How to be the Brad Pitt of Etsy - The Friday Bean Coffee Meet

beautiful friday what kind of jam uh let's do like a like a raspberry jalapeno compote spicy but not too much but perfectly sweet just a little bitter because it's chilly outside i was just gonna say strawberry but yeah mr fancy pants but i'm a fancy boy how's everybody doing how do we sound today i'm trying something new i say every week yeah every single week we're trying something new and we're going to try new things until everybody's happy with how we sound i've also been toying with an idea that i need you guys i need your seal of approval on um i don't know if you guys have noticed but our channel like our thumbnails for our videos episodes of the friday bean have the kind of reddish pink branding with the friday bean logo under that little square it's like a funny picture and then the title of the video and then little friday bean logo and then our standard content shorter uploaded videos have an orange square on the right hand side with white letters right no little friday bean logo i've been thinking about completely redoing our style of thumbnails but i'm afraid you guys won't be able to recognize my content because i've had the same style of thumbnails for like almost four years now yeah so if you're like yeah just freshen it up let me know if you're like no no don't freshen it up i'll never be able to find your videos um let me know because that's the only reason i haven't changed them yet i don't think that the font that i use doesn't fit our branding anymore but i don't want to change it if you guys are really used to the style so let us know how we sound let me know what you think about the thumbnails and then we're going to talk today we sound good we're using rtx broadcast today which means you really shouldn't be able to hear anything that i do did you hear that typing could you hear the typing on the keyboard alex couldn't hear it at all when i was using my chat yesterday oh let us know yeah do it one more time he's gonna type in i'm gonna i'm gonna type and i'm gonna talk at the same time we have a very loud keyboard sitting literally inches away from the mic can you hear it at all please let me know i'm actually curious cool i think they're saying no not to change the thumbnails wow we've asked no typing all right cool awesome it works exactly how it's supposed to and rtx uh camera is in beta right now so next week we'll try that a bit of typing okay all right um check your youtube listing says 4 p.m eastern i missed it no it's not it's not that it's because you're watching it on a device other than your uh computer yeah it does that to us too yep on our tv it always says that we start at 4pm we start at noon eastern every friday it that will never change it will never not be noon easter it's been noon eastern for like three years now so no matter what your device says your devices is lying it's 4pm or 12pm yeah good job crap um oop poop what's not a bee is crap a bad word no crap isn't a bad word crap's not a bad word it's not a bad word it's a verb i remember i remember when i was in the third grade my third grade teacher pulled me out into the hallway and said that another student had said that i said crap which i would never when i was little like i didn't start saying no i didn't start crap i didn't start saying wordy dirds until i was like 16 which yeah yeah but yeah i i always thought that crap was a bad word and my mom finally sat me down and she's like honey it's not a very nice word but it's not a bad word all right guys today we're going to be talking about a couple different things using a really weird morphed up strange metaphor that i part of it was inspired by a conversation i had with pam duthie yesterday part of it was inspired by a keynote uh speaking thing that i watched from chris cubby who's a social media marketing influencer um and then i morph those things together and turn them into an etsy seo and branding lesson using brad pitt so if this seems really confusing feel free to let me know i've been trying to change up our content style that's why we did the seo game show a couple weeks ago i'm trying to like think of ways that are fun to watch and less boring than most etsy seo content because i i will sit down and think okay what are all the other big coaches covering what are they talking about and i'll get like halfway through their videos and just turn it off because i i can't do it i can't do it i can't do it i love pam's videos she's very she's very tight and to the point and there's always like lots of motion going on on screen and i love it and it holds my attention pam duffy for those who don't know um we both work for e-rank so she's her channel's great as well but then most of the like big gurus they just sit in front of the camera and talk straight into the camera and i can't i can't guys um if that's your type of content that's that's cool but i like to make things fun i used to be a preschool teacher at least the thumbnail wasn't like entirely clickbait right just a little bit no it wasn't because that's exactly what we're gonna talk about yeah so we're gonna be talking about brad pitt's abs brad pitts abs no and you know what's funny is i've tried to draw brad pitt for this i couldn't so that's actually really good oh never mind i printed it but i did draw this okay guys i had to show him so he wouldn't laugh when i'm actually doing it he's probably still gonna all right guys so we have this is greg he's your next door neighbor let me put greg that'll watch the screen to make sure they can see greg yeah make sure you can see greg okay this is greg let me scoot up and just kind of barely see greg can you scoot oh is it too bright is there no there's nothing i can do about that i drew him too thin without making us look like ghosts you know what nothing i can do about it harry hold greg how about that hold on you can be greg i'll be greg all right there we go all right this is greg okay greg is your next store neighbor and greg he's a single guy he works at a local factory but he's got big dreams guys greg greg has big dreams he is going to get him a hot date this weekend and he's been trying to get cast in movies and he's you be greg for a minute because i'm going to go blow my nose oh okay i'll be great he's he is uh just he is a great fella you guys are our best friends with greg you go over you talk about the lawn whatever whatever you talk about with your next door neighbor but all around greg's a good guy okay here we'll put right here right here you go greg get over here okay um but we're gonna pretend that greg right greg is is is you okay you you've got well i guess i guess that wouldn't make a lot of sense greg's his own person i'm i'm all mixed up we'll figure it out i can't i can't do this without mark yes you can okay so we pretend that because greg he wants to go on a hot day and he i can't do it without you greg wants to get a hot date and be in movies right we're going to pretend that etsy is the casting director right these are movie casting directors etsy is the movie casting directors and we want etsy to you know show our listing show pick us to be in their movies so greg and our customers come here greg yeah my way our customers are the hot dates that we want to go on okay yeah the hot date and greg both wants to be cast in a movie and he wants to go on a hot date so we'll we'll work on getting we'll do casting first because i think that once you're cast in a movie you know you probably it's probably a little easier to get a hot date right so we've got greg applying to be in this movie he's he's ready to rock and roll he will be the perfect guy but then unfortunately in walks brad pitt into the casting caller is that it yeah i almost put a bar of soap for fight club beside him it is greg's competition okay so we've got greg is trying to be in the movie and brad pitt's trying to be in the movie if we've got both of these actors trying to be in the movie trying to appeal to etsy etsy's gonna look more at brad pitt because brad pitt i mean he's brad pitt he's been in lots of movies he has experience he knows what he's doing you you if you're greg right sorry greg if you're greg you've got to go if you think you're going to compete with brad pitt which is our top etsy sellers if you think you're going to compete with them you've got to go in like looking good you need to make sure that maybe maybe you go to the gym for a couple months you you're eating really good you get a personal trainer you've you're wearing your nicest nice suit and what else what your facial hair is all trimmed and you've got your perfect comb over you're looking good right as good as greg as greg can possibly look because greg ultimately has to compete beside brad pitt and i know that this probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now but when you are competing with top etsy sellers in the marketplace what you're doing is you're coming into the casting call as greg because etsy looks at these established shops the ones that have a good track record yeah the ones that have been around for 10 or 15 years and have 20 30 40 50 000 sales right and etsy says i trust that this etsy shop is going to give customers what they want i trust that brad pitt is going to do a good job you know you as a new seller you're greg or you as a seller who doesn't have as many sales as your competition your greg you don't have the experience yet and this is ultimately your listing quality scores etsy looks at how many sales you have they look at how many good reviews that you have on singular listings they look at how long you've been selling and they decide whether or not you are good enough to sit beside the top sellers so when you go on etsy and this is one of the most common things that we see with e-rank is that people will complain about their competitors and they'll say things like oh you know my competitors have terrible titles and terrible tags and terrible seo but they have like 30 000 sales why do they have so many sales i have great seo but i can't rank next to them and then they assume that maybe that person is doing something right maybe maybe i should start you know doing my titles and tags the way that they are with single word tags and and no long tail keywords in sight but that's not the case the reason that those shops rank higher is because they're brad pitt brad pitt doesn't have to go get his suit pressed brad pitt doesn't have to trim his facial hair or make sure that he looks top-notch when he walks in brad pitt could walk into that casting call wearing a potato sack and he would get cast for that movie even if brad or greg even if greg did everything right and just looked significantly better and more put together than brad pitt brad pitt would still get that role potato segment potato sac man because broad is the established one but that doesn't mean that you as a seller can't still succeed it just takes a little bit of time because what you need to do are accumulate the experience that etsy wants to see in order to someday rank right beside brad pitt you know so what we want to do is basically appeal to the customers our hot date that way they buy our listings that way they leave good reviews on those listings and that way we can build listing quality scores so that someday we will be able to rank right beside brad pitt because once we get cast for a few smaller movies once we get a little bit of experience and we've got more on our resume and and and casting