How My First Student Sold $580k in 2023 🔥

Andreas went from making almost no money his first year with print on demand to selling over $580,000 in Revenue last year and making over six figures in actual take-home profit in this interview he'll share some of the biggest lessons that he had to learn along the way to help you get past those faster and he shared some of the little changes that actually made a really big difference and he actually recently started his very own YouTube channel that I'll link down in the description so please take take a moment to go subscribe and check out his brand new channel as well so let's Dive Right In and start learning and let's say hello to Andreas welcome Andreas thank you so much for joining me today to talk about your journey on Etsy I know everyone is so excited to hear from you thank you I'm stoked to be here and it feels good to finally be able to do this with you so yes it's always so fun to connect and yeah excited to finally have you on to talk about your journey so let's just dive right in Andreas I'd love for you to give us kind of a quick intro about you and your journey to finding print on demand because this wasn't just always your dream right this was a vehicle to kind of get you somewhere else so why don't you talk to us a little bit about your beginning Journey with this sure thing so I mainly a musician that's the main thing that I've been focus on focusing on my whole life after some complications with a manager type person I basically was in a position where I felt that I had to find some way to actually make money so I stumbl AC stumbled across YouTube and found some print on a man videos I actually started a digital shop so that was my first Endeavor into Etsy pin on a man and then being a bit crazy as I am I actually reach reached out to you personally Cassie and you told me to start print on demand instead of doing a digital shop so I then I did print on demand and then I went ham in the beginning I did 500 listings a month and I haggled you even more to try because I really wanted to learn from someone so I haggled you to start a met to start start a mentorship it took about a couple weeks to get my first sale and to get myself from the ground up but for quite a while I did like five to yeah about like five to 10K in Revenue each month and that was I lived off of that cuz I went ballistic no I went guns blazing basically when it came to this I knew that I needed to do something else so I haggled you about starting a mentorship then you did and when I did that things really started wrapping up so I went from like five to 10K a month to with a 20% net profit margin in just a span of a couple months I went from 5 to 10K but I think I doubled and yeah I'm pretty sure I doubled and then tripled my order value each month so instead of just doing 5 to 10K I was doing 15 to basically 30k each month and doing leg regular months excluding you for yeah I think that is a really great kind of ramp up of beginning and getting going and then ramping it up and that's awesome I know you said you went ham 500 listings is a ton in a month let's start with what that actually looked like day to day so what was your process like how many listings were you getting a day what did that look like in the beginning compared to maybe how your process evolved in the begin beginning there I got to know about scalable designs so I tried scalable designs that was my main focus I basically did 50 listings a day so I did scalable design just switch out some words to for instance if we do like teacher stuff you can do for instance first grade teacher and then second grade teacher and just switch out a couple words and then you have a bunch of designs out quick but 50 listings today was my goal basically but I just knew that something I didn't click cuz uh some YouTube videos was um really going ham on that you need to list and the process of doing quantity is super important to get good at certain point because I have I have so many expired listings at a certain point it's just not a good time spent so I focused on working smart I hated this in the beginning to hear working smart instead of hard but I basically worked smart instead of hard so I started learning from you Cassie the community that was that that that you built within the mentorship was super valuable because you could just hear other people's struggles and then from learning from what other people experienced when that happened to me I was already kind of ahead so I knew what to do when stuff happened the process was basically doing 50 L things a day until I kind of realized that I just need to revamp my store in order to grow not do more of the same but do almost none of the same and just do a little bit stuff stuff a little bit different yeah absolutely so in the beginning you were doing 50 listings a day and kind of just throwing things at the wall but then eventually you learned that you needed to be a little bit more intentional with your listings pay more attention to the details and what were some of those details that you paid more attention to was it the research was it your pricing what did kind of that kind of more fine tuned working smarter look like for you in hindsight what I basically did was that I just looked at a I basically just I basically just just applied what Alex heroi says I'm a big fan of Alex Heros but he talks a lot about the the value equation that he came up with himself I think but H I looked at my shipping times uh to make sure sure that it was like if people are going into my listing that they're not receiving it in four weeks so having competitive shipping times was one of the one Big Driver during one Q4 I had almost no sales and I was wondering why and the main th the main reason for that was my shipping times the shipping times was one of the big things that I changed I increased the perceived likelihood of achievement by adding a guarantee into my listings so having just a guarantee that takes off risk of the customer because in the beginning we none of us have a lot of reviews and or a lot of sales so in order to make a customer feel more comfortable with their purchase I basically inserted a guarantee to say that H if something happens then they can have either a refund or a replacement so those those two things uh were I think one the two big ones and what was your time frame for delivery before and what did you end up changing it to just about just curious what kind of that difference was honestly don't remember