Her Journey To Becoming a 6 Figure Etsy Seller 🔥 (Print On Demand + Etsy Success Story)

if you're newer to print on demand or you're just not getting the sales that you want with print on demand then you are going to love this interview with Shauna Shauna started print on demand and didn't really make any significant money for her first seven or eight months selling print on demand and Etsy but since then she has actually been able to sell over 295 thousand dollars worth of t-shirts on Etsy and has now quit her full-time teaching job and gets to do print on demand full time so you're going to love this interview make sure you grab a notebook and a pen and take some notes because shawna's interview is amazing and you're absolutely going to love her story but if you're new here my name is Cassie Johnson and I am a full-time Etsy and print on demand seller as well and I started this channel here to teach other people how they're going to be able to quit their full-time jobs and sell Etsy and print on demand as well so I've got lots of videos on my channel that you can go watch if you're not sure what print on demand is or if you're wondering how to get started I'll link a few videos down in the description below and go ahead and like this video And subscribe if you want to see more content like this in the future and let's jump into the interview with Shauna to help me welcome Shawna Shawna how are you hi Cassie thanks for having me on yeah of course we're so excited to learn from you like I said you know you've had quite the roller coaster of a start here with Etsy so we'd love to just hear a little bit more about your story because I think it is just so relatable to anyone who starts out and doesn't really get a sale super fast so why don't you tell me why you even started at CN print on demand what kind of brought you here well it was a coven times and and I was home from school I'm a school teacher and I did not want to go back to school and tutoring I was tutoring every day after school and I loved my students and I loved my tutor kids but it was just a lot of time spent and I you know wasn't getting home from school until like 6 30 30 seven o'clock so during that time I I started renovating my house and and I thought well maybe I can sell you know Farmhouse mirrors on Etsy because I was making myself a farmhouse mirror and they were going for like four or five hundred dollars so I'd started looking into that which would have been it would have been a lot of work because every time someone ordered a mirror I would have been you know with the miter saw and painting it and all that and trying to chip it and came across you know this information about doing shirts online that I didn't actually have to print myself and I could just design them and someone else would print them and ship them and so that's what got me looking into it so that I would be able to replace that tutor income that I had yeah that's great I think most people probably have a similar story they're like well you know I like Etsy in general but then I found this I'm like oh yeah that'd be way better so I know that was definitely my story too so I totally get that so you started on Etsy when it was almost two years ago now yep it was October of 2020. okay awesome and then I know you said it took you a little while to get your first sale so why don't you run me through that first month did you do a ton of listings how long did it take to get your first sale I probably had about 60 listings up when I got the first sale and it was it took about three weeks we had just gone back to school we've gone back in October and there were you know a lot of cute phrases that I wanted to wear myself as a teacher about you know hugging you and and you know it's like sweet things about messages you know to the kids because we're all wearing masks and we're all covered up and all that and not supposed to give each other high fives and all that so I made a couple of versions of these shirts that I wanted to wear myself in I had not told anybody that I was on Etsy because I didn't want anyone to go oh that's weird or you know are you sure you should be putting all your time into making shirts online that sounds strange I don't know if that's going to work so I just kept it to myself and I just kept plugging along and on my way back from lunch one day I get a little chirp you know a little noise in my phone they hadn't I hadn't made a sale but someone was reaching out to me a principal of a school and she was asking me questions about the shirts and she wanted to buy 30 shirts for all her all of her teachers so I was beside myself I was like oh my gosh it's happening now I'm Gonna Be Rich this is this is incredible and was messaging back and forth with her and I did my wind up making that sale that that month I was super nervous the shirts when it gets delivered or something would happen and the shirts were delivered everything was fine the teachers loved the shirts so that was super exciting and I kept hearing you know on YouTube stations that I was listening to that your first sales the hardest sale so I was like okay well now I've made my first sale it's going to be smooth sailing now right like I'm gonna get a sale every other day and that I felt the second sale was actually my hardest sale because it took almost four weeks for my second sale to happen finally someone came in and bought another shirt um and then from there it was you know every couple of days someone came in and bought a shirt super City for sale yeah super exciting that's a huge for sale and I