191. When Etsy Sales Double in Q4.. Use Everbee This Way with Founder Cody McGuffie

Summary

Podcast Summary: Crickets to Cha-Chings Episode 191 - When Etsy Sales Double in Q4.. Use Everbee This Way with Founder Cody McGuffey

Introduction

In Episode 191 of the Crickets to Cha-Chings podcast, host Julie Berninger welcomes Cody McGuffey, Founder and CEO of EverBee, to discuss strategies for Etsy sellers aiming to double their sales, particularly during the crucial fourth quarter (Q4). Released on October 29, 2024, this episode delves into leveraging data tools like EverBee to enhance product research, drive traffic, and optimize sales on Etsy.

Guest Background

Cody McGuffey introduces himself as the founder and CEO of EverBee, an e-commerce platform assisting over 650,000 users worldwide in creating, growing, and scaling their online businesses. He emphasizes that a significant portion of EverBee’s clientele comprises Etsy sellers, focusing on product research and email marketing to help them identify profitable products and reach their target audience effectively. Beyond his professional role, Cody shares his personal life as a husband and father of two, with a third child on the way in December, highlighting his commitment to balancing entrepreneurship with family life.

Overview of EverBee

EverBee serves as a powerful tool for Etsy entrepreneurs, enabling them to conduct thorough product research, analyze market trends, and implement effective email marketing strategies. Julie Berninger, the host, praises EverBee for simplifying her podcast preparation by generating relevant product ideas effortlessly. She recounts using EverBee to create content around products nurses can sell, demonstrating the tool's practical applications and user-friendly interface.

The Importance of Data in Etsy Selling

Cody underscores the significance of data-driven decision-making in building a successful Etsy business. He explains, “It’s one thing to have intuition, but it’s another thing to actually put numbers to that intuition and then you could really lean into a niche or product category or something like that with full confidence” (02:00). By leveraging data, sellers can validate their ideas, reduce guesswork, and confidently pursue strategies that align with market demand, ultimately leading to increased sales and business growth.

Key Etsy Trends: Personalization and Customization

One of the primary trends Cody identifies is the rising demand for personalized and customized products. He states, “Whether it's a gift or it's a product, it will always convert higher and it's the easy way to differentiate yourself in a sea full of products and sellers” (04:45). Personalization allows sellers to stand out in a crowded marketplace, catering to customers' desires for unique and tailored items. Julie corroborates this by sharing her recent experience purchasing personalized products for a child’s birthday, reinforcing the trend's effectiveness in driving sales.

Tools for Personalization: Canva's Dominance

When discussing tools for adding personalized elements to products, Cody highlights Canva as the preferred choice among EverBee users. He mentions, “Canva is probably” the most popular tool, noting its user-friendly nature and widespread adoption (06:27). Julie adds that Canva has become the dominant option since 2019, surpassing alternatives like Cordial by making personalization accessible even to end customers without specialized skills. This widespread familiarity with Canva among buyers enhances its utility for sellers aiming to offer customizable products.

Niche Strategies: General Stores vs. Specialized Shops

Cody explores different niche strategies, comparing general stores to highly specialized shops. He shares insights from successful sellers who operate general stores yet achieve substantial sales by targeting specific sub-niches within broader categories. For instance, a seller might combine seasonal themes like Halloween with niche interests such as pickleball, creating targeted products that resonate with distinct customer segments (08:17). On the other hand, he acknowledges that certain niches, like business professionals (e.g., real estate agents, insurance agents), provide stable and predictable revenue streams, albeit with slightly slower growth.

The Role of Social Media in Etsy Success

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the necessity (or lack thereof) of social media for Etsy success. Cody reveals that most EverBee users do not rely heavily on social media, stating, “These people don't have socials most of the time” (11:44). Instead, success is often driven by optimizing Etsy listings and utilizing tools like EverBee to enhance visibility and sales. While having a strong social media presence can provide an edge, Cody emphasizes that it is not a prerequisite for success on Etsy. He advises sellers to focus on top-of-funnel strategies, such as growing their email lists and utilizing email marketing, rather than getting overwhelmed by content creation for social platforms.

Seasonal Sales Trends: Q4 and Beyond

Julie and Cody delve into the dynamics of seasonal sales on Etsy, particularly the significant spike in sales during Q4. Cody confirms, “Q4 will probably double just as far as like volume of revenue on the Etsy platform” (14:02), highlighting that successful sellers often double their revenue during this period. Additionally, events like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day contribute to substantial revenue boosts. Contrary to the common belief that Etsy sales slow down during the summer, Cody shares surprising data indicating consistent sales activity throughout the year, including during the summer months, which dispels the myth of Etsy’s seasonal lethargy (18:23).

