The NEW Etsy: Here’s How To Stay Ahead

what's up guys welcome back to another episode of The Rock your brand podcast today we are going to be talking about the new Etsy and how we can stay ahead of it and how we can take advantage of it and there has been a lot of Doom and Gloom out there where and we've even talked about some of the cons and some of the things that have been happening that we should all be aware of concerned about out uh but today what I wanted to do is I wanted to shed a little bit of light and really allow you to see that there still is a huge amount of opportunity we just need to know how to use it okay and how to use the Etsy platform the last time that we did something like this we had a lot of ogs in the house and what I mean by that is people that had been starting uh w back in the day and they have been doing handmade and now all of a sudden these you know print on demand sellers you know we uh we come on the platform and we kind of ruin it for everyone um I don't like to look at it that way I like to look at it as like Etsy has evolved there's a reason why it's evolved uh and uh now it gives us more opportunities that we can leverage the platform now with that being said is everything perfect with Etsy absolutely not and I'll be the first one to sit here and say they've got a lot of cleanup to do and I think it's happening so fast um but today what we want to do is talk about what it looks like the new Etsy and from there we can also look at okay what does it really look like for us that want to stay on the platform because here's the deal there's people running right now they're running from the platform they're like I'm out of here I am not going to be putting you know anything on Etsy I I'm so upset with them uh they're they're charging me now to to open up a shop they're they're charging me more on my fees uh they're letting in uh you know print on demand sellers uh you know they're letting people sell digital stuff which they've done that for a while but remember when they didn't let people sell digital stuff on Etsy and then when they started to oh my gosh like the world was coming to an end because Etsy now allowed digital product what's handmade about digital oh I guess you can say well you're using uh you know maybe a tool to create a template that you can use on your iPad I don't know I guess you handmade it by clicking or dragging uh but the you know the OG uh handmade people will argue with you on that um so really Etsy has been evolving for a while it's just a matter of do you want to adapt do you want to still leverage the platform and the other thing that I want to say here and we're going to dive into we're going to dig really deep into this area is we can't look at Etsy as it is your business okay let me say that again we can't look at Etsy as it is just where you are going to build your business that is the wrong mindset that I want to hopefully have you look at differently and look at it as you're coming to you're coming to the e-commerce world and you're like you know what I want to sell products I want to build a business it just happens that Etsy has traffic of customers that are buying things and we can go and tap into that and we can launch our e-commerce business there all right so we're going to dig into a lot here okay we're going to talk about the new Etsy and really how to stay ahead and really how to leverage the platform so Chris now that I've kind of teed up there for us uh where do we want to start and uh is there anything you wanted to add to that yeah so now that you've made everybody mad uh where do we start right we met we brought up digital sellers pod handmade right I think the only people we didn't talk about were the drop shippers who are actively violating and I think no matter what kind of store you have whether it's digital handmade print on demand or some sort of hybrid we can all agree that the people who are actively flouting the rules are the problem here and Scott we had a couple people in the chat I think it was Natalie said hey I've been I've been selling on Etsy for 10 years making jewelry and it's a disaster now here's the thing the traffic and the sales are still 100% there what has become a disaster is the way that people find your stuff and etsy's actively working on that right and Scott I know you and I over the last few weeks have talked about a lot of the different things that we have in terms of opinions and we've had a lot of tough love sessions on these lives saying hey look Etsy like you're screwing up here's where you're screwing up here's how you're screwing up and it's not because we're down on the platform it's not because there's not still an opportunity here yeah it's because we see that there's still an opportunity and they're actively doing a lot of things that is for lack of a better term shooting themselves in the foot and so what we wanted to do today was come on and say hey etsy's changing right like it has changed it will change Ben Franklin once said and you know it gets quoted to a bunch of different people the only thing that is certain in life are death and taxes everything else is change right and so what we have to do if we want to continue to take advantage of the platform and not just take our ball and go home which is a legitimate option if that's what you want to do but if you want to continue to take advantage of etsy's platform etsy's traffic Etsy customers and all of the benefits that we can start to squeeze out of those things like starting a business for a lower cost like not having to master ads then we have to think about what's working now look at the opportunities that ETS is giving us today and figure out how we can leverage that into a real business moving forward yeah good okay so let let's do this real quick uh if you're watching this on the replay uh if you're here live doesn't matter in the comments I would like to know how many of you are embracing Etsy are you embracing the change are you welcoming it or let us know if you've been selling on it for a while and you're like you know what I'm out of here it's gone I'm like done I'm going to start my own Shopify store and I'm G to build out everything over there which I'm a fan of by the way uh it's just we don't have to do one or the other we can actually do both uh but I would like to know in the comments let us know let us know what your thoughts are um on that so Chris let's let's get into let's get into again some of the changes some of the things that we're seeing and we've talked about these before I think the the big one that's a really really obvious one is for like we said the ogs right the original people that started and most of them were people that were artists or people that just were hand making stuff and they enjoyed it and it might even been just like one-off stuff okay um that's kind of where it all started and so that really it it started Etsy but Etsy has evolved because here's a big one and people will say this is that when they went public okay meaning they now are a company that has stocks and they have investors okay and people said when that happened it ruined everything some could argue and say well you know what yeah it it did it it ruined it because now it's all about trying to make the stockholders you know happy which is true but it also opened up a whole bunch more opportunities for people like you and I that are in the print on demand business which I think is a great thing for Etsy because let's say that Etsy just stayed with the you know maybe people that were just doing one-off quilts and it took you a month to to do it right but I come in and I'm able to do a stocking right uh around holidays and it has your uh you know your child's first you know first Christmas on it and I can personalize that because now I'm doing print on Demand right because now I'm able to do that even though it's not handmade it's technically hand created the design by us right so to me it's opened it up for other types of creators ones that are like well I don't know how to how to do Patchwork I don't know how to knit I don't know how to do woodwork but I know how to design really well and I can put it on a product and then people buy it so to me it's just it's grown it's evolved and whether they've been you know doing it for the investors they're just growing the platform to make it better and bigger and give more options to the buyer okay and so same thing with digital okay so if uh you created a planner that was a physical planner but then you converted it to be put on an iPad because everyone's using iPads today we've just adapted to the times okay um so yes I agree it's changed a lot and it's continuing to change which leads me into the next thing Etsy was known for handmade okay and still kind of is okay uh you know what little fun little thing here you can do the next time that you're at like a little family gathering or uh you know a group setting I want you to go up and ask five people say what do you think of when you think of etsy like what do you think of like are you going there to buy something and if you are what do you think and see if people say oh it's all handmade stuff I'm just curious I'm just curious what the what the vibe is now right um because right now and this brings me to my next Point Etsy is now trying to be known for the gift giving platform that's really what they're trying to be known for they really can't compete with Amazon technically Amazon is massive right like it's really really big what can they do how how can they carve a little bit out and start being known as you know something unique giftgiving and that's why they came out with gift mode and that's why they ran a seven or an eight million doll commercial for the Super Bowl and they have these other commercials and you're starting to see they're pushing the giftgiving mode so what does that do for us as sellers is that a bad thing I don't think so it makes me think what can I create or what can I take that's already in my product line and what can I create that could be potentially given as a gift and if not what could I create that could be given as a gift so it creates opportunity for us because that's what they're bringing attention to Chris anything you wanted to say on that before we keep on rolling on down the road here no I think gift mode is where Etsy is headed right and you you just pointed this out you said they they started as the place for handmade things they know that they're not going to be able to compete with Amazon handmade they know that on the the lower cost handmade stuff that people aren't coming to Etsy for that because it's a higher price point so what do they do they look at how customers tell Etsy that they are using the platform one of the main ways that customers told Etsy they were using the platform is they said hey it's not necessarily the handmade thing it's the unique items thing it's the things I can't find anywhere else place and when are you looking for those things sometimes it's for you but the vast majority of time that's going to be to give as a gift and right now Etsy has a very small sliver of that market and Scott I don't remember what the actual stats are if you do remind me but we said even if they just double what they have of that market you almost doubled the the value of etsy as a company right so they're making specific about this all right guys I don't know if we lost Chris or not but he did just freeze up for me let me know in the comments guys are we still seeing Chris or is he uh Frozen uh like the movie uh let us know in the comments real quick uh yeah it looks like uh Chris is frozen and that's a really good screenshot that we'll have to capture for later uh yeah Frozen Okay cool so it's not just on my end I always have to figure out if it's on my end or not all right um I I I wanted to say this here before we keep on on moving here uh we had a ment that came in from uh Mandy's mittens what's up Mandy's mittens thanks so much for the comment open my original Etsy store over 12 years ago still growing year over year manda's mittens and and Manda I would love to know uh I don't know if that's your name or not but let's just say it is um you're growing year-over year are you have you evolved over the years have you adapted um um it seems like you're still growing and that's a good thing so so thanks for sharing that uh okay cool so let me just keep on rolling here and we'll see if we can get Chris back on hopefully we can I know he was having some storms in Colombia that's where he lives by the way um so yeah so they're being known for you know they're being known for the gift giving so can we take advantage of this absolutely um so that's a that's a good thing it's not a bad thing okay now the next thing I want to talk about here and this is a big Hot Topic is AI the rise of AI and I'm not talking AI that uh that they're rolling out that they're using uh you know Etsy is using AI right now for their you know some of some of their chat um some of their identifying uh you know like what uh you know what listings might be violating certain things so they have that running but I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the rise of people using AI uh artwork and creating AI artwork and some would say it's cluttering the platform it's making it really bad it's making it cheap you know what I would kind of agree with some of that that yes there is some cheapening of the platform but wasn't there cheapening and isn't there still cheapening with digital products there's some really crappy digital products that are being created there's a lot and it's just clutter but here's what I always like to think of is like yes there's a new thing AI there was a new thing digital a few years back when they started allowing digital stuff right so there's always these changes but you have to look at and say is it an opportunity for you to leverage that and not worry that it's clutter because they'll take care of the Clutter and it's not like just because people are posting a lot like you might have heard some Etsy gurus out there saying like post five or 10 listings a day and just keep basically uploading uploading uploading that becomes crap right we where you don't want to do that um I wouldn't do that by the way because even if that's happening it doesn't mean you have to take part in it and it doesn't mean that that's going to be more competition for you you think that oh there's more listing so it's going to crowd the marketplace and they're not GNA find me no because if you're following what we teach here and what we