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- [00:00]
A
Hi everyone, this is Julie Berninger from Gold City Ventures. I'm here with Chris from Anywhere Pod. This is a tool that we love to use on the print on demand side of our Etsy shops. Welcome Chris.
- [00:10]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
- [00:12]
A
So he's here today to talk about one product that is perfect for this time of year. It is a somewhat little known product for print on demand and sellers are absolutely crushing it in this niche in Q2. So Chris, can you give us a little teaser about what you're talking about today?
- [00:30]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So we have one of really what I kind of consider the hidden gem in the pod world that's really kind of available exclusively to Anywhere pod that not very many people have access to and that during the Mother's Day and Father's Day season, this is one of those products that sells even better than it does during Q4. The growth of this product has doubled like year over year and is really something that we've had a lot of new sellers come in and really be able to be successful, successful with even just in the first few weeks of opening up a new Etsy shop.
- [01:01]
A
Love it. You're like an influencer now with that, with that lead in. I love it. So for the plates and the deco plate specifically is the name of the product. It's a, it's a platter, right? Like it's a, it's a platter that someone would serve cookies on or burgers. Is that how you would describe it?
- [01:18]
B
Right. Yeah. So they have a couple of different products. They have kind of your standard like round plate and then they also have like a larger like oval serving platter. And yeah, like you're, you're right on, on the niche being able to offer these especially for Father's Day as like grilling plates or grilling platters. It's one of the few print on Demand products that's 100% made and decorated in the U.S. it's heat safe so it can be heated up. I think it's to like 250 degrees. So like it's actually like a food grade product and able to be used like in that manner, which is one of the reasons why it does so well for Father's Day. And even during Mother's Day season you can think of like Grandma's cookie platters or even Grandma's garden with birth flower options. Like there's a lot of different possibilities to take this product that people find a lot of really good success with.
- [02:09]
A
And I do notice on Etsy gifts kind of tie to identities that people think of when they're thinking of that person. So for dads or grandpas, I would notice that fishing and golf seem to be good niches, but grilling and barbecue, in a lot of families, it's the dad that likes to get out there. I know my husband likes to go out and do his grilling. So it makes sense why people would think of this product when they're shopping for those occasions. And Father's Day is coming up in June, so what kind of tips can you give us on what you're seeing actually selling as looking into the data? Like, what types of stuff for. Maybe we'll start with the Father's Day example. Like, what types of stuff is. Are people looking to see on it? Like, and I know Anywhere pod, your specialty is personalization. So how. How can they personalize it so it doesn't just say happy Father's Day with a picture of like a fork? Like, what. What types of things can someone do?
- [03:04]
B
Right, Right. Yeah. And I probably should have mentioned a little bit about Anywhere POD when we first started here. So for those that haven't heard of Anywhere Pod, like Julie said, personalization is kind of one of our flagship features, feature sets that we're able to offer. So basically allowing your customers to be able to personalize the product any way that they want to, whether it's text or images or some really, really cool options. Now that you can do with AI effects, so you can apply an AI prompt to a customer's image that they upload themselves, and they're able to kind of see what it's going to look like before they even purchase the product, which is huge on Etsy and getting good conversions. And then we also kind of have a suite of additional features that help with speeding up your workflows. So if you're a beginner starting out, you don't have to go through five different applications to be able to get listings up and live. You're able to do it all in Anywhere POD and in bulk. And it really speeds up the process. So you can automate your mockups and your listing process and everything all the way through, which especially like right now, coming into holiday seasons like this, like Mothers and Father, Mother and Father's Day is next to Q4, is the biggest selling period of the season. And the problem is a lot of times people start listing products a little too late. Right. So right now we're really just kind of, kind of getting started into the, the Mother's Day and Father's Day Season. So especially for Father's Day, like, now is the perfect time to start listing because it can take a little bit for your listings to actually start ranking on Etsy by the time, you know, kind of gets indexed in the, in the algorithm and, and for Etsy to kind of see where they're gonna place you, sometimes it can take, you know, that kind of month or two to really kind of be able to start getting good traction on your listings. So right now is the perfect time to really be thinking about those Father's Day products and getting those listed in your store.
