Introduction
Artelo’s Bulk Digital Etsy Linking tool makes it easy to offer physical versions of your existing digital products. This process allows you to link digital listings directly to new physical listings that Artelo will fulfill on demand. Digital listing linking is an excellent strategy for growing Etsy sales by cross-selling physical prints using your existing digital listing traffic. To accompany this article, we've created a step-by-step video walkthrough demonstrating the entire feature.
What is Digital Listing Linking?
Digital Listing Linking is a strategy developed by Artelo to help Etsy sellers grow sales by offering physical versions of their digital products. By adding a reference image and link to a matching physical listing within each digital product, you can upsell existing traffic and boost conversion rates, without changing your core products. Artelo’s bulk linking tool lets you do this across dozens or hundreds of listings in one streamlined process.
Digital listing linking benefits:
Increases Conversion Rates - By directing digital listing traffic to physical product options, you capture more buyers who prefer physical products.
Upsells Existing Traffic - Leverages traffic you’re already getting on digital products to generate new revenue streams without additional ad spend.
Preserves Listing History - Keeps your reviews, SEO rankings, and listing structure intact while expanding your offerings.
Quick to Implement at Scale - Artelo’s bulk linking tool allows you to update dozens or hundreds of listings in minutes.
Improves Shop Perceived Value - Offering both digital and physical formats gives your shop a more complete and professional look.
Let's walk through an example:
The starting point: A standard digital listing on Etsy
A standard digital listing, like the one shown below, includes a few listing images but makes no mention of any physical product. Buyers browsing this page would have no idea that a physical version of the design exists unless they actively navigate to the shop page. This unlinked digital listing is the typical starting point for the linking process.
Linking the digital listing to a physical listing
The same digital listing from above now includes an image in the second slot that highlights the availability of a physical version. Additionally, the listing description has been updated to include a direct link to the matching physical product. This method—adding a visual cue and a description link—is what Artelo calls the linking digital listings to physical listings strategy. The final image shows the referenced physical product. This article walks you through how to apply this strategy across many listings at once using Artelo’s bulk linking tool.
The physical listing
When a buyer clicks the link in the description, they are taken to the corresponding physical listing that was "linked" to the digital listing.
Preliminary Steps
To begin the bulk digital listing flow and successfully link your digital listings to physical products, you'll need to complete a few essential setup steps:
Preliminary Step 1: Connecting an Etsy store with digital listings
Make sure you have a fully onboarded Etsy shop with digital listings on the Integrations page.
Preliminary Step 2: Creating templates
You’ll need to create templates that define the physical products you’ll offer and the listing structure we will use to create the physical listing.
To learn more about creating templates, read our template & product creation article.
For a template to be eligible for bulk digital listing, linking, you must include the following fields in the template:
Listing Images: You must include at least one image that will be applied to each listing. You can design your own or use images from Artelo's listing image library.
Note: Artelo doesn't yet support dynamic mockup generation. If you'd like to upload images with unique designs rendered into the mockups, you must upload those to each listing, independent of this process. We will be releasing a mockup feature in Q3 2025.
Note: Your existing listing images in your digital listings will be used in your new physical listings. We will also append the template's listing images to the physical listing images. Since Etsy only allows for 10 images per listing, we will exclude any digital listing images beyond 10 while still including the template listing images.
Variant Pricing: Complete the listing variants step by ensuring each variant has your desired pricing. This is the pricing we will use for the physical listings.
Listing Description: Write a detailed listing description for the physical listings. Artelo will automatically apply this description to new physical listings created in this process. However, during the listing generation step, you can manually change the descriptions for any listings.
Tags (Optional): You can add tags to your listings that will be applied to all physical listings.
Preliminary Step 3: Design the Linking Image (optional)
Finally, create a custom “linking image” to insert into your digital listings. This image points customers to the corresponding physical version and helps guide them to the upsell opportunity. Alternatively, you can use one designed by Artelo.
Step 1: Product Set Creation
In this step, you'll choose which of your existing digital listings you'd like to convert into physical products using Artelo’s bulk linking tool. You'll do this by generating and filling out the Excel sheet.
Generating the Excel Sheet
Select Your Etsy Store
Choose the Etsy store that contains the digital listings you want to link. The tool processes one store at a time, so only listings from the selected store will be included.
Generate the Listings File
Click to download an Excel file that includes all active listings from your selected store. This file will serve as your working sheet for the linking process.
Fill Out the Excel Sheet
For each digital listing you want to link to a new physical listing
Enter
Updatein the Operation column.Select a
templatein the Template column.Enter a unique product set name in the Product Set Name Column
Upload Your Completed File
Once your selections are complete, upload the file to the tool to continue. Once you've uploaded the file and the file is free of errors, click the next button to move to the next step.
Note: This step does not impact anything on your Etsy or Artelo account, whereas step 3 does.
💡 Helpful Tips
We highly recommend going through all three steps with one listing first to familiarize yourself with the process before implementing changes across a large number of listings.
Name your product sets the same as your listing titles.
Upload the Excel file to Google Sheets for a friendlier user experience. Watch the tutorial at the top of this article for a demonstration.
Double-check your templates before applying them to avoid errors later in the flow.
Step 2: Listing Generation
Generate the Listing Details File
Download the Excel file. Each row in this file represents one of the listings you’re preparing to launch as a physical product.
Fill Out the File
Use the SKU Prefix column to set a custom prefix that will be applied to the SKUs for this listing. This will help with tracking and fulfillment later.
Update listing Titles, Descriptions, Tags, or Option/Variation Names as needed.
Check that the correct Shipping Profile is assigned.
Upload Your Completed File
Once you’ve made your updates, upload the file to finalize your changes.
Note: This step does not impact anything on your Etsy or Artelo account, whereas step 3 does.
💡 Helpful Tips
This is a good time to add Tags if any listings are missing them.
Use the SKU Prefix field to generate consistent SKUs across similar product lines.
Usually, only a quick review is needed, especially if your template settings are already correct.
Step 3: Link Physical to Digital Listings
Finally, we'll make changes to the digital listings in bulk.
Updating the digital listing description
Use one of our suggested snippets or customize your own.
⚠️ Make sure to include the {{url}} in your description. Upon upload we will replace this with the URL for the newly created listing.
Insert the physical listing reference image
Add a listing image that links to the physical listing. We’ve designed several listing images that you can add to your listings. Design and upload your own custom image, or use one of our templates. The image slot field refers to where in the listing image order the reference image will be placed, we recommend slot 2.
💡 Helpful Tips
We recommend that you design you own image insert
Insert the reference image into slot 2.
Launch your listings
Now you're all set to launch your new physical listings.
⚠️ Uploading this file will create physical listings on Etsy and corresponding product sets for each listing on Artelo.
Wrapping up
You can use this process in whatever capacity you'd like. Some users take things slowly, others launch many physical listings all at once.
Fulfilling orders
During this process we create a product set for each listing that we choose to update in step 1.
These product sets were created as "draft connected" meaning that they are still missing design files.
Once your first order is placed, you'll be prompted to upload the designs for the product set from the orders page. After uploading the designs for the first order, any subsequent orders will be automatically fulfilled.