live by is finding the products that are in demand that are getting views and that are getting sales and then creating your version or taking inspiration from those and then from there getting your products to rank because you're getting more sales if you guys are new here you guys don't realize that for us SEO is way more than just title keywords uh you know good pictures like all that it's important but the ingredients that are really the most important part is sales and conversions and if you have that you're going to cut through all the noise all right we'll get into that a little bit later but the rise of the AI stuff I really it doesn't bother me if anything it gives us an advantage my wife and I were talking the other day my wife does use some AI in her designs she never used to but now she is and what she said the other day she said I use AI but I'm using it for components and I think in one of her designs recently it was like 15 to 16 different elements that she created individually and then she's layering things making the design come to life with all of these other components that takes skill that takes an eye so if you're just punching out like with one little you know command that you're sending into the AI engine and then it's spitting out something and you're slapping that up on a t-shirt yeah that's going to be crap right most of the time it's not going to work um and so you don't have to worry about that so much I look at it as it's a it's a an advantage that we get to use this this tool now right the AI that we can help our images become even better okay so again it's not a negative to me it's a positive and when you're looking at well everyone's just slapping up that stuff just don't pay attention if if people are slapping that stuff up there doesn't mean that they're going to out sell you um I'll share something with you guys and I'm probably G to do a whole video on this or a live stream not sure yet I did a video not that long ago maybe four or five months ago might have been longer and Chris and I were just talking about this and I have people that go Scott I'm following everything you guys say and I'm just not getting the views and I'm just not getting the sales it doesn't work it just doesn't work and my wife was was uh in one of our groups a couple days ago we were taking a road trip she never goes into the group usually either and she was like I saw someone complaining saying like they weren't getting results they weren't you know they they've been doing everything that you guys have been saying and they're just not getting the results and she said I went over and looked at their stuff and I can see why they're not selling and they needs help with design like it that's why they're not selling right so you can it's like Chris and I you know we were talking earlier you can you can't put a you can't put lipstick on a pig you can but it just isn't going to look pretty usually unless you're into you know pigs with lipstick um so my my point there is is like sometimes you got to be real with yourself and you got to go yeah I'm doing everything but the design is what's going to sell the demand is what's going to tell you if something's going to sell so if you have demand you're not getting sales but you're getting the traffic because you're running Etsy ads because that's what we always say like if you want to get views and you want to get traffic fast to see if your stuff's going to sell Drive some Etsy ads to it it'll get you some information pretty quickly um but if it's not if you're getting the views you're getting clicks even but you're not getting sales probably going to be it's just the design is just a little weak and you need to you know you need to get better at design or you got to hire someone all right so Chris is back and let's see in fact if he is here oh look at that magically he appeared he is frozen are you frozen Chris come on you're tricking oh there he is look at that look at that we were talking about Rockham sakam robots in the chat where you're going off on that rant uh so I figured I'd give them the Rockham sakam robot pose here right at the very end and Scott I think there's you know there's the kitchy phrase or the The Stereotype of cream Rises to the top and I think if you're designing good quality products you're creating a good customer experience you're always going to rise to the top of any ecosystem Etsy just happens to give you outsized rewards for doing those things so if you're worried about AI first you shouldn't be second of all if you've ever like taking a background out of a photo you're a cheater right like if youve ever used Photoshop to do anything you're making something that's not real that's not art right of course it is it's just a different way of going about it now Scott could you and I sit here and gri about some of the people that are using mid journey to just pump out junky looking full designs absolutely but that same amount of time energy and more importantly effort that it takes for us to look at those things and go oh this jerk over here is doing this stupid thing we could create two or three designs that we'll sell to our market and actually make money so the more time energy and effort that we spend focusing on complaining about the things that we don't like the less time we spend focusing on the things that actually matter and Etsy has said that they are going to allow AI so let's just get over that hurdle at this point right we we can agree or disagree with it but instead of complaining about it why not see how we can use that to our advantage or if we're truly a handmade seller and we don't want to touch any of those kinds of things ignore it because if we're creating better quality products we're creating optimized listings and more importantly we're creating sales because we're focusing on products and designs that we know sell or similar to things that we know sell that's where we need to be investing our time not on the griping side scottt I know when you said talking about AI there are a bunch of people talking about how they're tired of people just complaining in the Etsy forums and that seems to be where people go it's like the Etsy seller Forum uh it's the Etsy complaint box or the the suggestion box but it's usually just got a negative tone associated with it again and I said this at the beginning our goal needs to be focusing on where Etsy is headed and I think it was Wayne Gretzky uh Scott that said you don't skate to where the puck is you skate to where the puck is going yeah right and that's that's how he was able to become such a good hockey player if you guys aren't familiar with hockey right one of the greatest alltime hockey players if that's what we can do Etsy is telling us they are telegraphing where the puck is going all we have to do is start skating that direction and we're going to start to see the sales and growth follow yeah what it's so funny guys while we're doing this live and stuff I I I love doing it live this is this is why you know I'm sitting here thinking to myself I'm like because someone in the comments had said maybe it's the price is why it sell and here's what I always like to say and I'm not going to go into it right now because I want to keep rolling here because because we got to get through you know more of the stuff that we want to cover what I'll do is later um and just remind me if I forget and Chris maybe you can remind me I want to do a whole section all right that I W to I want to share with you how I would test okay that would take price out of the out of the equation it would take uh or it would take the you know the views SEO it would take all of that out of it and we can really just test to see if your product will actually sell right so I I will give you that little it's a little micro strategy that I have used and I would use to test to see if in fact your designs are worthy of someone buying them so just remind me and I will cover that a little bit later um so let's let's keep rolling here Chris and I mean we can go down that rabbit hole of like you know Ai and everything but bottom line is like right now we got one more topic there on this of the changes that we've been seeing um but and and we're GNA get into like how to create a business plan like how to create a business plan for 2024 using Etsy so you can stay ahead and so you can be building something that isn't just dependent on Etsy but you can leverage Etsy so we'll get there um but the next thing I wanted to bring up is yes right now it seems and it feels like Etsy isn't listening to the sellers and I would be one of them that would say yeah they're not they're not listening to us right now I mean we've done videos on here to try to get Josh Silverman's attention we're gonna keep trying and keep trying we've reached out to uh you know we've had people email us and say hey we've got a I got a special in with someone that works there and they can get the message to Josh we're like cool then we send out the message and crickets we don't hear anything so we're still trying um but I do believe right now there is just a huge amount of sellers coming in okay and they are trying to keep it where they don't have to suspend people in the future and ban people in the future now their AI bot is probably being a little aggressive but they're trying and so right now that's what we're seeing we're seeing like people are setting up their account they're either getting immediately suspended or banned or they're they're they're selling something maybe two weeks in and then they get a suspension or a ban and then they don't know why um what we're saying right now is a lot of times if you're to look at that if we were to look at it there's probably an underlying reason not always there probably is some people that aren't new and they've had their shop up for a while and they get shut down for whatever reason and don't know we can't get support so I do agree that is a problem but that again is why we don't put all of our eggs in one basket and that's why when we're coming up with our business plan okay we have to think to ourselves like we're building an e-commerce business all right I want you to say that with me You're Building or we're building an eCommerce business because that's what you should be thinking and I had in my notes here that I wanted to really really just drive that point home and i' I've been saying that now for a long time is like people get so focused on the platform and they they start building the business on the platform but not thinking to themselves I'm building a business business and if I was to take all my products and bring them over here I could sell them over here too and if I brought them over here I could sell them over here too but what a lot of people are doing is they're just putting all their eggs in that one Etsy basket and we don't want to do that now we're g to start there it's going to seem as though you're building an Etsy business but in reality you're not because again we're going to walk through what this looks like and really if we were to sit down and even write it down on a napkin right and just give you that business plan we can kind of go through what that looks like okay because anyone that wants to start a business you're not going to say we're going to build our business on rented land that we can never uh own the building right or we're never going to be able to own the things that we put in the building we always want to be able to protect ourselves and also it gives us more opportunity outside of the platform right but a lot of people get started on Etsy because it is easy to get started it's easy now with print on demand because you can create designs and put them up there and you've got you know printy and you've got you know all of these different ways to make it easier you don't even have to have inventory anymore if you don't want to even with digital so there's all of this upside okay but right now they are suspending listings they are suspending and banning accounts it's reality and to me it's a somewhat of a problem because they're probably overreacting in some things does that mean that you're not going to be getting able to get reinstated I believe you will I just don't know when and I don't know if it means you have to start a brand new account again when they get all the bugs worked out Chris what's your thoughts on the listing suspensions and the Bannings and all of that stuff and if if someone does want to start and they're afraid of that what's the what's the recommendation there and we had we had somebody in the chat saying hey I think this is their new scheme to make money right $15 a pound all they have to do is take that $15 and then ban your account and they're going to be billionaires they're already billionaires right they have a billion dollars cash on hand and that $15 shop setup fee is a heck of a lot less than they're going to make by having a good new seller on the platform what they are trying to do is this is Scott in my mind something that is very well intentioned and very very poorly executed at least up until this point and again we don't know all of the behind the scenes things we do see a lot of people complaining based on I think it was what Starlet did and what we've seen you know 50 60 70% of these are valid right so the vast majority or at least the plurality of these are valid bands of restrictions people who are violating terms of service people who are using a VPN because they're in a country that's not supported by the platform some of those kinds of things right but if what we are worried about here is that they're going to ban us that's not something we have control over no matter what you do you can be banned by somebody else right guess what for all of the people Scott that are saying I'm not going to go on entty because they can ban me I'm going to build a Shopify store you are aware Shopify also has a terms of service and they were in some hot water a few years ago for allowing some things on their platform and then went through and banned a bunch of stores from Shopify right it doesn't matter where you're building the business that's always going to be a risk and the the real moral of the story is what we're going to get to when we talk about phase two here it's about diversification it's about controlling our own destiny is there a way for us to permanently avoid ever having an issue no and that's true of any platform any traffic Source anything that we're doing anywhere in the world right if you have a brick-and mortar location and your local police decide that