6 Things I Wish I Knew BEFORE Starting an Etsy & Print on Demand Business

hi guys it's Heather welcome to my Channel or welcome back to my channel if you are new here my name is Heather and I started a at scene print on demand business two years ago that I grew and scaled to over 400k in revenue and now I teach others on how they can grow and scale their own Etsy and pronunian businesses on this channel here so if you want to see more content like this don't forget to subscribe before you leave like the video and comment what future suggestions of videos you'd like to see as well in my journey of scaling and growing to over 400k in Revenue I have came across a lot of problems a lot of challenges and struggles in my Etsy productivity and journey that I really don't want other people to have and hopefully this video can help those of you who are starting out or you're at that scaling Zone where there's that common phrase of I don't know what I don't know and hopefully this video answers that I don't know portion of your own pronouncement and journey so we're gonna hop right into the video here foreign [Music] so as I water my plant and my friend Steve here shout them out in the comments if you know you know my first thing that I wish I knew in starting and scaling and growing my business is that businesses are an investment over time and a lot of the time like investments in stocks trading and all that good stuff it takes a long time to see a return on investment for some people people see that return on investment a lot sooner than others luckily I was one of those but it did take me two to three months until I started to see a profit in my business over the amount of money I have invested and with that being said as I saw profit in my business I would reinvest that over time so if you're at that place in your journey where you're not seeing that return on investment just know it takes time to see that return on investment and just having that long-term goal in your head rather than just a short-term burst of sales and whatnot that we all want on Etsy that's green and all but with business it's a long-term gain and it's a marathon not just a race or a Sprint to the finish line so that is the first thing I wish I knew just to talk about mindset first right that's like the most important thing when you start a business we're gonna hop into the second thing I wish I knew so guys the second thing that I wish I knew is to always start with market research rather than just throwing spaghetti at the wall and designing what I thought others wanted rather than what they actually wanted an example of this is I used to design for the dog Niche and I just remember when I was designing for the dog Niche I just made shirts that said dog mom on them and they were really just not good designs and if I had done market research prior I would have saw designs that really worked for other people and created those in my own way and hopped in to trends at the right time that were relatable to that Niche not every design that you think will sell will actually sell you really have to do that market research ahead of time in order to see those consistent sale volumes there are certain niches that get high daily search volumes on Etsy and then there's other niches that don't get high daily search volumes on Etsy and that's where I based a lot of my listing Creation in when I first began but over time I did my market research my market validation and I saw certain niches were selling over other niches I am so sorry Steve I just totally hit Steve oh I feel so bad now in this video I'm like watering Steam and then I'm just beating him up oh my gosh this is so bad anyways on to number three so guys the third thing that I wish I knew when I began was to order samples of my products now you don't need to order a sample of every single product that you ever make on Etsy but as a experienced seller on the Etsy platform and being in the print on demand industry I would highly recommend ordering samples this is one common issue that I see a lot is people using transparent layers on their print on demand designs for t-shirts specifically and maybe other items and while those look really cool on the monitor when they print out they're going to look really not cool and I'm going to show something that I've never shown on my channel before which is actually my first design I ever made are you guys ready for this so this is literally my first design I ever made guys oh my gosh I can't believe I just found this the other day and I was like I have to show my YouTube subscribers so look at this this was my first design I'm gonna back up so you guys can see it so it was a bell on canvas I believe it was like a 8 000 model I don't know if they sell it anymore this is in the color Ash it's such a soft t-shirt but guys I want to show you this because this is the thing that I want you to take for from this video if not from anything else is to not use transparent pngs or files on your shirts so this shirt as you can see I used a cloud there is a cloud behind this Daydreamer text and you can't see the cloud because it's a transparent file and the transparency on the cloud was about 60 to 70 percent and the way it prints on the t-shirt is just very Incorrect and it almost looks smudged and like there's something wrong with the T-shirt but there's not it's just a transparent layer that doesn't print because when you submit those designs to your print on demand provider a lot of those time those designs don't print correctly or the way that you see it on the Monitor and the way it's supposed to print for the product demand provider if that makes any sense so hopefully this helps for anyone who has put any transparent designs on their items this is again another reason why it's really good to get a sample of your item and again you don't have to order everything but I would at least order one sample per product that you sell to see how the placement is and see how your customer receives it in person because this for me you can even see the second issue with this is this design is far too low on the shirt for my comfortable standards I generally like the design two inches below so probably around here is where the top of the design should