International Selling Insights

The conversation touches on international selling, particularly noting the active presence of Australian sellers in the Etsy community. Julie observes that while the US remains the dominant market for printables, countries like the UK, Canada, and Australia also contribute significantly. Cody recommends that sellers consider tapping into multiple markets simultaneously, as digital products and print-on-demand services transcend geographical boundaries, allowing sellers to reach diverse audiences without logistical constraints (16:21).

Upcoming Features: Daily Trends in EverBee

Looking ahead, Cody shares exciting developments for EverBee, including the introduction of “Daily Trends.” This feature aims to provide more granular, day-by-day data on product performance, enabling sellers to make informed decisions about when to list products and identify emerging trends prematurely. He explains, “Everbee is actually, we're building, we're calling it Daily Trends for now, but basically it's going to have the data that we already have, which is monthly revenue, which is very important” (19:47). This enhancement promises to offer deeper insights, allowing sellers to strategically time their product launches and capitalize on trending items more effectively.

Data Accuracy and EverBee’s Relationship with Etsy

A critical question addressed is the accuracy of EverBee’s data. Cody candidly acknowledges that no data tool can provide 100% accuracy due to Etsy's data sharing restrictions. He explains EverBee’s methodology, which includes analyzing review ratios and employing machine learning to estimate sales figures with approximately 80% accuracy (24:45). Cody emphasizes the importance of using data as a directional tool rather than an exact metric, encouraging sellers to combine EverBee’s insights with their intuition and creativity. Additionally, he highlights EverBee's direct relationship with Etsy, which allows for collaborative improvements and better API integrations, enhancing the tool’s reliability and functionality (29:01).

Final Advice from Cody

In his concluding remarks, Cody offers motivational advice to Etsy entrepreneurs. He urges sellers to persevere, emphasizing that entrepreneurship is challenging but rewarding. “Entrepreneurship is so hard. Digital entrepreneurship is, is so hard, but it's so worth it” (29:51). Cody highlights the ultimate goals of financial, location, and time freedom achievable through selling digital and print-on-demand products, encouraging sellers to stay committed and continuously iterate their strategies for long-term success.

Host’s Reflections

Julie Berninger shares her personal journey of founding Gold City Ventures, reflecting on the freedom and flexibility that come with running an online business. She recounts her initial inspiration to create courses for printables on Etsy and the significant impact it has had on her life, balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship. Julie expresses gratitude for Cody’s insights and the collaborative spirit between entrepreneurs and tool providers like EverBee, reinforcing the podcast’s mission to empower Etsy sellers.

Conclusion

Episode 191 of Crickets to Cha-Chings offers invaluable insights for Etsy sellers aiming to upscale their businesses. Cody McGuffey’s expertise with EverBee underscores the importance of data-driven strategies, personalization, niche targeting, and understanding seasonal trends to maximize sales. The discussion demystifies the role of social media, provides clarity on international selling, and previews upcoming features that will further empower Etsy entrepreneurs. Cody’s candid remarks on data accuracy and his encouragement to persist in the face of challenges serve as motivating takeaways for listeners striving to achieve success on Etsy.

Notable Quotes

• Cody McGuffey (02:00): “It's one thing to have intuition, but it's another thing to actually put numbers to that intuition and then you could really lean into a niche or product category or something like that with full confidence.”

• Julie Berninger (05:15): “If you have not thought of how to personalize your products, do it. And to Cody's point, any type of product could be personalized.”

• Cody McGuffey (11:44): “These people don't have socials most of the time… but people that do have socials have, do have an advantage though.”

• Cody McGuffey (14:02): “Q4 will probably double just as far as like volume of revenue on the Etsy platform.”

• Cody McGuffey (18:23): “There's a lot of sales like million hundreds of millions of dollars that are happening always all the time.”

• Cody McGuffey (24:45): “No data tool is absolutely accurate with revenue or sales. It's just not possible reason right now the reason why it's not possible is because Etsy doesn't share this data.”

• Cody McGuffey (29:51): “Entrepreneurship is so hard. Digital entrepreneurship is, is so hard, but it's so worth it.”

Resources Mentioned

• EverBee: EverBee Website
• Cody McGuffey on LinkedIn: Cody's LinkedIn
• EverBee YouTube Channel: EverBee YouTube
• Built Online Podcasts: Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube

Transcript

[Julie Berninger]

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Crickets to Cha Chings podcast. I'm Julie Berninger and we have a special guest for you today. I'm here with Cody McGuffey, who is founder and CEO of Ever Be, which is one of my favorite tools. Welcome Cody.

