Loading summary
Transcript30 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Julie Berninger and this is the Crickets to Cha Ching's podcast by Gold City Ventures. I'm here with Bailey Van. Welcome, Bailey.
- [00:06]
B
Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
- [00:08]
A
Oh, you're welcome. So we have a fun episode for everyone. Bailey has had quite a journey in her Etsy shop. She has sold everything from digital products to pod to AI designs, and she's absolutely crushed it. I'll let her introduce herself to you all first.
- [00:23]
B
Hi again. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I started on Etsy close to six years ago. Now I've sold in the hand man made space first and then move to print on demand and finally to digital products and now primarily focus on AI graphic design. So it's been a long journey and lots of different. Lots of different fun things have happened along the way, along with Etsy changes. So super excited to be here.
- [00:52]
A
Cool. And if you had to put yourself in a niche now, would you say you're selling designs and I think like tumblers were the area that you did really well.
- [01:00]
B
Yeah. So specifically I sell AI graphic designs for sublimation crafters. And they don't just sell tumblers. A lot of people think that that's all that they sell. But sublimation as a craft probably has over minimum over a hundred different types of sublimation products that you can create for, which is why it makes this niche on Etsy so huge. So a lot of people have success with just individual PNG designs that the crafters use on T shirts. A lot of popular or more popular ones are things like wind spinner designs or coffee mug designs, mouse pads, glass jars, just to name a few of them. There are literally hundreds.
- [01:41]
A
Oh, man. And they make great gifts. I know. My mom loves a good mouse pad. Every Christmas we like to make her one.
- [01:47]
B
Yes.
- [01:47]
A
So today we're gonna have you bring five hidden gems to this audience. And as you know, the Gold City Ventures audience, they mostly sell digital designs and printables specifically. So this is kind of fun to hear from someone who sells in the digital space, but a little bit different. So you have one queued up for.
- [02:05]
B
Us for the first kid in gym? I do. And all of these types of designs that are trending right now can be applied for your digital design. So whether you are just purely selling digital or if you are a print on demand seller and you make your own designs, this will work for you too. Also, a lot of my people use AI to enhance their printables. So you could take a lot of these trends. Design Aesthetics and use them for like a different type of design aesthetic for, say, your digital planner. So something like that. So the first one. Let me share this screen here. Okay. So hopefully you can see that this one is something pretty like. You don't see this one very often in the, like, sublimation Tumblr design space that it'd be just so typographical and basic. But these types of designs are just like really killing it right now. As you can see, this one is specifically a PNG bundle. So this is someone selling it just as a digital product bundle. And these are super easy to make even without AI. So you don't have to use AI. You can just find a really good font like this and it's basically just placing it out, stacking it on top of each other, and that's really it. So they are selling this one as a bundle. And I will note that a lot of the newer digital product sellers in my space are having the best success when they do bundle them, just because people see it as higher perceived value. And this one is something that you could easily just make a template within Canva and just replicate this one really quickly with different types of quotes. Um, I personally would just use chat to come up with fall autumn types of vibes, of sayings, and then create this type of distressed effect with a typographical font that looks. I mean, it's just a typography design. I don't know why this is thinking I'm always in Europe. I'm not. It's showing pounds, but it would be a little bit more. But this is typically what you see in the digital download space for this type of bundle. So this next one that we have is just an individual PNG design. So this is something that you would see a lot of digital sellers be selling to like print on demand people or print on demand sellers would be really interested in this type of design. So this is the. I just call it the iridescent ghost. But iridescent as a design esthetic is kind of crossing over all types of niches right now in our space. This is. I mean, it's kind of a little difficult to get this effect with AI unless you're using the right AI tool. So if you're familiar with graphic design, AI tools that are popular right now, one that can do this really well, which you wouldn't think has that capability just because they usually produce more realistic images, would be midjourney. But when I was trying this type of design aesthetic, they came out with the closest IRIDESCENT effect, so to speak. You can totally put a ghost into Photoshop and make it iridescent yourself if you have that time of or type of skill or commitment to wanting to do that. I personally don't have the patience to go in there and edit it, so I would rather play around with prompts until I got that effect going. So again, you're going to see this on real physical items. So people who are already selling it across their print on demand products, this has done really well on things like tote bags and of course T shirts and sweatshirts is where they're really popular. I will also say that the ghost trend is not a Halloween specific product. Ghosts are popping up across any season that you can imagine. Like go look at Christmas designs and type in Christmas ghost and you will see Christmas ghosts. We saw Easter ghosts, we see ghosts for the 4th of July. So it's kind of one of those things that are crossing across and just getting really trendy and popular in general. So it's not really a Halloween or seasonal specific type of product. So don't let it, you know, stop you that it's too late to be designing for Halloween. I would just take it and apply it towards iridescent Christmas ghosts. For an example.