be but again I was new this was my first design ever and I didn't know but I was so happy I ordered this shirt and I hope that anyone else watching this video has that moment with themselves as well and sees what's wrong and what they should be doing to correct these issues back to Steve guys so the fourth thing I wish I knew is I wish that I knew that failure is okay and that goes for any business that you create whether that be print on demand Etsy a handmade business maybe a digital business failure is going to happen and that is completely okay because as a business owner and as an entrepreneur you will always find a way to Pivot you will learn and through those mistakes through those failures you will learn so much and grow so much as an entrepreneur and I wish that I could tell my past self that because I failed multiple times for those who don't know I opened a store in 2020 and when I opened that store I decided to close that store because the processing and production times for my store was two to four weeks customers were getting their items in a month time frame because it was during the pandemic there was shortages of workers and people printing at the time so I realized no I can't keep a store open when my customers are getting items in four weeks plus so I closed my store in 2020 and I failed the first time I started an upscene product me in business but I decided to reopen it's just the moment of doing the thing and you need to keep going if you really believe in your business and you believe it's going to be a long-term investment and you will see that return on investment at some point in your business that is what I kept hold of in my time with that scene print on demand and when I reopened in 2021 you guys have probably heard my story already but I went from zero sales to 250k in sales so that is possible and it all started with failure and that's the secret that it's not really a secret on my channel but I like to remind people of that you will fail you just have to pick yourself back up and keep going so the fifth thing that I wish I knew when I began my Etsy and Chrono demand business is quite simply to divide and conquer and I'm just gonna explain this one I feel like I want to change position and I totally am moving my tripod too much so when I say divide and conquer I'm talking about dividing your personal expenses and everything associated with your business expenses this is a common thing that happens a lot of the times especially for new business owners when you create a business a lot of people may think oh you know it's not going to be serious it's not really going to work out so I'm just going to put all of my expenses on my personal credit card my personal debit card so here's the thing that I was so nervous of when I began is making that serious first step for my business even when I wasn't seeing profit or as much profit as I would like to even label it as a real business but the thing is when you create a business the moment that you start posting on Etsy and you create your first steps into your business you are already a sole proprietorship when you sign up on Etsy and create that Etsy seller account so with that being said you already are a business and to make it official you can get a assumed business name name document or a DBA which is doing business as document they're basically the same type of document it just depends on what state that you register but you can go to your local government and register this in your town and that is where you can apply for a business credit card maybe a business checking or business savings to separate those personal from business assets and that's something that I wish I did when I first began because when it came to tax season in 2022 guys I just want to share my story and all the stress I went through because I don't want anyone else to have the stress but I had my personal and my business finances so mixed up and so merged together because when I began my Etsy business I was charging all of my mock-ups all of my production fees all of the above expenses on my Etsy store to my personal credit card and while I didn't know at the time this would be a 9 nightmare for taxes and come the next year when I had to do taxes do you know how long it took me to do my taxes guys it took me six months because I had a bad bookkeeper first of all that started all of it and then on top of having a very not good bookkeeper they also had to separate my personal from business expenses so they were going through all of my personal banking and trying to thread and fine comb out the business expenses from the personal expenses and that was just a very long process and it took well over a year to get my book straight and make sure everything was separated correctly that I was paying the right amount for taxes and then also I was also claiming what was mine for my own income of 2022. so with that being said and all this taxing legal talk I want to say that I am not a tax or legal professional so please seek out tax Consulting tax preparation operation or tax help if you are feeling stressed about the world of taxes or the world of legal side of business because that can really help you in your journey especially if you're scaling and you're hitting thousands of dollars in profit and revenue per month that you don't really know what to do and you know that next tax year is going to be stressful I can only say from my own experience that if I could speak to my past self and tell them to do anything it would be to first of all seek out tax help and get your books straight separate your personal from business expenses as soon as humanly possible because it will make your life so much easier guys I cannot stress that enough so besides that we're gonna go into the last thing I wish I knew before we end this video so guys the last thing I wish I knew in my business is to scale within your limits and be careful what you wish for or this is something that I saw on one of my Facebook posts in my print on demand friends group I do apologize I don't know what the girl's name was but she put in a comment slash post saying be careful what you wish for in sales and this is so true and something that I never thought about when I was envisioning