[Cody McGuffey]

Julie, what's up? Super happy to be here. Thank you for having me on.

[Julie Berninger]

Well, we're glad to have you. So please, let's just start by having you tell everyone a little about yourself.

[Cody McGuffey]

Sure, yeah. My name is Cody McGuffey. I am, like you said, the founder and CEO of Everbee. We are an e commerce platform that serves over 650,000 users across the world world, helping them to create and grow and scale their online business. Specifically today we're going to talk about Etsy sellers and how we serve. A huge portion of our sellers are actually sell on Etsy and we help them like with product research was our main bread and butter that we've always done to understand what products to sell on Etsy and then email marketing for Etsy sellers and then also or building some other cool things that we could talk about later on. But yeah, that's who I am from a business perspective. Aside from that, I'm a, I'm a dad. I'm a husband. I am, I have two babies or two kids, five and three. And I have one on the way in December. So I'm a full, full time entrepreneur, dad, husband, whatever that, whatever you call that, that's what I am.

[Julie Berninger]

You're busy. That's what I call that.

[Cody McGuffey]

And happy and fulfilled.

[Julie Berninger]

Yes, busy and happy. So I love Ever Be and actually I use Everbee all the time to prepare for this podcast. So for example, I recorded an episode on products that nurses could sell and it's super easy to type nurse into the search bar in Everbee and using that awesome Chrome extension, see what pulls up filter on digital before doing it and wow, it's just perfect. So thank you for making my podcasting life easier and for helping provide amazing product ideas to this community because then I pass it on to them and, and many of them use Ever Be themselves so I, I think it's so easy to use. So thank you so much for coming today.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's my pleasure. Honestly, it's, it's something that I personally nerd out on too. Um, I like to use data and the numbers and to validate kind of where to go. Uh, it's one thing to have intuition, but it's another thing to like actually put numbers to that intuition and then you could really Lean into a niche or product category or something like that with like full confidence and actually like fully dedicate yourself to it. Cause you don't feel like you're guessing anymore. It's like, I will do this. The numbers say so and my intuition says so. Combining those two things, then I just go and take the action and do it. And then pretty soon you have thousands of sales and it's like you're building a dream business, which is a dream for the majority of people. I would hope that would be listening to this. It certainly was for me.

[Julie Berninger]

I feel the same way. And I think with us both sharing that we're both parents of young kids, we don't like our time wasted. So why wouldn't we use any extra help that a data tool could provide to help us get a little more accurate and closer to the eventual sale? So to me this is a no brainer. You should use a tool like ever be, Ever be super easy. So I love it.

[Cody McGuffey]

So I know, but Shameless plugs.

[Julie Berninger]

But it's, it's the truth. And I, I mean I'm beyond that. I used ever be. To prepare for the Halloween episode, I did one on gift baskets. I mean there's just so many different ideas that can come from using a tool like Everbee.

[Cody McGuffey]

Totally.

[Julie Berninger]

So let's get started. People want to know you have access to a lot of data about Etsy and what is working, what is not. And I'm sure you see some trends on your end. So is there anything that you would only know in the position that you're in that you could share with our sellers today that could help improve their Etsy shops and help them make more sales?

[Cody McGuffey]

Gosh, great question. Big question too. Only I would know. Hmm. Well, we look at a lot of data. We have again, 650,000 sellers across the world and they sell in every single niche possible on Etsy. Right. We're talking about the high level categories like let's say handmade to print on demand to printable templates, to digital products, to mockup shops, all this stuff. We get all this data and then we get to kind of try to tell stories from it. And so the stories that we can kind of see are where the market is going is competition is continuing to rise. It always has and it always will. But does that equal saturation or you know, not like the lack of ability to compete or win in the market? No, it doesn't. It's just we need to adapt and the trends that we're seeing are probably need to Be leaning into customization and personalization type of products. Whether you're a digital seller or a print on demand seller, or your handmade seller, a gift with somebody's name on it, with somebody's specific location on it, their specific city on it. Whether it's a gift or it's a product, it will always convert higher and it's the easy way to differentiate yourself in a se full of products and sellers. So if I were to answer that question, I would say probably personalization customization is. Is the game that I think is the market is moving towards. People are starting to expect this more.