think that's a good call out to the power of getting into group shirts because if you get into those group shirts right in the beginning I know it can be scary to make listings for group shirts or couples matching shirts or different things but how much more fun was that to have someone buy multiple shirts instead of just one uh that could have been a very different beginning to your story well and let's look at what time that is because I think it's really interesting that it's almost two years later to the day that you started so if anyone's watching it's just getting started with their Etsy journey I think this is really inspiring because this is exactly where your journey could look like and if it's feeling slow in the beginning that is totally normal and you're not alone and I think that can be so comforting to hear right but when you're looking at the time frame right in your first two months almost you had like two sales or did you say you got like four sales your second month yeah my in my second month I got four sales they were all um one shirt sales and they were all toward the very end of the month so I assume they were gifts for Christmas people were buying gifts um but yeah it was like very end of November that finally I think I one day I had two sales and one day I was super excited and then like three more days another sale and a couple more days and another sale yeah so I think in the end of November everyone will probably get sales right there's so much traffic so many people coming to Etsy but what were you selling at that time because I think you had said you didn't really get into Christmas your first year yeah I felt like um I I well if I could do that over again I would make a very different decision so I felt like because I was coming in in October it was too late for me to get in on Q4 like I should have been listing that stuff prior so I just focused on other niches and really I maybe I maybe I put like 20 Christmas shirts up which isn't a very big stab at that at all and I did not I did not get in on that Christmas rush or those Christmas you know it I really kind of just skipped it so the things that I was selling I assume they were you know selling as gifts but I really I wound up selling four things in November and seven maybe seven things in December yeah so definitely a lot slower start than you were probably hoping so going back you probably would have listed more Christmas stuff and it known that it wasn't too late so if anyone's watching this thinking it's too late for Christmas just know that it's not because Shawna has a crazy story to talk about her next uh holiday season in 2021 and what she did there so make sure to stay tuned until later for that and so it really took you a while to really start making sales right we know the end of the story we know you've sold 295 000 on Etsy and you were able to quit your job but at this point you know you're two three months in and you've made like 40 sales right it doesn't sound like it would leave there so how did that feel for you not getting sales so fast were you pretty discouraged did you think about quitting like what kept you going after months of doing all this work and not getting the results you wanted so it like really in the first two months I probably had under 20 20. it was probably toward the end of the fourth month that I had closer to 50 orders because January picked up a little bit I had 26 orders during that time the thing that kept me going was watching the YouTube stations that I was finding a lot of inspiration from and then your interviews with lifehackers came out and I was watching a lot I watched your interview over and over again because I just found that story so inspiring and then you had done a follow-up interview a few months later and I'd watch that one over and over again I had set my mind to it that when I'd open the store that I would keep it open for one year at least that I was not allowed to give up before the one year mark and and or 1 000 listings so I that's what I had in my hand I had divided up that amount of listings what did I need to get you know what I need to get in each month in order to make that happen and I just was not going to give up prior to that and you know good thing I did it because it took me like seven eight months to start getting inside income from the shop but it took that long to kind of to get it moving so I just kept watching those YouTube stations that were giving me that you can do this this is just keep doing this over and over again one of the things that was stated was when you're not making sales list list list and I must have repeated that to myself over and over again day after day not making sales I would just say to myself I come home from school I would get on the computer I would start listing and I would just say to myself let's let's list the only way you're going to start making money is a good listless I love that if anybody is not making sales right now get a Post-It note right now Shauna says if you're not making sales list list because that is honestly the best advice so it takes a while to really learn what sells on t-shirts what types of designs when to post them you know there's a lot to learn it's not like when you start a new job and you get to go through a six-week orientation that teaches you everything that you need to know right uh you have to kind of figure a lot of it out yourself and do a lot of trial and error and so it wasn't until really the spring of 2021 that your sales really started taking off so why don't you tell us about your first