directors and big movies can kind of trust us they can look at our past work and see that we have some experience they're more likely to cast us next to brad pitt etsy is more likely to trust that we can hold a position on the first second or third page of a of a search result for a highly competitive term now starting out we can't compete for big movies we can't we can't compete for movies like troy right greg being cast in troy probably not gonna happen right away that's that's reserved for brad pitt just like if you're trying to rank for sterling silver necklace yeah you know that's a really hard term to rank for and the brad pitts are going to dominate that first page of search so we want to start with a smaller movie we want to start with a more niche movie or a more niche keyword that you know maybe less people are searching for it but it's more achievable because it's something that is easier for us to rank for as a little guy as greg so maybe maybe brad pitt is gonna try for the role in troy and maybe greg is gonna try for a role in a i don't know a netflix series or series okay so what we want to do is appeal to our customer that way we can build the listing quality scores through those positive sales and reviews and interactions so that someday we can get cast for big movies like brad pitt and the way that we're going to do that is the same way that greg is gonna land his hot date right our customers are our hot dates and we need to make sure that we can appeal to them because let's face it go ahead and move this one over here if we've got a lucky guy or a lucky lady who is wanting to date an outstanding guy like greg greg is gonna have to do a little bit more work than than brad pitt is right that's what he's got going on well that's true but greg's gonna have to work a little bit harder because there's a lot of brad pitts out there on on etsy right now right and we we want to get those customers to buy from us rather than those brad pitts we still have to compete with brad pitt when it comes to the customer because competing with etsy is hard trying to get a customer though that's that's not as hard because we're appealing to a bigger a bigger audience versus etsy's algorithm so what we want to do is we want to appeal to the customers and just like etsy is more likely to rank a shop that has more experience the customer is more likely to buy from the shop that looks more experienced right so brad pitt if he's got all those sales and he's already got good photos and he's he's already established it's gonna be really easy for him to get hot dates right greg's got to work a little bit harder though greg greg can't just you know walk up in to any random person and say hey you want to go on a date if brad pitt does that i mean i'm assuming probably can't do that either well if you would date brad pitt you can you can comment and let us know but i'm assuming that brad pitt probably has a little easier than greg right greg's gonna do a little bit more work we as we as the average etsy seller who doesn't have you know we'll say 30 000 sales on etsy we got to do a little bit more to appeal to those customers starting out until we get that authority until we get those sales we get those good reviews and we've already established ourselves in the marketplace and the way that we're gonna do that is we're gonna do the things that brad pitt doesn't have to do okay brad pitt doesn't have to go and buy flowers maybe he does but i'm sure he doesn't he could walk up to somebody without the flowers it's brad pitt doesn't need to do that but greg griff might do a little better if he comes you know and offers a flower to the hot date so our flower is our branding okay so greg's got a shop with good branding he is coming to try to appeal to his date with flowers okay he's getting a little bit closer and then you know maybe maybe maybe he turns on a little bit a little bit of music he turns on some sexy music so this is our good photos right he's gonna come to the date he's got he's got some some sexy music playing and ooh and what's this greg what is this this is some wine some good customer service he's going to pour his hot data hot glass of customer service right there hmm this feels like alpha's after dark it does anybody want a hot glass of customer service oh yeah that's that's spicy let's just get demonetized i'll put in for a manual review and then and then guys here's here's here's when we start getting really serious we've got good photos good branding and good customer service but here's where we start we get a little bit bold right we're going to offer oh here's a diamond necklace top 10 pricing you offer a diamond necklace for a date it's a hot date not just a date a hot date hot date greg's got to work hard he's got a he's a sorry any bald folks out there i'm gonna be bald someday everyone in my family's bowl he's 100 percent gonna be bald you're gonna be crazy i'm not gonna be greg top 10 top 10 pricing okay that means that you are pricing in the top 10 of your market you are not just you know you are not just pricing below brad pitt we're going to price right beside him we want to make sure that we are offering top tier pricing so that we are perceived as being just as valuable as this guy over here and then we're also going to top it off with something a little bit sweet little bit of dessert we'll do some chocolate strawberries and this is our social media this is our brand perception because it can take up to seven exposures to a brand before a customer makes a purchase so if you're taking notes i would write that thing down out of every stupid thing that i've said today it takes seven exposures to a customer via social media or to a follower via social media before they will potentially buy your products so we want to make sure that we are appealing on the social scale continuously you know reminding us that we are that we exist reminding them that we have that that product that they've been thinking about buying we need to remind them that that product exists by continuously talking about our product and that's that's what a lot of people um in our in our streams they worry that they're over doing it on social media it won't i promise yeah like go to go to coca-cola's news feed right now and tell me what are they advertising dude even big companies are getting in on it i was just showing her colgate you all should check out colgate's website like the toothpaste company yeah it it's modern and it looks great it looks great so christina said i love how weird this is i hear that a lot so so we've got we've got brad pitt right we've got brad pitt and he's coming into the date and he's wearing i don't know he's wearing like sweatpants and a ripped up shirt well i'm trying there's nothing that we could really say that bradley's pants and a ripped up shirt is this 1985 is that what's hot now sweatpants i'm trying to think of what's not hot but what what wouldn't be attractive for brad pitt to wear well a sack is what's not hot for any dude to wear just like plain black oversized stained-up sweatpants and maybe like a stained yellow wife beater what do you guys think still hot that's like what that was what i'm talking the kind like where it's got like the armpit stains and like you can tell that he probably smells like cigarettes and last night's alcohol some some yeah some of you weirdos out there like that um brad pitt is gonna come to the date wearing whatever just black socks just black socks just black black socks and stained tidy whities there you go there you go okay okay we're gonna get to go up under the armpits no that's that's for greg i like that though just pants up to the armpits the the brawn one um he's gonna wear just pants up to the armpits to his hot date sorry brad pitt i hope we don't get sued by brad i think brad pitt would sue us we'll just put him in another crappy movie and then we got and then we got greg greg's coming to the date he's prepared he's got the wine he's got the flowers he's got the chocolates and the the sexy music and the the necklace and he's coming in you know really strong and sure brad pitt might be more established and he might have you know a face but greg he's a great guy greg's got all these things and you know side by side i guess it just depends on the dragon for long term or not brad might be will you shut up brad might be more established than greg brad might have been around a little bit longer but when you add in great customer service great branding a great social media presence great photos and top 10 pricing greg's got a chance greg has a good chance because he's got all of these things that make his shop just as good he just doesn't have the the experience that the brad pitt shops have and that is ultimately what we want to do because once we come in with all of these things already in place and we start building those sales and good reviews and those high listing quality scores then we're going to be next to brad pitt and brad pitt might not have all of these things how many times have you looked at a competitor who has thousands of sales and they're but their seo kind of sucks and their photos aren't that great because they're literally just relying on their sales history to build up their excuse me build up their brand exactly brad pitt's just relying on his like old movie roles right he's he's relying on fight club and troy and greg greg's got all these really great new fresh things in place greg isn't relying on the on just the sales and the listing quality scores right greg's got customer service too he's got great branding that makes you feel like you're a part of his brand planet he has a great social media presence where maybe you comment and he comments right back and he shares really funny pictures that you want to engage with his photos are really great he's got 10 photo slots completely filled in his etsy listings and maybe a listing video and you know exactly what you're buying from him and he's pricing in the top 10 percent of his market he's pricing right at the top that way you can look at that product you can look at his product next to brad pitt's product and they're priced around the same so there's no denying that quality is there because oftentimes when you see a product that is listed at a lower price next to a high priced product you automatically assume that the high priced product is the product that is a higher quality or that it's made with better materials or that there's something special about it that makes it better than that cheaper product right so and and after after greg lands a couple hot dates he's more likely to get cast by etsy he's more likely to build those listing quality scores and rank higher in etsy search so i highly recommend if you need more help with doing your etsy seo if you need more help if you like weird examples make sure that you watch our etsy seo game show episode where i talk about long tail keywords and head keywords and an exact match versus broad matching because that's really going to help you to get in the door just like greg here and we've also got videos talking about photos i've got an entire photo editing series using ipicy.com it's around three years old so it's out and the quality isn't that great but it still teaches the lessons we record one soon yeah um got tons of videos on social media i do lots of videos on branding and in december we do a webinar that you guys will be able to do with us and uh and customer service we've got our ssar swipe files down below