The NEW Opportunity To Get Started On Etsy In 2024

right all right all right welcome back to another episode of The Rock your brand podcast today I am fired up because well we're gonna be talking about the new opportunity on Etsy to get started in 2024 and the time of recording this it's before 2024 but we are seeing so many signs that well there is a new opportunity and something we've been talking a lot about here but there's also going to be some well some changes happening to Etsy sellers that are coming in and uh well we're already starting to see that where it's negative for these people because people are getting kicked off left and right and uh there are some reasons behind that but what we want to focus on today is number one how to avoid that but then also what is the new plan what is the opportunity moving into 202 for is there still opportunity for a new Etsy seller to get started so that's what we're going to be talking about here uh we do have some updates I want to give you too some fresh numbers and I'm real excited to share that with you because we have had a couple of Records broke this past week and uh I'm going to share that here on this episode and then we're gonna dig into the reasons why I feel like we've broke those records and some of the things behind that so with that all said this is going to be live if you're listening to this on the podcast well it's not live it's a recording so I want to invite you over to hang out with us on the YouTube channel if you're not already doing that but if you don't want to you can just listen on the podcast that's totally cool too but Chris I'm fired up man what about you I know we're just after Thanksgiving and we're diving into this this New Year stuff how you feeling man I'm good man I'm excited you know we we kind of ended 2023 you know and I'm saying this is still 2023 but the last few months have been kind of weird in the Etsy ecosystem you know there's been a lot of drama if you've been around and that led to like you said Scott a bunch of people leaving the platform a bunch of people saying hey you know I don't think this is for me anymore or there's definitely not a way that you can make this work because etsy's just totally arbitrary and so there's just no point so I'm going to go to this website that has five visitors or I'm going to go over here right and if you don't want to sell on that's totally fine but also it's not totally arbitrary and there's definitely an opportunity and Scott I think you would agree with me based on our November numbers so far and we're I think we have you know basically a day and a half left as of the time of recording this uh there's definitely an opportunity and it's a growing opportunity if you do a few very basic things and focus on some of the fundamental things that Etsy is looking for rather than uh using the if I launch it they will buy it type of an approach yeah no that that's a great that's a great Point uh because I think a lot of people are thinking still like oh I can just launch something and it's going to automatically uh sell and that's not that's not the case now I do have some notes here because it is a bit of a plan that I wanted to share with you guys so I'm going to go ahead and pull that up so if I'm looking off camera that's what I'm looking at just want to make sure that I cover everything here uh but first off before we even dive into like what you can do to take advantage of this new opportunity on Etsy uh before we do that I did want to ask you to comment in uh the comment thread uh are you just starting like right now and let us know a little bit about you like are you brand new did you launch in November or Q4 or are you thinking about launching an Etsy shop in uh 2024 so I'd love to know that too in the comments if you would do that that would be amazing but here's the deal and here's the truth Etsy originally okay started as a 100% handmade platform this is where all you could do is basically make something with your hands knitting something maybe carving wood maybe wood burning maybe it's engraving things like that that's the only type of items that Etsy was allowing for several years all right and I don't even know what the actual dates are I probably should should know them or or find them so I can share them with you but they didn't offer digital products you couldn't offer any of that stuff you couldn't offer print on demand and then what happened was is they started to allow digital items they started to allow print on demand now there are some stipulations and those stipulations are being a little bit more now uh really held to as far as like what you can do and what you can't do but as any platform once they start opening it up to these other types of products they're going to have a little bit more of a widespread of people just launching a whole bunch of different things they can't really monitor it and well it's kind of like the Wild Wild West and and so that's what I'm seeing and that's what i' I've seen since I've been been on the platform I mean we've been actively now on there just over three years but even before that I knew about Etsy uh you know because I've been in the online space for for years and ever since I started I believe Etsy was a thing I mean Etsy is I think 12 or 20 plus years old now Chris I don't know what the exact number is but I know they started a long time ago right alongside all of the other ones even eBay and all of them I believe it was around 2005 okay 2005 okay so it's not quite 20 but we're we're approaching we're approaching it's been a long time but a lot of things have changed the thing is right now because they open it up to print on demand and the way that you get around the print on demand thing too by the way like people are like well how is that handmade the way that they're making it okay to do this is you have to actually design the product or you have to put a design that you created or had created that is going to be for uh that product because a lot of people would say well handbags aren't handmade if you didn't make them no but if you create the design to go on the product then it's technically handmade all right you handmade the design you created it uh by putting your thought into it and your creativity into it so that's how you get around that now there are people that are just taking stuff from uh you know uh Alibaba um or any of these other sites and trying to drop ship it things like that that will be going away I guarantee that that's not going to last um now are there people trying to find Loop polls yes uh but that's not going to last now print on demand I believe has uh it's it's been very lenient okay they haven't had a lot of stipulations as far as like what they're going to do or or uh you know how they're going to control this but they are now and they've even said it in their documentation that they are going to be starting to make it uh harder in in a sense of where you just can't slap something up all right but there's still thousands of Etsy sellers that are coming in and that are going to be thinking that they can do that and what will most likely happen is these people will open a shop and within a week it's going to get shut down and we've already seen that with some people they're like well I opened up my shop like a week ago and it got shut down why there's a couple different reasons on why that can happen but one of the reasons could be that either you put up something that was trademarked or uh copywritten or or something like that you could have something there it also could be because you're brand new and your banking information was incorrect that's something that's been happening for a long time but we're seeing more so now than ever that shops that are coming in that are just trying to slap up products and put a whole bunch of stuff up there as quick as they can or digital products and just slapping that stuff up there we're seeing those shops are getting reviewed and most of the time getting shut down so we want to avoid that and I'm going to share with you guys the opportunity that we've taken advantage of and luckily we've done it three years ago right from day one and we'll kind of walk through that and if you guys are brand new and you don't know our backstory my wife started a shop uh about three years ago it was at the let's see Q4 of the 30 yeah about about three years ago and uh started in November I think it was November 7th maybe 10th and had I think six sales her first November and then I think in December did did about $1,200 which was great and then after that it just dropped to almost nothing and then we built from there um but that's kind of how we got started but there is something that we did differently than that what everyone else not everyone but most people are doing and that's what we're going to walk everyone through but if you are listening to this or watching this right now this is something that you want to create your own plan and following what we're going to share with you will guide you to work on Etsy but also work on any other platform or even on your own website so Chris I know I just gave a long winded intro there of what we're going to be discussing is there anything I left out before we dig into how we can go ahead and really take advantage of this opportunity in 2024 no but two things I wanted to address really quick dream talking with Vicki said so etsy's raising the bar this is a good thing and I think you and I both agree with that 100% And then somebody over on Facebook had said you know I started a shop eight years ago I stopped a few months into my journey and I'm scared it won't be as easy as it was eight years ago when I could put up anything and have it Rank and the long story short of this is the game has changed right the rules have changed but that doesn't mean the game isn't still to quote our friend Sherlock Holmes a foot right we can still play and there's just as much opportunity to play as there was in 2015 when they started allowing print on demand in 2005 when the platform started right there's just as much opportunity now if not more opportunity Scott because people are now familiar with Etsy right we ran the Etsy buyer survey and we know that people who buy frequently from Etsy buy as often as once a month or more and so if we can get a nice little stable of customers then we can really start to increase this and Etsy is growing over time in terms of a customer base so that stable will continue to grow but the opportunity itself is different right eight years ago back in 2015 uh you could pretty much just throw anything up on the platform and because there wasn't really any competition the shotgun approach or the General Store approach did work pretty well right because there wasn't any real competition and uh our friend over on Facebook had said you know I put up a few products I was surprised to see that they ranked on the first