How I Made Nearly 100K in One Year Selling Digital Downloads on Etsy
Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, yeah…it’s great you made money, but how did you do it?”.
Before I start, I just want to note that this is a raw, unfiltered blog post that I’m typing up from the top of my head. I just want to give you a transparent answer to what it takes to be a successful Etsy seller from my perspective and experience.
I say this a million times, but everyone’s situation and experiences are different. Some people can hop on Etsy and make 1,000 sales without any effort. For others…like me…it takes time & work. So, here’s how I grew my Etsy shop to make $93K in a year after being in business for 2 years…
First things first, it’s definitely easier said than done.
For you, all you see is the end-result but you weren’t here when I was buried in the trenches.
I’ve put in work for the past 2 years…and a lot of it nobody from the outside could see…that I was waking up first thing in the morning and logging onto my computer to put in a full days of work, or the holidays that I missed, or the social life that I had to put on the back burner for a while.
Which brings me to my first tip…
1. The work you put in determines the results you get out of it
I know the internet has glamorized the whole “make a full-time income while only working 3 hours a week” narrative, but if you start off your business with the intent of putting mediocre effort into it, then you’re going to get mediocre results.
The fact of the matter is, all of the heavy duty work is going to fall right between the time you launch to well after you make your first 1,000 sales. There’s a lot of setting up, analyzing, scratching projects to start all over, and serious grunt work that you have to get through in order to see success in your shop.
The more time and effort you put towards your business in the beginning, the sooner you can kick your feet up a little.
If you’re working a full-time job, make a commitment to yourself to devote all of your extra time to building your business. Yes, you will have to sacrifice some things, but it’s going to be so worth it.
If you don’t have a full-time job, make Etsy your full-time job until you get it up and running so it can run itself. From 9-5, pour your attention into your shop. If you think you don’t have anything else to “fix” or “change”…look again!
Again, get out of the mindset that you don’t have to put a lot of energy into your shop to make full-time income!
2. Create a plan & stick with it
I won’t go into too much detail, but here’s the gist…if you keep starting and stopping strategies inconsistently, you’re not going to get anywhere. You absolutely have to commit to a shop-building strategy for a long period of time to see results.
Going through non-stop trial and error because I wasn’t getting any instant gratification with my results is what took me so long to build my first shop.
When it comes to building a shop, you have to do a whole lot of one thing before you actually see an impact on your shop.