those are free just click see more under the video and those are going to help you to get more five-star reviews while following etsy's terms of service by uh communicating with your customer through every step of their transaction to ensure that they're happy with their purchase and to encourage them to leave a good review or contact you directly if there's an issue with their order rather than just running off and leaving a bad review so um that we only took up about 30 minutes guys i've anybody who joins the chat live is going to be so confused super confused um but if you have any questions feel free to get those in if this was the weirdest thing ever and you don't want me to ever do anything like this again please feel free to let me know um and we'll do it anyway and we will do it anyway because guys i am not the world's best etsy coach i'm just the world's okay coach so we really haven't had any questions yet honestly well give me some good comments yes white socks yes crocs and white socks they said oh gag yeah nobody looks good in plain black socks and stained up tighty whities no matter how good you look greg starts to shave those sides though no you gotta go with the like the double mohawk where you take the instead of combing it over you just spike it straight up on each side oh yeah you know what i'm saying like mad scientists love yeah here we go question reshipping timelines i just had my postman lecture me about dating my packages that i completed last night to today's date is that a thing no and and your postman is going to tell you that because he doesn't know what he's talking about um so i have talked to multiple post offices and i have i i i'm talking about our dude what's his name greg i think his name was greg yeah or put or was it brad something like that something like that we we had a post this is either greg or brad um we had a post guy who actually worked for the the main like big like post office in uh sacramento and i talked to him about this a couple years ago when we lived in california and he said that the date that you put on that package does not matter no it is the date that they scan it so the term that a lot of people heard last year it's called a postmark yeah that's all it is is a postmark you can have if you buy anything from like any major brand other than amazon you'll have seen where you'll buy something and it immediately tells you you have a tracking number it's because a machine somewhere printed out a label with your name on it and it'll sit there in the warehouse for five to seven days before they slap it on a box with your product and send it out it doesn't matter yeah so if he's hassling you um i would say not uh not to really pay him anything i thought so he said i need to make them look good meaning you make usps that's not your that's not your job that's not your job that's their job yeah yeah uh and if he starts kind of hassling you about it i would contact your corporate and tell them what's going on because that's not cool don't still feel hassled by them visuals work for me this is a great way to teach com for comprehension yeah my carrier says the same yep it doesn't the date that's on this as long as you're not letting it go like i'm sure there's probably like a limit like don't print something out and then ship it 45 days later like that's just bad etiquette to begin with but like if you need two or three days to get a package finished and you've already printed it by goof or you printed it the day before like that's that's a normal thing people will print it out the day before label them all up and then take them to the post office the following morning that's like a normal procedure for most people yeah as long as you're not doing it like late already they just do it do it like a day or two before your package is due to ship anyway um there's a good one for you mr mathwiz how to determine top 10 tier pricing so if you've got a competitor who's pricing their necklaces at a hundred dollars how might you determine what the top ten percent of that uh pricing tier is if there's only one person you would just price at the same price right so you would price it a hundred dollars for your competition see who makes the high quality products i wouldn't quite pay attention to the people that have like crappy pictures and clearly don't make good stuff but have no sales yeah and then literally just averages just just take the averages of what you're seeing and then price price where you're comfortable too like if some people are pricing like way higher than what you can afford to do and keep yourself in the green you need to first look and make sure that whatever distributors you're getting your supplies from are like not gouging you for what you're buying and see if you can find the same thing not lower quality but the same thing at a lower price so you can afford uh to print it at a higher thing but yeah and uh and guys e-rank.com uh disclaimer mark and i both work for e-rank but we don't get paid to recommend it um their keyword tool will show you if you search like specific keywords related to your product i would search whatever your product is so if you are selling a sterling silver necklace go into the keyword tool and search sterling silver necklace and then look at what the average price is because the keyword tool will show you what other sellers are selling that product for keeping in mind the keyword tool is showing you uh popular tags and keywords that fellow sellers are using not what buyers are searching for so you want to make sure that if you're doing your actual seo research you're both using the keyword tool and the keyword explorer that way you can see what buyers are searching for as well but you can see the average processing times and the average uh of ship or the average uh item price with the keyword tool just uh like i said make sure that you're searching very accurately what you're selling okay not a thing yeah so this she was talking about the the labels how else would you send return labels to your customers not like they're going to run out and make sure it's shipped out the same day exactly exactly ginger said can you have a check out my website in the description on your etsy banner no you cannot sell send people to your website through etsy directly if you're going to do that if you're going to send people to your website through an etsy purchase you need to do it by like inserts that you put into your package yeah or if they're on your email list it's against edc terms of service now there is an area somewhere down like in our policies down you know where we can put our processing time and um there's an area down there where you can link a website and that's the only place that you can put a website but you can't do like check out my website or go to my website if you're selling products on that website um it violates that terms of service what's the best way to find the prices in the top 10 of the market in your product niche through e-rank that's what i just answered by going to the keyword tool you can see average average prices for the the keywords that you're ranking for or trying to rank for should we do a deep drive into what brad is doing and try to copy the keywords they're using shipping times and policies no no don't don't copy anything come up with your own stuff no that in fact that depe that defeats the purpose did you watch the whole thing because if not watch the whole thing what i just basically was trying to to make the point is that brad probably doesn't even have good keywords have you ever gone and looked at a competitor and their tags are just crappy and their titles are crappy and they have like a high-end competitor yeah like one of the people that's been around a long time and they have the worst seo ever but they've got a ton of sales and you you're like why my seo is better than this because their shop quality and their listing quality scores are high enough that they don't need any of the seo or stuff like that and it eventually does get to that point but most people it takes a long time exactly so they might be making those sales simply because they're listing quality scores are so high that etsy doesn't even care that their seo is crappy but you can't come in with the same tags and titles as them you are not going to rank the way that they are because you don't have listing quality scores like they do not to mention they've been around long enough that they've probably got pretty good social media if not have people specifically hired to handle their social media for them and if not they've got repeat customers who have bought from them in the past so don't you you could go to a seller's maybe okay you're selling i don't know i've got bunny ears on my desk not for any any weird reasons i promise you um you're selling bunny ears in your etsy shop and you've got you know no sales right now and then you've got a competitor who sells bunny ears that aren't even as nice as yours they're like some crappy things that they threw together but they've got a hundred thousand sales and you think to yourself man they are ranking on page one position one i'm gonna i'm gonna use their exact titles and their exact tags and i'm gonna get my listing right beside theirs the problem is you don't have a listing quality score because you haven't sold your listings they might have hundreds of sales for their singular listings so there no matter what even if their seo isn't that good even if you copy their exact titles and tags you are not going to rank beside them because it isn't just the titles and tags that etsy's looking at it is the listing quality scores the repeat sales of that listing and the reviews left on that singular listing um and for those of you who sell one of a kind i have a video premiering tomorrow on my channel it is gonna like have a live chat and everything but the video is not live um but that video is going to talk about the struggles of one-of-a-kind sellers what you guys should expect if you're selling one of a kind why etsy places you guys lower in search and how you can overcome those lower search placements so i'm not going to talk much about it today but there will be a short video posting on my channel around noon eastern tomorrow uh what do you do if you sell print on demand to get like brad pitt when you cannot afford to purchase inventory so if you sell print on demand i just recommend you do your own mock-ups um make sure that when you if you're going through a company like like printful um make sure that you download like their their transparent background mock-ups but then you add your own backgrounds to them and you do your own marketing i would recommend going in and getting something like canva if you can afford canva pro i highly recommend it make sure that you are the king at social media advertising perfect the areas that you can perfect because what you're saying right now is that you can't afford to purchase your own inventory okay that's that's just photos that's just one of the things you've still got top 10 pricing you can still do social media really well using those mock-ups just do your own backgrounds rather than doing the plain white ones that they give you you can still have top tier branding and you can still have fantastic customer service you just aren't able to do your own photos and as you make some sales you can buy a couple of your products just buy one of them and and do some of your own photos with them then when you make a little bit more