like pretty successful month and do you feel like you did anything different for those months or how many listings did you have at that time well looking back I'm not I I don't know exactly how many listings I had I would have probably had around seven or eight hundred listings coming into like summer break I think of everything of you know in terms of school calendar so let's say April May June I was making my first thousand dollar profit month wouldn't have been until like June and I took a big hit that month because you know I didn't know anything about trademarks and I was doing jeep stuff because I had gotten a Jeep Wrangler and I was all into Jeep girl stuff so I was making sure it's a Jeep girl and that was the niche that I was plugging along the best in so when I became aware and Jeep came in and they got me and and I took all my jeep stuff down immediately but I lost hundreds of listings and that's where the most of my sales were coming from so it was so like my heart was just like oh my gosh I just like backed myself up like I've just killed my store but it the momentum that the shop was starting to gain carried me because I just put all my efforts into other nations yeah and I just um I and I I really didn't drop too much I had less orders the following month but I didn't drop too much I was also raising my prices because I was underpriced so my profit kind of stayed the same that that next month even though my orders were down a bit and I was getting around a hundred and like April was 121 orders and may was 189 orders and then I dropped in June to 134 orders and then I just started building back up though so by I had a thousand dollar profit over the summer by the end of the summer I had a month that was like four thousand dollar profit and from that day for the you know when I had the four thousand dollar profit I haven't dropped under a three thousand dollar profit since most months are better than that so at the longer you're in this and the more you list and the more well-rounded you make your shop the more money you're able to make each month you're able to kind of get it to grow each month no I think that's great advice so it really took you what almost 10 months pretty much to make over a thousand dollars in a month doing print on demand and how many hours a day or a week do you think you were putting into it at that time because you were still working full-time as a teacher this whole way yes so I really I really hit it hard and if I had listened to more strategies I could have probably worked a little less hard but I was just swinging I was just swinging the bat any which way I could and so it was it was a lot of work in the beginning I did not tutor and instead I you know kind of took a chance of not getting the tutoring income and I would come home and instead of tutoring for three or four hours every day after school I came home and I just listed for three or four hours every day after school and then on the weekends I was very motivated to continue that you know sometimes I'd put in seven or eight hours you know on a Saturday because I just really wanted wanted to get it done and I even figured out like the first three or four months I was sitting there figuring out this I think I'm putting like 40 hours a week in how much am I making per hour like two pennies an hour that's the cool thing about Etsy right and building your own business is we're so used to I give you this much time I make this much money right as a teacher that's how you get paid but now that you're two years into Etsy and you're getting paid for designs that you made a year ago a year and a half ago and you're still making money off that work you did a while ago it starts to separate right now your time and how much money you make aren't connected so I know in the beginning you kind of have to put in this like big amount of work and then it's like a couple months later it really pays off so you know just again anybody watching if you're in this boat and you're calculating that you're making two cents an hour just know that it will pay off if you just keep at it and keep learning and keep growing well and I'm be really curious to hear because I'm sure that everyone watching would want to know any specific strategies that you wish you would have followed in the beginning now that you mentioned that you could have probably worked a little bit less getting into group shirts for sure I was not into group shirts like I accidentally was in group shirts because I might have one shirt that maybe uh you know that school wanted to buy AI for all their teachers but I wasn't marketing it as a group shirt I didn't have different phrases that people could buy as a group you know as a group purchase where everyone's wearing something a little different that plays off of each other's shirts so getting into group shirts was Game Changer and as a matter of fact I didn't get into group shirts until around April it was like toward the end of the school year that year and like I said over the summer was when I started to make some real money and part of that was those group shirt listings taking off also okay no that's a perfect perfect advice right we talk about that a lot on my channel it's getting into group shirts because that's what really really helped move the needle for me as well and like ugly Christmas sweaters you know those types of designs did really good for me my first year so I appreciate you kind of walking us through that uh the hard times right but now let's talk about the exciting times right so in what month was it they