Tag: Etsy store

Posted in brain games, spot the difference

Spot the Difference Royal Colors Edition: Exercise Your Brain

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

I thought I would give a little update on my new brain game channel. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I found an inexpensive tutorial on creating a You Tube game channel, and I thought that it might be a fun and easy way to advertise my activity book as well as my Etsy shop.

Instead of only seeing a plain add with some pictures taken from a book or activity pack, viewers could have the fun of playing a brain game like this spot the difference puzzle in real time. And I would highlight my books and etsy shop by mentioning in the opening that these fun quizzes were made by De Graw Publishing, and in the closing of most videos I let them know that they can find more games and puzzles in my Etsy shop.

I was able to set up an automatic insert that allows me to add the link to my Etsy shop in all of my video descriptions. This is great because if I am having a bad day, which has been the rule rather than the exception lately, I can generate an AI video description, copy and paste it into the box, and at minimum have a link to my Etsy shop. If the video happens to be related to a topic for which I have already published a coloring or activity book or created an activity pack on, and I have a bit of energy to spare, I can just copy and paste the title and a link.

It is too early to tell if it will be successful. But hey, you never know if someone will enjoy a video so much that they decide to click on one the links and find something that they like. Even a couple of sales a year would be a small victory.

With 16 subscribers my channel could hardly be called a success. It certainly is not the great start imagined when hearing talk about how some of these game channels have thousands and even hundreds of thousands subscribers. Looking at channels where videos have thousands of views and twenty thousand, fifty thousand, even a hundred thousand subs, and comparing it to my little start is a rather discouraging.

I try not to, as I know it is highly unlikely that my channel will ever take off, but it is hard not imagine what it would be like if my channel took off. It is hard, after being shown channel after channel with millions of views making You Tube Ad money, not to dream of how different my life would be if I managed to make even the first layer of monetization for You Tube which requires 3000 hours of watch time and 500 subscribers where you can link a shop to your channel. Never mind full monetization where you can get paid commercial views, potentially have a link to your shop or book, etc. At that point the chances of making a sale in my shop or someone buying my activity books would increase tremendously.

While I worry about the risk of falling in the center of the donut hole, where my income is too low to cover medical cost and allow me to be a help to my family, the dream is if I could just bounce out of that hole to the other side where I could earn enough to help us afford our own home, pay my medical bills, and have enough for a few wants and needs like a small garden and some chickens, that would be so great.

Read more: Spot the Difference Royal Colors Edition: Exercise Your Brain

I try hard not to let myself even imagine that, because I have so many days like today, when I have to prop myself up a bit with some pillows and pull the laptop desk under the sofa because I do not have the strength to sit up. And I know that my poor health is putting a big dent in the chances of my ever reaching my dream. In a thousand ways it impacts the likelihood of it ever becoming a reality as it impacts consistency, quality, and so much more.

Still, even though I know my hopes are most likely futile, I cannot put in words the joy and bit of hopefully healthy pride that fills my heart whenever I manage to upload a book, activity pack, or video. That little victory, pale as it might be in comparison to the grand accomplishments of someone fortunate enough to be selling $2000 plus worth of books, making $19000 a month in profit from one of their Etsy shops, or getting thousands of views a month from their video, is for me a bit like winning Olympic gold.

Because I know that had to overcome the looming hurdles of intense pain where at times, I could not find a comfortable spot or could barely tolerate to look at my screen, or energy so low that it seemed like it took every ounce of strength just to breathe. That book, pack, or video might represent the journey of a week, month, or even a year where like the turtle vs the hare I plodded along. Taking a few good steps to do one task, pausing for a time as I battled the great dragon of pain, recovered, licked my wounds, and completed the next task before monster fatigue blew its blinding haze upon me.

While it is heart breaking to me that my little channel, my books, my Etsy shop might not rise up in a blaze of glory, allowing me to fulfil my desire to take care of my mother and sister, there is a satisfaction in knowing that I tried. There is a something satisfying in knowing that when sickness knocked down my door, I did not lay down and give up and give in to pain. But with every ounce of strength that I had I fought to have some sort of life.

While it is true that my Etsy shop, my activity books, and You Tube channel are not a success by the world’s standard, in their own small way they are successful. Because each video, each book, each activity pack, each t-shirt or mug, or each pack that I manage to list represents a small victory in my determined war against the life altering battle with the misery that is fibromyalgia, migraines, anemia, and as yet unknown autoimmune disease.