money buy buy another thing maybe you sell all like shirts hoodies tank tops and over the summer you just buy one tank top and you do some cool photos outside with it and then once you sell a couple more of your your products you can afford to get a sweatshirt and then you take some pictures of your sweatshirt and then you know whatever whatever that may be and then you can start incorporating your own photos but in the meantime just don't use the plain mock-ups that they are providing you um try to stand out with your mock-ups i'm getting so sick of seeing the same product mock-ups over and over again like give me something spicy give me something new my very favorite brand to um look at for like mock-up style clothing or backgrounds or you know making clothing stand out in a unique way is uh cloak which it's markiplier and jacksepticeye they have a fantastic like way of marketing where they use these really cool backgrounds and stuff on their social media so i recommend checking out their instagram and and looking at it it's uh c-l-o-a-k cloak what about telling them to go for our website for the coupon code um if it's like in an email list like you're sending them emails through your email list then etsy doesn't dictate what you do there anyway right but you can't are you saying are okay so what you can do is you can direct them to a landing page to sign up for an email list you can do that as he says that we can tell them to go sign up for an email list to get a coupon yes that coupon needs to be redeemable that coupon needs to be redeemable on that etsy purchase so you can't direct them away from etsy to make that purchase elsewhere so you can send them off of etsy to go to a landing page where they can get a coupon code that they can redeem for that purchase on etsy and then when you start emailing them because you have gotten their email uh through your email list you can use your emails to begin marketing your website okay um if you just have a coupon code available on your website but there's also products to buy you're kind of writing a line there so i would be really careful um i would never send a customer directly from etsy to a website where you have products hosted that you sell yeah because i just don't think that's a good idea i would create like a separate mailchimp landing page or if you really want to make it look nice you could you could get lead pages which is what i use for all of our opt-in like all the freebies down below on those really cool pages when you click see more all the freebies that's all through leadpages um and you can kind of get a little bit more customization uh for you know your your whatever email marketing service you use i use mailchimp and if this whole email list thing is super confusing for you and you you know for those of you who don't have email lists and you don't even know how to start uh that's something that we exclusively teach in handmade alpha academy which will be opening for enrollment june 14th through what's 10 like 10 days after 24th 24th yeah june 4th you just didn't add 10. june 14th through the 24th um we only open it twice a year 10 days per enrollment but i i talk about mailing lists exclusively in handmade alpha academy because there's a lot of legalities that you guys also have to consider you need to make sure that you're following gdpr and the can spam act because fines are up to a hundred and forty five thousand dollars per email sent so if you've got an email list of a hundred people um a lot a lot a lot yeah well that was a long time for one question yeah but like yeah yeah yeah but like we got plenty what if you're the most expensive high tier seller of your specific niche my handmaid goes up against 3d printed items and i don't have close competition sounds like you're at the top of your industry what's what's what's the what's the question here if you're the top tier priced products then you are going to be perceived as the highest quality products um now the down side of that is that it's going to take you longer to get those conversions you do need to watch and make sure you're making sales um even if it's you know just occasionally just like for example a seller who makes you know six thousand dollar coffee tables they might only make one or two sales a year but when they do that's a significant amount of money and like i always say it's easier to make one 100 sale than it is to make 100 one dollar sales so that big purchase that somebody makes is a better payout than under pricing but you still got to make sure that you're at least making the sales that are going to make your brand profitable and if you're not making any sales at all i wouldn't price down i would first focus on your photos make sure that they're as good as they can be make sure that your social is as good as it can be make sure that your branding is as good as it can be and make sure that your customer service is good as it can be and if you still aren't able to get those sales after you've done all of these things um and don't don't test this stuff right now spring and summer are the slowest times on etsy they are the slowest times for most e-commerce you know platforms we are going to see slow sales right now so i would wait until things start to heat up a little bit september october and see if you can get some sales when that holiday traffic starts flooding in and if you still aren't seeing sales when it's like all the stars have aligned and you have come to the date with all of the things and you're still not making those sales then maybe it's time to start looking at your prices so i'm sorry if this is too off topic but i was wondering if you'll be doing another etsy shop critique video yeah we we've been trying to do those once a month we could actually probably do that next week it's been a while since we've done one last time here's the thing guys every time i do them somebody gets really rude somebody gets really butthurt we got i got a really nasty email from somebody because they were apparently like next in line on the chat and then the chat guy so what we'll probably do i don't maybe not next week but the week after because i'll have to i'll have to figure out the what we need to do for it but we'll set up some sort of like pre-sign up thing and then we'll just pick a number of shops that we're going to do do those exact shops and then that's it like we won't have the chat do anything with it at all so look out for that we'll probably send that out in an email if not post a link next week when we do the friday bean so we so way the maximum amount of amount of people actually get so we'll we'll look into it but i don't think we're going to do it you say don't listen to the trolls but it ends up to a point where people start pushing pushing it in other pages and leaving reviews in places and then it ends up killing our bottom end too so here's the thing guys i'm not gonna do anything that affects my mental health negatively um this is like real talk with you guys i don't want you guys to do anything when it comes to your customers that affect your your mental health negatively and if something affects my mental health negatively you can you can say ignore them but we both know that if somebody says something mean about you you don't ignore it because and here's a little lesson in negative feedback well yeah here's a little lesson in negative feedback guys you know how you could get like 100 really nice comments that you know maybe you post a selfie and everyone's like oh you're so pretty oh i love your eyes so i love your makeup but then somebody posts like something mean you're not going to give a crap about all the nice things you're only going to focus on the negative thing exactly and that is what being on youtube pretty much is i'm pretty good at deflecting negative comments on youtube we just block people now but when when i get a personal email from an alpha telling me like that they're upset that they're hurt yeah it it it really does get to me we we feel differently about these kind of things she doesn't like the negativity i don't care because i know it's the internet and there's a 50 50 shot that those people are just actual trolls anyway they're not actually people that cared about us to begin with when i recognize the name of the person though so we block them don't be a jerk or you won't be able to watch our content anymore yeah anyway where do i find the rationale for the top uh 10 pricing i've oh we already read that one because i'm a dummy dummy wait no that's not you didn't read that yeah how do i i did have i have priced my paintings low hoping this would get me a lot of buyers and plan to increase later um so there are tons of i she stops mid-sentence and walks away there are so many books that you can read uh biology uh there's one called i think pricing power uh predicting all these on the facebook page no not all of them okay predictably irrational by dan ariely that's the number one that i recommend there are countless mit case studies uh one of my very favorite case studies was um where they do the the the test the taste test where they've got the taste testers and the two bottles of wine and they tell the uh taste testers that one of the wines is like i don't know like ten thousand dollars or something stupid like that when in reality it was like a five dollar bottle of wine and all these like wine aficionados are drinking it and they're like oh yes they can definitely taste the value and blah blah and i'm getting notes of cranberry and and it turned out that it was just a cheap cheap bottle yeah cheap box wine because they were told that the price was higher perceived value was real just like when i use the example about the engagement rings if you are you know about to propose assuming that you i don't know or the one proposing um and there are two engagement rings in the display case that look almost identical but one is ten thousand dollars and one is a thousand dollars you're not look at the thousand dollar ring and say what oh what a steal you're gonna say what the hell is wrong with that ring i'll take the expensive one our brains just work like that so they're like that in every industry exactly that's why tiffany and coke can sell thousand dollar paper yeah paper clips and and painted freaking what what was it the uh the tin can that they said that i had that gold-coated tin can and it was like five grand or something like that but uh i recommend reading predictably irrational by dan ariely because that that is a collection of different case studies by one of my favorite uh like psychology gurus he's fantastic and it's a book that i think every business owner should read because it's not just going to help you with pricing it's going to help you with brand perception it's going to help you with customer service and it's going to help you with your everyday life and decision making they said i worked uh thank you i'm new to sales i worked in healthcare well then you definitely know markups if you worked in the us you have definitely no markups it's very similar uh do you recommend blank products just so you can add your own pattern to it and make your own mock-ups um do you she was the one that was asking about the mock-ups earlier if you can't if you can do your own mock-ups that's great what i don't like to see is products that are obviously mock-ups i don't like to see where i can tell that something isn't printed like if you just take a picture of a shirt and then you just slap the the vector