page right away which is not an experience that recent sellers have had unless they're doing a few other things but you should not be scared that the opportunity is not there if anything the opportunity is still there and it's growing but how we approach that opportunity and how we play the game has changed slightly right if you look at Scott if you look at American football from the early 1900s would you say that that is the same exact sport that is being played today by the same rules in the same way or has that changed no that's changed dramatically Al uh yeah dramatically I mean we won't get in all the nuances there but yeah I mean even look at instant replay like that wasn't back then uh and uh you know just different you know uh you know going after the after the quarterback you you know you couldn't really give a late hit or something like that was forward passing right rules change but the game is still there and the opportunity to play football or to participate in the Etsy Marketplace is still there but the blueprint is different you just like you wouldn't expect an NFL team to be running an offense from 1905 we shouldn't be using the same strategy that we used in 2005 on Etsy in 2024 or 2025 and so that's what we wanted to dive in today the small tweaks the things that have changed and how that opens up a brand new opportunity in 2024 and Beyond yeah so let let's just dig in so here's the way that I see it now again this is our perspective but I'm also using like my thoughts the plan that we are that we're using because that's what I'm doing here I'm just sharing what we've done but I believe that if people are going to use this type of of opportunity and this plan I believe they're going to stand way ahead of everyone else that's just coming in flooding the marketplace that's going to be coming in and then leaving or coming in and trying to sell a whole bunch of different t-shirts and mugs and things like that so this here there's two things there's two things and they're big they are big things but the two things are this number one is building a brand and you might be thinking what is that we're going to talk about it but it's building a brand a cohesive brand all right that can sell multiple products to the same customer okay and there's a lot of different reasons why that works it leads me to my second thing and this is a big one and I believe that in 2024 the ones that take advantage of this and the ones that learn this and implement this will stand way ahead of everyone else and that is marketing now what does that mean marketing brand and marketing I look at it like Brand Plus marketing equals success because there's a lot of people that are just going to throw up products and expect that they just going to get the SEO Gods to give them the Etsy SEO Gods by the way that's going to magically let them appear at the top of the search and then they're going to be able to get traffic and they're going to be able to get sales here's the truth everyone's going to do that and everyone's G to be slapping up products right with no cohesiveness to it no brand behind it uh no products that are similar uh no repeat customers none of that stuff and when it comes to marketing there's nothing there other than what you get from Etsy of listing a product that's the only marketing and we can just take it one step further and if you were to utilize which a lot of people don't is Etsy ads that's one piece of marketing that's one small piece of marketing that Etsy allows you to use but there's so much more that we can do outside of etsy but there's that one piece and so many sellers will say I'm not going to do Etsy ads right now until I start making a profit why is that a bad idea Chris why don't you why don't why don't we stop there and time out for a second and why don't you tell me why that is probably a bad idea you throwing the challenge flag on this one Scott to go back to the NFL reference the reason you shouldn't be waiting is that one to get traffic and sales you need traffic and sales and the best way to turn that on the best way to start to get that is by driving traffic especially if you're just getting started you don't really have many ways of doing that you can either use the if I you know if I launch it they will come approach and that'll take you three to six months you can send email if you have an email list or you can turn on Etsy ads and start getting traffic right away even if you don't get sales right away you can start to see what your product is relevant for you can start to give Etsy some of that good SEO Juju from day one and more importantly Scott you get the data back so you start to see what keywords people are typing in to find your product you get that information essentially as soon as they start running ads and people start clicking on them that then lets you start to understand okay if somebody clicks on water bottle they buy my product if somebody clicks on mug they don't buy my product I should be optimizing more for water bottle and that helps us shortcut the giant traffic part of the flywheel that comes once the organic stuff starts starts to pick up but if you're waiting to turn on ads until you get to a certain number of sales you get to a certain level of traffic or Scott the one that drives me the most nuts uh I need to have five 10 15 products in my shop before I turn on ads you should not be as soon as you launch a product you can turn on ads it's not too soon to do it if you want that data back it's Scott the other reason people tend to wait is they say I want to get a couple sales coming in and I want to start to build up you know 20 50 $100 worth of profit that I can roll back into ads what are your thoughts on that as an excuse so basically waiting to get profit to roll them in here's the way that I think about this are are we are we starting a business or are we trying to go out in our yard and put a little yard sign in there because it doesn't cost anything but yet uh we want to sell coffee like three miles down the road right like we got to go where the where the people are and we have to get in front front of those people now probably not going to put up a billboard for free you're probably not going to be able to advertise in a newspaper for free you're probably you know so to get the attention we need to think about this as a business what business owner thinks that they're going to start a business and not invest money in marketing like who now there's a lot of people that do but you can also see that a lot of people don't get any sales they're like well I started uh you know I started three months ago and I put up 25 products I got no sales there's a couple problems there number one it could be because you're just not getting in front of those right people or secondly it might just be you're not creating really good products you know so it's it's like we can look at it that side too but if you're not getting traffic you can't determine if people aren't buying your products if you're not getting the views right so we have to fix that problem so I don't know if I answered that correctly Chris or or what you wanted to get from me but my point is is you have to spend a little bit of money to get eyeballs so the the objection I know that we will get to that line of thinking or the the thing I know a lot of people will think Scott is that we are then saying that means organic traffic doesn't work anymore what are your thoughts on that yeah I love that I hate to laugh but it is kind of comical because here's how I look at it uh is and I know we're on a little bit of a tangent here guys but we'll kind of get to the plan but this is part of the plan in a sense because marketing is Big the people that are going to focus on marketing and I don't mean just paid marketing but just marketing your business your products your shop the people that are going to learn marketing and uh and focus on that are the ones that are going to succeed in 2024 that's that's where it's going okay and so um so here's how I think about this right now if I was to pull up our stats which I could do here in a second and Chris can you know while he's talking I'll pull them up but I think I looked yesterday and I think we spent about $3,600 $700 something like that $3,700 on Etsy ads and you might be like whoa Scott that's a lot of money yes it is Those ads directly brought in about $122,000 okay but our Etsy shop has done overall today I just checked we're at 38k for the month okay so let's kind of look at this now we've got spent $3,600 on ads it it did great as far as a return on that on that money right so now we're at what was at 12,000 okay but we got how much more organically now you might be saying well yeah you would have gotten that if he didn't no the way that we're looking at it is is like the more sales that we can inject into our products it's going to bring us up in the search so this way here anytime that people are searching for something that is closely related etsy's gonna go this thing sells a lot put it in front of them and that's your organic side so that's how you need to think about organic so many people are like I'm just going to create my listings I'm gonna optimize the crap out of them and they're G to rank and I'm gonna I'm gonna make a million bucks not how it's going to work okay the the way that you need to to think about SEO is SEO yes you need optimization you need all of that but you need sales because Etsy is going to look at a 100 listings and go what ones have the most sales and the best conversion rate those are the ones that we're going to put at the top that's how it works and now that you know that people like me and my wife and Chris we're looking at business this way how are you going to compete with other sellers that are doing this you see where the marketing comes in you see where the marketing mindset comes in the the strategy behind it when you start competing with those it's gonna be real hard to compete uh but once you get that momentum it's like you're you're you're Co you're coasting in a sense so Chris organic traffic is still a thing what we're trying to do is shortcut that process right because Etsy doesn't know quite where to put a new listing in the algorithm and if we can give them the data they want which is two pieces of information traffic and sales right how do we shortcut that process by driving traffic and sales how do we drive traffic and sales we turn on Etsy ads right that's the easiest way to do it and Etsy themselves will then start to show us the data and say hey when you are shown for a water bottle people click and they buy when you're shown for cup or mug or whatever people click and they don't buy so we're g to turn that off in ety ads and then we're going to go back through our listing and make sure that we're not talking about cups and mugs and all of those kinds of things in the listing because that traffic on the