- [04:57]
A
I know Emily, who's our POD head coach here, she has a lot of experience with using anywhere POD and she uses it for personalization. She, she has a lot of demos in her school group and in her course with it. And I think what I've seen from her is that you can, you can even add like faces, like photos with anywhere. Is that more popular that you've seen year over year?
- [05:20]
B
Absolutely. And that's really kind of like if you look at these, these barbecue platters have been selling well the last several years, but kind of the predominant niche that we see really kind of expanding right now on these is being able to have like photos of your kids. You can apply an AI prompt to it so it can like crop out the image of, of their face and place it on the product. So they'll put it in like little stick figurines or have them look like a little like professional golfer or any of those types of things. So there's some really cool, clever things that you can do with those. I was playing around with some funny faces so you can have them upload their image, take a picture, you know, crop out just the head, the AI will do it all for you. And then have the kid make a silly face with their tongue sticking out looking cross eyed or like just kind of more of a silly, playful type of design that not many people are doing yet, but is something that, I mean, being a silly dad myself is something a lot of dads would kind of resonate with. That could do really well.
- [06:20]
A
Oh, Chris, that's clever. So we're a silly family. We got Christmas photos taken by a photographer and I chose to blow up the 8x10 the one of all of us sticking our tongues out. And I, I just think, I don't know why. Just something about making silly faces with these cute little silly kids. It's, it's fun. So I can see why that's a hit.
- [06:39]
B
And yeah, and that's what's so cool with this, this AI functionality is you can take any image, even like individual images. Right. So like everybody knows how hard it is. You just got done doing it. Especially if you have little kids, it is so hard to get everybody in one picture and all looking in the same direction or not if you want to do silly faces. So with our AI tool, you can actually combine multiple images as well. So you can create those family style portraits in any kind of scene or scenario or faces or expressions that you want and really be able to get something that is like completely unique that just isn't offered out there right now.
- [07:14]
A
Oh my gosh. Can you do your dog?
- [07:16]
B
Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Dogs is a big one. Doing even like just taking a dog image and doing like a watercolor painting of a dog or doing something around like dog memorial niche.
- [07:28]
A
Yes.
- [07:28]
B
Any of those are huge opportunities and are ones that are able to sell year round. Right. So like I love taking niches that like anything's going to sell well during the holidays. Christmas ornaments always do well during Q4. But if you pair that with a niche that is, you know, something that kind of happens year round, like, you know, memorial niche is good. Anything to do with all like birthdays or weddings are another huge one. There's just a lot of opportunities there that you can have these evergreen niches that are gonna sell throughout the year and still be able to get that spike during the Q4 season.
- [08:03]
A
Right. Okay. That definitely has my wheels churning. Now I have gifted someone a platter. I bought my mom a Christmas cookie platter and it had the three kids as little gingerbreads, but we didn't.
- [08:14]
B
Nice. I like those.
- [08:14]
A
We didn't use their faces. So obviously, you know, that's the next level. Like if I had spent more time or you know, if someone had created maybe like little elves with my kids heads or something, maybe I would have picked that instead of the actual gingerbread cookies. Like something different. You know, the kids names you could,
- [08:29]
B
you could even have, you could even combine those ideas too. Right? So like you can have the, the gingerbread but have the, the AI filter convert the image that you upload. So like the head is like still gingerbread but it has the facial features of the kids. So like it's still that gingerbread theme, but is really kind of pulling in those facial features from the photo that your customers upload. It can do like really when you get into these AI effects, it like your imagination is the only limit of what you're able to do with these. It is really really Cool.
- [09:00]
A
Cool. So you saying AI, half the people listening are going to be like, yes, like, let me get in this. The other half are like, nope, don't understand how to use AI. That seems confusing for me. So I want to, I want you to clarify. Like, it's not that they have to go and learn how to use Claude and then upload it. Like, this is something you've created. Your tool is using AI and they're just like typing in literally the word gingerbread or something. Like they're not, they're not needing to understand any technical piece to use the tool. Right?