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

Sometimes I Feel so Inept: Starting a Shop on Etsy

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

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.

I have had some of the You Tube videos that talked about how popular the something, something, repeat style design was so I thought I would give it a puzzle themed twist. I do not know if it is the font, keywords, or my budget friendly mock up, but for me this design has proven to be a flop.

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.

Besides listing multiple t-shirt and sweatshirts, I had created some fun puzzle designs, including an adorable series of animal detectives, that would make great, kid friendly gifts.

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.

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

Beware of Emotionally Counting Your Chickens Before They Hatch When it Comes to Your Etsy Shop

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

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” →
Posted in life, Thoughts, Trying to build a business

Quarter 4 is Here: What Will it Bring

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

It is officially the beginning of quarter 4. It would be great if that meant that an instant switch would flip and sales would dramatically improve. Unfortunately that is not the case. If there will be a real pick up, it probably will not happen for a few more weeks. Hopefully, even though the sales are not to expect to reach full swing until November, this month will prove to be better than last months single sale.

Thankfully today I did make a sale, but it was only for $3. So only getting 1 sale would be a real kick in the budget under normal circumstances. But since this is my first real shot at making some meaningful q4 or quarter 4 sales, I have been putting every ounce of spare energy that I have into stream lining production so I can make and list as many items as possible. I figured if I could just cut down the time to create the listing pictures by 1/3, that would at least mean an extra 1-2 products a week, and on a really good week an extra 3-4.

If I can get an extra 5-10 sales over this time last year, the effort would stand a chance of paying for itself and maybe a few other items. But with each listing costing $0.20 each, I really need those extra sales to cover the cost. Twenty cents might not be much to some, but twenty cents here and another there can quickly add up to a couple of extra bucks. And when you have almost nothing, it does not take long to become a really big deal.

Besides worry about not being able to make enough sales to at least break even and maybe purchase a couple of small items to improve my shop for next year, I would also feel really discourages as I have put a whole lot of energy into this project. And I have been working extra hard to get as much done as I can before my health crashes. Even now the muscles of my head are getting so tight that I cannot relax them. I would love to be in bed, but my the extra work has brought back my queasy stomach so it is harder to get a good night sleep.

But all of it would be worth it if my shop would start to make that turn towards profitability. It does not have to make a big bump, even though I would love it if it did, but at least if it could make a big enough turn that where there was zero sales I made 3-4, where I made 1 I now got 4-6, and instead of 8 being my best month it was now 16-20 that would be some type of measurable improvement. One that would at least allow me to cover all my etsy fees including ads, and probably even 1 or 2 other expenses.

Yes I would like more, but even that small boost in sales would give some meaning to what I was doing, and some hope that after a much needed break, my next effort will take me closer to my first major goal of earning enough to cover all of my business expenses. And give me some hope that some day soon I might actually be able to earn enough to pay my bills and some occasional wants. And at least be able to hold up my head knowing that after years of struggling, I had finally reaped the reward of some time of measurable success.

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. Where you will find a variety of fun items such as this fall inspired puzzle of Turkey’s demanding Thanksgiving be switched to Happy Sudoku day.

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, Medical, Thoughts

A Good Day

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

Finally, after 5 delays due to my mother being hospitalized, my Grandmother having a stroke, allergies, and other chaos, I was able to get my 2nd iron infusion yesterday. I can hardly move today, but it feels so good to have some iron as it make breathing so much more comfortable.

Well the moment I finished that video everything went absolutely crazy. My mother’s blood pressure started rising like an airplane, their were issues with the bathroom, and phone calls galore. And to my dismay issues with uploading my file, turns out my files had to be 20mb or less. In the middle of the chaos, while on step 3 of creating my shop, I did something, who knows what, that locked up my account and got it suspended.

And as an added bonus, after months of slow but steady prep work, I was finally able to open an Etsy shop. Opening an Etsy store was an idea that was recommended by several leading KDP low content You Tube channels as an easy way to diversify. After all, low content creators already have the content used to create their coloring and activity books. With a little mixing, matching, and tweaking, they can easily create digital download activity packs and coloring pages to sell on Etsy.

After several months of utilizing what little energy I had to create a few activity packs, after a bit of prayer I decided that it was time to open my storm. The first few minutes went by smoothly, and I decided to follow the recommendation and create a little video that I could post to Etsy and add a little sound and put on You Tube to show off my new package, On the Go Bible Games and Coloring Pages Printable Bundle.

Continue reading “A Good Day” →