organic side is probably going to be garbage too if we're selling a giant water bottle right so all we're doing is shortcutting that process instead of waiting three to six months to start to bring in enough traffic to be able to make data driven decisions we can shortcut that down to a few days or a few weeks depending on the demand for the specific product and if we're launching something especially right now we're getting a lot of data very very very quickly and Scott I think you sent me a screenshot I think it was for from Black Friday to Cyber Monday yesterday morning uh and it was like a s to1 return on ads spend right people say that's the worst time of the year to run ads well we had a ridiculous return on ads spend and I sent you a comment and said we better turn it off because we're just wasting money right even if it's just the four to one I think that you were talking about you said something about like $3,500 and somewhere between 12 and 13,000 in return right that's an insane return on investment from a pay-per-click stpoint but we're not even looking at that what we're really looking at is the 38,000 plus dollars that that is the total because that is a result of us getting the data back faster and being able to monetize more quickly and optimize more quickly by turning Those ads on it's got one more tangent before we get back on track here I know somebody right now is screaming at their television screaming at their telephone screaming at their laptop or just quietly muttering to themselves thinking how do I do this if I don't have the budget you guys were talking about you know you don't need to wait to have $50 or $100 what happens if they don't have a ton of money to run into ads like is this doable on a few bucks a day you know we're we're talking about spending $3,000 you know like a hundred bucks a day did they have to spend that much to get the information back or what's the what's the deal with that no we actually uh and I'm not promoting it here but I'll mention it uh we have an Etsy ads accelerator uh training we did a workshop where we break everything down um Chris you can throw the link up if you want to if you have it handy but uh but basically basically you can start with as little as two bucks a day and we have just this year is when we started to go all in on Etsy ads and we started to really see a great return okay not just on the front end because when people look at Etsy ads they look at okay I put a dollar in I need to get two dollars back or at least get my dollar back and yes we want to do that but we look at it differently we're not going to get into all of that but the way that we do look at it is we look at how many customers did we bring in and because we're building a brand as I mentioned earlier with multiple products that these people can buy number one we're going to have a higher cart value so people instead of uh buying one thing they can buy three which we have happen all the time uh and then you also have people that can come back and buy in the future which we also have because we have an email list another piece of the marketing by the way and now we can send an email and get people back over and do all of that fun stuff so we don't look at Etsy ads as Dollar in in $2 back we don't look at it that way uh but if you're just starting and we did this two bucks a day and you're going to start getting data you're G to start getting eyeballs on your listings to see how they're converting and if they're not converting now we've got another problem that we need to address you see we can't we can't tweak anything if we're not getting eyeballs if we're just sitting around waiting oh we got five views yesterday okay cool no one bought five views isn't really enough to determine I want to get a 100 views 200 views and how do you do that you start dollar $2 $5 a day to test it our recommendation is if you can go$ two to five dollars a day for the like five to seven days you're going to have some data back to start making some decisions um but that's kind of how we look at it and anyone that says I don't have a hundred bucks to do it then I would I would encourage you to go in your basement in a closet and I would I would clean some stuff out and I would go and sell it on eBay or maybe Facebook Market Marketplace and get a 100 bucks and then run ads that's what I would do so Scott you're saying you're saying a lot of words like optimize and data driven and some of those kinds of things would you say that one of the biggest differences regardless of the other stuff that we're talking about between let's say 2014 sure right which is right before they started allowing print on demand I think they allowed that right around 2015 the biggest difference is this is no longer a platform strictly for artists but it really is a platform for entrepreneurs right you can still make sales on Etsy by putting it up and letting it get ranked and and going through this but the real opportunity is applying a little bit of the business knowledge right looking at the scary things that no one likes to look at like analytics and I know I just gave 50 people that are watching this a heart attack just by saying that word but looking at the numbers and doing more of what works and less of what doesn't whether it's ads whether it's looking at the organic search reports that they're now giving us right Etsy is giving people the tools that they need to make data driven business style decisions rather than hoping somebody's gonna come to the platform really resonate with your really cool painting and buy that and it makes sense for Etsy to do that because then they have some way of getting a little bit of recurring Revenue right they can get a customer and they don't have to wait until somebody uploads that specific piece of art that they like uh to be able to buy again but it also helps the people selling on the platform if you're willing to do a little bit of the extra work which is really just looking at the numbers that Etsy gives you and making the most out of it it sounds a lot more complex than it is but to me that is the one of the biggest changes that I've seen over the last few years is Etsy moved from being kind of like the free Spirited Art Marketplace to being a place where serious business people or people who are at least taking it 20% seriously right uh we don't take ourselves too seriously but people who have a little bit bit of business knowhow can really have a leg up over the people who aren't using the tools that Etsy is now giving us to be able to do those things yeah again I I think and and again this isn't a big pitch for Etsy ads or anything that you have to run them but I do believe that you should run them especially in the beginning um so again going back to what's the opportunity the opportunity is is most people are not going to focus on marketing right I see it all the time with people that are in business had a guy here's a little story for you I had a guy that was detailing my car okay and he got me from a Facebook ad okay so I was on Facebook and I saw this ad of someone cleaning a car and my Jeep I wanted to get that thing detailed have never had a detail and it's about five years old and I'm like I should really get that detail couple hundred bucks whatever so the ad got me well he comes here and I'm talking to him and uh he never asked me for an email address a a phone number nothing and all he's doing now is waiting and getting the the next customer right and so I said to him I go hey give you a little tip uh you should probably be collecting emails and phone numbers so you can message people like me that have already paid you back he's like wow how would I do that the guy had no idea but he's running Facebook ads he's getting in front of people he's getting people to reach out but that followup that's the marketing so a lot of people can start a business but doesn't mean that they know how to do marketing and for me and Chris like our stuff is all about marketing good marketing right getting the awareness to whatever we're doing it doesn't matter if we're doing Etsy it doesn't matter if we're doing brand creators stuff it doesn't matter if we're doing our YouTube stuff like it doesn't matter you can't sell anything if you don't have eyeballs period like you have to okay um so to me in 2024 those two things brand and what what do I mean by a brand it means that you're focusing on a niche or niches that are tightly related okay and you're creating multiple products so if you think about it like I'm going to create a product for this customer and I'm going to create three more for that customer and then whenever I'm thinking about another product that I want to add to my catalog I'm going to think of that customer and so I'm constantly building out this this catalog of products that this customer can buy and that's going to help when people are coming to the shop because they're going to buy more now right off the rip and then they're also going to be able to come back and buy more in the future or when we create a new product for a upcoming holiday we can message those people because we have their email address so having the brand piece is really important if you did this and you're just selling random t-shirts like I'm going to just sell t-shirts and mugs the typical thing it's not going to work you can do all the marketing you want but you got to find all of these different types of people that might like these different style of t-shirts but the chances of them buying more than one thing is very low and they're probably not going to remember your brand and they're probably not uh going to be coming back and I'll I'll say this I think Etsy is going to really really favor the brands why because they're going to be doing more volume they're going to be more cohesive they're more serious like Etsy wants their platform to be of serious Brands all right so Brand Plus marketing equals 2024 success like in my eyes Okay um so with that all being said we can dig into a little bit of the nuances here but really that's what we're talking about that's the big missing piece and the opportunity that if people take advantage of that they will succeed because well not a lot of people are going to be doing it I mean we can see it right now I guarantee it's probably 8020 or maybe even 9010 of people that are randomly just you know uh Beverly's art design shop right like that's one okay or you got someone else that's like uh John's t-shirt rack right and that's the that's the business that's it just t-shirts like what's what's TR let's jump on that what's a hot product right now let's jump on that we don't do any of that okay now do we look at Trends as far as like certain colors or certain Styles or different types of of sweatshirts or different types of pillows or Flags or things like that sure of course but we don't look at a oh there's this this saying that's going viral