- [06:09]
A
Ghosts are the new gnomes because remember when gnomes, like way back they started appearing in all the holidays and there was like the Easter gnome and it didn't really make sense, but everyone thought they were cute.
- [06:18]
B
Yeah, I had hundreds and hundreds of gnome designs in my shop when they were. They were just super popular. Another one that has done that same thing are the Highland cows. So I don't know if you're familiar with the Highland cows, but those have crossed every niche, every type of design aesthetic, every holiday. They are one of like the go to Etsy's to design for still right now if you can come up with a new type of design aesthetic for them.
- [06:44]
A
So they're for these buyers, like who's buying the png? They're local crafters. Those are the people that are buying. Right. Do you know anything more about like who genuinely or who is the person?
- [06:56]
B
Oh yeah. I mean they are business owners, they're small business owners who make and sell the craft themselves a lot of times at local craft markets and in their own town. But so many of them have Shopify sites, they sell on TikTok shop. So if you've ever seen those lives going on on your TikTok shop feed at night where they're like selling all kinds of tumblers and T shirts like this. Those are predominantly my customers. I have a Facebook group of over 11,000 people of this and this. That's usually where they're selling these products. Every now and then you'll run into some big Etsy sellers. But that's. That's actually not usually where they're selling their products. It's usually shopify. So their own site and then they market it through TikTok shop is usually the number one place. Or TikTok, you know, doing it live is the normal for them. So again, they'll go to craft markets and fairs, though, in their local towns. So that is something that they do to, you know, do in the in between. But their primary source of traffic and where they sell is TikTok, so.
- [08:02]
A
Well, that's awesome.
- [08:03]
B
I mean, every now and then you two, you will have like just crafters who just do it just for the fun and they make their own crafts and give it to people. But the majority of my people are all small business owners, which is why this. It makes this space really, really good to get into because they have a constant need to buy new designs for the next holiday, the next season, the next, you know, occasion, because the trends are always changing. And so what may have been popular last year for their Christmas products probably isn't going to be this year. So it's a continual repeat buying process where these people just come back over and over again if they like your design and style. So it's just one of the really, really good things about sublimation, the sublimation niche in general is that you will have continual repeat buyers because the trends will change.
- [08:51]
A
Cool. Let's go to the next one.
- [08:53]
B
The next one are chickens. So just like the ghosts, the chickens are kind of crossing. And on that one, raccoons kind of are following the chickens as well. So these chickens are obviously Halloween ones. And this one, yeah, this is just a PNG. But I mean, as you can see, 16 people in the past 24 hours have bought this one. This is a really easy one to create in something like Ideogram would be the best place as your AI tool or generator to choose. Again, you're going to see chickens Christmas, Easter, fourth of July. Lots of funny sayings with them as well. This goes along with, like the homesteading and farm type of niches just really growing. And so now they're starting to pop up on all types of different holidays and design aesthetics. So a big one this past year was the coquette design aesthetic and the chickens were all over that. So it Just is really funny to see. You would think something so basic and normal as chickens just pop up all over the place.
- [09:59]
A
They're taking over.
- [10:01]
B
They are. Okay, so this next one is the postage stamp type of design. So this one is interesting because first of all it started off just like, as vintage places, just like a state stamp is what we really saw it on. And I actually made a few tumblers and they immediately became like bestsellers with just the location stamps of just like places all in Alabama, their state bird, their, their state animal, things like that. And then it started popping up with people making stamps into all different types of themes. So this one is a hunting one and I mean this one isn't. I probably would go a little bit more not so graphic like cartoony design with this one. But it's doing well, it's a bestseller. And so I mean it's working where it doesn't necessarily have to look at like a very realistic stamp. But the ones that I saw that have been doing the originally the best were really, really like they looked like a real vintage stamp. So this, I've seen it being done in the coquette space. So making anything coquette vintage stamp, you're almost kind of cross niching three times. So you're taking your original design idea which would be hunting for this one and then you're cross niching it with this stamp thing. And then this one is kind of, I mean it's a has coquette because it has the bow and it's still popping up here. My people know that I'm so sick of coquette and pink because I was creating it for months, but it's still popping up here, but at least it's not pink, so there is that.