they're having a bad day and they want to come in and and inspect something guess what they can probably write you up for something they can probably close your business down so how do we deal with it we limit our exposure we make sure that we understand how to follow the rules we go in and if we're selling print on demand we cor correctly create the listing and this is the biggest thing Scott that we saw come out of the mockup Apocalypse at the end of last year where people saying hey you know it must be AI you can't use AI on Etsy you can't use mockups on Etsy turned out the vast majority of people that got banned there were print on demand sellers who were listing their product as handmade not handmade with production assistance so when we're setting up our account let's make sure we follow the rules let's put our actual location not logging in with a VPN not doing anything silly that's an obvious violation of terms of service to make sure we're setting our listings up correctly and if we do that we can protect ourselves as much as possible can an AI go Rogue at Etsy absolutely but if we set it up the correct way to begin with we massively limit that exposure and if we can do that then we can safely take advantage of the traffic and the sales and all of the opportunity that ETS gives us so it's not about going somewhere else because it'll never happen over there it will and it has right it happened on Amazon it happens on Facebook it happens literally everywhere down to your local brick and motar store so how do we limit our exposure we set things up properly from the beginning and we make sure that we set them up properly on an ongoing basis and if Etsy changes their terms of service we go in and we make those changes right so it's just about setting that basic foundation and taking advantage of the opportunity we can't be worried about the edge cases and I think it sounds like a lot more people are getting hurt by this than actually are and I don't want to minimize the people who didn't do anything wrong but the vast majority the people who are screaming the loudest in most cases actually did break the rules in one way or another just based on what we've seen based on what starless seen and based on the numbers that came out of etsy themselves yeah uh okay uh yeah we got a lot lot of stuff going on in the comments and everything and yeah I don't believe like Etsy is like you know what let's charge $15 per new seller and then we'll ban them and we'll make a whole bunch of money I just I don't buy it they would much rather you be a successful seller why because they're gonna make money on your fees not not even your listing fees not your 20 cent little listing fee and people are all like they're making all that money on the listing fee no they're making money on the transaction fee and they make money on the sale right like so that there's other ways Etsy ads people are like yeah they don't they don't they're just going to charge me for my Etsy ads and I'm just not making any money with it no they're you're they want you to succeed with Etsy ads why because if you do they're gonna keep spending money right you're gonna keep spending money it's like if you think about it logically in a perfect little scenario you you you have Etsy that wants to make money and they want you to sell stuff because if you do and you advertise you're spending money on Advertising it comes in at a profit they're making money on the fees and they're also charging you the listing fee and yes when you open your shop you have to pay $15 to me that's just a hoop that they're trying to make scammers jump through that aren't going to do it or you know now if you have to prove with a license that you're an actual person it's a hoop to jump through right so anytime that they do this stuff to me it's a good thing because it is a hoop they're trying to keep out people that can just create these dumb accounts and then just start uploading a whole bunch of stuff so think about it logically do do you think Etsy would rather you just come in for a day and spend $15 and leave or would they rather you spend money with them all the time just like I've always said would you rather sell that one t-shirt because you sell 50 different types of uh niches and you know all these different uh t-shirts that pertain to everyone or would you rather have a t-shirt and a mug and uh a blanket and a flag and a pillow that people could buy more than one thing and they might come back again wouldn't you rather have the repeat customer the one that comes back once a year or five times a year or buys more at the time of checkout who wouldn't want that versus you come in you buy one t-shirt I barely make any money because you don't make a lot of money on t-shirts and you got to go find a new buyer like it just just doesn't add up for me I mean logically Common Sense wise so think about that for a second let that really sink in um okay so you know I've heard some people say you know oh you you should just start your own Shopify store and I am a fan of that I'm not saying that we we've had Shopify stores we actually sold a brand with a Shopify store attached to it um I'm a fan but when you're first starting out it is going to be a lot harder to start and create and load and put all your listings together and and uh you know get all of your Merchant stuff you know where you can collect money um all of that stuff has to be done and set up and one of the bigger problems and obstacles you're going to run into is traffic you have to get your own traffic people think that you just go to Shopify and all of a sudden you're in the Shopify platform no it's just a website no one knows about you you got to go let people know so how you gonna do that you're G to spend money on Google ads or you're gonna you know maybe write some blog content and it's going to take you six months to a year to get indexed into where you can start getting some trickle of traffic or you're going to spend money on on Advertising if you go to Etsy we can launch very quickly and yes we can spend money there too but we're spending money there to drive people to our shop that will help us get sales get reviews and then that snowball starts to happen but not saying we wouldn't want to then and this is something that I think everyone should do if they are building a true e-commerce business is you should take your products that are on Etsy and you should get those products over onto your Shopify because if your account does get shut down or it gets banned or it gets suspended and you don't have access you lost all of those products you'd have to go into maybe hopefully printify and you could Port it over but a lot of times your other images that you've been modifying your listing that you've been modifying isn't modified in the pry spot it's it's only the the product itself so you would have to go in and recreate everything so I'm a fan of just taking a plug in within Shopify and porting all of your products over so you're just backing them up in a sense so when you need them you've got them when you're ready to build that out so I'm a fan of that because you're taking the time to put these products out there why not allow yourself to be able to sell them outside of just Etsy why not right and it protects yourself and you've now built an asset the products that you're creating that designs that you're creating are assets okay um so with that all being said again I want to highlight I want to you know really underscore that we want to think of etsy as a shortcut to all of the other things that we would need to do to set up a website for e-commerce and getting traffic like we want to think of it we're launching on Etsy to really allow us to get in front of their traffic faster and get everything else set up pretty quickly okay that's what we're looking at but we're also thinking to ourselves and we're writing on the napkin we're building an e-commerce business okay you're building an e-commerce business and the plan I'll go to the plan here in a second but the plan is very simple okay and that is before you even launch on Etsy before you even launch anywhere on Shopify or if you're going to go to Amazon doesn't matter you need to validate the niche and you need to validate the products that you're going to be selling I can't tell you how many times people are like yeah I've got products but I'm not getting any traffic it's probably because you didn't do any product research and no one's really looking for it you know so we got to start there all right we got to start there so the very first thing is is when we're building out this business plan is we have to number one validate the niche and the product and the idea right that's what we're doing we're really just validating once we do that now we're like okay next step we want to create products for this customer to buy that is in this Niche right so if it's the garden lover well what other products would a garden lover want apron gloves right maybe it's uh maybe it's boots uh and or maybe it's uh maybe socks uh you know maybe it's uh uh maybe it's a little planter uh maybe it is uh a flag that goes in the garden you know any of that stuff right so we're thinking along those lines then we're going to go and do our product research and see what people have already sold what gifts could be given to the Garden lover so then we're playing in that space right now and regardless if we sell on Etsy we know that if we put an ad out there on Google or on Facebook and we targeted a garden lover or someone looking for a garden lover and we presented them with these products probably a good chance they might buy them same idea on Etsy so you see we're thinking along those lines not just like what will only sell on Etsy that's the mistake that a lot of people make what will what's trending right now on Etsy how can I go and find that next trending t-shirt okay to me that's a waste of time because you're literally playing the lottery ticket you're literally like I hope I can scratch oh no no oh I got a winner here I wanton a 100 bucks and then 100 bucks you go cash it in and then before you know it you got everyone else getting that same h100 now you don't have it anymore and then you're like oh scratch it up nope nope nope nope oh there's a thousand window yes I got it but it's gone right and you gotta find another one we don't want to play that game okay so that's the main thing whenever we're building out this business plan is we have to validate number one the idea the niche that it can turn into a business and then from there we have to start filling it out with products that that niche that those customers would want to buy like that's like phase one of this right is doing the idea and the validation and making sure that that all works then we can start to build everything out and then what we're going to do is we're going to launch on Etsy and why would we do that I said it earlier traffic it's all about traffic if you don't have traffic your business isn't going to survive it's not even going to be able to get off the ground so the first thing we need to do is get in front of that traffic what's the easiest way Etsy but then we can get into okay well let me look at the business plan here okay so we're going to launch on Etsy how are we going to do this well we're going to find those products that are in demand maybe three to five products that they that's one person would want to buy or buy for someone else and then we're going to launch those products and then when we launch those products we're not just going to sit there and put them out there and go SEO is gonna get me the traffic because it's free no we're going to launch like we would a business we're going to advertise those but we don't have to advertise on Google we don't have to advertise on Facebook why because etsy's got its own traffic and its own Etsy ads machine that we can plug into and then we go ahead and say five bucks a day get us in front of there and then we launch our products and then we let the market decide are our products good are they bad like I don't know well let's find out and then you're gonna get reviews and then reviews are going to help you and then it just kind of snowballs on itself but do you see we're still now all we got to do now is when we're coming up new designs and and new products is think about the customer and then also know that we can take those products and we can sell them over here on Facebook we can advertise them over there we can advertise them over here on Google right didn't even talk about building an email list yet right so that's another part of this that's our own traffic and that that's that's what we're going to want to do so that's on the business plan build email list how do you do that well we do that internally on Etsy and we can do it externally right so that's what we're talking about it's like that's phase one and that's how we can still leverage Etsy we can still use it because it's getting even more known they're running commercials every single week now all right Chris I just went through pretty much everything I wanted to as far as phase one goes um anything I missed there no but I think I want to hammer on something for just a second Scott I think it's the real secret uh the the ninja hack if you will for what you were just saying which is choosing a good Niche where people are searching for and buying things and this applies whether we're building a Shopify store this applies whether we want to sell digital products this applies whether we want to sell on Etsy right if we're building things and hoping that people will eventually want it that is a terrible business plan right you and I have talked about this in the past there's nothing worse than inventing a new product or a new product category that no one has any idea about so why would we do that if we're looking at the Etsy ecosystem if we're looking at building our own Shopify store we're looking at these things why would we not use the niche based approach and then start building products people are already looking for if we want to bring in designs or different product types that people in our Niche are not using that's cool we can do that down the road when we have the money to get behind the marketing side of that to bring awareness to people right that's what Etsy was trying to do with gift mode in the Super Bowl commercial they're saying hey it's this brand new thing that no one knows that exists we have to get out there and promote it awesome as long as you have $8 million to be able to do that and a billion dollars