Category: life
Video 4 Gaining a Little Bit of Courage But Still a Long Way to Go
Video 3 Two Things I Have Learned so Far in My Etsy Journey
My Father’s Dream
Video 2: Stop Saying I’ll do it Tomorrow
My Upside Down Life video 1: a Nervous Ramble
Pain the Word that Best Describes this November
Pain, its not my favorite word, but sadly it was the perfect word to describe last month. After weeks of pushing as hard as I could to prepare for the holiday rush, dreaming of what might be, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not one sale the entire month.
My heart sank into my shoes. After all that effort, pushing myself to the point where I was to exhausted to move which intensified my chronic nausea and the severity of my now daily migraines, I had actually taken a step backward, because at least the previous November, with only a handful of activity packs, I had made 1 sale. And now, with more than a dozen POD puzzles, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and mugs I had made nothing.It was hard to tell what was more painful, the severe ache in my head or the searing pain in my heart.
While I had done my best to remain cautious, repeatedly reminding myself that even though I had slightly more than doubled my listings from the previous year, my selection of listings was still to low to expect hundreds of dollars worth of sales. Yet even though I knew there was no real hope of making a couple of 100 sales, considering that a few months earlier in the middle of quarter 3 I had made 8 sales, with the over 2 dozen listings I had added since then combined with the holiday rush, surely I should be able to double that number. Or so I thought.I wish I could say that the month of December proved to be kinder, but so far I have gotten a grand total of 1 sale where last year I at least had 3.
So enjoy this short acrostic poem about pain. And hopefully, if you were to chose a poem describing your last few weeks, words like cheer, joy, and success would be the words that best fit your experience.
If you are thinking about starting your own Etsy journey, click this link to get 40 free etsy listings. https://etsy.me/3MhfyfA
Click here, if you would like to check out my Etsy shop.
Sometimes I Feel so Inept: Starting a Shop on Etsy
Its 8 days into November, almost the middle of the much hyped quarter 4 and my heart is on the floor. I have been listening to You Tube videos about Etsy, and hearing how this or that item has had 20, 30, even 260 sales in the last couple of days, or how this person was able to use the brand new Everbee email that connects to Etsy to not only collect over a hundred new subscribers and make over 500 dollars in sales on one campaign. Meanwhile, after pushing myself to the breaking, my shop is full of loudly chirping crickets, and I fell like an inept, useless, daydreaming fool.
I do not know if it is my lack of design skills, my poor understanding of how to write a product description, my choice of keywords, heavy use of budget friendly mock ups, or all of the above; but it could be the middle of summer instead of nearly the middle of the most longed for quarter of the year. After so many weeks of hoping, planing, prepping, and doing all in my power to make this season a big success, and yet I have not made even 1 sale this month.
Talk about the ups and downs, especially the downs of having an Etsy shop. I was so sure that now that I had a few POD items, and had even made my own puzzle version of some of the designs that were currently popular like my Thankful for Sudoku, Cozy Puzzle Season, and Farm Fresh Pumpkin Mazes that this year was going to be at least a little bit better than last year. Besides introducing a line t-shirts and sweatshirts, I had added mugs, totes, tumblers, and even a couple of glass cutting boards and an apron.
After watching dozens of hours of Etsy videos, researching keywords, and searching for a few popular demands to tweak to my niche, I thought for sure I had started to learn something. That my knowledge base was growing, and I was finally starting to get a slight hand on how to improve my Etsy shop. But after today, after hearing about all those sales, I feel like I am still back at step one.
No, make that step negative 1,000 or even 1,000,000. Yup, that sounds about right. 8 days into what is supposed to be one of the busiest months of the year, having more than doubled my listings from this time last year, and not 1 sale, and it really feels like instead of gaining the knowledge needed to move forward, I some how managed to lose what little I had and fall off a cliff.
Deep down I know this feeling is due to taking my eyes off how far I have come and instead focusing on others. But as much as they say don’t compare yourself with others, that is almost impossible to do.Its impossible to watch an Etsy tutorial where someone talks about how they did this, designed that, listed that, advertised this way, created xy sale, and made hundreds of dollars, without comparing your hibernating snail progress to their glowing accounts of how much they tutored this person or that person to making hundreds of dollars a month, without wondering what is wrong with you.
No mater how educational the video, it is hard to repeatedly hear the success of others, and compare your stagnate state and think that you must be the most inept, thick brained person on the planet who will never learn what it takes to move their shop forward. But eventually, I know, that if I keep trying, a sale will come, and hope will spring up again.
If you are thinking about starting your own Etsy journey, click this link to get 40 free Etsy listings. https://etsy.me/3MhfyfA
Click here, if you would like to check out my Etsy shop.
Beware of Emotionally Counting Your Chickens Before They Hatch When it Comes to Your Etsy Shop
At this moment I am not sure if I consider the old adage of never count your chickens before they hatch to be wiser than I thought or more frustrating than I can ever imagine. Because since I started my journey on KDP and Etsy, I have found it to be both. On the one hand it has repeatedly proven itself to be true, which has become a source of intense frustration.