- [11:39]
A
So are you, are you on TikTok? Like, are you a regular user of TikTok? So I'm guessing to stay on top of the trends, you need to know what your customers are pushing and what they like.
- [11:51]
B
I am, yeah. And I teach my members as far as the go to places to go and find trends before they're super popular on Etsy are in my opinion. TikTok is up there. But the first place I actually go these days is Instagram just because it's easier to save your things and then find accounts that are very theme design related and just save them. So if you do want to be early to the game. Yeah. The places that they're popping up first are on Instagram. TikTok Pinterest is even a really good one. And then sometimes I even say to Go to other marketplaces. So you're looking at things like AliExpress or Amazon where it might not be on Etsy yet. Because if it's selling really well over there, it's an indication it could sell really well on Etsy as well. So marketplaces are often a good place to check out. Okay, and my last one, this one is pretty difficult to do as just AI only, so I will preface that. But it's kind of like a mixed media collage type of a design. So you can see that all of the letters are different types of like pieced together like you would see in scrapbooking or junk journaling. And then they have all types of elements. But it is considered like a collage design. Which collage designs in general have been really popular this year on Etsy. This is just taking it, in my, my opinion, a step further with all of the other pieces. And while it may look messy to some, this one, it was popping up across a wide variety of different niches. So not just like Christianity. This one I saw this doing well with just like quotes in general, like positivity types of things. So not necessarily have to be in the Christian niche. You could take this and apply this type of design aesthetic to, let's just say for example, a hunting quote and then make it all themed with hunting. But obviously this is like considered preppy. Preppy girl is what they call it, which is a whole design esthetic this year too. So it would still probably, you know, appeal more to females in general. But this is something that's popping up that wasn't. This is really, really new. It has probably just the last month or two started to pop up. This. I, I personally would not waste a lot of time with AI on this just because you will spend way more time editing it versus just laying this out in something like Canva or Kittl or whatever your design tool is, and then layering your graphics in. Because all it is is just finding a quote that's already working and, and, and then just applying this type of design aesthetic to it to get that.
- [14:29]
A
Effect that makes sense. I've noticed even ChatGPT, they're struggling with text on image generation. Do you use chatgpt? You mentioned ideogram and you mentioned midjourney. Are you also using ChatGPT?
- [14:41]
B
So I use ChatGPT, but only for the prompt creation, so I don't generate anything in there. And that's typically usually just because of how long it takes and because of the style that it gives. So it's often just Easier to get it to generate my quote or my prompt for me really, really quickly. As far as how detailed I want it to be, what type of style, the saying, all of that, and then take that and put it into something like Mid Journey or in Ideogram or Playground or whatever it might be.
- [15:14]
A
Okay, would you say you're using mid journey like 90% of the time, ideogram 5 and playground the other 5? Or is it like 99% mid journey or how would you split that up?
- [15:25]
B
It's probably between my designs that sell the what the best. I'm probably in Kittl actually 50% of the time, so. And that is because Kittl has Dall E3. It has Ideogram in it, it has Flux in it, it has chat GPT is in it. It has, I think, 10, eight, eight to 10 different generators included in there. And the reason why I use KITTL is just because I can do almost, not almost. I can do a hundred percent of the editing and saving and downloading instead of having to move it into something like Photoshop and then have to redo it. That is usually where at Mid Journey I probably use maybe 20% of the time. And it's only if it's going to be a very realistic, more natural type of design compared to what. What I usually do. And that's just because of the style that Mid Journey is famous for producing.
- [16:21]
A
That makes sense. Well, this has been really fun, Bailey. I think it gave everyone a lot of ideas. And with our audience, there's some people that they're not interested in the AI side, but then there are some people that they really want to learn these tools. So great to know that you're a resource for them for this. If they want to follow you on YouTube. What is your channel?
- [16:39]
B
Yeah, it's just Bailey Van. So you can just type that in and I should pop right up. As far as I am on school, there is a community there and that is really it.
- [16:52]
A
Okay, awesome. Well, we'll definitely share those links below. And if anyone was just listening on the podcast, we have a YouTube link also that you can watch and understand the visuals of what Bailey showed today. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
- [17:05]
B
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.