made four grand profit the first time was that like August or that was yeah and so then from there how did the rest of your Q4 go last year so I had expected to do better in nov and like the following month or two after that but I did it I dropped it was like a three thousand dollar like a 3700 profit month and then a three thousand dollar profit month it's like oh no what's going on but it was just my store wasn't well-rounded yet I was hitting the Halloween and the Christmas stuff I wasn't hitting Halloween with group stuff I was I went back to single shirts uh for that Niche which I changed you know this year and then it wasn't until Christmas that headed home home you know after school thinking about what I was going to be listing thought okay we're a week out from Cyber Monday Black Friday it's time to stop listening Christmas stuff it's you know we're only a few weeks out from Christmas so let me start doing Evergreen niches again what's going to sell in January what's going to sell in February and on my way home uh you know I was listening to life hackers and they had said I implore you keep keep listening Christmas stuff so I went home and I kept listen Christmas stuff then it was a listing that I did and put up like cyber day weekends that weekend that just took off and you know if you're looking into pod and you're thinking about doing pod and you're listening to people talk about beauty that you'll you'll hear people a lot of times say it's just one design it can really change things and that design all the you know I was really happy with the money I was making as I was making a lot more than I could have made tutoring by then I was just hoping to make thousand dollars a month and here I was making three to four thousand dollars a month but that December I made 11 000 profit that month because I was able to put a group listing out that just took off and I made several thousand dollars just from that one group listing wow that's amazing yeah no I'm sure everyone's so excited to hear that like you really are just one design away from being able to make a bunch of money but you'll never find it if you don't keep listing right and so I'm thinking a lot about profit which I think is a really important thing to know how much profit you actually get to take home from the sales but I also love it do you know what your Revenue numbers were for like October November December just to give people a reference so October my Revenue was nine thousand seven hundred in November it was 20 000. 500 and in December it was twenty thousand six hundred wow that's amazing that's really really really great uh those numbers are you know a really well deserved for you right you put in over a Year's worth of work before you got to make eleven thousand dollars for the first time in a month and that probably was a game changer was that when you really kind of thought like this could replace my income or when did that cross your mind yeah that was definitely during that month I thought wow I like maybe I could make more doing this than I do teaching and um and so that was kind of like and I thought and I I thought well maybe not next school year which is this school year maybe the you know maybe the following school year I could replace my my teacher my you know the money that I make teaching but it happened you know a little faster than I that I had expected even wow that's so exciting so then coming into 2021 now is when you've done really the bulk of the amount of the revenue that you've done right because it starts to compound you know once you start getting it rolling those listings start selling you start understanding niches better understanding what designs sell best how has 2021 been for you now obviously went good because we know you quit your job uh but what has this year looked like in contrast to last year well this year it's been really interesting and and fun to to watch I was wondering how I would do in January because you know you expected you not as well in January as you do first during Q4 and I've heard people talking about it YouTubers talking about it and all that and and I had also sold a lot of stuff in December and wasn't sure how many people were going to come back and go I'm going to get my shirts in time or how many refunds I was going to do I only had to do a couple like maybe three so January I was just thinking well if I could break even after all the returns I might have to do you know someone that has a their shorts didn't get there in time or whatever I'll be happy but after all was said and done I still made around 3 000 profit in January and it's just grown steadily every month it grows steadily because I keep having my my eyes set on what's going to be selling in two to three months and on keeping up with the Evergreen niches that I've been working on and I'm always trying to add couples and groups group listings to anything I can think of so and it's just been it's just steadily grown each month wow that's amazing and so when did you decide it was time to quit your job and why over the summer I thought about it going into the summer break I didn't think that that would be a possibility but over the summer just spending you know full time working on it over the summer and being able to you know list so many things I just thought geez by the end of the summer I thought well I'm making what I would make teaching plus enough to cover what I would have to pay for insurance and we're going into Q4 and I heard someone say statement successful people don't run from risk they look at it they assess it