Category: Uncategorized

Posted in life, Thoughts, Trying to build a business, Uncategorized

Start Building Your Media Following Now

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

Maybe you happened upon a video about how someone who opened an Etsy shop and a year later they had made over $60,000 in sales, how using Canva and Printify you could design t-shirts to sell on Etsy, or a video using Etsy as a side hustle to make extra cash, and you said to yourself, I would like to do that some day. Well if your are thinking about starting an Etsy shop, even casually thinking about starting one, I would recommend that you start building your media presence today.

You do not have to sit down and map out your business strategy or even know the name of your future shop. What matters is that you are starting the process of building a loyal audience who eventually some will also become loyal customers.

Just look at some of the homesteading channels like Arms Family Homestead and Lumnah Acres. Well neither of these channels has an Etsy shop, their path to success highlights the importance of building an audience as early as you can. Both of these channels started off by showcasing a portion of their daily life on the homestead. They made videos introducing us to their farm animals, showing them working in their garden, mowing their lawns, doing various building and repair projects, etc.

Eventually, as their audience grew, they would occasionally design a few hats, mugs, t-shirts, and sweaters that they sold to make some extra cash. But now that both channels have grown immensely, they have harnessed the power of having a big audience to create their own shops on much bigger scale. In the past couple of years, Arms Family Homestead transformed a portion of their barn into a work/storage area where they could store supplies so they could make and sell their own t-shirts, hats, etc that displayed some of their most beloved animals. Recently, Lumnah acres also set up their own website and began selling selling a handful of merch items such as a sticker, some pencils, and a couple of T-shirts along with their main draw, coffee. And thanks to the power of their 345,000 plus subscriber base, their 3 different brands of coffee debut was a success and quickly sold out multiple times. Because they had already built a loyal audience by the time that they opened their shops, it did not matter that there were only a few colors and items to chose from as their audience was excited to get a Rufus t-shirt or a bag of Lumnah coffee.

Continue reading “Start Building Your Media Following Now” →
Posted in My Etsy journedy, Trying to build a business, Uncategorized, Videos

Setting up Sales Tax or Figuring out the Right Price: Which was Harder on Etsy

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

I have spent the past few weeks trying to prepare for quarter 4. Last year, because I only had digital items like coloring packs and logic puzzles, which except for being travel friendly, are not that big a draw. Therefore, there was nothing major for me to do.

But this year I have added some POD or print on demand items like mugs, puzzles, and T-shirts. Because of their potential for being given as gifts, getting things right this year is going to be much harder. This year little details like price, photos, and keywords will require much more effort than it did last year.

After watching multiple videos on Etsy and the POD items I am working on this season, it was time to set down with a pricing calculator to try and set a price that was high enough to give me a few dollars of profit yet low enough to be attractive to buyers.

It would seem like after watching multiple videos and aided by the handy Etsy profit calculator on Erank figuring out a fair price should be easy. But for me anyways, it was anything but easy as within minutes my head was swimming with a bunch of unanswered questions. Was it better to go as low as I can and have no sales, or was it better to go higher so I could have a 50% or higher sale during Black Friday/cyber-Monday week? Free shipping, reduced shipping, or regular shipping which was better?  Should i experiment with multiple price points or have everything set to the same price?

Talk about analysis paralysis, my head was so overcome with choices that within a few minutes my head was spinning and pounding so hard that I had take long breaks to rest and try and figure out what to do. The stress was so bad it made me wonder, which was worse, trying to navigate the new world of sales tax or setting up prices?

Because Etsy is a market place and thus is required to collect sales tax on our behalf, it would seem like it should be an easy answer. Etsy collects the taxes for us and Etsy turns it in for us, so what is the problem? The problem is that even though we only sell digital and POD items and only sell on market place platforms like Etsy and Amazon Market Place so we do not have the hassle to collect sales tax in many states we still have for a license to collect sales tax and turn in a $0 sales tax.

Talk about making your head spin. I had no clue where to begin. I spent an entire hour on hold, being switched from one department to another, just trying to figure out what form I needed to fill out and where it was. Thankfully the people at the state tax form were nice and helpful. They went out of their way to find the answer to my questions and even offered some helpful info to get me started on the right foot.

Thanks to their help I was able to set up an account and muddle my way through filling out the paper work. But it only took a few days, when I went back to try and figure out where and how to turn in my zero-dollar sales tax form, to realize that I had quite a few more questions. For a few hours it would have been hard to answer which of the two issues was harder to understand.

