Tag: Thoughts
Sabbath Afternoon Fun: Find 7 Difference Psalms 2:1
Happy Sabbath everyone. This weeks nature photo is of a faithful blackbird keeping watch over its friends and family at a grocery store parking lot. Like this handsome bird, we are called to watch for danger and to give that certain warning sound so that our friends and family can flee from danger.
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”
Sabbath Afternoon Fun: Find 6 Difference Psalms 2:1
A happy fall time Sabbath to you. I hope that you are enjoying some lovely fall color. God is such an amazing painter that He can take the sad remnants of this sinful world and transform it into a work of beauty. If He can take the dying leaves and turn them into an art piece, imagine how wonderful the new earth, where death will never be known, will look. Truly our hardest effort nor our grandest dream can even begin to come close to the land of glory that God is preparing for us.
May it be your aim to be part of God’s faithful flock and may this humble find the difference puzzle help you hide His word in your heart so that it may be a light unto your feet faithfully guiding you home.
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”
Start Building Your Media Following Now
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”
Quarter 4 is Here: What Will it Bring
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.
Setting up Sales Tax or Figuring out the Right Price: Which was Harder on Etsy
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
Preparing for Quarter 4
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”
reflectionsaboutlifedotcom 