How I Scaled a New Etsy Shop to $91,894.12 in 3 Months

let's talk about my brand new print on demand shop I'm excited to break down all of the numbers what's been going really well what's been working the strategies I've been implementing you might have already seen But I shared a little Glimpse at what has been going on in this shop and it has absolutely blown up and I'm sure that you are probably wondering what the fudge did she do to have this result and see these numbers so let's Dive Right In to pick up where we left off when I last recorded a video for this series it was September I had just started really actively listing in my shop and I was starting to see some views and some favorites trickle in but I hadn't seen any sales yet now I shared previously that this shop is using a different strategy than I did with my first shop I shared that I was making this shop Niche specific what I mean by being Niche specific is instead of expanding into tons of different niches like I did with my first shop in this shop I wanted to stay in the one Niche and expand into multiple different product types with that the niche that I pick for this shop is what I'm considering the events Niche which is super broad I know but there's a method behind the madness I wanted to choose something that was broad enough that would give me the opportunity to see the sales volume that I wanted to see and I also wanted it to be broad enough that it was expandable my thought process is that there are events literally all throughout the year no matter the time of year people are always finding a reason to party and so that was the real Core theme of what I wanted this shop to be about when you think of parties I think of things like signage and props and accessories and apparel and all types of different products that also can be print on demand products but can fit into that larger theme some of the types of events I started thinking of are things like weddings birthdays graduation parties bridal showers baby showers Christmas parties there literally so many and I got really excited when I thought about this as a niche it honestly just made my creativity explode and I have absolutely loved designing and creating for this niche in our last check-in I mentioned how in this shop I was only going to be starting with one product type now that wasn't necessarily the long-term goal as I mentioned I want to have one Niche but multiple different product types but I didn't want to spread myself out too thin in the beginning I wanted to go in really with a analytical approach where I can look at the data and see what is and isn't working so that I know exactly where I need to put more effort spend less effort and use that to choose my focus forward the product type that I started this shop with is signage it's a product type that I had never sold before but I was definitely curious about it and I figured it made the most sense for events I also really like liked the idea of selling something with a higher price point signs tend to be a little bit more expensive and I wanted to see how they would perform one thing that I had to factor in was shipping costs because signs are more expensive they're larger and in September if you remember Etsy shared that if you had more than a $6 shipping charge for your products then you were going to be limited in the search results your products weren't going to be shown to as many people and I I wasn't really sure how to take that there really wasn't a way that I felt made sense to adjust my pricing strategy to have cheaper shipping and then bake it into the price and go about it that way just to accommodate the new visibility score and how that was going to impact the shop and so I figured I didn't really have anything to lose at this point in September I hadn't made any sales so I just left it as is and I'm glad that I did for one because I think it was a really good test to see just how important those visibility metrics are at least for the shipping option portion of it the other thing is that I figured if it was actually affecting my visibility then I could go ahead and make a modification it wouldn't be that big of a deal but I didn't like the idea of adjusting my whole pricing strategy and structure and so I decided to just leave it as is which spoiler it didn't affect anything at all so as far as my print partner I am using printify for every single product that is in this shop now a disclaimer before we jump into the details the purpose of this video is to inspire you and to share with you what has worked for me it is not for you to compare your journey directly to mine every shop every journey is different it's also important to know that I am an experienced print on demand seller I do this full-time I'm self-employed and so starting this shop was definitely different than starting my first shop because I have a lot of experience under my belt at this point I started this shop with knowledge of a niche knowledge of designs and design styles that work knowledge of listing images how to create listing images and high quality listing images the strategies that I'm going to share are meant to give you ideas give you inspiration but remember that this is your journey so just take what resonates with you take what you can apply to your shop and your goals all right so now this is where we left off in September September was a very busy month for me I was actively listing in the beginning of September I got my shop to about 31 listings this month but then the later half of the month I actually was getting ready to leave I went to Rial lvia for PR ofice Amplified event and that was a journey in itself I had a great time but it kind of threw off my mojo when it came to being in this shop being active and listing because I was in a completely different time zone and then leading up to that trip I also was just trying to get my home and my family and everything else in order so that I could leave to go on that trip the last half of September this shop really took the back burner I wasn't really doing a ton of things and it was reflective in the metrics that you see here once I got back home from my trip I just had a new fire lit up inside of me I think going to printify headquarters being