I Made My First Etsy Sale 2 Months Ago — A 60 Day Progress Report
With over $180k in debt, starting my side hustle journey was a *must.*
Why Etsy?
My Etsy shop, No Thoughts Just Vibes, is a print on demand e-commerce storefront I started after watching Its Heather Studios on TikTok. I originally found her content in maybe March of 2022 and finally decided to take the leap to start on my own POD journey in July (side note: f you don’t know what Print on Demand is, I encourage you to check out my article about getting starting with POD).
But why Etsy? Why Print on Demand?
So a quick background on me, I graduated from law school in 2019 with about $172k in debt (that was *after* my half ride scholarships to both undergrad and law school + graduating a semester early from both schools). I knew when I finished law school that I did not want to be an attorney or pursue work in the legal field, so since then I’ve worked various positions in tech and management. That debt, though, always hangs over my head.
In early 2022, I learned about the FI/RE movement (Financial Independence / Retire Early) and quickly engulfed myself in the community on Instagram. I grew up in an impoverished household, so I did not know much about financial literacy before diving in to this niche group. I learned from them (and various books, I’ll release a reading list later if y’all are interested) that there’s only so much that you can *cut* from your budget, but you can earn infinitely.
Earn more? Listen. That was something that had occurred to me but was something I thought was only possible by leveling up the career ladder. I had never considered opening a business or working side hustles to bring in extra cash.
Opening a side hustle though, seemed impossible. My job at the time was incredibly taxing (as a team lead over a 24/7 team at TikTok, I felt obligated to be “on-call” most of the time, but that’s a story for another day), and I didn’t feel like I had any more time or energy to give. I kept an eye out for “do-able” side hustles, and after watching Heather’s videos for *months*, I decided POD was simple enough that I could at least give it a shot.
So here we are, two months later! If you were scrolling thinking “just get to the stats already, lady”, they’re coming up — I’ll give an overview of my “All Time” stats (July through September 12th, 2022) and then a month by month breakdown + how I grew to these numbers.
All Time Stats
As a disclaimer, I opened my shop in early July and sold my first item to my fiancé a few days after, on July 12th.
My understanding of the difference between “Views” and “Visits” is that views are how many times your items were clicked on / seen, and visits are how many times people visited your storefront, but if I’m behind honest, I’m not 100% that that’s accurate. Let me know in the comments if you know!
Additionally, I want to highlight a couple of other stats found on my storefront I think are important:
In the All Time stats, you can see that I’ve had 22 Orders, but this other figure of 25 Sales appears on the shop page. I’ve determined that “Sales” is how many products have been ordered (I had a couple people order more than one item at a time) whereas “Orders” is simply how many times an order has been placed on the site.
“Admirers” is how many people have favorited the store as a whole (not individual items within the shop). New items appear in the “Updates” section on these admirers’ Etsy app, so having people favorite the page is a great way to get repeat customers or to get potential customers to see your new listings.
As of September 12th, I’ve posted 340 listings to my shop.
I actually remember seeing Mar Riney’s article about her 2 month progress check in with her Etsy shop a few months ago wherein she noted she wanted to put an additional 250 listings up. At the time I thought “250 LISTINGS? I could NEVER, that’s so ambitious!” But now that I’m up to 340, my goal is to get to 1000 ASAP.
The more listings I have, the more reach I have. Q4 is also traditionally when people see the most growth and revenue in their Etsy shops (think last minute Christmas shopping), so I would actually like to have 1000 listings up by the end of October to get the items to potentially rank by Black Friday / Cyber Monday.
Currently, I have eleven 5-star reviews (huuuge thanks to my friends for this one!). One of the most difficult components of opening a new store is having this kind of public confirmation that you’re a real human being and that your items aren’t a scam. Some people will look up your social media accounts to ensure your store is real (especially when you do not have many sales), but many people will look to your reviews before making a purchase to double check on your quality, speed, and customer service.
As a brand new shop with no reviews, it’s hard to get strangers to trust that your business is *real* and won’t screw them over by stealing their funds and then disappearing off the face of the earth.
Let’s do the month by month breakdown, shall we?
July 2022
July was really a learning process for me. I opened the shop and began to upload listings (I don’t have exact numbers, but I believe I had about 50 listings posted by the end of the month). I also advertised that I had opened my shop on my personal instagram, my Facebook, and my LinkedIn.