but I remember was a bit too long because I think I had like one to seven in days in processing and then probably maybe two to five or like yeah maybe two to five or two to seven business days in delivery time and that's was way too long because then it says basically that that it's going to arrive in almost four weeks I think at least if I'm not miscalculating here so yeah when it comes to shipping times having those accurate uh with printify which is my print provider that I use H having those set in accordance to that was super important yeah no that makes a ton of sense obviously you want to be quoting the correct time frames that they can really expect I know in the beginning it's tempting to be um you know like under promise overd deliver you know but a lot of times when people are buying presents they want it by a certain date and usually with print on demand I'd say nine times out of 10 you can get the item to someone within like a week to a week and a half so I don't think that is unrealistic to think that that's possible so definitely a really good tip there and I love the advice about the guarantee as well especially when you're brand new uh people not trusting you because you don't have any reviews yet can be tough so offering some kind of guarantee that if they're not happy with the item that you'll take care of it is really great call but what has that looked like for you have you taken a lot of returns and exchanges because I know that people are really scared to offer things like that because it might lose them money and I think we both know from Reading Alex Hero's hundred million offers book that it the payoff is worth it but what has the downside looked like for you for anyone who might be scared to offer something like that yeah the downside is basically taking returns and losing some but here's the great part if we have a good if we have a good offer within our listing I think my return rate or basically my default my defect rate and return rate is about 1% but the upside to having for instance a returns and exchange policy I do have that in my store is huge yeah you just get so so much more orders from that exchange policy and you you might have a few customers that returns it but if your or if your offer is set you like you have an accurate size chart you have on you display everything in a in a good way you know that for instance you don't sell black writing on a black shirt or for instance uh you don't sell maybe red ink on a red shirt then you know that the customer will get what they actually see on the picture yeah no I totally agree I think offering returns and exchanges feels really scary and it is sometimes annoying to get them because people have pretty silly reasons to get returns you know oh I accidentally ordered two and I didn't mean to you know so let's get into some more of the actionable steps that maybe people can learn from you because I think you have a really awesome story you've worked really really hard to build the business that you have uh but in the beginning that feels so far away and so hard to get to so you said that it took you a couple of weeks to get your first sale going back to that time what did that feel like and how did you kind of push through that and what are some of the things that you did that you think got you that first sales so for me I had some savings saved up I knew that I was going guns blazing I needed to make this work there's a good Tony Robbins quote where basically people two two rivalries went on an island and they kind of fart for this island I think each party came by boat and then one of the parties and the leader there says burn our boats and they did and then the leader said if you want to go home you have to take over the island so we can go home with their boats and that's the kind of thesis that I went by it's kind of going ham I don't recommend it to anyone for sure but I don't have any kids I only have my girlfriend and my cat so I was in a position position where I could do that where I also have like six months saved up going ham basically meant that I have to make this work and that's also why I kind of went to talk to someone called Cassie on on the web so my biggest recommendation is basically have something that makes you for me at least having something that that made me really focused to having to make it work was one of the biggest things that actually made it work let's dive into maybe some more of the specifics if someone wanted to kind of replicate the success that you found what types of products do you sell in your store so I do a couple of different different things I believe in in just if you have a because my Approach basically there's different approaches to this but if I have a design that sells on one thing it could probably sell on another for instance if I sell something on a mug for instance it usually doesn't sell as good on a T-shirt and vice versa so H mugs for instance and t-shirts are stuff that I sell but I try to broaden myself as much possible just to try different products all the time but Based on data okay so you've tried some different types of products over time but the t-shirts and mugs are what you found kind of most of your success with those are definitely my biggest sets for sure okay yeah that makes a ton of sense and what has that looked like for you Niche wise do you have a niche store where you sell mainly just one niche in your store or have you kind of gone more the general Niche route where you've sold lots of niches so I've tried a bunch of different things but I'm still a Cassie alumni so um I've definitely gone the General Store way my whole thesis was that I I'll have to get your results and then I can iterate on that but I have to learn from you so and from the when I have like those results then I can iterate so I don't want to talk about specific niches but I basically use everybody to research I've tried a bunch of different things so uh I do I do add some niches but my main thesis now where I am at the moment is that based on my own data I I have my own set on niches that I know are selling really well that I'm kind of getting established in and then I can just add new stuff to those niches that I'm already in yeah that's where I'm now but in in the beginning I was just trying different things based on basically based on on what you taught me so I tried to do teachers nurses I tried to do what else I did a lot of Christmas stuff in the beginning I like it's so much Christmas stuff in the beginning and