around other print on demand entrepreneurs there's something that's just very motivating and inspiring about that and so I came back just ready to fully commit to this shop and that is exactly what I did I made a promise to myself that I was going to actively and consistently list in this shop I really had no reason that I couldn't and so I started listing about 5 to 10 listings a week which really isn't even that crazy I was listing about a listing a day some sometimes two sometimes three give or take but 5 to 10 listings a week I also want to add that when I was creating these 5 to 10 listings these were all individual Unique Designs on the product and so I wasn't duplicating listings like I shared in the previous video of this series something that I was testing originally was not only different design Styles when I first was listing in my shop but I also was testing to see which different thumbnail images got the most traction as well and so in September I was able to get some views and that honestly gave me a lot of direction as to what thumbnail image I was leaning towards for being my main mockup image that people would see in the search results and so I decided to just take that data and run with it and instead of scaling listings by different mockups and different thumbnail images I really wanted to just double down and scale out Unique Designs in this shop now while I was doing this I also was still only listing on signs and a lot of times people would typically start listing on tons of different product types at this point but I want to tell you why I didn't yet and the reason is I wanted to understand what designs were actually going to be speaking to my ideal audience at this point this was a relatively new Niche I had a good understanding of just design fundamentals and what worked from my original shop but this was a really new category for me and so I wanted to get a little bit of a proof of concept and get some validation on design Styles before taking those design Styles and putting them onto new product types and expanding my shop in that way following this listing strategy I got to about 78 listings by the end of October the results of October I think are really going to shock you because they honestly shocked myself here's an overview of what October looked like as you can see it really grew and it really just started when I got my first sale the day that I got my first sale was actually on October 6th what's crazy is I didn't just get one sale that day I ended up getting five and it was all for one single listing now I'm going to say something that is probably going to make some of you click off of this video and that's okay if if this isn't what you want to do then this doesn't have to be what you do but I encourage you to hear me out I started running ads in [Music] October I know that the reason that I saw this growth and got five sales for my first sales in this shop is because I had turned on ads on October 1st if you are a longtime viewer of my channel if you're an OG you know that I am not afraid of ads I'm not a stranger to ads but you do have to have a very specific strategy and be very active when running Etsy ads and honestly that's usually why most people don't benefit from running Etsy ads or they don't like running Etsy ads it eats up all their budget they're just kind of turning them on as a way to make sales but not really paying attention to them when I turned on ads in this shop my pure goal by turning on ads was to gather more data not to gather or collect sales and revenue sales and revenue from ads is truly a byproduct of what you do with the information that your ads tell you a master in marketing will always tell you that ads are for information not for new customers or for sales yes they can lead to new customers and to new sales but if you're only slapping marketing out into the world using something like Etsy ads just with the intent of making money you really lose a lot of the information that's at your finger tips on how you can grow scale and improve the business that you are trying to grow and scale and improve in September when I only had like I don't know it was like 100 views or something like that that sounds and seems like a lot when you're brand new and don't necessarily have the experience yet to know what a lot of views look like but I'm sorry to say that 100 views is not a lot in the grand scheme of things and especially when you think about the conversion rate or the average conversion rate that you see in e-commerce if you want a One % conversion rate you need at least 100 views to make one sale sometimes it takes more often than not actually it takes a lot more views just to get that first sale and for a brand new shop that isn't really looking super trustworthy yet or credible because there's no sales no reviews it usually is going to take even more views to actually see your first sale with that truly the simplest way to flood eyeballs to your listings is by by running ads and so that is what I did there's two main things that I learned from the ads in October that really helped me Propel my shop into November and see the results that I did the first thing that I saw is that certain listings that I had had a high amount of views but they didn't really have a high click rate and so I was getting eyeballs on those listings but nobody was really interested in clicking into them and this typically tells me that my SEO is working to some regard it's getting my product seen by people which is the purpose of the SEO my title and my tags but something about the thumbnail image isn't doing it for the people that are seeing it in this type of scenario for my experience it's generally a design issue and that is typically why somebody's not clicking into the listing but it also can be things like the thumbnail image or even the price point now the second thing that I noticed in my Etsy ads was one of my listings the listing that started to sell had a ton of clicks and was also leading to sales that is the perfect opportunity to take that information and double down with it and so that is what I did some of the ways that I decided to double down with that listing is I wanted to create more listings very similar to it using the