in cash on hand if we don't have that kind of money then we need to use a different and more intelligent approach and that approach is focusing on a niche looking at what the people in that Niche are already asking for and then just giving them that and Scott I think where people get confused with this is they say oh you know I I don't I don't love fishing so I'm gonna ignore that okay so find something that you love or somebody else is selling in the fishing Niche so there's no way that I could do that um last time I checked there's like millions or hundreds of millions of fishermen and in fact Scott there are what uh three or four Giant Sports and Outdoor stores all focused around fishing hunting and and camping right so obviously there's room for competition if there's not just one giant store that sells every fishing thing and every you know there's no no Mom and Pops none of those kind things right if we focus on what people are searching for and buying then we can set our foundation whether we're doing that on Etsy whether we're doing that on our Shopify store and then if we want to go a little bit more outside of the box and create some things we have the sales we have the customers potentially we have the email list which you just alluded to to let us start to drive traffic and drive awareness to those things but if we want to do phase one correctly and it's something that Etsy makes extremely easy especially if you're using something like everb which shows you the sales numbers for a lot of different products on the platform then we need to focus on what is being purchased Now set the foundation with that and then get a little more diverse later if we have something we really really really want to create but we know that nobody is buying we can always do that down the road set the foundation with the stuff people are buying yeah 100% I mean that's a that's a big one I think that that's a big big mistake um that people are making is that they're not looking at the demand they're not looking at the the niche or the market as a whole um guys listen the other thing I should bring this up um and some of you are new um you haven't uh you know received uh anything from us as far as like any type of uh of guide or uh we we do have some some free stuff that we can uh we can kind of share with you to help you um and I know it's a lot to take in but if you want our entire road map that we Ed to build my wife's shop uh and we got it up to over $100,000 last year um if you want that just put uh let's see do 100K in um in the comments just put in 100K and uh we'll make sure that we get you that guide in um and you can go through it it's like I said like we we kind of lay everything out all the way from like the niche validation to the products to launching and all of that stuff in between so if you want a copy of that 100K in the comments and we'll make sure you get a copy of that the other thing is is like and I'm just going to give a shout out here because we use them every single day and it's the only tool we use is everb um if you're not yet using everb I encourage you to use it and I would pay for it like I would pay for the growth plan because it is going to be vital for you to look and see exactly what the demand looks like now some people are using everb just for like keyword research fine I don't look at the keyword research as closely as I do sales and the reason why is because and they'll tell you this any keyword research tool is pretty much going to be a guess okay sales numbers are a lot easier for them to predict okay um so I would definitely encourage you if you are struggling if you are wanting to get consistent sales and you're struggling number one take your products plug them in and see what kind of demand you got are you looking at like you you could sell like maybe there's like one selling every four days might not hit that Target okay so um definitely check it out brandreth that back up on the screen one more time so if you go to brand creators.com slever you can go there you can sign up you can try it for free I would encourage you to sign up and just even if you did the growth plan for one month um I would do that because you're going to be able to do this research and we've got plenty of uh videos on this YouTube channel which again if you are not yet subscribed to this channel subscribe you're going to get notified when we go live just like this you're also going to be able to get when we update and do any new videos which we do about four new videos a week and um we also do our Thursday Etsy Shop audits where we actually break down shops and dig in and see how we can help them hit their numbers that they wanna that they want to hit um if you want to potentially uh get your Etsy Shop audited um by us um on one of these um just go to brandrep club members and what is that well we're actually doing one tomorrow um we do one a month and this is where we batch record our Etsy Shop Audits and then once we record them we have them edited and then we put them up on YouTube and generally they're around five to six weeks behind so if you want to get access to the live batch recording session which they're around three hours long um and then also you get to ask questions uh to Chris and I while we're doing these um you can join us and it's the backstage pass club if you go to Brand creators.com forward SL Club um it'll take you there or if you're on YouTube just hit join and uh you can join and it's under 10 bucks um so yeah I would encourage you to join us it's a lot of fun and um you get to see real live examples of us digging in and um and helping these uh these shop owners all right so with that being said Chris um the business plan so phase one like I said is you have to start with the plan the other thing that I would say in this in this little business plan and probably one of the questions I would ask you almost immediately would be what is your target number what is your target number and what I mean by that is is how much do you want to make now I know some people be like I want to make a million dollars okay I get it right everyone wants to make a million dollars what do you want to make in the next 12 months that would that would be worth your time doing this and also what is it that you're trying to get out of it by making this money so if you're like I just want to not have to work my second job or I want to be able to have my husband work less or my wife or vice versa um what is the reason and also what is the number and the reason why that's so important the number is because once you understand the number then you can reverse engineer how to hit that number and it's going to change your business plan is going to be different than someone else's because someone someone else is going to be like I want to make $1,000 a month or I want to make $3,000 a month and someone's gonna say I want to make $10,000 a month completely different now we have to look at different types of products um maybe a different Niche maybe a different sub Niche maybe we have to bolt a bunch of sub nites together to hit that number um but it's really important in the very beginning so at the very top of the business plan I would probably be writing that I'd be writing like the $3,000 per month uh business plan uh next 12 months something like that and then we would go through it okay um let me know in the comments too what is your number what is your number in the next 12 months if you could wave a magic wand and and again like guys like I want you to be realistic too right I'm not sitting here Chris is not sitting here we're not the type of people that g be like yeah this is overnight you just launch some products and then uh you're going to be making $10,000 a month you know mugs you just got to sell mugs that's all you got to sell t-shirts that's it just hop on those Trends we're not saying that at all um so let me know in the comments I'm curious and maybe we can kind of look at these a little bit later and see where the you know where the average is of what we're trying to do um because once you have that number it it becomes so much easier to reverse engineer because then we take everb and we we're able to look at the numbers of these products and see is it realistic for us to be able to hit these numbers is it realistic and if it's not we need to adjust and we need to then ask ourselves okay what is possible right or maybe we have to go to a different Niche um so yeah so leave that in the comments that would be helpful for us to know that as well all right let's move on so yes I could get into like when you're launching your product which I do want to do that here shortly um because I said in the beginning I wanted to share something there as far as like if you're not not getting uh sales or if you're struggling or even if you're just launching your uh products for the first time there is a little strategy that I would follow and to a lot of people uh I guess they don't want to do it because well it will take a little bit of money to do not a ton but a little bit um so we can touch on that but the bottom line is here is on that business plan know your target your target number for the monthly for the next 12 months then from there start with your Niche does your Niche support that will it allow you to hit that number by doing your research validating the niche and then from there start to come up with your three to five products once you come up to your three to five products those products are going to be the ones that are going to deliver the demand into your shop all right and then from there it's a matter of launching those products on Etsy and from there starting to build out your reviews so this way here you convert higher down the road because in the beginning not going to convert as high what I mean by that is is like you're going to you're going to have a hundred people come to a listing and because you don't have any reviews they're a little more skeptical right you've been skeptical if you go to a place it's only got one review I am I go to Amazon and I'm gonna buy something and I'm like wait it's only got three reviews this one's got 300 I'm gonna look at the one with 300 because it's more proof right and so in the beginning then we have to find ways to get those reviews so we can pump that up and then that way there that'll help us convert higher but if you get a 100 people to the listing you can convert at 1% you're going to get one sale we want to get that to three or 5% right so that way there we can sell more with not having more traffic necessarily um so those are some things to do in phase one of the business plan Chris we can move on to uh phase two which we're just going to touch on we're not going to go too deep on that um anything you wanted to add to phase one two things first when it comes to setting goals having that monetary number is extremely important but also setting a timeline for how you are getting there is also important and alisan just dropped in one of my favorite things to lay over any goal which is what's called smart Scott are you familiar with the concept any good goal is specific right so we know what the goal is we're saying we want to make $10,000 a month in profit it's measurable obviously we either hit that number or we didn't so that's something that's measurable it's attainable meaning it's realistic to be able to get there it's relevant so it helps me contribute to that why Scott that you were talking about and it's t bound meaning I not just $10,000 in the future would be really cool but I'm going to hit $10,000 a month by the end of the year for this reason and if you can structure your goals that way it's a lot easier to achieve them because you wrap in all of the things that matter you wrap in that deadline which we talk about all the time on the marketing side of things but it's just as important for goal setting because it helps keep you on track you wrap in the number and you wrap in one of the most important things Scott that I think most people Overlook which is the why we did have a few people in the Scott that said uh in the chat Scott that said hey Scott you're talking about setting these goals what is your monthly Revenue goal inside of ety and do you have one yeah uh okay so mine's different because uh it's not our main thing and it's my wife's thing kind of um where it's her side thing um and so for me personally if we did 50k to 75k for the year it would be it'd be fine because of the amount of time that's being put into to it um so for me and we've talked about it because we've built out Brands is going externally so we've put up a Shopify store um you know we've got our email list we've got all of that stuff but then it comes down to how much work in I going to want to put into it versus just my wife and so right now where we're at because I'm doing brand creators and some of you know might not know I also started another project uh where we're help my son and I are are talking about uh you know helping people with live video uh with live streaming and and what it's done for us here but also teaching that so it's another project of mine that I want to build out because I'm passionate about it but really for my wife it's a side thing and here's the other thing let's just say it's let's just say it was $75,000 okay and and I'm talking net profit like at the end of the year you walk away 75k um the other thing that we look at is we don't look at it as month to month like right now currently because we also account for the fourth quarter fourth quarter was probably 60 maybe 70% of our sales and I'm okay with that my wife's okay with that you grind for three or four months and then the rest of the year you kind of just chip away my my wife will sit down she'll do a couple of hours of design work and she she's happy she answers a few uh customer support things and she's happy right and I'm happy um it's a completely other business but it's to us it's more of a side business if I was going to make it my full-time business then I would have to say Okay the stuff that I'm doing here I'm on here teaching you and helping you with business and and e-commerce stuff I wouldn't be able to do it anymore I would just go and dedicate all of my time to building out the website getting traffic building the email list bigger um doing automation Within you know you know the uh you know abandoned carts and things like that whole another animal if I'm going to turn that into a full-time you know High six you know low seven figure business um so anyway hopefully I answered that correctly or not even