on top of it but i can tell that it's a vector just floating over a photo of a shirt if i can't see the grain of the print which a good mock-up will show the grain of the print or you know you can kind of see the fiber there's a little bit of fade there so it looks real then i don't know what the print quality is going to be when i receive it and good mock-ups like from sites like printful and uh redbubble and what's the other one printify those mockups are going to show how that product is actually going to look when the customer receives it if you have the ability to do that and your photo editing is good enough do that but if you can't make it look comparable to them i would use their mock-ups and just customize your backgrounds they come in and said no i was a nurse i did hard work for little pay i wasn't referring to you i was referring to things like iv bags where they'll charge you nine or ten dollars for a bag that they pay 45 cents for exactly that's that's what i'm returning we're referring to it's an established value based off of nothing exactly exactly because we don't have a price anchor uh in the u or our price anchor is different than the the price anchor in other countries yes exactly yeah no i'm not i'm not referring to you i would that would be super rude don't don't take it like that i promise i wasn't referring to you um cymac sorry if i absolutely butchered your name there uh so i just found out my competition has two shops on etsy with the same pictures and infos and tags is that legal legal yes against etsy's terms of service i don't know actually i don't think that you can do a you can do like one if you have like one listing that you're testing i think it's okay but i don't think that you can do two identical shops but here's the thing they might just be testing out tags i don't think that you can do that i don't i don't think you can do that that's what i'm saying because i've known other uh we'll just say coaches other coaches that have done that here's um here's my my advice here don't focus so much on what your competitors are doing because you'll drive yourself crazy doing it and they're gonna you're gonna have competitors that break out these rules and you're gonna have competitors who infringe on copyrights and you're gonna have competitors who do everything wrong and still get sales and it's really frustrating but the more that you focus on those things the less time you're gonna be spending on actually improving your own your own shop so um to a degree you should look at what your competitors are doing but only in the areas that it matters if you want to study what they're doing on social media if they're doing really good that's great you can look at their reviews look at what they're getting bad reviews for that way you can make sure you're not doing those things and look at what they're getting good reviews on that way you can make sure that you're doing whatever they're doing and maybe try to do it better if everybody is commenting uh in the reviews saying wow i love your packaging and your packaging isn't great you know that you need to improve your packaging so that it aligns with theirs that way you can stand beside brad pitt you want to be right next to him right cloak k c-l-o-k-e c-l-o-k uh that's c-l-o-a-k c-l-o they might have changed it and not changed it back for april fool's day because they usually change it to c-l-o-k-e for april fool's day but it's cloak c-l-o-a-k let me check their make sure they're uh because i follow them on instagram yeah it's cloak brand on instagram cl okay no c-l-o-a-k brand no spaces cloak brand and then there are logos like black and it says cloak yeah the cl okay i believe was just specifically for april four yeah they do they do an april fool's thing every year where they change their whole website and misspell everything on their prints um i have an email list set up with mailchimp to give a 20 off coupon in return for a subscription but nobody's subscribing how should i market the email list so there's a couple different things that you can do a lot of different places you can put it so my my first uh no one's using the coupon or nobody's buying it all what was the or nobody subscribing nobody's subscribing okay so if you're making sales couple things that you can do is make sure that there's some type of printout uh maybe do like a qr code that they can scan with their phone that leads to your your sign up page and put that in all your packages another thing that you can do is put your eep url your your sign up page link put that in the very last photo slot of your 10 photos and say uh type this link into your browser for an instant 20 off your first purchase or if they've already made a purchase you can send them a message and this one gets a lot of controversy you don't have to do it if you don't want to but send them a quick message that says hey i noticed that you didn't use my customer discount um if you want to join my email list so i can get you added i'll go ahead and refund you a 20 off you know coupon or i'll refund you the 20 that you would have gotten on that coupon and then you'll also get any future coupons from me um you can do that as well and that kind of helps also you want to make sure that you're shouting it out on social media if you're having a product launch i always tell people like make sure that you sign up for my email list because you know you don't want to miss my my product launch plus you're going to get a discount there's a lot of different ways that you can do it i know that it's kind of hard starting out but you really got to entice them because the idea of an email list scares people i also recommend and this is like a spoiler alert spoiler alert from handmade alpha academy if you're calling it an email list or a uh or a newsletter or anything like that call it something else nobody wants to join an email list i call it a vip club um i call the the alphas the alpha vips my key club is the key club um give it a different name yes and if you guys want examples of marketing for an email list uh i'm about to launch with amber marie a brand that we have not given any you guys don't even know what it's gonna be but down below there's a link with it's got a black heart black heart emojis and a red question mark and it says alph adapt click that link the lead pages are better than a bitly or other masking site lead pages are not a masking site no no you're masking what you're talking about is masking a link yeah each leadpage is an actual physical page it's a page builder yeah leadpage you're building a landing page leadpage if you click on any of the links that i have down below any of the freebies the elf adapt that i just mentioned all lead pages yeah look at the alpha they really did that one up nice yeah that one make sure you look at it on desktop the the mobile version does not do it justice but i worked really hard on that because i want to show you guys an example of what a brand new brand coming out of the dark looks like that her and amber have been busting their bunsen buns on amber here today no she's at a wedding that's right i forgot she's busy um but yeah make sure that you click that link and check it out and don't just if you sign up for that email list or if you see us marketing for alpha adapt in the handmade alpha facebook community don't just take it in as a piece of marketing i know that it's really hard because it's it it's hard to like see a piece of marketing and not be marketed to but the oh they said i meant landing page not leadpage but yeah the same thing the the object here isn't just to try to sell you guys the thing that we're making okay if you buy it that's great but the object that that we're trying to that we're really aiming for here is to get you guys to see what it looks like for a brand to tease their products to market their products without revealing what they are to build hype to build confusion to build excitement to launch with momentum to email market effectively and if you join that email list you're gonna get all that so don't just look at it as us marketing to you study what we're doing click that lead page that i have down below for elf adapt and really look at it really look at the at the all of it the branding of it and when you sign up look at the page that you land on after that look at the type of emails that you're going to start getting here in the next few weeks the brand is marching or um launching on may 8th so we're going to be building up to this launch you can follow me on facebook starla and the handmade alphas is our actual facebook page not our group but our page i've been posting the marketing there make sure that you're a member of the handmade alpha facebook community that's linked down below i'm going to be posting the marketing there and i'm not just marketing to you i'm teaching you how to market without telling you that i'm teaching you how to market so yes and this is not i i want to reiterate that this is not a money making attempt out of this it's great we are actually not getting any money yeah anything that sells no i'm giving it all to amber um because she's got she's got her own brand she's very busy and she's helping with this i just thought it was i thought it was important to be fully transparent about that we are not financially invested in this whatsoever yeah so yeah anyway support amber i think you're i think you're supposed to disclaim something like that like if you're if you're advertising a product you have to be open about like where the money's going with that so i'm just trying to be very clear about that this is literally just like a marketing thing for us it's neat anyway when you're working a full-time job and trying to get your etsy bringing in a decent income what's the best way to balance your time any ideas would be helpful you guys are the best so i'm the i'm the blunt one of the two when it comes to doing business stuff and there's a little bit to this you're gonna have to sacrifice a little bit of fun time i mean really you're gonna you're gonna have to take away your free time now that being said you do need to still make sure that you give yourself like a mental health day or something to like keep yourself sane because burnout is real burnout is very real but you're gonna probably have to push yourself if you're working a 10 hour you know a day job eight hour a day job you're probably gonna have to come home and put two or three four more hours into it and get not a lot of sleep yeah but you're gonna have to give yourself some recoup time when you can you're gonna have to lose time with family you're gonna have to lose time with friends and it sucks but that's the hustle that's the hustle but eventually hopefully it'll pay out to a point where you can quit your day job and don't if that's your goal if that's your goal and if that is your goal don't immediately quit your job when you think you're to a stable point get it stable and make sure it stays stable for like six months to a year maybe until you're actually comfortable quitting your job because there are slow years like a lot of people joined and we're seeing this with erank2 a lot of people joined etsy last year when etsy was having somehow its best year ever and a lot of people are quitting etsy now because it's a it's a lull things happen in society uh especially with around like presidential elections please leave politics out of the comment section any election any election period affects sales like things happen