[Julie Berninger]

And I totally agree. I recently attended a kid's birthday party from my daughter's best friend and I went on Etsy a couple weeks before and we bought everything with this kid's name on it. So I'm like this, she's just going to love it if it says her name. You know, we got a cute Halloween bracelet that said her name and then we got some type of journal notebook so she could do like little writing and things, little diary I guess that said her name and it was just perfect. So if you have not thought of how to personalize your products, do it. And to Cody's point, any type of product could be personalized. So just to give the audience an idea, let's say that you sell printables. You could add a personalized element to it where someone could, let's say it was a gift tag. Instead of doing a gift tag for someone to give their family, what. What about a gift tag for the PTA to give teachers or from the director of the nursing program to give the nurses or something like that. Just think of how you could make it personalized and then allow the person to customize it on the back end. So we use cordial for that or Canva. I don't know. Cody, have you seen any differences on for personalization? Which other software the person ends up using is that data that you track?

[Cody McGuffey]

Now we don't track this data, but I could just say like we have hundreds and thousands of interviews at this point across our team. Definitely hundreds and hundreds of interviews with customers on my side of things on our podcast or literally just like customer interviews. And it seems like the go to tool mostly for ever be customers are is Canva. Typically I haven't used cordial a whole lot. I don't know of any other tools that are really, really popular. Yeah, I would say Canva is probably.

[Julie Berninger]

The majority and that makes me so happy because I've been doing this since 2019, even before when I was selling in my own shop and Canva was an option, but it was not the dominant option. And then over time, Canva has just continued to kind of take over every category. It has definitely went for the personalization category with its templates, and now even the average end customer can understand it because before the business owners got it, but regular people were like, what I have to get download something. Whereas cordial, it's, it locks everything. It's super easy. It's easy for the person to understand. But like, Canva has really stepped up and the average person seems to understand it. So I think we're at a tipping point here where eventually Canva's just going to take over everything.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. And at this point, like, like you said, tipping point is because the majority of people, the end buyers that are buying product, they already have a Canva account too. So like they've already played with Canva multiple times. So like they're already more familiar with it. So it's interesting to see them dominate.

[Julie Berninger]

Are there certain niches that you would see? Like, for example, one critique we get is that a lot of people think, well, I don't want to sell kids stuff, but kids stuff seems to be the dominant player in a lot. In sometimes in the printable space. In. Are you seeing like, oh, it's kids. No, it's business to business. No, it's gifting. Like, what are the kind of the major niches that you're seeing when you do talk to these successful sellers?

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, successful sellers. It's so interesting because I had a podcast today, actually on our podcast, and they were talking about how they have a general store on Etsy. They sell to all kinds of niches in their store. And I'm like, oh, it's interesting. And she has 20,000 sales in like a year and two years of time. Right. I'm just like, wow, you obviously have figured out that you can have a big general store and then target specific niches inside of that store. It could be the. A Halloween. It could be seasonal mixed with like a niche. For example, like pickleball. You know, pickleball people, right? People. People that play pickleball, but then design that specific thing for, you know, the seasonality of things. So Halloween and then Black Friday or, sorry, Christmas and then New Year's and it's like you can make unlimited things for the pickleball person. So that's an example of a sub niche. But it's interesting. Then I have these other long term, very stable Businesses, sellers that they design usually for some sort of business professional whether, whether it's maybe it's like real estate investors or real estate agents or somebody like that, insurance agents. These are the most stable businesses. They're not super high growth, but they're like the ones that are just like oh yeah, predictable money. Every time people are willing to spend $50 for their digital template pack or something like this just because it's a business expense, now it's business minded purchase. Those are the ones that are more probably stable but a little less high growth, I would say.

[Julie Berninger]

Yeah, and that makes tons of sense. So we in our Gold City Ventures programs, we tend to teach people the former path because we find that it's the quickest learning path for them and the quickest way to make sales is kind of to play the 12 months calendar year. But then we'll see when someone goes on to make their second shot. Eventually when they figure out what they're doing, they'll tend to pick like a super, super niche thing just for that second shot. But the first shop people have, yeah, they need to learn and like that's the fastest way to learn because usually if you start from the beginning, you're not going to probably pick the best niche and you might not have the best design. So it kind of takes a little bit and it's easier to create something for a holiday where the expectations are kind of lower than.

[Cody McGuffey]

I totally agree. Like there's a learning curve aspect to this thing where you can just speed up that learning process and get through that phase as soon as possible and then you can just, you're going to learn a whole bunch, you're going to make a whole bunch of mistakes and then you're going to find, maybe you'll find your niche inside of that general store and then you can just run with that niche ideally. But totally agree, that's a super smart approach.

[Julie Berninger]

Have you found any connection between listing images as well as sellers that use social and like really successful sellers?

[Cody McGuffey]

Maybe I want to understand that question a little bit more. When you say social and listing images, what do you mean connecting those two?