same title and tags but creating new designs and putting those out there on the same product type and then another way that I double down was actually taking the design that was selling and putting that on to new product types that complemented the events niche as a whole and so now this one design turned into a collection of that design for that specific type of event that when people came for one of the products they ended up often buying multiple and so this really increased my average order value and I found that most of my orders were seeing an average order value of over 50 and even $60 at times it can often feel really discouraging leading up to this point and feels like there's not a lot of information to go off of when you don't have any sales yet but there really is so much data within your shops analytics you just have to dive deep into it there are tons of ways that customers can be interacting with your listings including clicking into it of course views thinking about things like favorites as well if your listings are seeing views and favorites but they're not converting so even if you're not running ads and you're just seeing this information on your main dashboard or on your listings in Etsy that's a good indic that it might be similar to the issue that I saw with the one ad that had high Impressions but no clickthrough with that listing the first thing that I wanted to focus on was design now the moral of the story with October is that I saw a lot of information about what was working and that is where I narrowed my focus to and only focused on in this shop I put all of my energy into that working design putting it into new product types using the same SEO that was proven for the listings that were really starting to get a lot of momentum and taking off and because I was now running ads throughout October I was raising my ad budget anytime Etsy allowed me to I found this to be about once a week that I was able to raise the budget now if you are watching this and you're currently running ads and you're like oh my gosh Taylor just said that she's raising her budget every single time that she could I should do that too please don't I mean you can if you really want to but I typically don't recommend this for new sellers or somebody who isn't necessarily as acclimated to their ads yet or if their ads aren't quite as profitable quite yet and if you are not monitoring them pulling information from them and then actually acting upon that information you often are going to end up spending a lot more than you really need to and so the reason that this was part of my strategy is because as I mentioned in the beginning of this video I do this full time I have full ability to be in my Etsy ad dashboard looking at where the money is being spent making tweaks making adjustments and this is also my second time scaling a shop so I already have the experience and I just felt comfortable doing so and so that is what I continued throughout October after I made those initial sales I saw sales every single day for the remainder of October now they were a little bit all over the place they were up they were down my highest order day I think I had 18 orders and that was actually toward the later half of the month I think it was actually on the last day of October I'll have the screenshot right here all in all I saw 194 orders in October and because I was selling higher ticket products my Revenue was over $6,000 I also just want to show what this fluctuation really can look like so while I did have an order day of 18 orders I also would have days as low as two and it's not uncommon during this phase to actually then go back to having days with zero I didn't have that experience but it is normal to have fluctuation especially as you are kind of Paving your way and finding out what's working now looking at November it is December 1st as I'm recording this and I am honestly still in shock has been the craziest month I have ever experienced in my entire life this is more than my first shop has done it was completely above and beyond any of my expectations and I just want to also add that I don't think that this is like normal so to speak I don't think that this is something that as I mentioned in the beginning of this video I don't want you to compare and think that you know this is just how it goes when you grow and you double down I'm not saying that it can't happen but I also just want to have really realistic expectations and I'm going to make future videos and updates but I just really had the one product do so well and because I doubled down on what was working with it that is truly why I feel that I saw these continued results into November and why November ended up truly being a life-changing month for me as you can see in November I had over 2,000 orders and my highest order day was actually 182 orders I know you're already wondering how much of that is profit how much do you get to keep how much did you spend on ads I'm going to get to all of that here in just a moment but I wanted to just show this glimpse of kind of what the orders look like throughout the month because really the bulk of this was actually in the last week during this month I still was actively listing and after October that put another fire behind me and I decided to list even more in November I got this shop to about 222 listings I also want to add that at this point in the shop it is still a core of about 3 to four designs that are selling these three to four designs started selling on one product and then I would expand it to multiple different product types for example the first design that sold in October I expanded that to multiple different product types then I started to see a few other design Styles sell and I did that same process so it was kind of just this ooh this is working let me Focus my energy there put a bunch of products out of course researched products but I already knew the design would sell so I just repeated that process and continued that all throughout the month of November I also think that this is such a good takeaway majority of my listings don't really see the type of traction and attention that the listings that are doing really well are seeing and I think the moral of the story there the