and they they figure out what's the worst case scenario if I take this risk what is the best case scenario what how hard would it be to redirect my life if the worst case scenario happens so I can be right back where I'm at and I just could not argue with that logic because the worst case scenario is I go back and I get another teaching job and I could be right back where I was fairly quickly so I just decided to go ahead and take that risk and I'm so pleased that I did because I've been able to work on it full time which is really helps me to grow it it's grown a lot since school started so I made that decision two weeks before school started and and so in August like mid-august I made that decision early August wow that's so amazing I think getting to quit your job and Be Your Own Boss is really scary right but if you're making more than you're making at your job and especially coming into Q4 you know I made a similar decision last year and quit my job in June because I was like well if I can spend the next few months full-time posting for Q4 I know it'll be so much bigger and I know you're already starting to see that I don't know if you want to share it but I know before we got on the call you shared that you had your biggest Day Ever yesterday here in October even bigger than your days in December during Christmas last year right so that really shows how everything can compound and how everything grows do you want to share how much revenue or how many items you sold yesterday well yesterday I had 52 orders but it was something like over a hundred shirts because you know a lot of group listings so sometimes people come in and they'll buy 10 shirts sometimes I'll get one for one shirt so I don't know exactly how many shirts it was yesterday but it was the most orders I've ever had and so the revenue was up there but the other day I think it was Saturday a record day also I was I think 38 orders and because before that it was last year my record day was 41 orders so no it must have been like 42 orders or 43 orders on Sat on Saturday and it was my record Revenue day I don't remember what the revenue was exactly but it was like around 4 000 for the revenue in that one day guys one day she did four thousand dollars Revenue it took you so long to do four thousand dollars Revenue in just a month and now just keeping at it being consistent learning every day and you know getting to go full time you did that in one day that's so impressive cool thing I heard someone say one time was the difference between someone who is successful and someone who's not at something is the person who's successful was willing to fail a lot more times than the person that isn't successful with it so I have so many failing listings I have so many things that I tried that didn't work and I'm just so glad that I kept plugging through that and just kept failing and failing and failing over and over again so that I could get those winners and those winners have come up to what they're adding up to for me now which is something that's really changed my life for something you know in such a great way that's amazing I'm so excited for you and I think everyone who's watching this is going to be absolutely inspired because again I think your story really resonates with a lot of people working full-time doing this aside hustle wondering if it's even worth it right and a lot of people give up before you succeeded right you even have the huge hit of having to take down you know hundreds of your best-selling listings because it was in a trademarked Niche that you actually found out you couldn't sell in and now you're more safe now but since you made that change you know I think a lot of people are worried that you can only make money on that say if you sell trademark stuff because you see people selling Disney and all these other things but you're proof now right you can make money with those but you'll get a trademark infringement lose your shop so if you switch your focus to making group shirts being ready in advance for niches and just learning from everything you do it might take longer than you want but two years isn't bad to be making more than you ever made as a teacher and getting to work for yourself so any tips that you have for someone who's sitting there discouraged in those first few months like you were only having made a couple sales or no sales any words of advice yes just keep listening persistence will pay off you just keep listening and also surround yourself with a YouTube station like yours listen to it every day listen to the same videos over and over again because if you're finding value in them and you're finding inspiration and then in them and you're inspired by someone else's story who is able the regular person that was able to go from point A to point B and that point B is where you're trying to get also you need to hear like flood your mind with that so that you're you know you have the gumption and the persistence within your soul to just keep at it and just to keep at it keep failing until it's until it's working I love that I think that's really really good advice and I think some of the advice you gave is that from the four hour work week is that yes that you read you would suggested I thought it was a great I found a couple of great little nuggets in there yeah yeah some of it doesn't apply like you might fast forward the four hour work week a few times when he's talking about lying to your boss and going and living in Bali but a lot of it really does apply in helping to shift your mindset right you can't sit there