so so just be aware you need to save for emergencies and you're gonna burn out yeah just know how to deal with your burnout and don't let don't let that burnout pass on to your friends and family because that's that's what's gonna really kill your kill yourself and and keep in mind that i i always say it but we are all gifted with the exact same 24-hour day so look at whoever inspires you the most you know elon musk oprah to the moon whoever whoever you know whatever person that does the most that inspires you the most just keep in mind that they wake up with the exact same number of hours that you do and anybody who has ever built a huge brand started by getting no sleep uh i built my original brand art by starla moore with a little itty-bitty little one running around my feet the whole time and yeah it sucked and there were times when i worked for like five minutes and then i had to go take care of the baby and then i worked for another five minutes and i had to go take care of the baby and there were times when i sat at my desk just makeup streaming down my face crying because i was so stressed out but you kind of reach a point of business maturity where it doesn't get the there's no it's not like there's less work but you evolve and adapt to it you adapt to the workload where the things that were once very very hard don't take you as much time anymore they're second nature you just know that you have to do them i mean that's like these friday bean episodes uh we've been doing these for like three years now mm-hmm um before it was enough yeah before it was the bean it was friday q a before it was q a it was tech friday and a lot of people say man you guys are here every single friday how do you how do you manage that with a kid you know your other businesses are working for e-rank and it's just we just know but i mean so one of the big things too that and you'll get this as you as you get a little bit more money rolling through your business or your job or whatever but streamline streamline everything that you possibly can if you're printing out labels and taping them on get yourself a label printer they're like 50 bucks labels are cheap and they they literally saved us hundreds of hours with every launch like do whatever you can to streamline your process without taking away from the quality of what excuse me taking away from the quality of what you do yeah and if you've got like a teenage kid or something that can help you out um you know have have them help out my my daughter is nine and she's just now to the point where you know if i wanted some help i could probably get her to you know bubble wrap orders or something somebody asked a question i think i accidentally skipped back in the day yes just remembering give me one second that's fine i'm gonna let them there it is yeah hey if i sell them at in-person venues can i list them on etsy for local customers um yeah you can you can even get which we used to do for custom orders you just do uh do you just do a custom listing yeah you can you can do that they've got their little card reader too does etsy still have that card reader they might if not if not you can get them through paypal or i think even has one square has one i but i believe etsy still has their card reader as well and i think it deducts from your actual etsy inventory when you when you use that so question with shops in the uk opening now post pandemic will etsy slow down they're opening here and it already has yeah that's that's that's literally probably what's causing this the current slowdown on etsy is shop people are out shopping and not on the internet yeah it's it but this is normal we're not we're not seeing uh it happens every summer too yes spring and summer are always slow down below i've got the summer survival guide because i we we anticipate and for those of you that it doesn't slow down for me we don't mean every industry it doesn't happen for every instance right it doesn't happen for every person but for a lot of people it does if you if you sell wedding stuff you you're probably about to see a boom because everybody's gonna start getting ready yeah if you sell bikinis you're gonna see a boom if you sell birthday cards there's birthdays all summer you're going to see a you know consistent sales so it is really dependent on industry but most industries across all e-commerce not just etsy most industries will see a decline in spring and summer don't look at last year's stats but look at any other stats for any other quarterly like you know revenue for big companies and and you can see that decline you can do it for any company if uh people's talking about oh yeah if it's more expensive it must be better that doesn't always apply but in some things it does they're expensive there's a it's called a point of diminishing return exactly there's there's almost always a point of diminishing return with things like we'll just use yeezys we'll do cars for example like you can buy cars up to about a hundred thousand dollars and you'll probably get better and newer stuff up until that point but then after that you look at cars like a bugatti like a 600 700 800 000 car there's nothing to justify that price and this shoes is another thing yeezys for one or ugly is a sin sorry for all of you guys that wear yeezys but they make your feet look like clowns um they're stupid um i thought are you sure you're not thinking balenciaga the giant you look saw the freaking easy thing that i sent you that was literally just the foam capsule that you put your feet in yeezys are stupid too but then again you look at something like an adidas boost which is like the baby version of a yeezy they're a little silly looking but they're the most comfortable thing i've ever put on my feet but they're and they're like 170 not like a thousand dollars like there's a there's a point of diminishing return for everything so don't immediately disregard things that are more expensive because there's a chance it might be better but just do your research anyway sorry that's enough on that i'm thinking about changing my product that i feel my business name doesn't fit anymore so i'm torn on changing it because i've done all the branding and signing packaging so much money what to do um that's a that's a personal decision you've gotta you've gotta decide if if it's a good move for you um and if it's a good move for your brand in general um i don't think that that's something that anybody should answer for you though you need to decide that on your own and decide if it's something that you can personally part with and if you're ready to you know change your direction and if so that's fine too i've rebranded my business um you just either stop using your old like business cards and things or maybe you know what i i used to do is i used to take my old business cards they still had the the right like you know url and everything on them for my etsy shop but the branding was different i would take them to like craft stores or anywhere where there was a bulletin board that would let you put your your business cards and i would just put them in stacks and leave them places that would allow you there we used to go to like coffee shops that would have little tables for small businesses and i would just leave a big stack my mom used to carry him to bars that she went to she would leave big stacks of my business cards at the bars so uh is it legal to quote something off of urban dictionary and sell it as a printable just like just the text the sentence ripped off there so what you need to do what you need to do is you need to go through the uh legal they probably have a page either just called legal or terms of use terms of service something like that you're going to need to read through that because it depends on what they consider themselves if they consider themselves an open forum then yeah probably because yeah literally anybody can submit them that's why that's like you can get on something that's not like a password protected reddit and you can take anything off of there print it because it's it's just a combination of words that isn't copyright but it depends on whether or not they copyright and they consider themselves a real dictionary because if they do then it's a little different so yeah i would get with them and worst case scenario like i always say get with a legal expert because that's not what we are identical listings in separate shops used to be against the rules but they got rid of that restriction three to four years ago yeah i i would think so because i've had so many issues with people talking about chinese shops stealing their stuff i think that you could do a couple i think that that's the the thing that they don't care if you're just testing but i don't think you can replicate an entire shop i'm pretty sure that an entire shop replication violates their terms of service because that's going to dominate search pages in a way that's really unhealthy for the the entire marketplace as a whole because you could have 100 shops with the same print on demand products all linked to a print-on-demand service and you wouldn't have to touch anything and it's yeah it's a little hard is there any way to change the email address from mailchimp the address is so complicated you get to pick your email address what your mailchimp no not you have to pay for a domain email do you mean change the email address or the url you mean like your eep url that they go to get to or the email address that your emails are sending from because that's that's your email that you put in there or do you mean the the url let us know because i want to make sure i'm answering that correctly i tend to let invalidating comments get to me we talked about this a minute ago and it interferes with my ability to market any tips on how to deal with this um you have to build thick skin over time there's nothing that's going to make you have uh thicker skin when it comes to mean comments um i wouldn't recommend engaging with them because that's just what they want they want to make you mad uh i would just say delete the person and block them and do your best to move on from it but don't make public posts about it don't you know if you want to make a like something funny about it i i will sometimes make like something funny about you know a mean comment that was said about just understand that if you do that and because i'm the kind of person that creates uh fights on purpose on the internet because it's funny um you if you do that if you do the funny thing you're inviting trolls so just be aware of that that like it could end up biting you back yeah just uh people like me exist your best bet is to delete it and then try to find um try to find a way to find that value within yourself whether that be you know reading some of the nicer comments or exactly or you know doing something that that completely disassociates you from your business for a few hours until that that thing just doesn't feel as heavy anymore the unfortunate thing about mean comments is that they send all right here's the science behind it they send a prediction error signal from your interior cingulate cortex which amplifies that bad feeling because when we were like tribal beings living together in small groups if you were unaccepted by a group that was bad for you right you were the one who wasn't in the cave getting worn by the fire you were the one who wasn't sharing the food you were the one who wasn't getting the the best mate to make the best babies you were the