takeaway is that you don't necessarily always know what listings are going to be those listings for you you don't really know what designs are going to be the ones that really take off for you like I said I could have never foreseen this taking off the way that it did but I also wouldn't have gotten there if I didn't continue listing and being consistent in creating and scaling out my designs that I had in the shop another thing that I've really just been reflecting on with this shop is that because it is Niche specific It Feels So cohesive it just has this feel to it that is very unlike my other shop and I feel like I'm harping on my other shop I love my other shop that one's still ride or die does great but that is more of a general store and it has tons of different niches it's kind of scatter in the sense of like what's in there and who would buy from it I get tons of different types of customers where this shop I feel like when somebody comes to buy one thing from it because it has such a cohesive feel I found that I sell a lot more products in one order that's why the revenue is so high because so many customers are not just buying one thing they're buying multiple things and then I'm selling High ticket products as well in addition to that so let's Dive In in to the numbers I know you want to know the profit and I'm excited to share everything with you before we dive into that though I want to share with you something that I've been working on that I am excited and ready to share and that is that I am launching my full program plan scale profit if you've been following my journey learning from my strategies and my videos here on YouTube then my program that is getting ready to launch on January 1st is going to be the perfect fit for you this is a full program covering everything from Finding Your Niche to scaling to multi6 figures that is why the name is plan scale profit it is broken down into those three phases of a print on demand business everything that you need to know and how to operate while you're in the planning phase and that's really geared towards getting you to your first 100 sales from there you jump into scale which is focused on the growth and scaling strategies that are going to get you to your first 10,000 sales and the third phase of the program profit that is going to include everything that you need to know about running and owning a print on demand business what does it look like for bookkeeping and profit and taxes and just all of those details I wanted to keep in one place and make it a resource that's also easily accessible for any aspiring print on demand entrepreneur and so while it's a full program and a full course it's actually baked into the Pud connection which is my community and so all members of the community get full access to the program I will have a link in the description for you to learn more about it doors are currently closed but the reason I wanted to share it now is because doors reopen on January 1st and so if it's something that you're interested in I will have more information in the description as well as the wait list for you to join to be the first notified when doors reopen all right now let's get into the juicy details I use a website called profit Tre to track all of the revenue and expens and just overall profitability of my print on demand businesses and so what you see here is the full breakdown of this shop now what you'll notice is the net sales here is actually higher than what is being shown on Etsy and that can vary for a couple different reasons one of the main ones is if you are charging for shipping then what Revenue you see on Etsy is often a little bit different than what you will see here because profit tree actually takes into account all all of the revenue that you are collecting which is why I like using it because it just eliminates human error and trying to do math and things like that it's not fun now overall these metrics are for the shop year-to date now of course I didn't start making sales in it until October but this is everything from October to the end of November and so in that time frame my operating profit was $29,99 7. 79 that is a profit margin of about 27. 6 4% which I am obviously happy with that number I'm not going to make any complaints in my other shop I generally see around 30 to 35% profit margins but it's also completely different product types so this is new to me I'm playing around with it and maybe at some point I'll be working towards increasing the profit margin but nonetheless I think that this is a pretty good start this does break down all of the other costs that were associated with running this shop so the cost of good sold that's for all of the actual products so paying printify to make package and ship these products that cost $ 43,2 167.

50 which was about 41. 1% of my total costs there also was shipping costs because it cost to ship these products Etsy as a platform of course has their costs as well transaction fees are 6. 5% for this shop it was $684 to8 listing fees if you weren't familiar when you list a new product on Etsy it costs 20 cents but also every time you sell that product it renews and relists so you're also paying listing fees again every time the product sells so while I was listing but not to the extent that would necessarily make $1,000 worth of listing fees because I was selling products that's where this listing fee amount can really start to rack up of course it's only 1% of the total cost here but it was $1,527 processing fees are 3.

95% here it was $415 a. 38 and then last but not least my ad costs as I mentioned earlier I was increasing the budget as often as Etsy would allow me but I never got to the full threshold the highest my budget got to was about $500 and I don't think there was ever a day that I was spending that full amount I was usually spending somewhere between like $200 and $300 some days were higher some days were a little lower but I think that because I wasn't meeting that $500 that's why they never increased it this also was happening in such a short time frame that maybe just with time then it'll also let me increase that budget even more which I wouldn't be opposed to because overall my ad cost were 6. 37% and I spent $675.