nothing worked in the beginning uh but I basically tried just a bunch of different things until I find found something that worked yeah it sounds like when you first get started try quite a few different niches just to find what works best for you and then when you start finding success in a niche to really double down in those niches and make different versions do SUB niches or cross niches and really kind of dive deeper into those ones and so I think it is interesting that the process in the beginning can look very different than it does you know in the end and I think that's a beautiful thing you know when you're starting to build your business it's so much learning it's so much grinding it's so much work but it doesn't look like that forever and I think that's really cool because looking at the results that you had in your store last year Andreas why don't you tell us a little bit about how much you sold last year and maybe how that has kind of change things in your life so last year I sold $580,000 h on Etsy with about a 5% conversion rate and what that basically means is that you don't have to do that much work if you're conversion rate is high because you can just for instance there are shops that have like 20 listings I'm not saying that everyone should list 20 stuff and expect 600k in a year but I mean you can have less listings with a high conversion rate and that can make up for a big amount of Revenue yeah I think there's a lot to learn there so in the beginning you're kind of shooting everything against the wall you know seeing what works but then as you start to find success you refine and refine and ref fine and eventually you don't have to work quite as often because what does that look like these days for you I know in the beginning you were doing like 500 listings a month and that can feel like such a grind and so much work but I know that's not exactly what it looks like for you today yep so for at the moment I'm basically working one to two hours a day on ety that's all really I do and then I have my new YouTube channel that I'm trying to learn about H and trying to grow so uh I spend my most of my time doing that and then apart from that doing some music stuff but yeah when it comes to ety it's basically one to two hours a day that's amazing and you said of that 580k that you sold last year on Etsy about what percentage of that was actual take-home profit after all expenses for you because obviously that's the number that people really love to hear about for sure H roughly it's basically 20% it's 21 or 20% but roughly 20 20% so basically six figures yeah six figures is not bad and what were kind of some of the expenses that went into that because I know a lot of people um wonder about say like running ads is ADS something that you've used a lot in your store or what are some of the expenses that you pay for to make that uh all work together ads is a huge part of my strategy H Stephen from Hell custom that also has a YouTube channel his ways I implemented a lot of his uh teachings last year and he is a big proponent of ads so I spent about what is it I think it's um like my gross margin when I sell something is around 30 to 40% I think it's around that at least but my net margin for sure is because I based that on my accounting but that's about 20% but when it comes to Etsy ads it's about I think 11 9 to 11% is my ad cost of my Revenue so basically h of of my gross profit of my Revenue that I make nine to 11% I think was my uh ad cost for the um for the ads and then after that I have my take-home margins yeah no that makes a ton of sense so if you were to give us some actionable takeaways of if you were starting back over with ads today what are some of the advice that you'd give someone trying to get started with ads to find success with those yes so one of the biggest things is that I think Etsy has really mislabeled the what a budget really is because it feels like if you put like a x amount or like $500 per day it feels like it's going to spend that like with Facebook ads but when it comes to ety it's paperclick so if no one is clicking on the on the Etsy ad then you don't pay anything that also means that we can have a really high ceiling the ceiling is basically the budget so we can have a ceiling of like $1,000 which is the max and then uh we can give us our eles the highest likelihood of just boosting listings so the the the biggest tip that I would basically give someone is that don't be afraid to use it if no one is basically clicking the ad then they don't pay for anything anyways but I would also C have a big caveat to that which is if the SEO isn't super targeted like for instance if we sell a flamingo shirt but it says bird shirts then it kind of confuses the Etsy algorithm because then you will also be advertised on Bird shirt and if people look at Bird shirt and they click your listing you pay for that so if the SEO isn't correct and it's not super targeted towards the thing that you're actually selling then it can be costly but not if you're targeted towards the niches that you're towards the thing that you're actually selling so my biggest tip is that if you're doing if we're doing Etsy ads then we really got to be careful be super highly focused with our with our SEO so not include for instance if we sell a flamingo shirt we sell a flamingo shirt not a bird shirt we only use Flamingo within our title and apart from that is don't be I I wouldn't I wouldn't be afraid of because I was afraid of this in the beginning but I wouldn't be afraid to have like a$ thousand dollar a day on my budget I have that and I don't spend nearly as much as that now but having that ceiling if something for instance hits and kicks off it gives a really it can give a really good boost to a listing and as long as our SEO is targeted I would not be afraid to just have a good high ceiling on our Etc ads budget yeah absolutely and what does that look like actually running ads do you run ads on every new product that you post on only what's selling which listings do you decide to run ads on so I basically run ads on my this also comes from Steven from H Custom his his strategy but when we basically list our items we um uh sorry when I basically list my items I can basically push them with ads that basically gives them a highly likelihood of of selling just because they are pushed out right away so I list my items with ads on and I do that until I spend about $10 when I've spent $10 I can see if it it has hit the return on ad spend that I