Is Etsy Worth It? My Experience as a Full-time Seller

right before i went viral as kale likes to say i had about 40 to 50 sales and maybe 15 to 20 reviews so a tiny tiny shop like that can definitely take off [Music] hi guys i am here with another video today i'm going to be talking to you about whether or not etsy is worth it i see this all the time in the facebook groups people asking should i sell on etsy can't even make money on etsy does anyone make money on etsy it's way too saturated on etsy why are the fees so high on etsy coming from someone who sells on etsy my personal opinion is yes it's worth it and here's why i first launched my etsy in 2017 and this was right when i started to think of my soaping hobby as a soaping business so i was trying to think of places to actually sell my products to someone because it was really really early on i didn't have the customer base i didn't have the following i was just like most people wanting to sell soap just completely new to everything and etsy was a natural place that i decided to put my products up hoping that someone randomly will find it and buy it and because i had that mindset there wasn't any strategy there wasn't any ideal customer that i had in mind i went all of 2017 without any sales whatsoever i don't think i even had any visits to the shop it was that bad but i never gave up once 2018 started that's when i had a little more experience i took really really good pictures and made my listings as nice as they could and by the end of 2018 i managed to get 38 visits to my etsy shop did i make any sales no no one bought for me in 2018. even though i figured out that i needed a brand and i had a brand in mind and i was honing in on my ideal customer i still didn't have anything really figured out cut to 2019. it was in 2019 that i did a complete rebrand of my whole company and mind you i had started doing soap as a business back in 2017 so i was two years into this so in 2019 i realized something had to change because nothing was working i wasn't making any sales outside of my close friends and family i didn't even really like the brand that i had created at that point it was time for a change so i made some key adjustments to my brand i honed in on a specific ingredient i decided to build a whole company around an ingredient and highlight that i cleaned up my packaging i made my branding very very simplistic minimalistic really wanted to appeal to that high-end customer i started to post more often on social media i just started to really take my company a little bit more seriously because i had plans on not just making a few sales but i wanted to make a lot of sales i really wanted 2019 to be the year where i got somewhere with my soaping business and it kind of worked i started the rebrand in january and by july of 2019 i managed to get my first etsy sale and that was really cool if you sell on etsy you know what that sound is when the sale comes in it's like a cash register cha-ching sound so when i first heard it it was kind of surreal and i was extremely happy about that so after that first sale i started to get a few more trickling in and by the end of 2018 i managed to get i'm looking at my notes here by the end of 2019 i managed to make a total of one thousand one hundred and thirty four dollars and eighty nine cents that's pretty significant to me that was a thousand dollars of sales to people who i didn't even know so that is a huge milestone to hit when you're starting a soap business so by 2020 our company started to really really gain momentum we had spent all of 2019 working at the farmers markets doing events and so when 2020 came around early 2020 we were planning on doing all of that times 10. we were going to add more events we were going to add more farmers markets because our main source of revenue was the in-person sales we just really really wanted to focus on that and so i kind of forgot about etsy it wasn't making enough to really warrant me focusing on that and you'll find that in your business the busier you get the more you're going to have to really prioritize your attention on what's more important versus not and etsy definitely fell on you know the lead the less important side of things because it just wasn't making that much so i forgot about etsy and we spent march february march planning our in-person events our farmers markets and stocking up for those events and then the happening happened and i think we all know what i'm talking about one by one our events started to get cancelled and eventually our farmers markets started to get cancelled so our biggest source of revenue for our business was taken away from us literally overnight it was pretty devastating because 2020 was supposed to be our year and at the time both kayla and i were fully employed so it wasn't that big of a deal but this was supposed to help us finally leave our nine to fives and do this full-time so when the events were taken away it was just it was horrible it was very very sad so then we went into isolation just like everyone else and resigned ourselves to the new normal and had to be okay with the fact that 2020 wasn't going to be the big breakout year for my company that i had hoped it was going to be spoiler i was wrong it was around the middle of april we got an etsy order and this is a weird thing to get because