but honestly just completely I think the the thing here is the goal is irrelevant from one person to another it's really about the why and the reason that you are doing this specifically and Scott just asking we had people in the chat CH that said I'd be happy with 20 grand I'd be happy with $2,000 a month which would be 24 right I'd be happy with 100K I want to I want to sell a million dollars worth of stuff next year awesome all of those are good as long as we backwards engineer and make sure that it is a realistic and smart goal right is our Niche going to support that sales volume if not then before we get started we probably need to pick a different Niche because we're not in the demand generation game when we're working with Etsy we're in the converion game right the get traffic make sales game and if our Niche supports our goal awesome if not then we either need to rethink the niche or rethink the goal and those are really the only two options especially for getting started inside of the ET ecosystem yeah um and so I I'll address something in the comments so your Frugal friend brought up I did an analysis of your shop so I don't announce my shop but obviously you found it it's not my shop it's my wife's but whatever um and and uh basically uh trying to call me out um no our our our business did over 115 or 119,000 in gross sales last year and I've publicly said that and I can show you a screenshot so anyway um someone trying to trying to I guess call me out or something but anyway your Frugal friend thank you for that but no I could send you a screenshot if you'd like I can actually post it here publicly um I've already done it I've done a video on it so um yeah yeah anyway um let's let's keep moving on um so let's where where we at here so let's let's get into phase two so phase two is building out the external channels and really that starts with your email list so if you're not yet building the email list that's what I would do I would start with building the email list like phase two for me that's where it starts because that's where you can start directing the traffic to your Etsy shop or outside of of your um Etsy shop so this way here we're able to now build an asset that we can then also Drive traffic and start launching our products and driving more sales to our products on a regular basis or when we launch a product so a perfect example of using this external uh this external Channel we're now able to take it and uh you know we we recently did this for my wife's shop we ran I think three emails and did uh little over $1,100 right from and we drove it to Etsy but we we basically just sent those emails if I didn't send those emails we don't do $1,100 extra right it just wouldn't have come in um so the very first part is building the email list we've done videos on here uh we've done live streams on here showing you how to build an email list and how we've built an email list one of our um one of our strategies is what we call the Fishbowl method and from there what we do on that is we basically will do a giveaway and we'll take three to five of our products we'll advertise them on Facebook at a low budget maybe five bucks um a day and then we drive traffic we target people that are interested in the niche and then from there we go ahead and we build um we build the email list that way um and we've done uh we've done that several times we've done it with other businesses that we've gotten um or that we've built and we actually sold um so email list is like first step if you guys want help with your email list I have another free guide you can go through um you can go to uh brand Creator actually you know what just put it in the I forget the link put it in the um put it in the comments um just put email if you want that um because I'm not sure if I remember the the right uh link or not so just put email in the comments and I can go ahead and make sure that we get that to you and it'll show you that full process and that one's that guide's got got to be over 40 or 50 pages a lot of screenshots a lot of a lot of guide uh or a lot of guides inside of the guide walking you through the step on how to do that um Chris anything on the email stuff yeah one thing really fast and Helen said you can't you can't do an email list in Europe because the gdpr regulations that's not accurate the only difference is they have to opt in which they have to do in the US anyway but they have to just click a box when they opt in to say that you are allowed to email them and then you can do exactly what we are talking about doing in the US uh there's no difference in the regulations beyond that right in the US you have to have an unsubscribed Link in Europe you have to have an unsubscribed link Link in South America you have to have an unsubscribe link right all of those things basically stay the same the only difference is when they're opting in they have to check the box to allow marketing emails to be sent the way that we talk about doing emails that's not a problem right even using the Fishbowl method all you do is you add what they call the gdpr checkbox to that and they are opting in to hear from you on the marketing side we would never advocate for just blindly sending emails to people they should be opting into the list in one way or another whether that's by opting in through uh the VIP link that we talk about or opting in with the fishball method however we're getting those people they're still saying hey I'd like you to send me stuff and as long you're clear about that up front and you're giving them a compelling offer on the front end then you're good to go yep yep okay and we're gonna we'll finished with the uh with the phase two with then yes you would build out yourself your own website right and Shopify makes it really easy nowadays and there's plugins um that you can now take they'll integrate with Etsy and it'll Port over your listings it'll even populate the listings it'll bring over all your images it'll bring over your descriptions your bullets um pricing um even your um uh you know even if you have like different sizes uh you know variations like it'll bring all that stuff over um now there's a little cleanup to do when you do it but it's worth it to do that so that would be part of phase two I would start phase two with the email list building to make sure that that's that's there because you can utilize that quick you can utilize that when you're driving people over to uh you know your Etsy shop if you're doing a promo or if you're doing a uh you know you're doing a a product launch um which is really good or if you have a holiday coming up you can send people a promo that you're doing um so the email list is Big um and once again if you want that guide our email Playbook just uh just put email in the comments and we'll make sure that we get you a copy of that and then yeah the Shopify stuff again we don't have a ton of training on that um we've had people ask us to do some we may we may not there's a lot of great tutorials out there on how to set up your own Shopify store and stuff um we may do something where we show how to Port over the products but there's again there's there's a lot of explainer videos out there that'll help you do that but then from there once you have that in place you're going to have your own email list so then you can play with that you can start to drive your traffic to your own website and see how it converts there some people might convert better there they might convert worse because they feel more trusted on a platform like Etsy so that's where you would want to play around with that um and then you're going to have to start playing with some paid traffic and again that's another part of growing and learning it's like anything so you would you know start with maybe Google ads and then from there you might go to Facebook ads or maybe you start with Facebook ads because you think there's a better opportunity there or you want to learn them first like it's totally up to you but that's going to be the phase two of the e-commerce business and really like building it out so it's not just an Etsy business anything else there Chris before we move on to uh another little topic that we want to cover here today the the question that we're going to get if we haven't gotten it in the chat already is how do we move those listings over once we're setting up that Shopify site there's a bunch of different tools out there the one that we used in the past is Vela and if you go to brand creators.com forella that should take you right there uh the cool thing about that Scott and you were talking about one of the biggest pains in the butt about moving those things over is sometimes people create listings in printify sometimes they create them in Etsy sometimes they edit them in different places you can kind of pick and choose what you refer to as the source of truth right like where you're creating the best version of that listing and then just go through and move them over and if you want to update on both platforms at the same time you can do that right inside of of V so we have used that in the past with great success there's a lot of other tools out there that's just the one that that we used to make sure and art by Flynn says I love Villa doll cleck says is Shopify the best one uh I tried Wix and it was terrible there's a bunch of platforms out there if you're not a tech nerd uh I would probably go with something like shop it's going to be a lot easier to set up than wooc Commerce will be and you're going to have a lot less updates and things that you need to pay attention to that could potentially or will break your site if you either do them too soon or don't do them soon enough so Shopify tends to be the lowest friction way to do that but again and Scott I think this is the greatest trick that Shopify has played they say the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist the greatest trick that Shopify ever played was convincing the world they are a Marketplace they are not a marketplace right so if we're moving over to Shopify we have to be cognizant we have to be conscious we have to be paying attention to the fact that they are not going to drive traffic for us and Scott you said something right at the end there that I think is one of the most important takeaways you put it at the beginning of phase two I would say that goes at the end of phase one which is building that email list even if all we have at the beginning is that email list we can start to drive traffic over to that Shopify site whenever we want to right so our e-commerce website we can get the we can get the traffic and the sales flowing over there as soon as we want to just by changing where we send that email traffic we can send it to Etsy if we want more sales there or we can send it over to Shopify if we want more sales there and then anything we're doing on the advertising side whether we're doing Facebook ads or Google ads or YouTube ads all of those run off of what is referred to as a conversion pixel right they try to optimize to get you more sales so if we can drive those early sales it'll make the ads optimization even easier so before you even think about starting your own website start building the email list using the fishball method and using existing customers that we're getting from the Etsy ecosystem yeah no it's all good stuff and like running an econ business it's not easy right like I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's easy there's there's a lot of moving parts to it uh and again if you just want to primarily focus on Etsy that's fine but I would just create those as also the things that you're creating is is assets like that's the way I look at like whether we ever go full throttle and try to build out our Shopify for my wife's stuff you know maybe but it's there like I it's all there like it's all ported over it's there the email list it's built we've got it we're using it we send emails still it's just a matter of where I'm directing the traffic right now um and it it does just come down to like what you want out of this is this going to be your full-time gig is this going to be a part-time gig like like ours like ours is completely and being totally transparent like ours is completely a side hustle I barely touch the business the only thing I do is I send some emails for my wife like that's it and I'll give her like opinions she'll be like what do you think of this right and I'm like yeah I like that cute or she'll ask my daughter what do you think of that yeah that's good right but pretty much it's all her and she doesn't want a full-time gig so for her it's perfect but we've also built those assets that if we wanted to grow that thing bigger we could and I've already validated the niche I've already done all that stuff so we know that there's enough demand there for all of the other stuff um looks like we just lost Chris again too so hopefully he will come back um let me go ahead and share with you though I've got a couple other things to share with you uh and I'll just give you guys those right now like what I'm going to do so the first thing I'm going to cover is uh and if Chris comes back on he can share it with you if not I'll pull it up um because there was just a great article that came out with the top Etsy niches and searches in 2024 um and we want to cover that it's a full list and I want to go through it and I want to talk through it and and kind of talk about it and then the other one I wanted to uh talk about is I wanted to share um the state of etsy and on demand sellers because that's a big big topic and people are wondering like is it still good is it is it something we um we should still lean into um is it something that etsy's gonna crack down on and then we're out of business like we want to talk about that but before we get to that I did promise that I was going to give you guys if you're struggling with getting sales or you're struggling because you've done everything that we've said or others have said and it's not working I want to help you guys here okay we're going to V validate your stuff like right now so if you are struggling right now to get sales and you're scratching your head and you're like I've done everything I've been told I've been I've been listening to you Scott and Chris and I've been listening to other uh people out there that are are are teachers or instructors or gurus on Etsy and I've done everything and it's just not working I'm not getting views I'm not getting sales or I'm getting views but I'm not getting sales and I just don't get it I I don't