My two orders were from my fiancé and my work bestie.
I still need to do my QuickBooks, but I know I haven’t had any profit in the store at this time, so I will not be breaking down what my “profit” was for this month or through present day. Maybe next month, though?
August 2022
August gave me some momentum. I remember posting on LinkedIn on August 12th that I had a few less than 100 listings available in the shop.
I had three things that really helped me succeed throughout month:
1. I set a public goal and asked my friends to help me hit it
On August 10th (see the spike?) I asked my friends on Instagram and Facebook to help me hit my goal of 10 sales / reviews for the month. I am so thankful to have such a strong support system, because they showed up for me almost immediately and got me to my goal by, I believe, September 15th.
I also did a review exchange with one of my co-workers who recently opened his own Etsy shop, Stateroom Statements, in the cruise niche.
Miraculously, I also received a couple of sales from strangers for my Digital Size Charts (I made them for my own shop and thought “eh, why not put them up for sale too? Who knows if someone will buy it), and after I messaged them through the Etsy app, they also left reviews! I was shocked, and that experience really helped me continue to be consistent.
2. I started using Etsy ads
To be honest, I still don’t feel like these have helped my shop a ton. However, Etsy only counts these (and only charges you) once someone clicks on one of your ad, so I do know that these ads directly brought 57 potential future customers throughout the month. Every person counts!
3. I bought Heather’s $375 course on running a successful POD shop and ate. it. up.
Remember how I mentioned I originally opened my shop after stalking ItsHeatherStudios TikTok for literal months? Well, it turns out she offers a Print on Demand Academy. Since I already trusted her content, I was happy to give her an extra $375 to learn from her course directly and to have access to her private Facebook group + monthly coaching calls (which has been a lot of extra value, I’m not going to lie).
I finished her 8 module course in maybe 2 weeks, spending about an hour learning each day. In the course I learned how to use Sales Samurai (will update with a referral code once I get accepted to the affiliate program) and learn how to make designs on Canva (well, better designs because my first few were absolute garbage).
Most importantly, though, I gained access to Heather’s personal stats with how fast her store grew. Her numbers were similar to mine when I was first starting, and her growth is still similar to mine. Without that case study, I may have given up. I’m a big “instant gratification” person, and this slow growth + thinking years in advance is new to me. Seeing Heather’s stats helped me continuously remember that this is a long game. It’s not about how much I can grow in a month, it’s about where I could be in a year or beyond.
September 2022
September has been really exciting for me so far! And to be honest, these “How shoppers found you” stats are a little misleading for this month.
So what changed in September to double my average daily views?
I started posting in Facebook groups.
A simple trick, and one that nearly everybody who talks about e-commerce recommends, creating a *single post* in a FB group with 39k members skyrocketed my views, favorites, and admirers count.
Nothing about this post was a trick, though. I genuinely was just looking for feedback and made sure to ask mods for the group if I could post about it before submitting these items. I was SO shocked by the number of responses I got (and favorites at the shop, my phone would NOT stop popping off).
I have also received six orders from strangers because of this post. I had not received any shirt / sweatshirt sales from strangers up until this point, so this experience was really exciting for me (please read as “I literally scream every time I get a sale and run to tell my fiancé).
Since September 5th when I posted, I have consistently seen >70 visits per day. I’ve posted in a few other groups since then, but nothing has popped off and brought traffic in like that first post did. But that’s okay! Just seeing what it would be like to have a popular store getting consistent favorites and sales was such a fun and fulfilling experience for me that I’m happy to continue to work towards it over time.
So, how much money did I make?
The question everyone tends to ask is “is it profitable?” which is totally fair, and at this time, the answer is no. That $375 course set me back quite a bit, and my profit margin on each item after production and shipping costs ranges anywhere from $4–$15, so it’ll probably still take a hot second to pay off.
Additionally, I filed for my LLC last month which came with a hefty $300 filing charge in Texas. These larger charges, on top of the smaller charges to buy my mockup images + monthly Canva, Sales Samurai, and QuickBooks subscriptions, likely means it will probably still be a few months until I see profit from the shop.
But that’s okay. I’m learning it’s about the long game!
I’ll be sure to continue with these monthly updates, so please give ya girl a follow if you’d like to keep following along with my Print on Demand, Side Hustle, and debt payoff journey!