i had not gotten an etsy order since december and like i mentioned it was pretty much abandoned at this point i had stopped thinking about the etsy i stopped touching the etsy it was just it was there but in my mind i wasn't even thinking about it so we got that order and it was exciting and it was really great to get it during that time because we were kind of down about the whole situation and so we fulfilled it and we went along our way thinking oh that's cool like maybe we'll get a few etsy orders and that'll make up for you know at least some of the loss of income but then it started to pick up and eventually in a short amount of time we started to get an order a day and when you're coming from no orders to an order a day that's pretty significant not even a build up it wasn't even one a week or one every two weeks it was literally nothing and then one order a day and then in a short span of time it started to be two orders a day and then three orders a day and then 10 orders a day we had hit at the peak of this time about 20 orders a day i mentioned i didn't really touch my etsy i didn't really work that hard on my etsy it wasn't a viable source of income to me at the time so getting all of these orders was a huge huge shock and we weren't that prepared for it at all we scrambled to get all of these orders out we really put our heads down and really had a great april and may because of etsy i had forgotten about mother's day and i think that a few of my items had hit the first page of search results when people typed in mother's day care package because i remember in a few my listings i'd put mother's day in the title and that might have helped boost our listings to the top because ultimately that's what etsy is is getting your product seen by people and getting to that first page is huge so i think that's what happened so by the end of that insane rush that mother's day rush we had made 10 825 in sales on etsy that's crazy so i answered the question about whether or not you can make money on etsy yes um yeah you can so is it worth it absolutely when you first start out you don't have a customer base etsy is where your customers that you're trying to target are so it just makes sense to put your items up on there will you make money overnight no um i'm a huge example of that it took me two and a half years to get my first order and another half a year after that for it to start happening there are a lot of soap makers and bath bomb makers on etsy but i don't like to use the word saturation because even though a lot of people are trying to do this very few i think are putting in the time and the effort to really stand out so there is a lot of room for all of us to get sales on etsy don't let the idea of a saturated market stop you from doing anything i am living proof that a small shop can make sales right before i went viral as kale likes to say i had about 40 to 50 sales and maybe 15 to 20 reviews so a tiny tiny shop like that can definitely take off downside of that is a lot of it is kind of luck there are things you can definitely do to give your listings the best possible chance of converting on etsy that's going to be a whole different video where i actually give tips on how to get your product sold on etsy but at the end of the day you should not be relying on etsy for income because things can change on etsy all the time and in fact i have not been able to make 10 000 in the span of a month since that crazy time in may so although you can make money you should really find ways to increase the number of income streams for your business as possible so that's it that's the video i hope that you guys learned something from it or became inspired from it how many of you guys are on etsy are you doing really well on etsy are you struggling on etsy i have been literally through every stage of selling on etsy so i know no matter who you are as a seller on etsy i can understand and feel your pain or feel your highs and feel your motivation because i've been there if you like this video please give a thumbs up if you'd like to see more please subscribe i try to post daily really really try to post daily and don't forget to hit that notification bell so you never miss out for those already subscribed thank you guys so much i think we're gonna hit a thousand in the next couple of days so that is just absolutely mind-blowing if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments i know that a lot of you guys are wondering about etsy and have questions about etsy so your questions could probably help other people out there watching this video so please please don't hesitate to leave a comment i try to answer as much of them as i can thank you for choosing to follow me on this journey and thank you for watching and as always keep being awesome and i'll see you in the next one bye guys you

Channel: Jerika Zimmerman

Views: 18,234

Rating: 4.9661016 out of 5

Keywords: how to make soap, soap making, cold process soap, cold process soap recipe, bath bomb recipe, how to make bath bombs, bath bomb making, soap business, bath bomb business, make soap at home, soap diy, bath bomb diy, etsy business, small business behind the scenes, selling on etsy, is etsy worth it, selling products on etsy, full time etsy seller

Id: OEa4uGzoQ_U

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020