want then I keep it on if it hasn't I just turn it off okay so that's about the threshold that you use no I think that's really actionable really great and I think a good reminder that Etsy ads aren't just a saving grace that if you just throw anything up on Etsy and run ,000 dollar a day in ads that you can get sales I think Andrea is really stressing the importance of making sure that your SEO is really tight it's very specific you know if you really do your research on how to do SEO look at what other successful listings have done replicate that make sure that if someone types something in really think am I going to be exactly what they're looking for when they type that in and is there a good likelihood that if someone typed this into Etsy would they click my listing and want to purchase it and I think that's really important but I don't think that's the only aspect obviously there's your shipping times there's your photo cards like we've talked about I think one of the biggest things we haven't touched on just yet is the designs you know without a good design for the item no one's ever going to click it or buy it in the first place so I'd love to hear what that process has looked like for you for designs you know were you pretty great at designing in the beginning do you have any experience with design or what has that process kind of looked like for you over time to get good at designing things for what people actually want so for me I am a creative person but I'm a musician so when I started this I couldn't do anything I can barely draw a stick figure so I'm not a designer whatsoever at least that that's what I started in but H when Cassie had her stuff up on up on itsy that really inspired me to see that okay she doesn't really know anything about designing as well so I could probably do it too and then if we just put a lot of work into it I'll get better and that's why I think it was a really good thing of me to actually do 50 listings today because then I did I did so many designs that didn't work but that led me to find a couple designs that really worked so when it came to my process I knew nothing about it I got good over time and by just doing it not knowing what I did and then just trying to get better with h like with one step every day so when it comes when it comes to designing my whole thesis my whole thinking about it now is I try out as much I try to find basically a proven design so I try out a lot of designs I take Inspirations from stuff that has worked on ety like for instance I did a video recently where I talked about that I just I just scrolled through Etsy and found that like college far City fonts are working super well also cive fonts are working super well so so how I would have how I would have done it better if I would have started now would basically be to just see what works there combine the elements and find basically a proven design based on that research so to give an example if a college font works and a cursive font works then we can combine those and make a design out of that because we know that they work separately but then we can combine them together and make something new we never copy anyone we just take inspiration from what from what is actually working we find the elements we write a list on the elements that works and then we just put two and two together and now and the pero principle still applies here so in the beginning I tried out a lot of different things but when it comes to design we just I just had to try out as much as I as much as possible to find a proven design that I can then add to a list of proven designs basically and so you H you find different maybe layouts color combinations um fonts that you really like that you know that work and then now when you go into say a new Niche or something you already have an idea of what the designs are going to look like because you know these certain ones sell well on Etsy exactly I treat this only as a business this is not the creative outlet for me so I know that just like you said I know that for instance this element works like this college font works and then this cursive font works I combine the two and see if they work together maybe they do maybe they don't but then I try to find other elements that work as well just like you said different color palettes yeah just everything that could be in a design try to combine one two and three or one and two and then two and one and just see whatever works and then when something clicks I just put that when something clicks that would mean basically mean 10 three to 10 sales and then something would click and I would basically write that up on a list called bestselling designs and then you have one there that you can just replicate into different niches yeah no I think that makes a ton of sense it really seems like your success can all be boiled down to maybe two things from what I can really tell is doing the competitor research taking a look at what's really working on Etsy doing research on what works in business in general by doing things like reading the hundred million doll offers book by Alex Heros um joining my mentorship group to learn from other people and how they did it and you know kind of compound on their successful it sounds like there's been a lot of research a lot of learning so that you can be really intentional with your actions but then also on your part a lot of maybe AB testing where you're trying different photo cards you're trying different design Styles you're trying different niches and then doubling down on what works from those results exactly I learned the a how important the AB testing is when I did my Facebook Ad Agency uh because that's all you do with Facebook ads you basically test you basically just test test test test test to find a winner but yeah testing is a big part and then but in in all you honestly the most important thing is learning because I could have probably achieved this result in four years if I did this all by myself or five years probably because I had to figure I had to go through if I would have done it myself I had to I would have had to actually go and find every roadblock and then find some way to go past that but if since I joined your your mentorship I heard that one person basically struggled with this and then another person struggled with that I basically struggle with this then you could really relate to someone you could really learn what everyone was going through and from that uh you could really learn so when something happened