[Julie Berninger]

I guess what I have found is that there are some sellers that use social to have breakout sales. Like for example, I found a shop that was making a cold brew candle that was started like two months ago or something and they had an Instagram where one of the videos had like 2 million views or something because people thought the cold brew candle was cool and she showed herself making it. Whereas for the most part though, that's like an outlier for the most part. Actually, you don't need social. And these sellers, they don't have any social presence. And it's just, the traffic is just coming from Etsy alone. I'm curious, like, is that when you ultimately, when you meet the sellers, like, is that, is that true or is it like. No. These people have huge accounts.

[Cody McGuffey]

These people don't have socials most of the time. Most, most of our customers don't have socials. I do think that if you do have a social, you have a huge edge though. Like you have, like, if you already have a following, of course, you know, you have an audience already that trusts you, loves you and knows you. They will buy your stuff. But the majority of people that I talk to do not have big socials. They don't have any socials because usually they're creators, not content creators, like designers and artists and people that are usually kind of in our shell. We're not really out there in the public. And so we don't think audience first. And so the answer is majority of people don't have socials. People that do have socials have, do have an advantage though. And then typically those people would just follow that same funnel type of strategy. What I would recommend would probably be like, continue to like top of funnel, grow your, grow your following. Drive them to some sort of free digital product or maybe something free digital product, ideally to subscribe to your email list and then push them to welcome series sequence and then through your email marketing and all that stuff. And that's typically what those, how those people really, really win. But you do absolutely do not need it. I was talking to somebody today who. They have, they don't even do Etsy ads. They literally just have. They just, they make it a goal to publish a hundred great listings per month and they have 20,000 sales in their shop. They did $100,000 last year in profit and no social.

[Julie Berninger]

Yeah. And that's the best part, right? Because for me as a business owner, putting out content for social, it just feels so overwhelming. And I can just imagine that everyone kind of feels the same way about it. They don't want to jump on the hamster wheel if they don't have to.

[Cody McGuffey]

Totally agree. I don't, I don't think you have to. I think it's. If you love that and if it's like your gift, like you're just really gifted at like making social and it's like really comes easy for you, then 100% do it. It will amplify you but you're not requirement.

[Julie Berninger]

Got it. Do you from a trends perspective, do you see any other holiday things like for example even the sizes of the holidays would be helpful. Like obviously we know I'm assuming the biggest sales times are Christmas and Halloween and, and that kind of quarter Q4 but does anything else like surprise you or you're like, oh, there's tons of activity for St. Patrick's Day or international like any, any insights you could provide would be helpful.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, totally. Q4 doubles. So like that was pretty. I know we've, we've heard this before. People that follow trends and stuff and data and stuff. We know that Q4 doubles but like majority of people listening to this don't follow trends a whole lot or follow the data. So Q4 will probably double just as far as like volume of revenue to the Etsy platform. It's probably going to double in Q4 usually does. And every B seller is exactly the same truth by the way we look at all the data from our sellers and we're get to like see them on a high level of how the data moves. And usually all of our successful sellers, they usually double revenue or almost that and so take Q4 very, very seriously. And Q4 starts by the way like it's now it's, it was already started. You know, we should have already been prepped for it. But it's not too late. Jump on it. Yeah, you know Mother's Day and Father's Day. It doesn't might not be surprising to some but like these things just crush, you know these, these US holidays, they are exactly what we've always thought they were. They, they're 30 bumps, you know, for these holidays just in revenue and so that's just like usually more revenue for, for you as long as you have those listings that have own some of that real estate.

[Julie Berninger]

What about other countries?

[Cody McGuffey]

I don't know if I have that data in my like they would be meaningful.

[Julie Berninger]

It'd be interesting to see because what I've seen in terms of who wants to sell, I was shocked in our Facebook group I was sorting by city and the second most active members are from Australia. In our Facebook groups I'm like, oh, there's a lot of sellers in Australia that want to sell on Etsy, but I didn't know if that translated to printable buyers. And what I typically see is that for printables specifically US is the dominant market for printables. Uk, Canada and Australia, they tend to buy but not in the same volume than US So sometimes our sellers, if they change the wording to like UK spelling or something, can get some sales or mother's or Father's Day in some of these other countries they continue to list for those and they'll get sales. But I don't have any concrete data. So yeah, if you want to in the future come back, you can tell us if there's any more country specific things because that would be good to know. Our. We have sellers from those countries. So should they pump out more things or should they focus on the U.S.

[Cody McGuffey]

That'S a good question. Yeah, I'd be very interested to see that data too. Also makes me think about are those, for example, the Australian seller in this case, are they not selling to the US today? Is that the assumption?