right now so we're going to create a shirt on it don't do that it's so shortlived and it doesn't go with our brand so we never Veer off the brand all right um so guys got questions drop them in the comments if you guys are finding this valuable do me a favor smash that like button for us that would be amazing because that would help us it would help us it would help us reach more people and we would love that so if you would do that that'd be awesome and Chris maybe right now would be a good time to put a little Shameless plug in there for something that we've got going on here you think we should maybe let people know about that maybe yeah why not okay cool so uh guys we are going to be doing a brand new workshop because we've had people ask us what do you guys do how do you do it how do you build a brand how do you build marketing into it and all of those things and so we decided to do a workshop which we're we're doing and it's going to be on December 7th and uh we've already uh opened up enrollment uh but you can go to brandreth pod FastTrack and this is is going to be everything that we've done all the way from finding the niche building out the niche building out product lines connecting everything getting everything so it's it's working uh marketing and how to really build out that brand so everything that we have done we're going to be reversing the steps that we've done and teaching them in a live Workshop so if you guys are interested head on over to brandcreativity free and you can buy a ticket if you're watching this after the 7th you can still go there uh the price will probably be uh a little bit higher but it will be uh an ond demand class uh but as of right now we're going to be teaching this to just over 240 uh you know Etsy sellers so we're really really excited so if you guys want to join us hop in on over there check it out all right cool so uh Chris where do we want to go next I can take this in any direction that you want I've covered pretty much everything that I wanted to but if we want to get into like there's six I just did numbers here there's six um there's six different things that we really do focus on and we can kind of break those down if you want uh where do you want to go any questions come in that we need to address yeah I I would say let's take a deep dive into the things people need to know moving forward right the the big lesson is that from 2005 when Etsy started to 2015 when they started allowing print on Demand right it really was kind of the wild west and last year Scott is when we really started to see the transition from that more of like a side hustle art Whimsy type of thing and I don't say that to sound like dismissive right but it really was more of like just put up anything and people will come and buy it to really more of a brand-based repeat customer model and Etsy themselves are the ones that really started to kick this off and I think it was around the middle of Q4 last year like October or November when they started announcing and saying that they wanted to roll out more and more of these things they started rolling out these tools and then earlier this year they rolled out the share and save program and some of these kinds of things they're giving people who are more analytics focused Brands right more ability to rule on the platform and so that's the big takeaway we wanted to give everybody in terms of the transition that's happened now Scott how do we take advantage of this right if we're starting in 2024 or we've already started and we find ourselves using the if I build they will come type of a model what are the things that we need to focus on yeah let's let's let's dig into those um I did want to address something though uh a couple people jumped in and said like well how does this how does this work for people that are selling digital products uh well marketing is marketing okay so you got to do marketing on if you sell digital if you sell physical it doesn't really matter you still need eyeballs so all of that is the same the only difference in what with what we're doing is we're just leveraging physical products by using print on demand okay uh if you don't know uh we've built other brands with physical products that we bought inventory like thousands of pieces of inventory and we had $100,000 in inventory sitting in a warehouse well when pod became a thing and we started the opportunity on Etsy we decided to take our brand approach and bring it there and it's been working out really well because we don't have to have that $100,000 in inventory sitting in a warehouse all right so digital can still it can work the same my only advice to anyone anyone selling digital products and if that's you pull in here real quick because I've got something that you might want to try and I've said this to a lot of people that I've done Etsy Shop audits for that sell only digital maybe you need to start taking some of that digital stuff and putting it on products or print on demand and now you've got two different types of products you have digital and physical I see this a lot with people selling art prints you sell an art print that you give away as a printable for six bucks but you can take that same printable and put it on a canvas on a pillow on a flag on a blanket on all of these different things why not right so that would be my advice there and if you are in that situation and you want to go through the workshop with us we'll show you exactly how to do all of that stuff but that's what I would recommend anyone that is selling digital prodct products all right so with that being said let me go ahead and pull up my notes here because I have like six things that I wanted to share so Brand Plus marketing for the win in 2024 that's going to be my little tagline all right number one is Niche focused I really believe that it's under it's underutilized it's underdone it's like no one's really doing that where they're focusing on a niche and I know a lot of people say well there might not be enough demand in one Niche well then there's shoulder niches as we call them there's niches that are related so if you're in the wedding Niche it's going to be wedding but then it's going to be like bridal party it's going to be engagement right those are all still related right to the same person or the same event um so being Niche focused is really really important and that's going to help everything everything that we do moving forward to build out the brand the second thing is is creating unique print on demand products and what I mean by that is designs and styles so again everyone sells t-shirts everyone sells sweatshirts everyone sells mugs okay we sell them but we only sell them because we already have the designs that's not what we started with it's not like we're going to start there and that we just put them on other products so the great thing about print on demand is when you create a design guess what you can put that on four five 10 different product types um so that's something that we always do is create that unique design and then we create that unique pod product okay um so that's number two number three is building out the Etsy shop and branding it all right so you think about your Etsy shop as your store as your physical location if someone was to walk in the brick and mortar the colors the signage the organization like everything that's what we want to do there so that's number three is really having a cohesive and really well done giving the people the feeling of the texture of the colors like all of that stuff um so that's big so that's number three number four building out product lines um this is going to help with repeat customers all right so if we build Out product lines okay for these individuals that can come into our shop and buy one thing but then three things or maybe five things you see how that's a lot easier to increase your sales to sell more to one person than it is to just keep finding new people yes we want to find new people but we also want to take advantage of the work that we've done and being able to give more opportunities for the people that have already came in and and bought from us or are buying from us so that's number four product lines okay number five is marketing all right and the marketing side is internal and external so internal Etsy gives us a ton of things that we get to take advantage of right a ton of things right yes you can say well they give you SEO you you can SEO isn't necessarily a thing as far as like oh you just do it and it's turned on right you have to actually put it out there and it has to get indexed and there's some things that have to happen in order for you to show up right so yes you can use SEO but there's a lot of other things there's internal emails there's coupons there's sales there's things that you can do um there's followup all of that stuff so that's the internal the external would be building your email list which now we can do with everb email which is awesome uh following up with your customer the first four messages as they're getting ready to receive their message increasing your reviews all of these things are parts of the marketing and that would be the external piece um so that's internal and external marketing that's number five and then number six is a big one and my wife does a fantastic job with this uh better than I ever could do and that is customer service like she's on it the minute someone messages about a question about a product she's on it if if someone is asking about uh uh where a product is she's on it right now right now fourth quarter oh man is she busy busy processing orders busy with customer service with all this stuff but we know it's a short window it's going to be over soon right but she's doing it and she's doing a fantastic job and you can see in the reviews oh my gosh U so I love my product and I I love the uh the communication that I had with the owner she's awesome she really cares like all of these things are baked into a review by the way okay so customer service is huge and it's even more important when you're building a brand because we want these people to go oh I want to go back and buy from them because they're really cool people and they're really responsive and they take care of their customers so you see how everything gets built off of the first thing that we talked about the niche and then everything else we build around that and we build for it and then everything else becomes easier uh and I I say easier it still work you still got to put in the time you got to show up but you you have so much opportunity if you follow that model the other cool thing is is then you can take that model right that all that stuff that you just did and we can then go oh let's set up a Shopify store let's pour all of our things over to a Shopify store and we can sell externally on our own website now huh we can do that we build our email list externally we we we