to the to uh to one person in the group and that then happened to me I knew how to face it but apart from that you could also say for instance I'm not selling anything right at the moment why I'm not selling uh and then you can get like ideas and bounce things back and forth in the small community that you that you basically made for us so one the biggest takeaway in my opinion and this is not in any way shape or form a plug but it was it was actually the mentorship I even am now paying for a super expensive course on how to do YouTube because I don't know how to do YouTube but I know that if I want to learn this fast I can either pay this with time or I can FastTrack it with money I will still have to pay it some time but I can pay with less time and just some money to be able to Fast Track it no and I definitely couldn't agree more I think you know I went through my own mentorship program with the life haacker couple when I first got started and I found a lot of the really exact same benefits and so when you asked me to create one I thought it was a great idea so I feel like we have a fun kind of intertwined story of kind of how things have gone for us I'm really excited for you to be on YouTube and starting this journey now and what I think is interesting is there's a lot of exact parallels you have to do a lot of the same learning a lot of the same AB testing you know a lot of the same types of research you know any business that you start really these skills that you're going to learn building your Etsy store can be applied you know the fact that you learn things from when you were doing Facebook ads kind of brought that to Etsy all of this is business and I think looking at it as anything else is going to give you a hard time you know like you said you know trying to like be unique or be creative with your designs if it's not based on Research if it's not what someone is already looking to buy then you're not going to get sales and so I think that was really good advice to make every decision that you make for your business based on the research and not what you like or what you want to do and it takes time I mean you didn't start making six figures a year right away you know and I don't think that's what you were expecting to do either you know obviously it'd be great if we all made six figures our first year on Etsy and print on demand but most of us had to go through hours and hours and months and months of trying things and learning things to get where we are today and so I think that this has been a super valuable interview Andreas I really am so glad that you decided to come on but before we Hop Off are there any other words of wisdom or helpful tips that if someone is maybe not getting the sales that they want that you could give them to help them on their Journey if I had to boil it down to one thing it's basically if your expectation is to make it work as a business then you have to treat it as a business you can't treat it like a hobby and and just do it do it once in a while you have to make Daily Progress in my opinion at least and then you got to base your base your decisions on data I think that's really really great great advice so thank you so much Andreas for coming on to join us if you guys haven't already check out andreas' YouTube channel down in the link in the description he's just posted his first few videos and is going to be making such valuable content and will give a great perspective especially to anyone that doesn't live in the United States obviously you give great advice to everyone but I know living in the US and selling to the US is simple U but I think you'll be able to give some really great advice and you have a great video about VAT if that's something that you need to worry about so go ahead and click and subscribe to andreas' channel down below and thank you so much Andreas for your time thank you for having me on Cassy it's been it's been awesome to be on so thank you I hope you love this interview with Andreas I think some of the biggest takeaways for me when I was watching this was that you shouldn't be afraid to try out Etsy ads I know they can be intimidating this can be a great way to boost new listings faster and start getting more results back to know what you should make more of or make less of the second thing that I think I'd really take away is that it takes a ton of hard work to build a print on demand business in the beginning it might look like making hundreds of listings doing hours and hours of research but eventually when you find things that start working for you it gets a lot easier and you get to just keep doubling down on what's working instead of having to always be going back to the beginning so just know that the beginning is the hardest part that actual building but it does eventually get easier third is to really invest in your education whether that's reading books watching lots of YouTube videos purchasing a course to become a part of a community of other sellers on the same path as you or really just doing a ton of competitor research and being a student of etsy making sure you're paying pay attention to what works and how you can Implement that into your own store and I'll go ahead and I'll link my coaching program that I have available down in the description below that comes with a whole community of sellers on the exact same Journey as you just like Andreas was talking about so if that seems like the right fit I'll link that down below but even if you don't I hope you know that I am here rooting for you that there are tons of other people out there on the same Journey as you and it's normal that it feels hard and that it takes time to build it nothing good ever comes easy right and just know that we are here rooting for you and that you can do this and as always thank you so much for watching all the way until the end and I'll see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: Cassiy Johnson

Views: 36,511

Keywords: Selling on etsy for beginners, Etsy seller tutorial, etsy success 2024, print on demand, etsy print on demand, printify print on demand, etsy and printify, printify and etsy, etsy bestsellers, how to sell on etsy, how to start an etsy shop, passive income ideas, work from home, how to start a t-shirt store, how to start a t-shirt brand, how to start a clothing line, Etsy success story, etsy interview, make money on Etsy, print on demand success

Id: HcNfXgluvQw

Length: 31min 53sec (1913 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2024