That was until I found a helpful video on You Tube about setting up for collecting sales tax and turning in a zero-sales tax form. I found there step by step tutorial quite helpful. Before watching their video I had no idea what form I was supposed to fill out. Thanks to their video, I found out that one I had found the correct place to sign in, and I was even using the right info to try and sign in. The problem was that I did not know that I had to remove the hyphens if I wanted the sign in info to work. Thanks to one video, the frustration of multiple unsuccessful log in attempts was solved and in 1/3 the time it normally takes me to figure out keywords for an easy listing, I was in and filling out the paperwork.

If you live in Florida or have nexus in Florida, you might find this series on Florida Department of Revenue by James Baker CPA to be helpful.

While I still have a lot more to learn about how sales tax and filing forms work, thanks to this helpful video, right now I can confidently say, that thanks to Etsy being a market place platform, filling out the required sales tax form is so much easier than trying to figure out how to price a t-shirt or a mug.

Click here, if you would like to check out my Etsy shop.

And if you are thinking about starting your own Etsy journey, click this link to get 40 free etsy listings. https://etsy.me/3MhfyfA

Posted in life, My Etsy journedy, Thoughts, Trying to build a business, Uncategorized

Preparing for Quarter 4

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

The past few days I have been dedicating every ounce of spare energy that I had to preparing for my first real shot at the potential excitement of quarter 4. While my shop was opened last year, I only had about 40 digital coloring and activity packs in my shop. It was not until the end of December before I added my first POD product which was way too late to have a real shot at getting a slice of the quarter 4 sales.

Under normal circumstances, quarter 4 brings in the biggest number of sales. From what some people have said in their Etsy videos about this time of the year, they make as much and sometimes more in this quarter than they do all year long.

But as we know this is not a normal year. Finances are tight, and rising food and gas prices have taken a huge chunk out of people’s budget. So how big and exciting this quarter four will be is uncertain. And considering my past history with poor timing, such as starting a You Tube channel just before ad apocalypse and its financial impact on small channels, I do not hold much hope of seeing a dramatic rise in sales.

Continue reading “Preparing for Quarter 4” →
Posted in life, Medical, My Etsy journedy, Thoughts, Trying to build a business, Uncategorized

Enduring the Hidden Drop of the Etsy Roller Coaster

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

I have been trying all morning to create a post about the struggle of trying to build an Etsy shop while dealing with poor health and a slumping economy. There is so much I could say now that I have passed the 1st year mark with my shop about the importance of listening to old adage of if it is not broke don’t fix it, the importance of listening your body and knowing when to give your body the rest it needs, accepting that not everyone will be an overnight success, and more.

But today my brain is just to tired to focus. As much as I would love to write an article saying that if you just think positive there is delay or disaster that will stress you. But that is not true.

Like it or not there are days that you will wake up and say to yourself, what am I doing? Why am I even trying when nothing I do work? And you will be tempted to give up. And strangely enough, some of those days might come the day after you make a sale.

Sure there are going to be many great days when your mind will be full of hopes and dreams. Dreams that are bolstered by the remission of your symptoms and encouraged by a few sales. Like a well designed roller-coaster, there will be a period of steady climb with only a few mild dips that are perfect for lulling you into a false sense of confidence before a blind turn reveals a stomach shattering dip.

With a new high of 8 sales, July was one of those months. Finally after months of getting only with 1 sale and only 3 months where I got 2 or 3 sales, my slow but steady work was starting to paying off. With a few sales now behind me, and more than a hundred and fifty listings, my business was on the cusp of taking off as each new listing, sale, and the occasional review only adding to the growing momentum. With each sale I was calculating the conversion ratio to estimate what my sales would look like if I got x amount of visits and how may visits it would take to pass the next mile marker of 10 sales per month.

After such an exciting month I was eager to see the progress that August would bring. Now that I had close to 160 listings, 30 sales, and 2 reviews, surely I was set to see my biggest month ever with 9, 10, or even 11 plus sales. And from the amount of traffic, which was 4 times the amount of my normal traffic, it seemed like that hope was going to become a reality. Day by day I eagerly looked at my inbox hoping to receive a message from Etsy letting me know that this massive (at least for me), influx of traffic had converted into sales. Morning after morning I woke up filled with hope, eager to see how much money I had made overnight, only to be met with disappointment.

Continue reading “Enduring the Hidden Drop of the Etsy Roller Coaster” →
Posted in life, Thoughts, Uncategorized

Tired in Bone

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

Tired in bone is definitely the sentiment of the day. After weeks of pushing our bodies to the breaking point as we struggled to move all of our belongings into storage, my body is desperate to curl up in a ball and not move for at least a month. The problem is that in spite of the deep fatigue, the barrage of problems has not given us a break.