get to own that so now we start building real assets for the business okay we aren't going to get into all that but that's what I'm calling Brand Plus marketing for the win 2024 like that's it all right and uh Chris did I leave anything out anything you want to highlight underscore what did I miss I think that really is it right there it's not overly complex the biggest thing that has changed is that we have to be a little bit more business-minded a little bit more numbers minded we have to focus on the things that Etsy wants to get the results that we want which is sales it just so happens to turn out Scott that traffic in sales is also what Etsy wants so if we can focus on the easiest way to get those things that's going to get us 90% of the way there and the best way to do that is really to follow those six steps and I think the biggest one that we would get some push back on Scott there is number one it's that Niche focus and I know there's a lot of people saying well like look at some of the most successful stores on the planet right target Walmart uh Kmart which is probably a bad example for those people but they were around forever right all of these places offer everything to everybody so am I not losing out on something by not offering everything to everybody by not just launching all of these things and the real answer is no and the the way to understand this Scott would be to to start to think about your Etsy store as a uh as a section of Walmart so let's say you walk into Walmart and you're looking for Doritos if they put the Doritos between the kids toys like a Lego set Doritos and then a Samsung 42inch television and then right next to that there was some other things uh that were just totally you know diapers totally unrelated things that would be a very confusing experience for people right they just so happen to have enough space that they have stores within stores right they have the electronics store it's Walmart electronics they have Walmart grocery Walmart clothing right there are different Define sections organized in a way that makes sense on Etsy we don't really have a way of doing that except for at the storefront level based on the anti buyer survey that we ran the people who are most likely come to come to your storefront are people who are repeat customers the problem is they're looking for something very specific so if we give them Doritos diapers and a Samsung 42-inch television they're going to have a hard time finding what they're looking for yes we can in theory pick up a few more sales here and there from the random people who are just driving by at 3:00 in the morning and going you know what I really need some Doritos but I don't need a 42in TV and I don't need diapers but we lose out on the thing that really is the driver of growth which are the repeat sales that come from somebody who knows what to expect when you go into the grocery section of Walmart you know where your favorite bags of chips are you know where the meat is you know where all of those things are they're not going to suddenly move that to the television section and get you lost through the store by doing that focusing in on one single Niche and serving one group of people actually opens up that opportunity of getting that repeat business because it makes it easier for them to find not only things when they come back to your store that they are interested in but also when they're making that initial purchase and looking at the other things that you have is not just a smattering of everything right they have the chips right next to the dip for a reason and we need to be doing that as well if we put the TV next to the chips nobody's going to buy the TV just because it's sitting there I think the other side of this Scott that a lot of people miss out on on the niche side and I wanted to get your opinion on this before we move on is people tend to think uh and I saw at least one comment over on the YouTube side that niching down stifles your creativity and can leave you feeling uh kind of constrained what are your thoughts on on that as a push back against that that niche-based approach yeah again I you have to look at like a lot of times people are they're creative people right like they just love to create right it's not necessarily like you want to create for a specific you know Niche you don't want to just do Sports and Outdoors or you don't want to just do weddings or you just don't want to do baby stuff and I get it but you also have to look at it as a business if you were starting a business okay which you are by the way but if you were starting a business and gonna GNA pay rent in h a Plaza and you were going to spend $3,000 a month on rent what would you think then like how would you would you want to get people in and be able to sell them multiple things and have people want to come back because you're the go-to for that that's how I'm looking at it I'm not saying that it might not be for you like that's the other thing Chris like we almost have to be honest with ourselves here not almost we have to be we have to be honest with ourselves this isn't for everyone if you just want to be a person that creates a whole bunch of different stuff you might want to just do like Fiverr gigs go over on Fiverr and just create for people one-offs right right so something you have to you have to ask yourself are you building a business are you doing this because you want to build a sustainable business or you doing this just because you love creating things and you you just love creating things and that's what you want to do I personally and my my my wife we did pick and I I believe everyone should pick a niche that you're interested in and that you're maybe passionate about and then you enjoy it and then you get to have fun by creating stuff for that customer who might just happen to be you so I think people that have the most success are generally going to build in a niche that they're interested in or that they're passionate about and I also think that you have to also then look at all of the other sub niches that you can go into because we're not just we're starting with this one Niche it doesn't mean that we have to stay there I brought up this example before if I was going to do like sports stuff for children I might start with a sport that my daughter's in right now which is beach volleyball and then I might move over to baseball and then I might move over to basketball and then I might move over to another one but they're still related it's still Youth Sports so hopefully that makes sense yeah it absolutely does and I think the the place where people get bogged down with that is they say oh I want to be creative right well you can still be creative you can still create baby clothes you can still create dog BS you can still create whatever it just has the bent of whatever your Niche is which in our case we Define a niche not as a product right we don't have a Tumblr store we have a fishing store we have an electronic store right we have a baby store right babies are a niche we have a wedding shop and then all we have to do is Target those people it actually makes your job a heck of a lot easier on the marketing side because you know exactly who you're going after but it also makes your job easier on the product creation side which is where we get a lot of feedback because you're not just you know that's where we get the most push back I think it's on the product cre I I'm gonna feel stifled well uh do you think that somebody who's interested in Game of Thrones might want a Game of Thrones thing for their dog yeah probably now don't use Game of Thrones right trademark copyright intellectual property avoid that but that was an easy example right do you think people who are into fishing might want a fishing thing for their dog if you have a pet shop yeah so we don't have to go create everything for fishing but maybe we create a fishing themed dog booty Set uh booties like socks not dog butt um booty set for Christmas right or something like that and then anybody who has a dog that is buying from our shop or anybody who has is into fishing is going to buy that for their dog right we can make this work we just have to apply the idea to the niche and it actually frees you up creatively because then you don't have to go chase the trend and say oh I have to launch this specific kind of a product you can look at your store and say what sells best with my audience and then apply the design trends that you're seeing through the lens of that and it actually is a lot easier to come up with product ideas it sounds a little counterintuitive until you've done it a few times but once you start viewing things through that lens it's much much easier for you to say oh I could take this color palette and apply that to my audience or I could take this design Trend or this saying and create it in a way that would appeal directly to my audience and you don't have to compete with everybody else who's going after those trends at a generic level because then you're only going after bass fishing socks for uh kids at Christmas or whatever instead of just bass fishing socks right and so it lets us more easily create the listing it Narrows our Focus which actually opens up the possibilities and then all we have to do is apply what we see through the lens of our Niche and we can create more designs and more products much more quickly yeah no 100% and uh okay so here's what we're going to do I've got some questions that people have asked and also uh I have some things that I want to make sure that we cover here that is related to this by the way uh but you know a lot of times people are starting and they're wondering like when can I get you know when will I see success uh and one of the big questions that I get is like when will I make my first $1,000 on Etsy like how so let me give you a plan if you want to make ,000 or your first, in 2024 selling on Etsy here is going to be what I would recommend and this is what I would do if I was starting from scratch the very first thing and I talk a lot about this and you're going to hear me talk a lot more about it here in 2024 and that is we want to focus on building a brand on Etsy so this way here I can attract a certain customer and then that certain customer can buy from me today it can buy more from me today because I'm gonna have multiple products which I'll get to here in a second and I'm going to be able to have repeat customers it's so much easier to sell to the same customer so much easier we have all heard on Shark Tank if you are a shark tank fan please put that in the comments below I'd love to know but you always hear them say how much does it cost you to acquire a customer you'll hear it all the time and the reason why they're saying that is because they understand that it's going to cost you marketing dollars or in this case maybe it is your time but it's going to take money to