[Julie Berninger]

They are, I think because they're in our community and we teach how to search for trends in the US we do mention other things like I just mentioned, but I think they're selling the US one. One reason it could be there are some popular people, competitors that do what I do in Australia. So it's very possible that once you kind of get in, then you're just gonna take multiple courses and then you ultimately find us. So I'm not, I'm not sure. I think maybe I'm gonna reach out to them and ask.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Julie Berninger]

How we can best serve them. But I think they're making US products.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, I would hope so. At least I would, I would suggest that maybe it was like, well, there's nothing wrong with selling to Australia and also to the US in my experience. We have a lot of sellers that do that same thing for uk like they're selling in the UK and also in the usa. Fortunately, like digital products, it doesn't matter about where the borders are. And same thing for print on demand. Like you don't have these border options or border issues anymore with these. So I would recommend doing that. You should be able to tap into both markets and especially if it's the same type of audience. Now the holidays is something that. That's what we're talking about. We're not sure about those answers. But you know, humans are humans. A lot of times we're very, very similar to each other regardless of where we're located.

[Julie Berninger]

Are there any surprises in terms of trends? Like obviously it doubles in Q4, but is there anything like, for example, in the summer you might think that it's dead, but we do see people making sales. Actually, I was looking recently we have this thing called 100 Sales Club where you get 100 sales on Etsy and we send you a gift and then you get our membership for free. And we had more people join hundred sales club in July than the months on either end. And I'm just kind of wondering is it because of our launch schedule where they ended up getting in and that's just when they happened to hit it. It took them a couple months or whatever. Or is it like July is, has, is a secret sneaky time to making sales. I'm curious what you think of the summer.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, I think the summer, I think there's this myth where people think that Etsy starts to die. Like it starts to slow down during certain times and that's not true. I don't believe that's true. It doesn't slow down. We just have speed up moments throughout the year, like spikes, but then it gets back to normal, which is not slow by the way. There's a lot of sales like million hundreds of millions of dollars that are happening always all the time. Like right now it's just happened. Right. And so nothing slows down. They're just spiking moments. And so I think the surprise for me is that, that probably that data right there, when I get to see all of our customers and how they're performing and I get to see like the aggregate of all these, all this data coming in, there is no downtrend. There's, it's just like level trend and then uptrend and then obviously goes back to normal, goes down to the normal again. But there's never like, wow, Etsy is just slowing down. Like it must be that time of year. No, it's just, it's, it's just not spiking right at this moment. And that's, that was my surprising probably fact that I learned.

[Julie Berninger]

Yep. And I mean every niche has its time because when I had a bachelorette shop that summer was my time to shine and December, it was nothing happening. Nothing at all. Okay, so we talked a little bit about trends before we move on. Is there anything else that you're like, hey, your audience will find this really cool or I discovered this weird nugget last week and I just have to share it.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, I think probably something I'm excited about. Maybe not the nugget, but it's more like something that's upcoming for if people are here, are using ever be something that's in our pipeline is daily trends. Because trends are important. Etsy is a trending platform. Meaning like you could jump on trends very quickly way before like the big retail stores jump on them. It's valuable to actually have this data and actually get a jumpstart on all these big companies. So it's also important for us to have, like, seasonality trends that we're talking about. Everbee is actually, we're building, we're calling it Daily Trends for now, but basically it's going to have the data that we already have, which is monthly revenue, which is very important for each specific listing. But now we're going to be able to see, hey, that specific listing, this Halloween shirt, how did it do last year and then last month and five months ago and like, specific daily trends of this specific shirt. It's going to be really meaningful, especially as you look through hundreds and millions, millions of products. You'll be able to pick out some of these trends that were trending last year around this time, and you will jump on them again this year, make them, make some tweaks, and then actually win in that product category. So I'm excited about that. Not exactly sure when it'll be released, but it'll definitely be in the coming months.

[Julie Berninger]

Okay, so let me kind of explore this use case more so people can understand how they would use it. So I'm thinking that I'm going to create. And we'll just use Print on demand, because you use that example. I'm going to create a toddler's shirt that's personalized with my kid's name with a pumpkin on it. And that's my vision. But I found using Everbee, a bestseller or some like one that was clearly one of the best listings in this category. So instead of. But I'm looking in July. So is that, is that kind of like you're going to solve the piece here? And so they could actually go back to October to see for that particular one. Can you kind of walk me through the beginning of like, how someone would even before they even got to this tool, like, like use that example. That would be super helpful.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay, cool. I'm gonna try to piece that together. I haven't thought about this in real time. So in this case, this, this specific toddler listing will now understand when that product was listing. Listed. I'm sorry, like when it was created. So it was created in July, but it probably didn't get like, it's a. It's a Halloween listing. Right. So it didn't get traffic and didn't get any sales for like months and months and months and months probably. And then eventually, probably in September, it started catching traction. And obviously all of a sudden it started to crush it. So now you can look back, let's say now it's a year forward, and you can look back at that toddler thing and say, wow, that's interesting. They listed it in July. I'm going to go and list all my Halloween products in July. Or maybe, maybe you don't need it in July, maybe you do it in September. The point is now you have that data to make that decision of when you need to be listing products and then also what type of products to be listing.

