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.
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.
Happy Sabbath everyone. Once again I find myself so grateful for the gift of the Sabbath. This week we made the third move to a temporary rental since moving out of our home while also having to make a trip to the doctor the day before and on moving day, on top of our search for permanent home.
While after all the craziness of this past week and the exhaustion of moving, I am so grateful for the opportunity to pull aside from the stress of searching for a home, of rushing to the doctors, shopping, etc., the past few weeks there has been a deep shadow cast upon our Sabbath joy due to the passing of our beloved dog Happy.
Within a few wees of my father’s death, Happy had become gravely ill. for 3 years he fought valiantly. Our loves and prayers giving him the courage to fight a little bit longer. But the dreaded day finally came when as much as he loved us, the pain was too great, and his hold on life to weak for him to continue fighting. And God in His mercy said it was time for Happy’s battle to come to an end.
But oh how empty the house feels without him. Starting Friday afternoon I miss his impatient demands to receive his weekly bath before Sabbath arrives so that he would be ready and waiting for the Sabbath. His love of the word of God always inspired me to seek to draw closer to Jesus. During his final weeks of battle, the word of God had been his comfort. There were nights that the only way he found rest was for me to put a sermon on the TV.
A few weeks before he passed, we were watching a sermon by Doug Batchelor talking about how now is the time to make a choice to stand firm for God. Then he made a call where he asked those who wanted to stand up for Jesus to stand up. Something caught my eyes, and I turned to see Happy, who had been resting quietly on the sofa, standing up with pride, facing the TV. There was a huge smile of joy on his face, as he answered that call and weak as he was becoming, used his strength to stand up and in his sweet doggy way, stand up for Jesus.
Happy had reached the point where he was so weak that my aunt was able to put a purse on him and he did not have the energy to move or even whimper, yet he used what strength he had to proudly stand up and face the TV with a giant smile on his face when he heard the call who was wiling to stand up for Jesus.
As I tearfully remember how much he loved God, my heart aches. I remember how much he trusted God and His word so that even though he was trembling in fear from the constant booming of the fireworks, when I put on some hymns and told him that they attracted God’s angels, and God promised that His angels would take care of us, he would look around, smile, and within a few minutes he would be fast asleep.
He was such an inspiration to us. Time after time we would see the way our dear little bundle of fur showed his love for and trust in his Creator, and it filled our hearts with longing. to him, Sabbath was an extra special day because not only would he hear the hymns and sermons that he loved, but he knew that the God whom he loved, would draw near to us and him in a special way. And unless one of us was extremely sick, he wanted to be bathed and waiting for that longed for visit by his Friend.
I do not know if our precious pets will be raised when Jesus come or if they will be given back to us in Heaven or when the earth is made new, but seeing how deeply Happy loved Jesus, how his face lit up with joy as he stood up immediately after Pastor Batchelor made his call to stand up for Jesus, it would not surprise me. It is true that God did not die for our pets, because they are not guilty of sin the way we are. But when I consider the deep trust in God’s promise to send his angels to protect his people, that was so strong that his trembling form was able to sleep even while the fireworks loudly boomed around him, I cannot help but wonder if one day our joy will be increased to see our little dog smiling up at his best Friend and beloved Creator for whom he had been so proud to declare that no matter the cost, he was willing to stand up for.
I hope that you have a happy Sabbath. And that today, like my precious Happy, you will answer the call that no matter the cost, you will stand up for Jesus.
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.
I hope that you are having a Sabbath afternoon. And that you are enjoying this chance to learn better how to keep your heart rested in the promises of God. I know how hard this lesson is to learn, but before the last great battle we must learn this lesson fully if we hope to stand. Yet learning this much needed lesson is painful.
Currently God is teaching our family this lesson. Between the death of my father and the change in the economy our house became too expensive for our tiny budget to support so we had to sell the house. In the months leading up to our home going up for sell the market was full of good homes at a price we could handle. But within days of our house going on the market most of the homes were gone. But every so often a seemingly good home would appear. But as soon as our house sold and we could finally put in a bid, the competition became so fierce that there were times I found a potential home in the morning and before I could show my mother and sister a few hours later, it was sold.