bring someone in the door and when we do guess what we now have a customer that even if we paid $20 to acquire the customer we now know because we've built a brand with products that are related to each other we're able to then sell them more things in the future all right so that is number one building a brand focused on a niche so this way here when we acquire a customer no matter how we acquire them by the way we're able to sell them more well how do you sell them more well there's a lot of different things that we can do but the first thing that you need to do is you need to create multiple products and an easy way of doing this is create one design and then put it on five different products or six different products and a lot of people are just focusing on the T-shirt the mug you know the typical things that we see people selling why not put something on a pillow a throw pillow why not put something on a yard flag why not put something on a throw blanket why not put something on a tumbler why not put something oh I don't know put it on if you're in a certain Niche maybe you put it on a uh I don't know a tablecloth they even sell them by the way or you can do printify you can do that so no matter what you are what you're creating most of the time you can repurpose that design and put it on multiple products and now that person that came in from one thing they might go you know what I want to get the pillow and I want to get the yard flag okay so that's a way that we can build out our catalog all right so I would say start focusing on that one customer think about what products and what designs would they be interested in and that's where I would focus my product research I would do product research to find products that are already selling in my Niche and then I would build off off of that and here's a little hack for you when you're doing your product research you're going to find that there's not a lot of etsy shops that are selling to one Niche you're going to find maybe uh five different shops and they sell a whole bunch of different t-shirts or sweatshirts or mugs and you're going to be able to see oh for my Niche this seller has one that's selling really well I have another one from another seller that's selling really well and then I can take those and I can start to get Intel and say I should probably create something with that type of theme or that type of design because people are buying it and now I collectively will have all of these different these different designs and products that they've already tested for me all right so that's the other thing now we have a niche we have multiple products that they can buy now we got to get traffic the quickest way to get traffic need to get to that first thousand doll is to turn on Etsy ads and why would you want to do that if you haven't made any money yet because we need to get that Etsy flywheel going I would put all the listings up on Etsy I'd make sure that their SEO optimized I'd have good title good images good description good tags all of the basics and then I'm going to turn on Etsy ads because then what's going to happen is it's going to give me eyeballs and when I have eyeballs I have a chance of making sales once I make sales guess what that's going to help the Etsy algorithm because they're going to say hey there's a 100 listings like yours but yours is getting more sales we're going to promote you and that's a little secret that a lot of people don't know about they don't realize that Etsy is really looking at the sales velocity of a product and that's how they are dictating what is going to show up more than others all right so that's a big one then the other thing that I'm going to do here is I'm G to start building an email list I'm going to start following up with these people okay and you might be wondering well how do you do that well now we're very very lucky because there's a tool out there called everb email and everb also does the product research I only use the one tool by the way product research SEO optimization and now email um if you want to check that out by the way you can go to email forshop dcom if you go there email4 shops.com you can sign up through my link and uh yes I'm an affiliate yes you'll buy me a cup of coffee but you'll also get uh one month free so uh you can check that out and I'll also give you some bonuses I've got some templates there for some email stuff but it's marketing and a lot of people new sellers are not focusing on marketing and that's what I would do there email is marketing when you are able to get in front of someone that's already purchased from you that is marketing so that's what I would do there as far as the marketing side and then to wrap this thing up I would go ahead and focus on customer service every single person that comes through your door asks a question you need need to respond as soon as possible you need to deliver on your promise if someone got a product and it might not be exactly how they wanted it don't fight with them just either give them a refund or offer to give them another one for free or just offer to take care of them okay because customer service now that we're we're building a brand is going to go a long way because now people are going to leave reviews what are reviews going to do they're going to help you make more sales because it's now social proof people are saying oh these people bought from them and they're happy and they're getting their products and oh this person had a problem but they took care of it and they're happy now so all of that stuff is going to also help you get more sales so that's what I would focus on if I'm starting from scratch in 2024 I'm focusing on that right there and then I'm going to just keep building out the product line keep taking care of my customers keep marketing through Etsy ads email marketing and those things and I'm just going to repeat everything that I'm doing all right and to get to $1,000 in or on Etsy is not as hard as you might think because well you're going to be focusing on products that are already proven to sell because we're doing our product research and then from there once we're able to really get that Etsy ad stuff going the email marketing stuff going it's just going to be a matter of time so that's what I would do if I'm starting from scratch and I want to hit $1,000 dollar or my first on Etsy so Chris did I leave anything out of that no I think the only thing I would add to that Scott is people get bogged down in how easy it is or like what the timeline is and I think one thing that a lot of people miss out on is how easy it is to get to ,000 doll really especially if you're following the model that we're talking about we shoot for $10 in profit on every sale so we're only talking about a 100 sales to get to that Mark if it's $5 in profit because you're running discounts some of those kinds of things maybe you're spending a little bit on Etsy ads right that's double that right 200 Sales it's really not that hard if you are following what you were just talking about if you're going after products that are in demand and you're not selling them for a dollar right now it it is a little bit harder with digital products because although they're mostly margin the prices on those things tend to be lower but that's why we advocate for there's nothing wrong with digital products but look at what your Niche is looking at both physically print on demand and digitally right and incorporating those things together so that we can get the best of both worlds and start to go after that but I think the plan you just laid out will get people easily to a thousand dollar and rather than thinking about it from the monetary thing I think going after it for me from the sales perspective of saying if I get a a hundred sales at $10 profit it seems a little bit more doable to me and I'm not sure why but that's the the piece of advice that I would have there is just break it down right how long do we have to do that well if we get one sale a day for the next three months we're almost there right so if we can focus on just getting one sale a day out of our Etsy Shop we're gonna get there over the next three months and 10 days yeah okay so another question that I get asked uh now that we have cross six figures in sales on Etsy people want to know like what what have you learned like what would you do differently uh what would you do again uh what are you doing now that maybe you didn't do in the beginning and so here's what I would say if I'm going to reflect on $100,000 Plus in Etsy sales and this is again from us not anyone else because everyone else has their own experience but I would say we definitely have dialed up our marketing and in the very begin beginning my wife started this Etsy shop and she did it as a little side hustle and it still is somewhat of a side Hustle but we've learned that well it's like anything when you focus on something more it's going to grow generally okay and that's what we've really uh been able to do I got involved uh probably about about two years ago I would say and we also realized that marketing is really really the same here as it is on other platforms and what do I mean by marketing Etsy ads email marketing internally and externally those are like the big ones the big levers I would say that has really accelerated our sales this year even over last year last year's November was around 22,000 this November we're going to hit $40,000 okay and the difference is well we dialed up Etsy ads and you're probably going to ask well Scott how much did you spend on Etsy ads to do that 40,000 I'm glad that you asked um because I just looked not that long ago and I believe it was just under $3,700 is what we spent and from that $3,700 we brought in $112,000 it was like $122,200 from that 3637 $100 but organically made up the other part of it so I've realized that Etsy is is a it's like a flywheel you you put good products up you create a really well branded shop you make sure that your listings are optimized very well and then you turn up the traffic and what I mean by turning up the traffic is any way that you can drive traffic that's targeted by the way that's important once we can dial up that that marketing through Etsy ads email marketing okay we're able to now inject traffic targeted traffic to come over and buy well that's what Etsy ads did $36 $3,700 in spend $112,000 in a return that's great right but you heard me say we did about $40,000 so all that other stuff we didn't pay for but because we drove sales into the business that also took our SEO that we that we optimized for and then put us at the top of a lot of search results because now etsy's looking at our listings like hey this listing is really selling and people are leaving great reviews we should probably promote it organically so all we're doing is we're feeding the Etsy algorithm we're feeding the Etsy flywheel and we're feeding it