wedding registry that I have set up in my personal profile was only a test to see how it works, so I had set it to be private.
You can see that in the photo, there’s a little lock, and it says “no one else can view your registry yet.”
Etsy says that you can add up to 100 items to your registry, and that you can make it public at any point.
So you could go in and set up a registry, not make it public until it’s ready, then make it public so that people can find it and that you can share it with other people.
The registry will also keep track of things that have been purchased so that people can see what’s already been bought, and when the event is over you can go in and see who purchased what so that you can send thank you notes to the right people.
When you’re ready to share your registry, you can make it available to the public or you can choose to have a link that you can send to people to share it directly with them.
That way you can keep the registry private if you don’t want to make it publicly searchable, but you’ll still be able to send it to the wedding guests to make sure that they know what’s on your registry.
How to add something to your Etsy wishlist or registry.
To add something to your Etsy registry you need to be signed into your Etsy account.
Go to a listing that you like and click the heart in order to favorite that listing.
After you click the heart a little window will open up that suggests that you add this to a collection or registry.
If you tap add to a collection or registry, your favorites will open up, and the registry will be available as one of the collections that you can add things to.
Once you click the name of the registry that item will be added to that registry, and other people will be able to find it later if you direct them to the registry link.
Is an Etsy registry and wishlist free?
There’s no cost to sign up for an Etsy registry or wish list, (which would be the gift registry,) and you can also use the other collections on Etsy to keep track of things that you might like but don’t necessarily want someone to buy for you.
You can also have some collections set to secret so that you’re the only one who can see them in case you’re choosing gifts for someone else.
To create a collection, all you need to do is favorite something, click “add to a collection.” and then create a collection with the button there that says “make a new collection.”
The collection will show up on your favorites page, and you can add more things to it as time passes.
Each collection is a separate board, similar to Pinterest boards, and they can be set to be private or public.
Collections don’t have the same features that Registries do as far as seeing what was purchased and being able to link to them and send the links to other people.
They’re more for you to keep track of things in specific groups, as opposed to listing things that you want other people to buy for you as gifts.
To see the full Artisan Shopping Directory sections, including signups for discounts, click here.
How to share your Etsy wishlist.
To share your Etsy wish list or registry, you can choose the option to make your registry public, or you can choose the option to get a link that you can send to people individually.
If the registry is public, anyone who comes to your personal profile will be able to see it and see what’s on it.
With the link option, the registry will be private unless the person who has the link uses that link to get to the registry.
If you want to limit the number of people who can see what’s on your gift registry the link option is better, but if you want to let more people see what you’d like to receive as a gift, leaving it public is fine.
How to find someone’s Etsy wishlist.
To find someone’s wish list or registry on Etsy, you need to know their name, and their registry also needs to be marked as public.
Go to etsy.com/registry, and it will prompt you to enter the person’s name who you’re looking for.
If their registry is public and they use their full name the way that you typed it in on Etsy, their registry should come up.
If their registry is still private it won’t come up, and it will give you a message that they can’t find that registry, like the example that I posted in the image above.
As you can see, when I searched for my registry I couldn’t find it using my name, because it’s still marked as private.
Until someone publishes their registries, you won’t be able to access them or see anything that’s on them.
Once they’ve been published, they might only be findable if you have the link that goes directly to them if they haven’t made that registry public.
Unless they’ve given you the link to find that registry or wish list, you might not be able to find it at all.
If that’s the case, you’ll need to ask that person directly for a link to the registry.
I wrote another article about how to find people on Etsy, so that might help, but Etsy doesn’t make it easy to find people all the time.
Your best bet might be to ask that person to send you a link directly, because then you won’t have to waste time hunting around and trying to figure out if you found the right person and the right registry that you should be buying from.
Etsy’s wish list / gift registry options are really handy, and they’re something that not a lot of people know exist.
Definitely take the time to sign up for a gift registry, especially if you’re a hard-to-buy-for person and you want to give people big hints.
You might also want to check out some of the gift guide articles on this site, and you can find those here: Gift Guides