one who was all alone and solo humans did not do well we are packing i don't survive right we are pack animals we are meant to live in small groups and we don't know how to deal with rejection in a healthy way exactly when we get a piece of negative feedback our brain is telling us that that's important because we need to be accepted because if we're not accepted we don't get to belong in that in that little in that pack that's why trends are a thing that's why why clicks are a thing that's why everybody dressing the same way is the thing right um and for some of us we we're a little better at dealing with it than others i'm not good at it though i don't care but you know look at our look at the the evolutionary differences between the two of us you know maybe maybe you're built to to not care because you are if you were the guy who was unaccepted by the tribe maybe you're the one who starts a new tribe because you're more more alpha and maybe i you know am hurt because i feel like i need to belong to a child honestly if it's things that are like legitimate insults and things just block those people exactly if it's facebook instagram any social media you can block them youtube even if it's youtube you can block people we have a lot of people blocked on youtube just for being crappy yeah so the thing is i think that when it comes to uh evolutionary pitfalls that are wired in our reptilian brains what we need to do is remember that that's exactly what they are they are evolutionary flaws that our brain has yet to overcome that's why predictably irrational is such a great book because it tells us the irrational things that are hardwired into our brain that we can't often you know overcome on our own but it makes us more aware of them and when we're aware of them we might not be able to to you know get away from them every time but it makes it a little bit easier because if you know that it's that it's the nonsensical part of your brain doing it it's easier to overcome those things and that's kind of how i uh how i help my own anxiety was i learned exactly you know i learned okay the world isn't actually ending here my body is going into fight-or-flight mode because it thinks that there's a threat right now and there's no real threat i just need to do the dishes and they're piling up so right you know anyway my humble hook said i taught my son how to send email snippets when i'm swamped exactly toss your kid at 20 and tell them to do a certain thing every week definitely reward them for that otherwise you kind of start to build this negative association with work that you don't get anything out of actually providing for something it doesn't have to be like 20 bucks but give them like cook them their favorite dinner or something you know buy them buy them a video game or a little something for them i'm telling you how to parent your kid just setting helping giving advice on helping setting them up for success if you don't reward it then they could they could end up being lazy when they're older right i mean genuinely i mean chores or chores are a good thing you know yeah uh as i listen i'm doing my research to try to reduce our three envelope sizes to two sizes to streamline our packaging exactly streamline everything i've learned to streamline my products for packaging especially for advent calendars i think it's the only time people realize how much work i do yep uh and then jura had said the url you just need to use you need to use just a url shortener and don't type don't i hope you're not like typing it from one place to another you should be copying and pasting it well no the eep the unfortunate thing about your eep is that i mean it's not a huge link but um there's nowhere on etsy that you can put an eep where it's an active link you either have to tell them to copy the link and paste it or you have to tell them to type it out you could use bitly it's uh bit.ly and that will make your url b i t dot l y slash whatever the heck you want it to be it could be b i t dot l y slash your business name and that's a little easier to type they commented back they said at 24 he wants more than 20 dollars but he's ready to open his own etsy shop i mean that doesn't really matter you pay him what the work is worth right like answering emails doesn't usually pay more than like 20 bucks for 10 minutes worth of work um my burnout comes from interruptions from the hubby i ask him not to talk to me when i'm working usually counting he stands there in size until i hear his latest news quote-unquote i mean you just you're going to have to just be honest with him i used to be like that i mean really like she can't work if she's even got a mild distraction going on just a loud noise in the other room and she's pissed so you just gotta find what find what works man if you have to sit down and talk to him and be like hey shut up just just shut up sometimes but be nice about it right i would say i would say that you're that you should have that that talk and say you know during these times um i need to focus on my work and and let him know let him know that hey you know i have a i want to do good i want to do a good job i really am passionate about this um and one of the things that really you know keeps me from performing at my best and you know distracts me is when i'm working and i have to stop working and redirect my attention away so um between this time and this time i would like to work on my business and if you need to tell me something uh could you just wait until i'm not sitting at my desk or just come and say something like hey when you have a minute come talk to me right like um because i think that if you're going to have a business you need to have 100 support from your partner we talk about this in handmade alpha academy we have a bonus that we're going to be re-recording hopefully in the next couple of months couples business couples business bootcamp because we and we occasionally will do a friday being like once a year on like spousal support and things like that and it's really important for both spouses to be on the same page it doesn't matter if they like your business or not that's kind of irrelevant you just both need to be on the same page about what your priorities are because you can have different priorities from your spouse yeah absolutely you should have different priorities from your spouse that's being an individual like and it says it looks like she said something about note to self don't have a retired mate so you guys have been together a long time your guys priorities over time start to kind of come in and then streamline forward to where you both have the same ideas but it doesn't alway you can always you know divulge from that path and come back when it's necessary and and also consider how they're feeling too yeah i'm don't if he's retired then and not doing anything then he's probably bored yeah he try to try to encourage him to do something i mean seriously he might just be bored he might be he he might he might need to talk to you just make sure that you set that time aside he might have considered if he's retired unless it's a physical or mental health thing that he retired if he's retired then he probably considered that like this is when i'm done and this is when my family's done so yeah just make sure you guys understand each other's priorities um i'm certain my handmaids are in the top 10 my seo is likely rubbish as are my photos i work on both but the clients want wally world prices on tiffany quality yeah those those kind of people you just kind of gotta ignore well yeah and i would say that you'll never be able to price like tiffany if your products and photos and marketing don't align with tiffany's yes so i would say seo is is i mean it's important but it doesn't matter if you've got great seo if you're pro if your photos aren't good photos to me are the number one thing because photos build the expectation of like regardless of what quality the products are the photos are what build the expectation for what they're going to receive so if you're if your products are tiffany quality but the pictures are walmart quality then i'm going to expect walmart quality when it shows up and my expectation is not going to allow my perception of that product to actually reach what the quality of that product is so your pictures to me need to be like on point yeah and descriptions should have good grammar and like sentences should be built well i understand some of you guys don't speak english and you're selling to english-speaking countries but you can have people help you with that kind of thing yeah feel free to use the handmade alpha facebook community as well yeah we know that we know that you are an english speaker we're just talking talking to the majority i have to address the crowd uh thank god i'm on social media free with the exception of youtube the only comments i get is from e-rank feedback who might work two to three times a week let's see yeah my add is like when i'm working i'm working please don't distract me then we have dedicated times to talk to each other while eating dinner doing housework together yeah that's kind of how we are if i'm working i don't want to be bugged if she's working she doesn't want to be bugged we have we have designated together times and we announce it ahead of time we're like hey tonight like while we're eating breakfast we'll say hey tonight let's let's start us hang out at like eight yeah like around eight let's play a video game together or let's go and we lay in our we lay in our bedroom and read together is that something that we play games together some i've got her into gaming now yeah thankfully well we find something to do together but we plan it ahead of time because neither one of us is good at like just pop up hey how you doing you want to do this right now at this very second no i don't no we don't because we're usually either busy with something of our own work wise or something of our own fun wise right be an individual have your own things too uh with the new pinterest shop option you need to copy and paste coding to your website so your products sync with pinterest as a shop rather than just pins and etsy where would this code go i have no idea i have no idea not i have not even heard that so that would be a question for the handmade alpha facebook community link down below i'm sure that there's an alpha that can uh that's more up to on pinterest i'm just not as uh i don't use i don't really use pinterest that much for anything other than personal and listen to help with your business if he wants to if he's retired he might not want to uh i published lots of listings and was wondering if it's better to use etsy ads for lots of listings or only a tiny number and what the best budget would be depending on the number of promoted ads so budget is entirely a personal preference thing start lower don't start definitely start lower if you haven't seen it i know we talk about this every week but go watch pam duffy's video on etsy ads i don't usually recommend most people putting a lot of money into it unless you know for a fact they work for your products because they work for some shops and they don't work for others because the way that etsy is doing it is kind of dirty so at the moment i don't recommend it put a low budget if it works raise your budget a little bit until you're comfortable you know and don't you know etsy says to etsy recommends that you advertise a lot of your listings advertise tons of listings and you