Over and over we would call about a home to find out it was already pending, or after a few days of discussion and prayer we would decide that it was time to call the realtor to see the home, and it was gone. The first few times we were not worried, but after days turned into weeks, and the time to move drew dangerously near, we began to worry. Finally we decided that we would have to put our house hunting on hold and find a place to rent. But to our dismay we found out that even though we will have the money to rent a home for a year while looking for a new house, because our income is too low, we cannot find a home to rent.
Now we are only days away from having to leave our home, and we still have no place to move too and no idea where we are going to put our belongings or how we will move them since none of us have the health or strength needed to move hundred of boxes or heavy furniture. It is a very unnerving position to be in. One that I would not wish upon another. Living on the street is hard for someone in good health, but for a diabetic dog who requires refrigerated insulin and three sickly women, it is a potential death sentence.
I wish that we could say that we have reached this point without questioning or murmuring. Our trust in God so complete that like Peter we can fall into a sleep so deep that even the glory of an angel in our room cannot wake us. But that would be a commandment breaking stretch. At times our blood pressure has reached dangerous levels, our nerves have gotten so taunt that we had to apologize for our tense and irritated words, and at moments the fear has become so strong that we could not help but with tears wonder if God had abandoned us.
Yet at the same time, after gathering in prayer to ask for God’s strength and help, peace filled our hearts. While we were worried, our trust in God outweighed that fear to the point that smiles replaced tears as our minds were pointed to all the ways that God had helped us in the past. Promises from God’s word were recalled to our minds and as our trembling hands reached out to grasp them, He made us stronger.
At this moment we cannot fully say where God is leading us or why He has chosen to take us down this frightful path, we have no clue if we will have another roof to go to when we leave this home or if the car will become our new home, but we can say that God has been faithful to His word and is holding our hand. Here and there doing little things to prove that He taking care of us and to help strengthen our trust in Him.
It is my hope that for whatever future test God is preparing us for, we will prove faithful. That in some way this test of our faith, of painful muscle building, will not only draw us closer, but will in some way become such a testimony to others that it will help others to find the courage to stand firm and bring others to the Lord.
As you enjoy today’s find the difference verse about God’s love for sinful man, it is my prayer that God will help you to hide this verse in your heart. So when your test of faith comes, you will have the words of love and hope that you will need to help encourage your faith and to be a light to your feet keeping them from falling off the narrow path that leads to light.
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
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.
It has been seven months since I opened my shop on Etsy and I am excited to say that just this week I made my 14th sale! It might not sound like much, but considering the craziness of this year, where there was a time I was afraid that I might lose not only my centurion grandmother but my mother and dog too, my iron repeatedly dropped so low that I had to have 6 iron infusions, and thanks to the financial impact of my father’s death and the rise in cost of living we have had to make the tough choice to put our house for sell, 14 sales is a very big deal.
As I look back at these first seven months on Etsy, I wish that I could say that I had learned the secret to writing a high converting description or made great strives in understanding SEO. It would be nice if at this early mile marker I could lean back and share the secret to creating eye catching product photos and videos. But seven months in and a whole lot of you tube videos and I am just as confused as ever. To a great degree I still feel like I am wearing a blind fold, have been spun around in a chair a hundred times, and am blindly trying to hit a dartboard in a 5000 square foot room. And then wonder why I miss the mark far more than I hit it.
Alas, my major take away from the first 7 months is that if I ever hope to make a success of my Etsy endeavor, is that the very first skill that I am going to have to learn is not SEO, illustration, or photography, but patience and endurance. While learning to create eye catching illustrations and heart catching product descriptions are important, having those skills will mean nothing if I give up five feet into the race.
It would be great if I would wake up tomorrow to find that I had become one of those overnight Etsy success stories. I would love to wake up and find out that my next step attempt at leveling up my shop by adding drop shipping had worked, and that my puzzle and notebook designs were such a hit that I had made a dozen, then a hundred, and by the end of a week a thousand orders. I would love nothing better than to wake up tomorrow and find out that I had sold so many digital packs on Etsy that I could call social security and tell them that I no longer needed SSI.