know well I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna give you something right now that you can do you can Implement as soon as you get done here okay and watching what I'm going to share with you you can go and do this and this will probably tell you okay if in fact your product should be selling because I'm going to assume that you've done your product research I'm going to assume that you've well looked at the sales numbers and uh you've run it through a tool like everb which by the way if you're not using everb little Shameless plug uh you should probably use them because it's a very helpful tool to well show you the data because we want to follow the data and know that are we even trying uh to get sales on something that's actually selling so little Shameless plug if you want to try everb go to brandrep coffee if you go and use the tool and you upgrade to the growth plan which I recommend because if we know that there are in fact sales someone's getting sales okay that's the first part and you're saying you've done that you've already done that right right so yes they're getting sales and I've created a design that I think similar or it's it's it was inspired by that it it's a let's just say it's a uh a tumbler and I see that it's selling and it's doing great it's hitting my numbers and you're like yes and I've done everything I've got the title similar I've got tags I've got good images that are similar and uh you know but I'm not I'm not getting the sales I'm not getting the sales and so the first thing that I would ask you and and that I would want to see is I would want to compare Your Design to their design because sometimes you're thinking your design looks like something that would kind of represent theirs or at least the flare of it right it would be like the same kind of idea concept colors but in actuality if I was to look at it I might be like that ain't even close or your mockups I know you say you did what you were told to do but that mockup it's not good right so I can see why you're not getting Sal but let's just say let's just assume that your designs are killer your mockups killer everything is great and you're like demand awesome Okay cool so we're going to test this now now you might not have as many reviews as them that's a problem okay we can fix this or we can at least we can see if we can actually get some sales and we can see if people will actually buy that so I would run this through like a fay test window and what I would do is I would take your product and I would bring it down in price to be break even break even you're not gonna make a dime on it and you might even lose a little bit of money and I'm saying losing you might lose two bucks each sale let's say that you were you were gonna get 10 sales so you lose 20 bucks okay great would you if I could tell you that we could test your stuff for 50 bucks and we can know if it's in fact going to sell like we can get eyeballs we can tell right away would you do it for 50 bucks I would because immediately I know do I got a winner or do I got a loser so so what I would do is I would reduce the price down to break even okay and then I would run some little Etsy ads and I would put it at five bucks a day right five days 25 bucks let's say you lose two bucks on each one you're you're out $45 to test this right 45 bucks okay so after five days you've gotten in front of the audience you're going to see that in your numbers too you're going to be like yep there's the numbers there's My Views you're like okay cool because here's the other thing if you do this and you don't get views there's something else broke there's something else broke if you're not getting views but you looked at the demand you did the testing and you did the research and you go yeah they're getting sales I can see it they're getting views they're getting sales and you're like okay great but you're not getting the views or the sales something is wrong with your listing you either have keywords wrong okay or you have tags wrong there's something missing there that you're not getting the views because views come first then come clicks then come sales so we have to see if you did all that and you're seeing you're getting views you're not getting clicks we got a problem with the what the thumbnail there's something wrong with your mockup okay or let's say you're getting the click but you're not getting the sale now it's either price no reviews so now we don't have any reviews so we we take that out of the way where people are like oh well gosh this is this is like $15 cheaper than the other one I'm gonna get this one okay cool we took that barrier out of there okay so that's what I would test and that's how you can very very quickly know if it's in fact your product that's bad or that's the problem or in fact if it's the demand okay and then we can know right away because if you do all that stuff and you're not getting sales then like I said there's a problem somewhere along the way like I said demand we got to look at the numbers and Etsy ads is going to tell you numbers and you say well I did the keyword research Scott I looked at ever's keyword research tool I've said this publicly I'm going to say it again everb and any other keyword research tool and they'll tell you themselves it's a guess it's a guess do not base your your numbers and your uh validation on keyword searches and competition don't do that here's what you want to look at your Etsy ads data because that's real that's actual real data and you're going to see okay what keywords LED two people coming over to my listing oh those are all related keywords cool I got my keywords right so this is how you can look and see but I would say if you're doing all that and you're not getting sales I would question your design I'd say maybe you think your design is good but maybe your design isn't good I know it's hard to hear maybe your mockup you're think yeah my my Design's great but maybe your mockups H not that good okay so we got to compare apples to apples but we also have to run some real live traffic to the listing to actually get a result and taking the price down with a discount also shows that there's a deadline that gives people the urgency to want to buy all of those things are in place now and then we can validate and we can see is my product good is it bad what's the problem where's the problem okay and that's how I would want to test your product if it wasn't selling right now so Chris we got any questions on that did I leave anything out couple things uh so first in the chat as we're going through that Scott people are saying hey Like My Views are changing my views are going down maybe my sales are going up though what's up with that it's not always about getting more views and Scott you went off on a rant you said first comes views and I was waiting for you to say then comes marriage right so F first comes love then comes marriage then comes I got got right uh so yes you are going to be getting views first but that's not the only thing that we're concentrating on right just because views come down that's not necessarily a bad thing if sales are going up and views or clicks or both are going down means we're getting better qualified traffic coming to that listing at the end of the day that's what this whole process is about it's not about the total number of people seeing the listing or the total number of people coming to the listing it's about the total number of people coming to the listing and buying our stuff right and so if we can focus on that that's where we start to have success and I think the one thing that people Miss Scott when we talk about running Etsy ads it's about shortcutting that process and I think the easiest way to do that is to go look at your Etsy ads data you will see when you first start running Etsy ads that a lot of the views you're getting a lot of the clicks that you're getting are not for things that are very relevant if you've ever seen us talk about Etsy ads you see us talk about turning things off that aren't relevant or turning things off that aren't leading to sales the reason for that is that's not qualified traffic it's not the right Market fit for what our product is and by doing that we start to tune the algorithm the other thing that we get out of that is all of the data to say hey when you show up for this people click and they buy stuff that's the gold that we're looking for there and so yes those are the three things we need to be paying attention to but we shouldn't always be looking at getting more views or more clicks we should be looking at getting more sales do those things sometimes correlate yes but we shouldn't be afraid to turn off or remove a keyword from the listing if it's leading to views and not sales yeah I wanted to this is a perfect a perfect way to that off I've actually seen a 10% decrease in views this year but double conversion and double sales this year I think part I improve my listing quality and part Etsy has less junk traffic yeah I I like it I like it um CC said okay it's all clicks I've been working on mockups and photos right that helps you with the view to click ratio the place where people seem to just kind of forget about that is what is the keyword and is it relevant to your listing and we we've used the example of wood if we're selling wooden signs would the word w wow uh does the word would I guess would be a better way of saying that make sense for the listing in theory yes but if we go to Etsy we type in wood and that's where all of our traffic is coming from and we don't see any wooden signs or it's a mixture of raw wood and treated wood and lumber and signs and all of these kinds of things maybe we want to turn that off uh on the ad side of things because people don't know what they want when they're typing that in right so we need to look at the optimization side of this your clicks are going to increase if you have better photos your conversion rate will increase potentially if you have better photos but what we need to look at is the relationship between what people are typing in and what they expect to see when they go to a result that shows up for that keyword and if we can really focus in on that area that's where we're going to start to see the conversion rate increases yeah uh we got another one here real quick uh My Views clicks and sales are doing okay ads eat up my profit but when I increase price to account for that sales drop how do I find a balance um well here's the thing too though is so what I would say is like number one are you taking advantage of the customers that you're getting in are you trying to get them on an email list and I know we're going to get people we're not going to dive into this too much but it's like you can still build an email list with your customers you just can't message them without them giving you consent so when you're very very first welcome email you should have a VIP list um sign up where they'll get you know monthly discounts or weekly discounts whatever um specials to your uh you know new product releases and things like that but think about this for a second like yes you're running the ads right now you're acquiring the customer but then if you got them on an email list even if it was only 20% of them like a 100 people that's 20 people and out of those 20 people you get people to buy again you didn't pay for them anymore right that's like pure profit now I say pure profit on the ad part you don't pay for the ads again so this is why it's so important when you're building the brand we're building it towards and for a customer and and a and a niche so this way here like when I sent those emails a week and a half ago to my wife's shop and made $1,148 in sales I didn't pay for those right I didn't pay for that traffic you know if anything Etsy paid me you know they gave us our our little rebate on our fees um so yeah so that that's what I would say and oh by the way um thanks for being a club member it looks like you're one of our club members so we'll see you tomorrow maybe oh you're muted Chris yeah that's what I get uh Maria Gabriella says you're totally right I don't have too many views but my conversion rate is good and that's I think the thing that people focus on is they want to get all of the traffic that they possibly can that's not a terrible strategy the problem is if you don't focus on the conversion rate then we lose the forest through the trees does Etsy want traffic yes do they want sales way more than they want traffic right the views are kind of that first step in giving them that data the conversion is what we should really focus on Bailey said that's my vote uh my conversion rate every month this year has been four to five percent since I started implementing actual strategy by the way great conversion rate at four to five% that's great yeah I have way fewer views but higher sales and at the end of the day that's what this is about right I don't care if a million people see it as long as I make those thousand sales or whatever that number is if I can sell that same thousand products to 1,1 people then I'm just as happy with that and it makes my life a lot easier because I only have to get a thousand and one people instead of a million and that makes it a heck of a lot easier yeah Bailey says yay Etsy Shop AIT tomorrow yes tomorrow is our recording day so I should give a little shout out here if uh if you are a club member uh and you're here well tomorrow at 12: PM eastern time we will be meeting um for I believe we're doing three Etsy Shop audits we'll be recording them privately um for our little Club um if you want to be a club member or become a club member and you're not and you want to join that call um you can just go to brandcomet.com jooin will take you there um or just if you go to Club I believe that's that one there um yeah and you can join us tomorrow we will be kicking it off at noon eastern time um so yeah um we got a couple other things here uh there was one other oh this is great so yeah I was just gonna say my conversion rate is 6.5% is that good um it's terrible just give up now listen that's a high marker to hit all the time so that's a very very good conversion rate um we're happy generally with 2% like 1% is like bare minimum we want a 1% um two three you're doing good anything above five you're doing great so don't don't uh don't mess that up what I would say though is if you get more traffic that could decrease but that's okay um then you just have to kind of dial that in but six and a half percent is Stellar that's a great a great one um looks like Pat