[Julie Berninger]

And you'll know. You'll know, like back in October, even though the month is in October right now, they crushed it.

[Cody McGuffey]

Exactly.

[Julie Berninger]

Because sometimes, like, you'll look at the monthly revenue on ever be and the revenue won't be that impressive, I'm assuming because it's not in the actual month that all the action's happening. But you know, you got to get your products listed early. So you'll be able to go back and say like, oh, this is cute, but, well, how did it do last year? And then you could go back to October and you could say, okay, this did well. And then you'll be able to. If you're deciding between like, I'm going to do this type of toddler pumpkin or I'm going to do this, then that's going to be exactly a competitor to that one's better 100%.

[Cody McGuffey]

And also everybody right now is as I, as much as I love our tool, like, it's not perfect and it needs to get better and better. And that's what obviously what we're doing. Iterations of like needs to get more and more accurate. And this is the next level of accuracy to understand, to help sellers understand when products are selling too. Not just like in the last 30 days. Oh, cool. The stocking crushed it. Well, it's December. Of course the stocking crushed it. Right. But when did it start crushing it? Was it November? Because people buying in November too. And like, we could, we could start to really get more sophisticated. Our sellers can get more sophisticated by selling on the platform. Because right now, Etsy sellers are kind of flying a little bit blind. And when we start to have these data that gives real time, like solid, accurate data behind it, we can start to make really thoughtful database decisions. And I'm excited about that.

[Julie Berninger]

That sounds great. And I don't get anyone too excited because I know from working in tech, tech things take a while, but it sounds like this is right around the corner and it will be great. And even without it, the tool is very. It's very helpful. So I, I wouldn't discourage anyone for waiting for this. I mean you're going to be missing out on sales if you do. So the last question I want to ask you Cody, when I so I've been running blog posts reviewing data tools and the number one searched query for any Etsy seller data tool is is the tool accurate? So if someone said is ever be accurate and where do you get your data from? Like how would you answer that?

[Cody McGuffey]

That's a great question. No data tool is accurate. Just to be clear, no data tool is absolutely accurate with revenue or sales. It's just not possible reason right now the reason why it's not possible is because Etsy doesn't share this data and they shouldn't share this data with you, with me, they shouldn't share other people's information with each other. And so it's not supposed to be accurate. So I would recommend that somebody doesn't expect it to be accurate completely. Now I do think based on our machine learning and we do some lots of data studies and stuff like that, internally we have a lot of data. We get to kind of figure out our algorithm and not try to make it as accurate as possible, but it's never going to be 100%. If I were to just throw like a blanket number out there, I would say like we're like within around 80% range of accuracy just because it's logical of how we have a logic based algorithm that's very smart and improved over time. But essentially somebody could do this in a Google sheet, in an Excel spreadsheet. And because we can do that, because of, because we can do that, then I just like the sound reasoning behind it. For example, when we built Everbeat very first version, the very simple approach was you simply look at a listing, I'll just look at one. Right now we look at a listing. We understand first we need to understand how many total sales that it gets. And all we do is look at the total reviews of that listing. This one has 67 reviews on this, on this shirt. So then the question is, well, how many people leave reviews after they get a sale? Well we understand that. Well we guessed at first, now we understand deeper. But basically 15, 17% of people that purchase something actually leave a review on a listing. Okay, well that gives us a total sales. Now how long has this listing been, been available in the market? Okay, and then we just like divide that and buy that total amount of months listed and then we can kind of extrapolate an average monthly revenue that's like our base, base layer algorithm. I probably just gave that away. But at the end of the day, like that's, anybody should know this, right?

[Julie Berninger]

Yeah. And we'll, and we have to tell our sellers because they're like, no one left me a review. And it's like, okay, wait till you get to at least like 20 sales and then maybe, you know, you'll get a review or something.

[Cody McGuffey]

Like it's 17%, 20%. Sometimes you have more, ideally higher the better, but like that's.