For the first few days after moving I was in so much pain that I could not bare to move. The effort to stand or sit nearly caused me to scream from the intense pain. But before I could recuperate from that misery before our little dog Happy became so ill that we had to rush him to the emergency vet. Not only was he not eating, but he his temperature had spiked to 104.5 and his sugar was back up into the 400’s. We arrived at the emergency vet by 6PM and did not get home until nearly 3AM.

But worse than the exhaustion of a night of almost no sleep, was the fact that we had to leave Happy at the clinic because he had bacterial hepatitis and the doctor was not sure if he would make it. For the next 2 days we were constantly gathering in prayer, pleading with God for Happy’s life. Thankfully he pulled through and they sent us home with antibiotic and told us to visit his vet the next day to have him tested for Cushings disease.

Long story short we were relieved to learn it was Cushings because the alternative C word was not what we wanted to hear. The good news was in a few days with a few pills Happy would be feeling more like his old self. And the cloud that had hung over our head was ready to evaporate and we could get back to the important business of finding a place to live.

Last week was a very scary week for Happy as he spent the whole week fighting for his life. But praise the Lord who answered our prayer and granted us more time with our precious bundle of fluff.

Nope, two pills later and we were rushing Happy to the vet due to an adrenal crisis. Not only was this bad news because Happy was once again fighting for his life, but it meant that there is a high likely hood that Happy has the big C, and no one knows how long he has.

His condition was so bad that the vet warned us that he might not survive the night, but if he did he needed to come back early in the morning so she could continue the fight for his life. Needless to say any thought of moving was moved to the background as we once again gathered in prayer for our little pup.

The funny thing was, that while the vet felt Happy had a high chance of not making it through the night, the moment I saw him I had peace that he was going to make it through the night. But even with that peace, I knew that the danger was far from over. So at every change we prayed that if it was for God’s glory, that he would bring Happy through the crisis.

The next day was hard. Once more we had to leave Happy at the vet and spend the day waiting to find out if Happy was going to survive. The good news is that to the vet’s surprise, Happy made it. With a smile she declared it a miracle, telling us that she really thought he was so bad that he was not going to make it. With joy I declared that we had been praying for him.

Happy is not out of the woods completely. He is still a rather sick pup. His liver enzymes were through the roof thanks to the hepatitis, and he is on prednisone to help with his reaction to the cushing meds. And the growing concern that he has cancer is still hanging over his head. But he is hungry again, his fever is down, and he is walking, all things which were not true this time last week. We do not know how long he has, but thankfully the Lord heard our prayer and granted us the precious gift of more time.

Now that the stress of moving out and Happy’s life hanging in the balance has subsided, our energy has dissipated. And like the poem, we find ourselves tired in bone and tired in spirit. And for some much needed rest we plead so that we can get the energy to pick up and continue the seemingly impossible task of finding a place to live.

Posted in Fun Puzzles, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Word Searches

19 Sales and Learning the Lesson to Leave Well Enough Alone

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

Ten months into my Etsy journey and I have made 19 hard earned sales. For months at a time it seems like there is an unwritten rule that I can only make 1 sale a month, no matter how many visitors come to my shop. Then, thankfully, there is a month like this one, where I get a slight boost and make 3 sales, and then back to crickets for weeks.

So, after listening to some You Tube videos, I have been trying to work on improving SEO and making a few changes to some of my pictures that I felt could use a better background. I still have a long way to go to make the needed improvements. But one lesson that I quickly learned, thanks in part to some mistakes that I have made in the past on KDP, is that the saying leave well enough alone or if its not broke, don’t fix it, is a very important saying for your Etsy shop.

If a listing is doing well, don’t tamper with it. After making a couple of changes to a listing that was doing fairly well, and experiencing a sudden slow down (you think I would have learned my lesson from KDP), I heard some very valuable advice from an Etsy youtuber. If you want to see if you can improve it, and there is another category that it can go under, make a copy, change the first picture, and make one or two tweaks so you know if the changes you made improved your listing or hurt it. Kind of like an A B testing at the optometrist office where the doctor ask if you see better with A or B or they are both about the same.

For now, since I do not get many sales, if my listing recently had a sale or two, I leave well enough alone and give that listing a chance. That way I do not sabotage a listing that might have taken off, but thanks to my tweaking instead ends up sinking like a lead balloon. Instead, if I want to make changes, I will see if I can add it to another category and make a change or two and hope and pray that at last one of my listing will take off and I can stop spending months wondering who wrote the invisible rule that I can only get 1 sale a month even if if it is only for$2

If by any chance you are looking for some fun word games, then you might enjoy my Fun Word Games Digital Download Activity Pack, Word Search Puzzles, DecoderRing, Word Scrambles, Alphabet Soup, Zigzag Puzzles, Anagrams, pack.