know why etsy recommends that because they get more money because they get more money but don't do that start with your best sellers pick only your best sellers right because here's the thing if you're going to the racetrack to bet on racehorses you're going to bet on the racehorse that has a good track record you want to bet on your winning race horses not the ones that are slow you pick the winners you pick the ones that are performing well not just the ones that you like yeah that's one thing that we have a big problem with a lot of sellers is they'll they'll take the product that they like the most and assume that that's the you have a bias you have a bias towards a particular product but you don't know what your target market is going to like out of a collection of 10 items your favorite might be their least pick your best sellers pick your pick go buy numbers and then if that works then start expanding out then add in some more but start with those best sellers first because you want to bet on the listings that are already proven to work because if they already work on their own they're going to work even better when they're in front of more people so uh yeah i wouldn't know what to do uh what i do if my boys were still at home although i wrote and published two cookbooks while they were still under foot yeah i mean my husband and i are obsessed with the mario kart we were but i'm a bit of an elitist with video games so it ends up just not being good i beat you quite a bit occasionally we got that mario kart circuit with the camera and you have the real car that thing's cool you can set it up in your house and on your like little nintendo switch you can draw you draw out the course and then you race with little actual real cars like cameras and it puts things on your screen like the boosts and the fruits and all that in your house it's so cool if your cat walks by it's like oh no cat on the track look up uh mario kart circuit if you enjoy playing mario kart with your partner because that's really fun how can i get my favorite coupons to be sent by etsy i don't you're oh she means like people when they favorite your products how you you can't there's etsy has different coupons that trigger that you can find within their marketing yeah their marketing tab on the left hand uh panel of your dashboard they've got a coupon that sends out um when they're they're like abandoned cart coupon um if you mean people favoriting your listings though don't i wouldn't focus too much on that because um for one you can't like get a hold of the person and say hey i noticed you favorited this here's a coupon for it a lot of people just favorite things because they think that they're cool they don't have an intention of buying and if you obsess over favorites it's just not really a metric that is useful um it proves that people are seeing the listing it makes you feel good inside but there's no useful information that you can really gather from favorites so hopefully uh hopefully that helps i would just set up an abandoned cart coupon and then maybe if you want to offer a different type of coupon do an email list sign up coupon which like i said we teach about email lists and handmade alpha academy because there's legal issues but you can find videos directly from mailchimp uh i think that they've got their their own youtube channel that will teach you how to do it but mailchimp is the service that i recommend because it's easy yep all right and we're out of questions right at 1 30 perfect timing so if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet you should click the little subscription button down below and then hit the bell icon that way you know when we go live for some reason it's a little slow so usually about 10 or 15 minutes after we start but you should get notified every time we upload a video or go live we got a video next uh tomorrow yeah we do i'm we'll tell them about them we're done oh i interrupted a spiel she did hit the like button if you liked it don't hit the dislike button because either way you're doing us a favor yeah um we got a couple more questions we'll get to those we have a video that i just finished editing yesterday that will be going up tomorrow that's on one of a kind and why one-of-a-kind uh sellers tend to have it a little bit harder and why they tend to rank lower in search but what you can do if you're a one-of-a-kind seller to overcome the the obstacles that etsy kind of puts in your way one thing i will say is that before that video even went live right when i scheduled it yesterday somebody immediately went to the scheduled video and disliked it so that person sucks you can go over there and like that video and uh yeah there's also a button on it i decided to set it as a premiere because you can click to set a reminder right from the video so if you're interested in watching a couple quick questions i just remember we kind of talked about this a little bit is it worthwhile to set up a b testings with listings to see what titles and tags work yeah totally start on a couple just make sure that you keep up with etsy's terms of service because they could are terms of use because they could always make it where you're not allowed to do that so just keep up with the news they usually allow you to do split testing within your own shop just um just keep in mind that if you're working with two fresh listings that's usually best because fresh listings don't have listing quality scores so as in two brand new just created listings my partner's having a super frustrating week i sense a super smash bros attorney tonight we refer to it as that as well anyway what do you use for video editing adobe premiere pro and then for cell phone quick videos you use for video quick little snippet videos uh i don't really edit videos i use you can use canva i i you can add things to your your videos with canva honestly i kind of just use tic tac for my videos um i i don't recommend editing videos on a phone it's not that great if i have two metal options for the same necklace design should they be in the same listing or separate listings um it's up to you really i would say separate because the more or less things that you have the more uh fishing lines you have cast into the water um last year we did a friday bean episode called like reel in those etsy customers yes the thumbnail is me fishing um go find the video with the thumbnail of me fishing from last year because that will explain the the benefit of having variations listed separately rather than within rather than within one listing jim morgan said sorry i saw what you posted before she said sorry i'm whining hey you're not being like rude or gross with your comments so like yeah if this is what's helping you that's fine we would rather this is a public forum we would rather help you as long as you're not hurting anyone else's feelings that are here or somebody that might watch later i really don't care let's try like sometimes you need to vent but anyway uh we will see you guys next week i'm not sure got links down below yes we got links down below so down below free stuff my uh summer survival guide if you're experiencing slow sales or if you're anticipating slow sales for spring and summer which are you know normal across every industry there's a survival guide link down below that you can sign up for amber marie created a fantastic wholesale spreadsheet people have been uh trying to get the spreadsheet by requesting to edit it if you don't watch the video that's included with it you're not gonna know how to do it you don't request to edit it okay so make sure that you watch the video yes watch the video because we will just deny you we will not let you have the spreadsheet if you don't watch the video because you will not know how to use it so amber's wholesale spreadsheet if you are wanting to do wholesale my 2021 marketing calendars we're all ready halfway through april we've got april may june july august september october where the hell is this year going good now god 2020 sucked and it took forever and we're already a third of the way through the year those marketing calendars are going to teach you when to market where to market when to launch collections holidays to anticipate things to plan for when the good time to host a giveaway would be that's down below and then my ssar customer service swipe file strategy is also down below for free that is my most valuable freebie because what it is gonna do is help you to gain more five star reviews while following etsy's best practices in terms of service and as you accumulate more positive reviews your listing quality score is going to increase and your listings are going to rank higher in search so that you can stand next to brad pitt in the search results um and then also down below we are working on a new etsy shop with amber murray alphadopt it's not open yet but it will be launching on may 8th and we're going to be doing tons of teasing and marketing that you guys are hopefully studying and watching and seeing how we're doing it and how we're building a brand from the ground up so down below is a link to an email list for alphadapt you're not going to get any marketing for alphadapt if you don't sign up for the email list for it there are black hearts and red question mark emoji next to those and then handmade alpha academy is going to be opening on june 14th so if you want me to coach you personally if you like the idea of doing a uh online classroom almost online called your own pace at any time with free access with no well the money back guarantee yeah 30 days no questions asked not free access not free access that's not the word we've been talking for an hour and a half i'm exhausted if you want me to coach you there's a work at your own pace course that i open twice a year 10-day enrollment periods it comes with a ton of content that's going to teach you a to z how to get your etsy shop to what we call an alpha brand where you are the brad pitt come here greg for the brad pitt of your industry so that link is also down below for the waiting list signing up for that does not obligate you to buy but it ensures that you get a thousand dollar discount when enrollment opens on june 14th uh haa is open for 10 days and 30 day money back guarantee work at your own pace and we believe that there's like i think 19-ish hours of content with bonuses so lots a lot of stuff lots of good stuff we're always adding stuff we're not always adding stuff but we're adding stuff occasionally when it eats it and you get all that stuff for free when we add stuff yes it's included so but that's uh that's it we're gonna go enjoy our weekend have some sketti make sure you call your mom if you can drink a glass of water or two and watch our video tomorrow about your video tomorrow yeah i edited it and it looks great all right guys have a great weekend and we will see you next friday

Channel: Starla Moore

Views: 2,519

Keywords: handmade alphas, etsy seller tips, grow your etsy shop, grow your etsy business, etsy marketing 2021, grow on etsy in 2021, selling on etsy in 2021, starla moore, etsy trends 2021, etsy trend research, etsy trends summer 2021, trending on etsy 2021, what to make and sell on etsy, what to sell to make money on etsy, make more money on etsy, make more sales on etsy, how to be successful on etsy, etsy shop tips 2021, etsy hot products, what is selling on etsy right now

Id: F8BRr3b-rmc

Length: 96min 12sec (5772 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021