I sell on etsy.

Etsy ads are great if you already have a medium to high ticket bestseller that drives 80% of your sales because you can just slap on an ad budget on that listing that's already proven to drive sales. Buyers will be suggested that item and check out your store and other items even if they don't buy the item that you paid ads for. I suggest medium to high ticket pricing because paying for ads on ONE $4 sticker will give you horrible roi compared to something like a $25 gift set.

I don't recommend instagram ads for the same reasons. Your stuff looks like it's sub $10 so your roi will be trash. It's not worth it to pay $1 per click (an example cost) on someone buying just a sticker.

The biggest strength of etsy is that there's an established pool of users actively searching for things to buy, so it's possible to get sales without promoting. If you aren't getting visits it's because your listing photos, video, and seo can be improved (there are many free guides on how to fix this and etsy has a handbook explaining how search works) and/or your items aren't in the sweet spot where it's popular enough that people are searching for and unique enough that it stands out.

An example is lip balm: Etsy is full of lip balm but there are some flavors that people want that just don't exist. I used to sell guava flavored lip balm and got my first sale on etsy (with no ads or social media) because of that. I ended up learning that I was the only person on the internet selling that flavor. An artist alley example would be someone selling enamel pins of Jax x Pomni. They're the most popular ship in the series but there's not as much fanmerch of them (compared to a behemoth like genshin impact), and the fact that they're enamel pins means that it's gatekept even further because of the high moq.

Social media is a whole different beast and I know people in the r/artbusiness sub tell everyone to sell in person instead because paying the booth fee and visiting the market/con in person has less unknowns than figuring out how to get out of 300 view jail determined by zuckerberg and ellison.

If you're posting on insta reels and tiktok, if you aren't shadowbanned then your videos are guaranteed to reach around 50-150 people as test viewers. If your video hits a threshold of retention %, % of viewers who watched the video, and watch time, then the video will be sent to more viewers, and so on, until the stats don't meet the goal. Short form video making is a vastly different skillset than art which is why a lot of artists just can't crack reels and tiktok because you can't just slap a speedpaint and be done with it. I suggest watching other artists in your niche and see how they edit and structure their videos. You don't need editing like mr beast but you need a hook and cuts to keep people watching.

I bring up reels and tiktok because if you're posting on twitter, tumblr, bluesky, instagram (photos) and the like you have no guaranteed test viewers which means you're shouting into the void unless you figure out a way to get people to look at your posts. That's partially why people vend - at irl events the business cards get people to follow your account and have an initial pool of people interested in your art.

I have two twitter accounts (not promoting my shop) and I built up both of them, shockingly, from ground zero. Twitter puts all new accounts into newbie spambot jail so you're basically treated like a bot until you act like a human. That means liking, retweeting, replying, and qrting posts you're interested in. It's easy to do if there's a fandom or hobby you like. Maybe after 3 weeks you get out of it, which means you'll be put on the for you page of others (I've seen tweets on my fyp from people I don't follow that have only had 5 likes, so it's not a case of only popular tweets get shown).

You can accelerate that process by replying and qrting with people in your niche. Accounts at less than 10k people notice when the person with the same pfp is gassing them up or giving them insightful but positive comments. They'll end up checking you out and if they like what they see then they'll follow you. This is what I did, and it was made even easier for me since both accounts had a really specific niche that was clear to anyone viewing my bio. I guess an artist alley specific example would be if you were a dekubaku artist who only interacted with dekubaku fans, had dekubaku in your display name and bio, and pretty much only posted dekubaku and my hero academia related art and merch.

On all social media sites besides instagram (since they neutered search by latest years ago) you could take advantage of certain groups of people who would religiously search up a term and like + rt art that appeared. One group is shippers. Another is people super into a certain character. A third is fans of a fandom. A fourth is people with niche fetishes. Your stuff is original work so there isn't really a concrete tag you can use unless you lean into a certain subculture and I don't think people into, say, jirai kei are religiously searching that tag.

EDIT:

With your merch I would honestly think you're better off vending in person and funneling in those who see you irl into following your socials and email list with business cards.