Posted in life, Thoughts, Uncategorized

Another Important Lesson for Trying to Start Your Own Business: One Hundred Percent Effort Does Not Always Equal Success

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

How many times have we been told that effort is the secret to success. Your grades are slipping all you need to do is study harder. You want a promotion at work just work harder. You need to take off a few pounds, diet better and workout harder. No matter the problem, the answer to all your problems is to give your 110% effort and like magic, all your problems will be solved.

Well this might be true if the reason for your few extra pounds was that extra slice of cake or two that you liked to indulge in after a hard day, and not a hormone problem. If your grades were slipping because you were not completing your homework and forgoing that needed hour of study in favor of hanging out with friends or binge watching your favorite You Tube channel and not because you had an undiagnosed learning disability like dyslexia that made it hard for you to understand what you were reading. As much as we want to believe that effort always means success, there are areas of life where we can work our fingers to the bone, only to fall short of the mark. But what about things that you have absolutely no control over, like how many people buy your books or from your Etsy shop?

We can spend hours creating the perfect shop banner and creating professional looking designs, take pictures that look like they belong in magazine, and have all the right keywords and yet the success we seek may remain a step our two out of our reach. Our little shop might seem like it is about to take off when changes to the algorithm brings our rising graph crashing downward for days and even weeks. Sickness could put such a damper upon our effort that a car without gas being pushed uphill by the father of knew born with colic and a bad case of the flu looks like a blaze of glory compared to our empty tank of energy.

Or after spending months preparing products, creating photos, and trying to brainstorm tags, and mere days after celebrating the opening of our shop, we can wake up to the fearful news that interest rates are rising, stores are closing, banks are failing, and the economy is on the brink of a financial disaster not seen since the great depression. Bringing the traffic in your shop to a slow drip instead of a quiet but steady stream.

Yet for all of that, there is something satisfying knowing that even though your dreams of financial greatness did not come to pass, or have been put on an extra long hold, that you have given it your all. That you have done all in your power to learn, grow, and work towards your dream. Because

So if you have a dream that you believe is worth giving your all, what are you waiting for? Who knows what you can do or where you will go if once you pick up your feet and begin the journey of a thousand miles. There are no guarantees that you will become the millionaire of your dreams, a doctor, a best selling doctor, etc. But one thing is for certain, a hope never pursued will forever remain a dream.

Click here to check out these fun designs about how 100 percent effort does not always equal success.

Posted in life, Thoughts, Uncategorized

My First 3 Sales

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

It is so exciting, the other day I made my 3rd sale on Etsy. That is a one sale a month average. Hardly an exciting start, as 1 sale a month is far from a living wage or even enough to buy a pizza. Depending on any discounts and cost of ads, it might barely be enough to buy a small pint of on sale ice cream, yet for me it is a huge deal as it gives me a minute taste of success and gives me hope that someday I might be able to make my dream a reality.

How long it will take for my shop to become a success, if it ever does, is uncertain. Like the Etsy and self-publishing experts warn, if you want to build a business that will last, you have to be in it for the long haul. You have to go in with the mind set that this is going to be a long term investment of your time. Otherwise you will be tempted to take short cuts that will hurt your reputation or even shut down your business.

You have to go in with the understanding that, especially if like me, you do not have a large media presence and a host of family and friends ready and waiting to buy your books or your latest Etsy creation, it is highly unlikely that your shop is going to start with a bang.

Like the tortoise in the story of the tortoise and the hare, if you want to have any hope of winning the race, you have to ignore the fact that you are not blessed to be one of the lucky few who can race out of the gate and within a few days be selling hundreds of dollars worth of goods. Like the tortoise you just have to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that it will be days, weeks, months, and even years before you have a flourishing shop.

Instead of focusing on how far you have to go, you have to take aim at the first goal, then the second, the third, and so on. Knowing that even though it does not appear like much today, like a puzzle, you are creating the frame work that will one day fill into a beautiful picture that you can be proud of.

Sure there are going to be a lot of days where you feel discouraged because it seems like nothing you do moves the cart in the direction that you want to go. That no matter how much time and effort you make, success refuses to acknowledge you. Sadly, while you dream of making a thousand sales in a month, you might for a time have to celebrate that solitary monthly sale.

But hopefully with a lot of prayerful work and persistence, the day will come when one sale turns into two, then three, four, a dozen, and eventually one glorious day enough to pay your bills and enjoy the life of your dream.

If you would like to check out this fun collection of word games, mazes, and more, click here.