[Julie Berninger]

Okay. So that, that, so that makes sense. So these are the best estimations you can because Etsy does not release this data. So you, you're going to do that and over time the tool is going to get better because you're seeing more and more sellers and you have more and more of your own data and experiments to work with. So I think that should help put seller's mind at ease. Like just, there's never going to be a tool that is accurate and Etsy will never release it. And I can guarantee that too, because when I worked at Amazon, I realized that we would buy other people's numbers for Amazon data versus releasing data that we actually had and blew my mind. I'm like, what? But yeah, it wasn't allowed to release like search volume and things like that. And we had to be very careful what was going on. When I, when I worked kind of in the ads data tools area.

[Cody McGuffey]

Totally our job to like just make sure it gets as good as possible. And we've gotten smarter. Like now we use views and we use, we use specific listings of the, of the, we look at, we look at review ratios of a specific shop in a specific listing too. It's, it's gotten a lot better than just like that base layer thing. But that was like version one of ever being. And really that should be enough data for a seller to be like, okay, this thing is in demand or it's not in demand. It doesn't need to be 100 accurate. It just needs to be like, is this thing trending up or is it going down? And usually after that then you use your intuition, your creativity and you put that stuff on top of it.

[Julie Berninger]

Right? Yeah. And I think that's tough because sometimes sellers will look at their own shop and say like, I know my own shop and this doesn't match or whatever. And it's, it's like, yeah, this is, you know it's going to happen, but directionally you rather have this data than not. Okay. And I know where we're at the end of the podcast. But when someone says Cody, then where are you getting this data from? You just explained that you're doing a lot of your own kind of mathematics. You have people on your team that are coming up with the algorithm changes and such. But you know, you probably also do get some information from Etsy itself. And is. Is ever be an approved Etsy tool?

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, exactly. Everbee is definitely. Yeah, we have a relationship with Etsy. We. Yeah, we have a direct relationship with them. Yeah. And I think it's a good one too. It's actually gotten better as we've gotten bigger and better too. Now we can basically partner with ET and we actually share notes on. On API structures and like they ask us like our opinion on certain API changes that they make now too. Which has been really cool to build that relationship with them because at the end of the day when Etsy succeeds, sellers succeed and also everybody succeeds. It's a beautiful thing. So we all kind of need to help each other make each other better.

[Julie Berninger]

Awesome. Well, this has been really informative. So thank you so much Cody for coming on today and sharing about the trends and how data works and all of that. It's so appreciated. You're welcome back at any time. Thank you.

[Cody McGuffey]

Thank you so much Julia. I really appreciate you having on and honestly like if I can give like a share some advice for anyone listening to this like last thing is don't expect everything to happen in a short period of time. Just like continue to go and go and go and like iterate and like you said start general and then like just keep on going. Entrepreneurship is so hard. Digital entrepreneurship is, is so hard, but it's so worth it. And I think that's the biggest thing. Like if you're a mom or if you're a dad, the what you're chasing here is like a life changing thing. And sorry to preach for a little bit. It's just like I'm so passionate about this subject of. You mentioned freedom earlier. That's the ultimate goal is like have this financial freedom, this location freedom and this time freedom. And that's usually that's all possible through like selling digital products, selling print on demand products. Like it's, it's so worth it and it will be hard but it's worth it. So anyway, just keep going. If you're at all having any moment.

[Julie Berninger]

Of doubt, I, I'm so in agreement. And honestly this week I had a flashback to when I had the idea for Gold City Ventures. I was in a gym in my apartment building when I lived in Seattle back in. I think it was 20, might have been 2017 or 2018. And I remember, like, being over this equipment listening about. And at the time, we were not. We were probably one of the first people to have a course for printables. Etsy specifically.

[Cody McGuffey]

Cool.

[Julie Berninger]

And I just remember, like, thinking, oh, maybe I should do this. And it took me about a year to do it. And then I had this moment this week where I'm like, oh, I literally did that thing. And how much freedom does it give me in my life now? I have multiple kids. I don't go to the gym anymore. So I lost that freedom. But I'm going to get that back eventually when my schedule kind of eases up here. But it's just. It's truly incredible. So thank you so much, Cody, for sharing your story. We're going to link to Ever Be below. And if anyone wants to follow you personally as an entrepreneur and founder, where can they find you?

[Cody McGuffey]

I'm on Instagram. I don't post there to be disappointed. Probably it's very personal. But feel free to go there. LinkedIn for sure. Probably more active there just because we're hiring people and we're kind of growing the company. Follow us on YouTube. Ever be YouTube? I'm on there a lot podcast that we have called Built online Podcasts where we talk about, like, building online businesses. And so that's on Apple podcasts and Spotify and. And YouTube as well and gosh, where else? That's pretty much the main things, I think.

[Julie Berninger]

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on today.

[Cody McGuffey]

Thank you so much, Julie.

[Julie Berninger]

All right.