making multiple six figures in a year was that my credit card for my business couldn't even allow for that amount of scaling in a short frame of time I began with about one thousand dollars of credit limit on my credit card and I had to keep calling into my bank every few months and it got to a point where I had to call in a few times within one month and say hey my business is making a whole lot more now how do I get this credit limit increase because I have to charge a few thousand dollars a day now and I don't have that on my card and over time what I figured out and I started doing was I asked for Etsy to deposit funds into to my account on a daily basis I would pay off my credit card every single day during that time where I couldn't get the credit card increase until the credit card inquiries came through then I could space it out within a few days but it really is that moment of be careful what you wish for because it's so incredible when your business makes ten thousand dollars in a month but the back end of that is how much can your credit card take within a day or a few days and how much can your businesses funds and resources take as well when you scale to that level sometimes you can scale way too quick and when it's just you by yourself as a business owner you have to figure out okay I need a credit card limit increase or I just need to ask Etsy to deposit funds every single day so I can pay off the credit card every single day when I get those new charges coming through so that is something to think about as well I remember on my printify backend I had so many orders I just kept on hold and till the next day and then I put in my processing times that we were delayed because I couldn't fulfill all the orders because my credit card couldn't take all the production fees that needed to be charged every single day so that happened when I began and that's something that I didn't remember until someone commented in that print out to me and friends Facebook group so thank you to who commented that because that is something that I wish I knew when I began so in this last Point here talking about your business credit card and how to increase your credit limits and all the above as you scale up your business this is something that I did want to dive a little bit deeper in real quick so when I began like I said I started with one thousand dollars on my credit card account as my limit now I had to get a hard credit inquiry in order to get that credit card and I know for a lot of new Etsy and print on demand business owners or a business owner in general your credit sometimes might not be at that level where you can have a large credit limit as I did when I began now there's two ways to really go about this one of the ways is to fund your own business and by funding your own business that's setting maybe a few hundred dollars to start off in a business checking account so if you can't get a credit card account I recommend getting a checking account one of my personal favorites is Chase so I do have the Chase business credit card I recommend down below to sign up under this is what I use since the beginning and I started with one thousand dollars and then I had to increase that 10 times during my scaling with that same print on demand and while I was scaling there was times that even that was a lot to charge within a week there was times where I just had spurts and growths in my business that I had to ask for Etsy to deposit on a daily basis and then I would pay off my credit card every single day so I would reopen my available credit limit to to charge in my production fees on that credit card so that can happen as well and I don't want to scare anyone in this point because there's a way to fix this and that strategy is what I just explained which is have Etsy deposit the funds every single day so you can pay off that card open up that credit limit again and then you can recharge and sometimes you may have to delay your production times Maybe by a day just so you can wait for that new Etsy deposit and Etsy does not deposit over the weekends so that's something to note as well and if you have that delay with your payments in charging your credit card I would at least contact your customers as well but you can also put again funds into your checking for your business account so that's why I always recommend opening up a business checking a business credit card and then two business savings accounts one for your taxes one for business expenses in the case that you may have an issue like this you can take from that savings and have it in your deposit so off your production fees are charged in a timely manner so your items and your orders go to production in time so hopefully this method makes sense I just wanted to make this point and explain this in detail for those of you who may be scaling at the level that I once did it is one of those really incredible moments because you're getting so many fails but the downside is that you can't fulfill all the sales that you have coming in based on the credit limits that your bank may have given you and one of the things I do suggest as well is calling into your credit card company and telling them that your business is making a whole lot more than you initially said as well I had to do that and after six months of telling them that they gave my credit card a increase without having to do a hard or soft inquiry on my credit score or my credit account so that's something to note as well so guys that's gonna be all for this video today don't forget to like And subscribe comment down below any future video suggestions that you guys have and I will see you all in the next video don't forget to stick around for that blooper reel because you guys know one is on its way see you guys in the next video businesses are why why can't I say the word businesses you just have to pick you just have you need bookkeeping once you have started earning this amount of money I'm gonna repeat that I'm gonna repeat that I feel like I sound so dumb oh [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: heatherstudio

Views: 20,464

Keywords: passive income, printify, printful, pod, etsy pod, etsy

Id: _hsspBHAtds

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023