just joined the club thank you Pat we'll see you tomorrow um appreciate you um all right um let's let's keep rocking and oh we got another one there okay cool love look at this we got club members coming in awesome thank you guys um all right cool so let's get into it Chris do you have the uh the little list that we wanted to kind of go over here real quick oh yeah all right cool all right guys we are going to be sharing something that was well emailed to me and then I forwarded it to Chris and I said let's look at this the top Etsy niches and searches in 2024 it's a full list and I believe I'm going to pronounce this wrong maybe right it's marmalade or marmalade I don't know but they actually posted this on their blog they also emailed it out Chris could you pull that up for us so we can actually dig through this and we can see exactly what they're talking about so I think this is interesting um they're gonna be going through the top Etsy searches in 2024 with popular keywords but also is is the types of products so Chris can we scroll through this a little bit Yeah so it came to us from marmal and I think you said they emailed this out it also popped up on their on their blog and Scott before we dive into this as I'm getting down to the actual keywords what are your thoughts on just focusing on keywords as what's important for SEO well I'm okay so I'm not looking at this as okay these are the top keywords so this is the the keywords that we want to use um what I am looking at is like did this come from their tool or did this come from Etsy themselves directly because Etsy does also a quarterly report on a lot of their top searches and those are the ones that I kind of want to really pay attention to but what I'm looking at here is like this is still useful information and so what it does for me is it it shows me certain areas certain topics or certain trends that are getting searches this allows me if I'm a new seller and I don't know my niche this is a great way to kind of see and expose different areas of etsy that I might be interested in starting a brand around um also it's a way for me to look at it and go is there something here that lends itself to uh you know to our brand you know that we're building right now um so not everything will apply but it is something that I'm going to want to look through and say okay this is something that's trending or this is something that people are into um maybe I can add that to it for an example if you're not in the wedding Niche but you're in the baby Niche is there something that you could cross promote could is there something that you could create for someone that's getting married but also has a baby or something for a uh if you're doing like I don't know baby uh you know baby's first Christmas or something right and or baby's first year and you're doing all that is there something that you could also put in there that would be related to uh baby wi within the wedding or maybe uh what is it uh I'm drawing a blank here like a flower child flower boy yeah yeah whatever right like would that allow us to see that so that's kind of how I'm looking at this Chris yeah and I I would say anytime you see like a giant list of keywords or you're using a tool to help you find keywords you should not be saying this is the golden keyword right like this is the one thing and I think one thing I enjoyed about the way that marmal laid this out is they talk about all the keyword research and then they organized it Scott almost by Niche right so it's by category but we can come in and look at these on kind of a niche by Niche basis and use that as a starting point to say hey maybe some of these would be a good idea for a we to Niche down inside of something like weddings or maybe these are good product ideas or maybe there's a better way to describe my product based on what people are actually typing in and so is there a specific place you wanted to dive into like actually what I wanted you to do is rather than dive to them is scroll I want to see I want to get to the yeah I want to get here so top Etsy yeah I want to I want to get into that stuff um so like right here okay so here here are some of the Etsy searches for wedding and celebration so we have baby shower bachelorette party cake topper wedding so what I'm doing here is I'm looking at this now if you're in the wedding Niche you want to see this right and you want to go okay and we've talked about this right if you're gonna break into a big Niche like wedding which we've talked about is a good strategy then you might want to start with wedding favors right and then you can add all of these other sub bachelorette party okay uh we have wedding guest book we have wedding invitations wedding signs right so that's what we're doing there okay What a Wonderful World um so okay be careful with that one yeah I would too um scroll down a little bit though Chris so where it says top Etsy search no back up again real quick the gift giving so top Etsy searches for giftgiving well we're not in the gift giving Niche necessarily but let's see if anything is here that's worth paying attention to that we could then adapt to our Niche or get ideas around so let's kind of keep going here so okay anniversary gift for him anniversary gifts um best friend gifts boyfriend bridesmaid um engagement gifts gift box gifts gifts for boyfriend you get the idea right now another little trick you could do here too is you can just go to Etsy and put gifts for and then let it see what populates and that's going to probably give you a really good indication of like what's the top searches um groomsman gifts there we are we can now straddle that with wedding right so you have wedding and then we have groomsmen so we can kind of use those two together okay that's interesting and I think the the way I would probably use this one is mostly on that product side so fishing anniversary gift fishing best friend gift fishing boyfriend gift right what are the products that we can create and then make sure we're incorporating those gift specific keywords one because we know that they're highly searched and two because it's going to help us show up inside of gift mode so we see a lot of different things here getting down to like teacher gifts personalized gift right personalized gift for fishermen is going to be something that we're doing so we're not just taking this because we're probably not going to compete for the word personalized gift but we are going to be able to compete for something like personalized fishing gift or personalized grimsman gift or something like that if we're using the niche based approach yep yeah so keep on going so keep on scrolling so you have uh t for home decor so now we're into home decor we have apron uh baby blanket bed frame Queen right so all these now go back to the top there real quick Chris right there yeah so apron right no where it says apron so like so think about this for a second like let's say for example um you're in like Chris was saying like maybe you are in um the I mean this is under home decor but let's just say that you were into rustic uh or Farmhouse Decor right maybe you create an apron because it's a popular search with something that's kind of Southern like a southern say or something right so you would take something even though you're selling like rustic wood or rustic Farmhouse stuff right does that mean you can't sell an apron that would then pertain to that style no because people are using aprons in the kitchen of a farmhouse kitchen right so that's kind of how I'm using this list I think that's interesting yeah I think the only two that might not apply there are like map of Florida yeah right um which I think it's it's it's interesting to look at that and say that uh that is the one state that made it and then you also have map of USA but again if we're taking the niche based approach all of these things are potential products for us right so going back to your your thought here Scott rustic right so rustic bedf frame rustic bedding or rustic feel uh you know cabin feel whatever we're going for as the niche if we have a design style we can apply that same thing here bedding for people who love fishing right fishing bunk beds um if that's really what we want to do uh fishing candles fishing mugs fishing coasters right all of these kinds of things we can just put the niche-based angle on and this is a great way to find a ton of product ideas that we can then go validate and make sure that people are are actually buying in our yeah this is great and we'll we'll link up the article uh in the description so you guys can uh you guys can go check this out um this is from marmal I believe is how you say that I was corrected uh so that is how you say it so let's look at top Etsy searches for outdoor in gardening so let's see so we have Laurel uh planter plants solar succulents terrarium okay interesting and uh you know again like if you in that Niche you might be saying oh solar I didn't think of that or succulents oh maybe terrarium okay you know so there's some things there that you can definitely um build on okay pet supplies let's look at this what do we got here cat collar dog collar dog tag and pet portrait okay so they give you four um you know for that keep on rolling through here Chris aloe vera hair accessories Nails press on nails soap all right now the now Chris these are very broad terms but to your point you might take something from this if you're in this space and know that at least these are are some of the top searches right so aloe vera like that might be something that if you sell soap you might want to include right that might be something there because people that are putting aloe on their skin probably put soap on their skin right I love that and if you're selling fishing stuff soap to get rid of the fishy smell from your hands right obviously need a better product title than that but it doesn't mean that just because we're not in the health and beauty space that we can't sell these types products look at this type of thing and then say how can I apply this to my Niche uh top Etsy searches for jewelry Scott uh bracelet choker crystal necklace earcuff right these are all just kinds of jewelry that I'm seeing here I'm not seeing anything really stick out beyond that at this point electronics and accessories a category most people don't actually think about when they think about the ety ecosystem yeah because interesting to me well and I was gonna say so like let's say for example you're selling phone cases right so you have Apple iPhone 11 looks like a a search a top search Apple watch band Apple Watch series 3 so these are ones that you're like oh well maybe I should create one for my you know for the bass fishing lover uh gift that you're making a iPhone case for right the thing that really stuck out to me here was that if we're doing that it looks like it's not even the newer devices no it's the how many iPhones what are we 14 right so we're uh you know we're at 6 Seven 8 nine 10 11 seems to be the the top one there and so it tells you something about the Etsy ecosystem right if somebody's buying a brand new device maybe they're not looking at Etsy right now for that case but once they've had it for a little while that's when they really start to look at this and if we're in a niche then we need to pay attention to something like that toys and gam in games dice dice tray DND dice fidget spinner hand spinner Miniatures puzzle yeah these are great uh for existing IP so I like that called out and then they said hey and also please don't use these that's hysterical yeah okay we can Skip by those I mean it's interesting to see that Chick-fil-A is in there you know yeah Arby's Chick-fil-A like what are what are people selling is it like collector's cups maybe maybe used french fries there you go vintage Chick-fil-A fries um would probably be a good one also uh do not sell these things yeah right like just let's just add on their disclaimer there uh search for clothing y right so baby onesies right make sure if you're using that keyword that you are selling a onesie that is a trademark term uh bikini Brides made Brides made robes uh does that count as a keyword for clothing if we just put the name of the category in there I don't know but obviously we're gonna naturally include that in the listing anyway if we're doing clothing so it's not something we necessarily have to think about this one stood out to me Scott just because it's a specific kind of a robe so maybe we have bridesmaid's robes but also we have a bridesmaid's kimono right even if it's a similar design or we include that because we see that there's a lot of sales volume there and it's easier for us to stand out there rather than in the broader bridesmaids robe category so again you know not not a huge surprise in the clothing category here accessories uh accessories again right badge re uh somebody was asking us in the chat on one of our live streams to talk about badge reels for nurses Apparently that is a a big deal right anybody that has one of those swipe cards would be using something like that and it is one of the few places that people in a lot of different professions have to show off their love for different things so keep that in mind if you have the niche based approach going on um washable mask uh mask patch pins scarf sword is not one that I would have expected to pop up in there and wallet and watch bags and purses backpack bag uh it a bag I'm assuming that's some a specific kind of bag somebody correct me in the comments leather makeup and tote and keep and keep in mind like you can you can um uh print on demand you can print on demand bags so like that's a that's a great thing there um here uh we're looking at Air Force One Croc charms like yeah potentially Croc charms but you got to be careful because you don't want it to be as though you're infringing on Crocs or Air Force One um shoes is generic slippers is generic sneakers is generic craft supplies supplies yeah okay I'm not even trying this one somebody H give me the phonetics in the comments if you will beads canvas charms crochet crochet pattern right all of lumber there you go there's a good one Mac magnifying glass sewing patterns washi tape um paper and party supplies yeah yeah which interestingly is a different sub uh subcategory um 2024 calendar Advent calendar birthday cards right these are fairly straightforward nothing really stood out to me here other than there's a couple specific kinds of cards uh that show up here so if you are tring cards double check that list Chris before you get