with good marketing that is getting eyeballs but also getting conversions all right so the big lesson here that I've realized is well when you inject those sales and you inject that that type of traffic sales will increase but they're only going to increase and this is a big important point they're only going to increase if you have products that people actually want so you can do all that marketing stuff but you didn't do good product research to find products that are in demand that people are actually searching for it's not going to matter you can put all the marketing behind it you want you're not going to get any sales and you can turn on Etsy ads and you'll probably see you're not getting a lot of Impressions you're not getting a lot of clicks and the reason why is because you might have on your product research you might have missed that part okay so that has to be in place so we always start pick a good Niche pick good products that have demand and then turn on the traffic with Etsy ads and email marketing and that is the Simplicity of our business like and I look now and I kind of zoomed out at 10,000 feet and I'm like okay what what makes us different than a lot of other sellers brand focused we have multiple products to serve to that same customer we have good Marketing in place and uh well we're also taking care of our cust customers with great customer service and that's it like that's all that we focus on now the one thing I will say is this and I've realized this is on Etsy Q4 is going to be by far the biggest the the most the most sales that you're going to do on Etsy okay and so what we've done is throughout the year yes we try to stay consistent but we also know that we're gearing up for these holidays okay and we can even say Easter we can say Mother's Day and Father's Day and all of these have have nice little spikes right but not like Q4 and this year we noticed that in around late August early September is when things started to tick up for us and that's when I said okay we're gonna have a great Q4 so because of that I've also realized that you're probably G to be a little stressed out in Q4 but we also know that there's there's an end in mind or a a rest period in time um which will come after Q4 and my wife right now is experiencing that the time that I'm I'm actually recording this here for you is you know she's in it you know and I'm in it and we're busy okay but we know that there's only a few more weeks left and then it's going to kind of taper down and that's okay but the one thing we're focusing on is how many customers can we get in Q4 because if we get customers in Q4 like I think I just looked we're over a thousand customers in Q4 or not Q4 in November um so a thousand customers now we can we can Market to those people again in the future so that's why when we're looking and zooming out on our business those are the things that we really really focus on yes we're looking at the the number that we're making right but we're also looking at the amount of customers that we have coming in because we know that there's a potential that they could be repeat customers and we're building out our customer base all right so those are just some lessons and you know some things that I reflected on since getting into this Etsy game and hopefully you guys can can see that there's a lot of similarities about what I talk about because well it's just that's how it works that's what's been working for us and uh well I don't think we should change it I think we should probably keep doing what we're doing so hopefully that helped anything I missed on that Chris I would say there's a lot of good lessons to take away from that but focusing on the customer acquisition side of this which really Scott everything else that you've been talking about makes the customer acquisition side of this easier that to me would be like the one big takeaway for anybody who wants like one lesson or one nugget out of the first $100,000 in sales because if you can get repeat customers those are going to be the people who are going to buy from you again and again meaning there's no additional customer acquisition cost once you get them in the door the first time two they're the people who are most likely to buy from you meaning every time you put up a new product there's a chance that they will add to your bottom line and three if you can really start to build up that customer database you're not always worried about fighting for new customers or making sure that you have the exact perfect keywords in the exact perfect place because you need to be in position number one not position number two for the organic search results as soon as possible so that you can start to bankroll that right if you have Dependable customers and you focus on getting those people you can get away with if not being perfect at SEO because you're driving what Etsy really wants early traffic and sales and so if you have to take one thing away that would be the one big lesson that I would focus on for growing your Etsy business no matter what size you are currently focus on getting and keeping customers and that's going to get you where you want to be yeah okay here's another thing that I want to address here uh moving into 2024 because this is super important and I get this question a lot and that is how do you avoid getting kicked off banned suspended on Etsy in 2024 and that's a big concern because there's a lot of people right now probably as we're doing this video right here there's people getting kicked off and it's scary because you're putting a lot of time and effort into this this Etsy thing and we don't want to waste our time well there are some things that we can do to not necessarily 100% prevent this from happening but it's definitely going to make your or take your chances of getting you know shut down and banned and suspended and all that it's going to definitely minimize that number one and this is a big one and I see this happening do not do not I'm gonna highlight that don't go after items or products or designs that are copywritten or trademarked we see this right now where people are still launching products Taylor Swift Disney uh Yellowstone the TV show anything that is out there that people are buying for a concert anything like that and you see it and you're you're like wow they're making a fortune and you're like maybe but guess what they're probably going to get shut down they're probably going to get banned for life which I did a video on this channel by the way of a lady who was doing that and she did get shut down and she actually recorded a video and I just reacted to the video and kind of gave my thoughts but she was doing Taylor Swift not even saying Taylor Swift it was like some of her lyrics that are not owned by us they're owned by her okay so whenever you see that do not please fall into the Trap of trying to go after the easy money because that's what a lot of people think and they also think well if they're doing it and etsy's letting them do it it must be okay and that's not that's not the case there's been some debate that Etsy is not going to do anything until they get a notification from someone else that complains about this situation and that may be so but I do believe that it's going to be getting stricter as we move forward because there's going to be AI Bots that are going to be able to go through and see okay are these listings violating a trademark or copywritten material and then you're going to get flagged we've also heard recently of people saying well you can't use third party mockups because that's going to get you banned and that may be so but the only way that I see that happening is well using a trademarked mockup that isn't yours that someone else stole from someone else and then sold that and then now you're using something that's like a stolen goods like you you can't do that the other reason is is well your mockup might not be of the product that you're selling it might be be close but it's not the right one so Etsy doesn't want that because they're going to get complaints from your customers that say I bought a sweatshirt and it's a v-neck but this one here isn't really a true v-neck it's small you know it's not a it's not that deep of a cut or something so that's another thing to avoid moving forward and that's a a mistake that Etsy sellers are still making all right the other thing is make sure that your banking information and your address and everything that you put in there is 100% accurate because you will get shut down suspended and a lot of times it might be temporary but that's also a red flag that can now be put on your account I believe that Etsy is going to give you certain strikes I don't know how many but I do believe that they're going to give you certain strikes that would count as a strike even though it's not really a huge deal you just you know you missed a couple of uh you know parts of your address or maybe you put in the wrong ZIP code or whatever it is you don't want a strike on your account from day one so make sure that when you're putting in your information it's 100 100% correct all right so those are the big things on how people are going to they're going to get kicked off they're going to get banned and they're going to lose their rights uh to be able to sell on the Etsy platform form so make sure make sure please that you watch this video over if you need to and make sure that you're not violating trademarks copyrght material and that you're also using mockups that represent your products 100% And if there's any any chance that it's not don't use it one little tip though I would do is reach out to any mockup stores that you're buying them from and ask them are you actually taking a real photograph of the product or are you buying these from someone else because that's really important you want to make sure that they're actually photographing the product themselves so this way here you're 100% sure that it's the exact product that your customer is going to be getting and that you're representing all right so hopefully hopefully that helps you and eliminates you uh out of that batch of people that will be getting uh shut down in 2024 so make sure you follow the rules all right anything I miss on that Chris two big things and then just going back to the rumor right the rumor that was going around for the longest time was that it was the mockups it's not the mockups as long as the mockups accurately represent the product and you own the rights to it you are allowed to use mockups the two issues where people run into the biggest problems are copyright trademark infringement type stuff like you were just talking about and also Scott the one that I believe was actually the root cause of all of the mockup drama a few months ago which is improperly building your listings and not focusing on setting it up correctly Etsy allows print OnDemand products but they have to