But sadly, that is just a dream. The overnight wonder is the exception, not the rule. And even though I work as hard as my chronically ill body will allow, giving my body’s version of 100 percent, the likely hood that I will be able to close my eyes and wake up to discover that overnight my dreams had come true is sadly nothing more than a pleasant dream. Worse yet, even though I push myself to the point of breaking, because of my body’s weakened state, 100 percent for me probably is the equivalent of a healthy persons 40 percent.
Whether I like it or not, if I want to be successful I am going to have become far more patient and persevering. The road between me and a life altering successful Etsy shop is going to be a long one. Much longer than it is for the healthy and more financially mobile. At every turn I am going to have to contend with the battle to learn how to stand out on Etsy, but how to deal with the barrage of obstacles created by episodes of eye closing migraines, overwhelming exhaustion from low iron, and days of being so pain ridden that even copying and pasting a few lines feels like a marathon of torture.
If I want to win this race, and I do, I am not only going to have to endure the frustration of views and clicks that bring nothing, where a whole month passes with only one $2 sale to reward my hard work, but the agony of wanting to move ahead and build up my shop inventory, but having to wait for a whole week or two to pass until I can get a much needed iron infusion so I can have the energy to do more than stare blankly at my screen.
On days where it feels like all hope is lost, where it seems like all the forces of misery are against me, and nothing I do ever works, I will have to find a way to muster up the courage to count the few steps towards my goal that I have made, and gather the courage to focus on my dream and trust that in the long run if I patiently persevere, the morning will come when I will realize that my long night of dreaming is over, as thankfully, my years of working and dreaming have become a reality.
If you are looking for some fun brain games, check out my Etsy shop where you will find a growing list of fun brain games and ctivities like this mind stimulating collection of word games and mazes.
And now you will also find cute puzzles and journals like this adorable schnauzer themed Happy Day Dream puzzle that comes in multiple sizes as well as a matching Happy Day Dream journal.
Happy thanksgiving everyone. Even though my energy is low, I thought that I would take a moment to share a shore a poem of thanks and to wish everyone a happy day of giving thanks for all that God has done for us. May you and your family enjoy a good meal and a full heart as you count your blessing and find joy in the fullness of your basket of blessings.
Happy Sabbath. Isn’t it a blessing to know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, to know why we are here, where we came from, and where we are going! What a sense of hope and purpose should thrill our hearts to know that God Himself formed us out of the dust, that He bent low in the garden of Eden to personally give us the breath of life.How blessed are we to realize that our God is mighty enough to hang the moon and the stars in the the heavens, yet He loves us so much that He knows the number of hairs upon our head.
That is one of the great blessings of the Sabbath day. It reminds us that our Creator did not wind up a toy and then turn and walk away. He did not make earth and leave it to sink or swim on our own. But from the very beginning, right after saying that what He had created was very good, He created a day of rest for His creation where they could draw near to Him. Before sin entered the picture, while all was perfect and pure, He has set aside a time for us to walk and talk with Him as we would our best friend.
If we had need of the Sabbath in the perfect garden, how much more need do we, laden down with the mighty burdens of sin, racked by infirmity, feeble and worn, need the faith building communion of this day.
Now, as we draw close to the river Jordan, as we near the temporary spot of rest where so many of the Israel of old were beguiled by food, song, and dance and joined themselves to Baalpeor, we must learn to cling to the side of our Savior. Instead of trusting in our power, reassuring ourselves like Peter before his conversion that even though all should be offended we will stand firm, we should be making our anchor sure. Now, while there is still time to accept the offer of mercy. Now, while there is still time to call our friends, our neighbors, and even our enemies to the great wedding feast, we must give the Lord every corner of our heart. We must give Him permission to do His work of soul cleansing and transformation. So in that longed for hour of solemn rejoicing, when the trumpet shall sound and the righteous revive their eternal reward, we will be found standing on the right hand of God and we will be allowed to walk the streets of gold and join the holy angels in songs of praise to our merciful Lord and Savior.
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