into the uh digital downloads uh section here I just want to uh remind people that uh we're going to leave the link in the description so if you uh if you want the link and you want to go through these yourself um we'll go ahead and we'll link that up in the description so you have it from marmal all right so yeah the Etsy searches for digital downloads this will be interesting canva template clip art digital art digital download digital planner digital print digital prints digital products ebook Lightroom Lightroom presets logo these are all great I mean so if you're noticing like notion template right so these are brand names these are trademark names but if you're creating a template for them there should be no reason that you can't do that because you're actually selling it for the device you're not saying hey I'm notion and I'm creating a template you're like these will work um as a notion template is kind of what what you're doing there um twitch overlay okay yeah so these four are the ones that really stood out to me so you know um emotes so like emoticons the overlays and then vtuber which Scott if you're not familiar with the terminology would be when somebody shows up as like an animated character on YouTube doing a live that would be a a vtuber right so apparently they sell vtuber models on NY uh who knew right definitely a digital product definitely a very Niche type of a thing but a very interesting opportunity uh arts and collectibles so again the the stuff that we would expect here right art prints metal wall art the one thing that stood out to me here Scott what's the one thing people talk about all the time that's not on this list canvas yeah it's interesting which must just fall under like wall art or wall art yeah yeah but it's it's interesting to me because the way that I would search for that and I think the way that you would search for that would be like fishing uh fishing art on canvas or something like that I would I would probably start the search with canvas because I'd want to make sure it was canvas it be like canas bass fishing scene or something right yeah um okay spirituality and religion big Niche yes this is this is good um Bloodstone oh wow okay crystals tarot tarot cards Tarot deck okay we've done some videos on that so we know that that's pretty popular um top that search for vintage cool um Fire King and vintage t-shirt I would have thought there would have been more there for that somebody somebody let me know what Fire King is as long as it's internet appropriate in the comments because I I'm lost on that one uh descriptive keywords yeah let's see this here so we should be adding to our descriptions got it okay Al Alabama must be a popular uh area Okay so uh alcohol anime baby bed and breakfast boho coffee yeah this is this is actually useful this is really useful I'm not sure how that's a descriptive descriptive one Declaration of Independence but we'll go with that uh do it-yourself or DIY dog Dragon right looks like state names or location names are a big thing just looking at this list yeah Hawaii Magnum PI go Magnum PI that's awesome uh Statue of Liberty steampunk T that's a good list right there that's a good list yoga yeah okay so I think the the thing the thing I'm gathering from this descriptive list is a few different things if it and you and I talk about this all the time it should be who it's for or what it's about right and what we're seeing there is a lot of location based things a lot of things that call out design or specific locations be it a country a state a city any of those kinds of things so if those are relevant you should always be including exactly who it's for or exactly what it's about where it's from inside of the title and description cool yeah so that that's the little list there um that marmal put out for us and uh I think it's a great list I would use this list to basically just bring the awareness to me as far as okay these are these are some things that are either descriptive words uh add-on words that we can add on or a certain type of product that we might be able to say oh maybe we should put some of our stuff on that because people are buying that type or people are buying aprons oh cool can I create an apron for my Niche maybe um so that's how I would use this list um and just really to allow uh ourselves to see that there's these are keywords that are supposedly getting searched for the most and we don't know where they got the data from if it's from their tool or if it's a you know from Etsy themselves um but it's actually good because there's some of these things that I wouldn't even have thought of so definitely take these use them to bring inspiration but also maybe open your eyes to different areas that you might be able to uh well either create products or add some of these descriptive words onto your current keywords that might open it up a little bit more for more traffic all right Chris we got anything else there did we want to cover that last little topic or did we want to uh wrap her up you're muted again let's do a little bit of Q&A and then wrap it up uh we can we can cover that little rant uh a little bit later on I think uh Alpha said does it cost a lot of money to use Shopify every month you guys were talking about Shopify the answer is it does have a cost to it it depends on what plan you sign up for it's not cheap so if you're just getting started that's why we recommend doing it in phase two I think right now their their standard plan is like $30 a month um they do have a lower end plan that I think is 19 or potentially cheaper depending on where in the world you are but the vast majority of uh people are going to sign up for that $29 a month plan alisan said never compete on price and Scott this is something we were talking about earlier because somebody said hey what I I'm trying to raise my price or I'm trying to lower my price I want to compete yeah never compete on price a lower price does not guarantee more sales if it's a premium price you want to be in the top 20% to reinforce that you are quality I think this is a big mistake that people make is they say I want to be the low price person not necessarily I want to give the best value and they price it at the bare minimum or they price it forever at break even and they don't think about raising that price one of the things you and I have talked about in the past is are there t-shirts in your wife's ETS shop yeah are there sweatshirts in your wife's ET shop yeah are we pricing them at $12 just because other people are selling them at12 no no we're pricing them at 29 or 39 or $49 so that we can make the margin that we want which is going to be 35 to 50% depending on the the product or even higher in some cases and a lot of people think that when you do that you limit your ability to sale uh to sell those things the truth is people tend to break down into 30% will only ever buy the cheapest thing 30% will buy if it seems like it's a better value and 30% will always buy the premium thing right and you have 10% that kind of floats around in there and if we can focus on getting better value for the money then we're going to do that right we're going to create that perception by having a higher pric product making sure that we're creating good quality products and making sure that we're known as a quality place to get things the other thing that people forget in this whole equation is they think they have to compete on price to be able to get Clicks in the Etsy ecosystem if you're doing that you're losing money there's no point in getting those clicks to begin with and so if you focus on the niche-based approach it's a lot easier to sell those things because we know based on the ET buyer survey and based on email and based on all of the other things that we've done that repeat customers are a lot less price sensitive and specifically in the N ecosystem repeat and high value customers start at the shop level meaning they're never seeing the other prices they're not seeing the19 9 fishing sweatshirt they're only seeing yours because they've bought from you in the past and they trust you and they trust the quality that they're going to get so they're not necessarily looking for The Bargain Basement gift they're looking for the best quality thing that they can find and they know based on previous experience with you that they're able to do it so they're a lot less price sensitive Scott we had a question about making sure that we have our keywords in our description how many times should be we be repeating those ones that we see from something like marmal what are your thoughts on repeating keywords and is it necessary it's not necessary and I mean Etsy has even said it in their handbook is like just you say it once um and then you're good so if you're going to repeat it is it going to hurt you no but you're you're taking up other areas of where you can uh especially in the tags where you're going to be able to include more tags that will allow you to be indexed for more types of keywords and and Etsy is smart enough to piece it together too like if you had like one or a two one one or a two-word tag but then another one you could also put it with the one that has the two words it's G to know it's just all you're doing is putting the information in there so that way they when they scrape the listing and they index it you're going to start showing up for those keywords even if it's a keyword here and a keyword here right even if it's in the title the title might have a keyword at the front and then it might be you know another one in you know maybe three four words in or you could reverse those so it could be like you know uh gift for garden lover or garden lover gift you don't have to you don't have to say it exactly how it is in order to show up for those types of keywords um so you know I would not repeat them over and over and over again and in the description I always like to just fill it out with the information like and it doesn't have to be information like 12 ounce mug because you think people are going to search for a 12 ounce mug for the most part they're not um so just make sure that in your description it's descriptive it's that's what it's for and then from there make sure your tags are filled out and a great way to see what you're you're indexed for is to start running some Etsy ads against it even if it's just to see what you're ranking for or what you're indexing for um and then that would be a great way to see what kind of keywords are coming up because you'll see it it'll also give you recommendations for tags um inside of there so there's some things you can do there that's pretty cool um yeah I actually dropped the link to that in the description guys so you can you can check it out in the description I just updated the Des description so if you're watching this live or if you're watching this on the replay go to the description you'll find the maral um little article there that they put out um anything else Chris uh no I think that was it for today cool uh couple resources like I said they'll be in the description uh if you uh would like our uh 100K road map uh you can go and just put 100K in the uh in the uh comments and we'll get that over to you that's that's the guide that we put together um of us building uh my wife's shop to 100K in sales that's not net sales that's in sales just to be clear um and then from there um you can kind of see exactly like our business plan that we kind of live by um you can get that 100K if you put that in the comments the other thing is the email Playbook if you want to build an email list which we're a huge fan of um and you want to see how we are building an email list but also how we're doing email marketing to the brand um just put email in the comments and the last one I would give you to is SEO there's a lot of talk about SEO there's a lot of people that are like just trying to figure out SEO because they think that is the gateway to get traffic it's part of the Gateway um and I really believe that SEO is important but sales are more important because sales is going to allow you to get ranked and get ranked faster but if you want to make sure that you're fully optimized with SEO then I would definitely recommend downloading our guide it's free and it's our SEO guide just put SEO in the comments and we'll make sure that gets over to you um so that's our resources we got for you they're free um just let us know in the comments um the other thing I would say as well is um if you wna kind of hang out with us a little bit more and uh see us uh do Etsy Shop audits for shop owners we actually do a live recording session for our backstage pass club members we're doing one tomorrow depending on when you're watching this um but we do one a month and what we do is we record up to three and then they get aired later um so if you want to get access to those first and be there for the live recording and be able to ask us questions on the Fly um then head on over to brandcreativity club and you can join us or just click the join button if you're on YouTube um and lastly if you've gotten value from this do us a favor smash the like button let us know and uh if you want to subscribe to the channel you can do that as well and you'll get notified when we uh when we go live when we post new videos which we're posting about four new videos a week um so if you want to make sure you stay in the loop make sure you subscribe and uh that's going to wrap it up I want to thank you guys well over 240 is people on today um on our live I want to thank you guys so much for hanging out with us if you have any questions or if you have any topics you want us to cover in detail um let us know that in the comments as well because we're always listening we're always wanting to make sure that we're giving you and uh giving you the value and and also the things that you need to help you succeed um oh one last thing if you've if you've actually implemented something that we've talked about and it's it's gotten you some results let us know that too let us know in the comments we'd love to give you a little shout out on maybe the next the next live stream so let us know in the comments you got any wins for us let us know all right guys that's it that's going to wrap it up as always take care take action have an awesome amazing day we'll see you right back here on the next episode take care guys

Channel: Brand Creators

Views: 12,198

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Id: ql7HEEdLunU

Length: 115min 40sec (6940 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024