be properly marked as print on demand products which means you are indicating that you have a production partner and you do not claim that you make or manufacture the product you are not the manufacturer of a print OnDemand product when you create your listing should say in the category section handmade with production assistance that is something that will happen when you set your listing up properly if you claim that you are the manufacturer of the product it will get listed in the handmade category and what a lot of people were running into Scott with the mockup drama was they were in the handmade category not handmade with production assistants meaning they didn't set their listing up properly and Etsy went through and they said well this has the same image that's showing up a bunch of other places so it's clearly not a handmade product right right so we're just going to take it down you wouldn't have that issue if you were listed as a print on demand product because they know that you can use mockups for truly handmade products you're not supposed to be using mockups you're supposed to be using real photos of the item which you should have because you're hand making it right so that would be the thing that I would focus on make sure you're not doing anything silly with trademark or copyright it's not worth it it never is right and to make sure that you really have your listings set up properly if you have a million listings do you need to go through all of them and go back and say hey I need to change the settings on all of these you probably should but it's not necessarily the best use of your time just make sure you're doing it right moving forward and that you're indicating that it's handmade with production assistance list yourself as the designer not as the manufacturer for print on demand products and those two things I think will clean up 95% of the people getting banned for no reason issues yeah no I I think that's I I think that's all good advice and I really just think it comes down to people need to realize one thing I want to leave you guys with is like we need to realize this is a business okay and we need to treat it like a business if you're going into business I don't care if it's on Etsy I don't care if it's opening up a coffee shop you need to do two things one you need to focus on building a brand that people and I don't mean brand like you have a have to Pepsi you know like a Pepsi brand or a Coke brand I'm saying you just want it to be where people feel as they're in the right place for what they're looking for and it feels also safe to them it feels like they're going if they have a problem they're going to be able to reach you they're going to be able to uh come back and they're going to be able to ask questions and things like that that's what we're talking about as far as building a brand that is cohesive with products that are related that are going to serve that same customer and then we need to do marketing okay and and you need to make marketing a big part of what you do in your business because without marketing no one's going to see your stuff okay and I would really really strongly strongly recommend embracing marketing okay and learning marketing I mean right here on the channel we teach marketing we're going to continue to teach marketing if you have any questions that you want us to address put it in the comments and we'll possibly answer it or or address it on an upcoming video but marketing is so so important if you don't have eyeballs you can't sell anything and there's so many people that are just relying on finding a product creating the product and listing it and doing good SEO that's it end of story next product next product next product and then all of a sudden you have a store filled with a hundred products and you're like why why am I why am I not getting any sales why am I not getting any views because there's I don't know thousands of other people that are doing the same exact thing and then everyone has the same listing stuff the same type of images the same everything what separates you what makes you stand out so you have to find ways to get attention that other people aren't doing Etsy ads people aren't doing it I would love to do a survey on all of the Etsy sellers out there how many people are doing Etsy ads and I guarantee it's a lot less than you think so there's an opportunity number two is email collecting email addresses following up with email and focusing on customer acquisition okay if we do all that all we need to do now is just create more products because everything else is kind of working like I said earlier we had over a thousand customers for November a thousand people do you think that maybe they might come back and buy more if we have products that are similar to what they purchased or at least on that same uh you know that that same theme or in that same vein don't don't you think that there's a greater chance of that than if I had a thousand customers that came in and they all bought random stuff just makes sense to me anyway it does let me know in the comments if this plan of building a brand and marketing makes sense and if you see that it is an opportunity because there's not a lot of people doing it either they don't want to learn it or they just don't want to do it so let me know that in the comments I would love to know that but that to me is the secret formula Brand Plus marketing that's that's how you're going to win in in 2024 Chris anything you want to add to that before we wrap for the day I think we are good to go again the big change that has happened over the last 10 15 years uh I'm not going to do the Matt well I guess Etsy would technically be old enough to smoke uh now as of having this conversation right so the last like 18ish years of etsy is that they are going from something that was more of a put it up and see what happens type of a platform to a business focused platform and if we want to do that we have to embrace it right if we want to be successful in 2024 and Beyond we need to embrace it and that doesn't mean we have to stress over every little number and that we have to go in and fine-tune SEO all of the time but we do need to focus on the tools and the opportunities that Etsy are giving us and the two biggest places or three biggest places Scott that I see that happening is really niching down and focusing on one Niche so that you can build a brand around that Niche creating products a wide variety of different products that serve just that person if you have a fishing shop right don't be afraid to create something more than mugs people that like your fishing stuff will buy it on a variety of different platforms or a variety of different products rather uh and then really focusing on dialing in a little bit of the business side of this which is numbers driven marketing right turn on those Etsy ads get some data back and let that start to help you make the decisions then focus on what keywords are driving the sales for your products that's going to get you 99.9% of the way so the real opportunity in 2024 is just to take advantage of the tools and opportunities that Etsy is giving us by building a niche focused brand rather than kind of a generalized store that we have to constantly be trying to Market to compete with the people who are building Niche focused Brands yeah now that's awesome I want to give a little shout out before we do wrap with Rodrigo thank you so much Scott and Chris I've started in May and today I see people are reaching you take that off for me there Chris I'm reading uh you taking it away on me I'm I'm trying to keep that up there uh thank you so much uh Scott and Chris I've started in May and today I see people are reaching my store by typing my shop name and I just broke 5K this November branding is everything I agree with you Rodrigo I I believe it is everything too I I do so uh yeah you and I we're we're thinking the same thing so I appreciate that um all right cool so let's um let's go ahead and and wrap this up I did want to give another little Shameless plug here if you guys want to hang out with us on December 7th depending on when you're watching this and this will be also an on demand class later but if you want to attend live we are doing what we're calling the uh one two3 pod FastTrack Workshop which is going to be going down December 7th um we are going to be walking through all of the different areas that we just addressed really and we're going to be diving into Niche you know Discovery how to find them uh then also how to build that out how to do the marketing and really everything that we've done we're g to try to create this Workshop to walk you through every single part of this process uh so this way here we can help people understand how to do it but also to see that it's not that hard and once we have these pieces these building blocks in place then it's just a matter of doing it and then repeating some of these areas so this way we can continue that Etsy flywheel so if you guys are interested in joining us head on over to brandcreativity enroll before December 7th which I think we're going to close uh enrollment while we're teaching the class so December 6 will be the last day to get a ticket but if you wanted to join us get a ticket you can show up there hang out with us live it'll probably go around two to three hours and then we're going to answer Q&A and all of that stuff as well but uh we're also going to be recording it and then we'll have an on demand version uh later after we uh we finish the workshop and gets edited and things like that but if you want to be there for the live we're only going to do this thing once if you want to hang out with us live and go through this training randrecous I think that's going to wrap it up guys thank you so much we went on for over 90 minutes so this has been awesome I appreciate each and every one of you if you have any other questions for us drop them in the comments down below if you got value from this today smash the like button if you're listening to this on the podcast go ahead and leave us a review let us know what you learned or what you took away from this episode we'd really appreciate that as well all right guys so 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 in the next episode take care guys

Channel: Brand Creators

Views: 27,979

Keywords: selling on etsy, etsy, etsy shop for beginners, sell on etsy, how to sell on etsy, how to start an etsy shop, etsy business, work from home jobs, online business, how to make money online, how to start an online business, etsy shop, make money on etsy, etsy print on demand, etsy digital products, etsy store, how to sell on etsy for beginners, etsy seo, etsy seo optimization, etsy seo hacks, etsy seo tool, etsy rules for selling, etsy mockups, etsy mockup drama

Id: aBdbf0Fb1IY

Length: 91min 9sec (5469 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023