as you know a fourth grade teacher or as whatever you're doing for a living and expect yourself to like have a business mindset or an entrepreneur mindset because you haven't grown that muscle yet and so I think it is an important reminder to keep feeding yourself positive things and keep learning and improving every day in your mental as well because one of the biggest takeaways from I think what you said earlier is that you said I'm gonna do this for a year and I'm going to make it work and if it doesn't work by a year maybe I'll give up but I think a year is a really good amount of time because even at that year mark you weren't even making that much money but by then you were like oh I think I might have something it wasn't until your second 12 months that you really made like the bulk of your money right so now sitting here just to kind of finish it off you've sold 295 000 worth of t-shirts on Etsy which I'm sure you wouldn't even believed yourself if you heard that two years ago uh but just for everybody at home trying to understand what that means right you've made most of that in the last 12 months would you be comfortable sharing how much profit you actually get to take home out of that 300 000 in sales yeah it usually winds up being and and it's actually more profit now I'm gaining more profit now than I was before because I've been slowly raising my prices to to get a little closer to you know to the price that I that I know that other people are getting and I'm always afraid that's going to drop my sales but it's been okay slowly slowly doing that and also getting more and more into the group listings you're making more and more per shirt because you're paying less for shipping per shirt so I usually make between 28 and like 31 percent of the total as my profit so out of that almost three hundred thousand dollars probably about a hundred thousand of that has been profit and more and more of that has been you know it's really just the last 14 months I've been making good money right really this year you know aside from last November and December really like the last three or four months of you know consistent just really gaining in that you know making more and more orders and more and more sales leading to more and more profit so that gives you an idea of just the love you say in it the more you're gonna make because your work starts double without anyone itself right like you were saying earlier I think you had mentioned before the call that some of your best sellers for Christmas last year are already selling really well this year and that's the exciting thing that that's going to just keep happening like just imagine five years from now you're not gonna have to work nearly as hard because of all the hard work you put in in the beginning and I think that's so inspiring and so exciting and that'll give you more time to focus on other things which I know one of your goals coming up here soon is to start your own YouTube channel so why don't you go ahead and tell us what your YouTube Channel's name is going to be that way anyone who wants to follow your journey when you're ready to share it can go ahead and subscribe and follow along as you keep growing your business all right so a YouTube channel will be about my story and strategies and and things that I've you know have learned along the way I've been very inspired by Cassie and and this you know her kind of a few months behind Cassie and and this journey of etsy and then I've been very inspired by her her neck attorney and and YouTube so I it'll be Shauna Lynn s-h-a-w-n-a-l-y-n-n and it'll just be showing my story and how I'm doing and getting you know the next phase what strategies I'm using I might be opening up another Shop with a different type of of product so just some exciting things that I'm thinking about and and excited to explore and share what I learned along the way that's awesome so excited so I'll go ahead and Link down below the link to Shauna's YouTube channel even though she's not posting anything yet but that way you can be the first to know when she's ready to share all those exciting details so thank you so much for being here Shawna again I think everyone's Really Gonna Love Your story and be so inspired especially if they're sitting there not making sales now so I appreciate you being here with me today absolutely thanks for having me I just want to say thank you one more time to Shauna for coming onto this Channel and talking through all of the hard times she went through growing her print on demand business and Etsy I know that a lot of you have been through really similar struggles so again I really hope that you take from this that if you just keep listening keep learning and just persevere you really can make a full-time income and absolutely change your life with print on demand so I hope you really really enjoyed this and please go ahead and like this video And subscribe if you want to see more videos just like this in the future and we'll see you in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: Cassiy Johnson

Views: 70,848

Keywords: Etsy success story, how to sell on etsy, etsy print on demand, etsy printify, etsy success 2022, print on demand 2022, etsy and POD. What is pod, what is print on demand, how to start a t-shirt shop, make money online, work from home job, side hustle ideas 2022, how to start an etsy shop, how to sell on etsy full time, how to make money online, passive income, etsy shop for beginners

Id: YNiFGBY72uM

Length: 31min 0sec (1860 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022