Month after month it has felt like there is some unseen rule that stated that with only a couple of exceptions, my shop could only get 1 sale a month. For my first year, except for 1 month where I got no sales, 1 month where I got 3, and another where I got 6 the rule did not deviate. So far for my second year that number has been bumped up to a mind boggling 3 sales.
And like last year, there was a thrilling month where the numbers suddenly spiked and I got 8 budget saving sales. I remember how excited I was that month as for a short time I got a sale every 3 1/2 days. For a few weeks I was able to open my laptop with a sense of eager expectation. Every time I got a sale I would pull out my calculator and crunched the numbers to determine how many visits I would need before I would get a sale with that new conversion rate and how much I might earn after Etsy fees if I got x amount of visitors a month divided by the number of visits needed to translate into a sale with my current conversion rate.
Yes, it was a bad thing to do, it went against every rule I had set for myself. But after the first 3 or 4 sales, I began to dream what I would do with so many sales. I let myself imagine how this sudden boost in sales would slowly but steadily snowball from making enough sales to cover Etsy listing fees, then adds, then an etsy Seo aid like Everbee and Erank, to a program that let me sell custom products like Hello Custom, then the paid version of Canva, etc until I not only could pay for my business expenses, but all my other expenses and a few wants as well.
Oh how hard it was when the next month came and I got more views than I had ever gotten, yet my sales plummeted back to the seemingly newly set in stone 3 sales a month. What a bitter pill it was to realize, that even though I had told myself that I would never allow myself to do so, I had counted my eggs before they hatched, and as usual, it was a big fat zero.
That month I promised myself I would not let it happen again. But then came all the videos talking about Q4 and all the holiday sales that come with it. Last year, had not been very amazing. I only had a handful of digital download puzzles. I think that at the peak of Q4 or quarter 4 I had a total of 40 or 50 listings so it was not a big surprise that q4 went by with only a small bump of 2 extra sales.
But after watching all those videos, and realizing that this year I had added a variety of POD items such as puzzles, t-shirts, and mugs, I began to feel very excited. While my digital download puzzles and coloring pages had appealed to those who were traveling or looking for some project to keep their young holiday guest busy, there had been nothing that would appeal to someone looking for the perfect gift to give a loved one or a friend.
But this year was different. Thanks to the addition of POD items like puzzles and mugs, I now had a growing collection of gift-able items. And after watching hours of videos of people talking about how they would make more in Q4 than any other time of the year, sometimes making in those 3 months as much as they had made all year long, I was overflowing with excitement. Because I had worked slowly and steadily throughout the year, my collection of 40 or 50 items had more than doubled.
Continue reading “Beware of Emotionally Counting Your Chickens Before They Hatch When it Comes to Your Etsy Shop”
Discouragement: Choosing to Be a Joseph or a Murmuring Israelite
If I were to write a poem right now the title would probably be discouragement. It would certainly sum up the mood of the day. Not only for me, but for my business as well.
Here we are, nearly a month into Quarter 4 and after weeks of pushing myself to the breaking, I made 3 whole sells on Etsy for $18 dollars. I know what you are thinking, how will I ever manage to spend so much money. A new car, a house, a vacation, or all of the above? Ha ha, it really is enough to take the wind right out of one’s sales.
I know that I have a way to go to develop really good designing skills, but even though I did not expect a rush on my products, I had hoped that at least 1 or 2 of my designs might get a couple of sales. I was sure that some, like my Turkey’s protesting Against Thanksgiving and insisting that you should play Sudoku instead was not only colorful but humorous as well.
Sadly, even though my Mother helped me to purchase a mockup to give it more appeal, it has gone over as well as bag of potatoes filled with bricks.
If that were not discouraging enough, in a few days we have to move from our temporary rental, and we still have to find a new place to move too. And between the holidays and the arrival of the winter birds there is a good chance that we could find ourselves on the street.
It is hard to believe that when we put our home on the market almost 1 year ago, there were multiple homes in our price range. Even more amazing, it is hard to believe that at the time, interest rates were low enough that we could get a house for $300,000 and it would have cost less per month than the house we were living in. Why at the time we put our house for sell, there was a 4/3 manufactured home on 3 acres for $180,000 that we were hoping to get once the house sold.
But fast forward a couple of months to when our house finally sold, and it was as if a vacuum had come along and sucked up every descent price home and then spit out a bunch of higher priced fixer uppers. Almost overnight anything that was descent disappeared from our price range or shot up in price along with the interest rates. Before we sold there were dozens of halfway descent places under $250,000 and even some under the 180,000 mark. Then our house sold and their were only a handful of fixer uppers remained. It has been six months since we sold our home and 4 since we had to move out into one temporary rental after another, and the market has become even bleaker. Now, with the our down payment dwindling and the competition for housing rising, it seems as if it will not be long before my mother, sister, and I shall soon be homeless.
As each day brings us closer and closer to this possibility, I find myself pondering the story of the Israelite and their years of wandering in the wilderness. From the day beginning, as we moved from our house to house with the remains of my beloved father and a few weeks later placed the remains of our sweet pup Happy by his side, I was reminded of how all through their wilderness wanderings they had carried the remains of Joseph.
Continue reading “Discouragement: Choosing to Be a Joseph or a Murmuring Israelite”
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