- [09:28]
B
Correct. Yeah. I always say to look at it like you're giving instructions to somebody else. Right. So, like if you were going to take somebody's photo and you wanted it to be like we were saying earlier with the dog watercolor painting, you might go to a designer and say, hey, I have this picture. Can you turn this into like a watercolor style painting? Give them any specifications that you want. Really? It's the same thing that you're doing with AI. So like, I always think of it like, pretend like you're giving the instructions to somebody else. Like you've hired a designer to take your customer's images and do that conversion. The only difference is, is that AI is able to do it in real time so the customer can see the results and you don't have to send it off to somebody for every image.
- [10:13]
A
Got it. And I love that you mentioned that you can have the customers send like the images in three separate images. You don't have to get everyone together and it's simple to get it done. So for. Let's just use the example of, okay, you're going to make the kids for Father's Day, the kids are going to be in little golf outfits with like tees and a golf flag or golf whatever, clubs. And you want to offer two different versions to the customer. You want to offer the kids smiling or the kids with crazy tongues or whatever, or the dogs in the golf outfits or something. I'm getting, I'm really getting creative with it. I know that you just came up with a new feature called Variant Wizard, I believe that allows them to offer all of that in one listing. Because sometimes it can be good to test in different listings, but a lot of times it just makes sense. Like, this is pretty much the same product. It's a Golf Father's Day platter. Like, you should offer it all together and then just let the customer pick from a drop down. Like, I want the funny face I want the dog or, you know, whatever, whatever, like vibe they want with it. So can you describe a little more about that new feature you launched and how people would use it?
- [11:15]
B
Yeah. So we really give you the flexibility on your Etsy listings to offer whatever you want to your customers. So I know a lot of people are used to Etsy listings that are really just kind of your standard. Maybe you're picking like a color or size in the POD world, that's what people are used to doing. But if you look at a lot of the top selling listings on Etsy, a lot of them let the customer have a few additional options. You don't want to go, you know, too wild sometimes and have too many options where it's overwhelming to the customer. But having those additional options that the customer can select from can really kind of elevate your listing to the next level and allow the customer to really get what they're looking for and not have to, you know, just either decide yes or no on the one design that you have. Right. So we let you be able to have that type of flexibility where if you have one, products, like we're talking about platters, but this works on journals and ornaments and really any product that you want. If you want to have different background color options available. Another good one is like Birth flowers, right? So maybe I have a journal and I want them to select a different background color. Then I also want them to be able to select what birth flower they want and enter their name. Before Anywhere Pod, it was a real pain to set up those types of listings and a lot of manual work. But now with Anywhere Pod, really all you have to do is just set up your designs and you upload them and it just spreads it out across and sets up the listing for you automatically so the customer can come in, select the right birth flower right from the dropdown in Etsy, select the right color, enter in the person's name in the personalization field, and then it's completely hands off for you. So not only is the setup process easier and automated and the customer is able to get exactly what they want and not just getting pigeonholed to one single option, but then on the ordering side of it, it's not extra work for you either. So everything's, you know, still kind of flows through and is automatic and going to pick up those selections from the customer. And it's really just kind of a way expanding on, on personalization, which, especially for Mother's Day and Father's day, something like 75% of the gifts that are purchased are personalized in one way or another off of Etsy when it comes to the gift giving portion of it. So being able to offer even those kind of levels of personalization right inside those variant fields in Etsy really is a huge game changer and allows you to do these kind of like super listings I would call it, but without having to spend the additional time and work on the setup side of getting everything set up.
- [13:49]
A
Awesome. Yeah. And I think sometimes when people think, oh well, I need to spread it across multiple listings to try to a B test which one converts and blah blah, blah, and maybe there's some truth to that. But for those of us that have sold on Etsy for a while, sometimes simplicity is what is important too. So keeping it all together for the customer, using Variant wizard so that they can go through and just make that selection, it makes, that makes sense.
- [14:12]
B
And sometimes that is the case. Like I would say yes and to that. Right. So like one of the nice things that you can do with the setup in anywhere podcast, if I've got say I'm doing, doing journals and I've got maybe four different, they're very similar of artwork that I want the customer to select from, separating those out into individual listings. Etsy is likely to rank only one of those listings. Right. But the problem is you don't know one, which design, which mock up which which set of titles is going to resonate with Etsy and get it ranked. So what you can do is add those as variants so you're giving the customer that choice. Then you can actually duplicate that listing in Etsy and just change your primary image and your set of keywords. So now you're able to test each one of those five designs individually while still giving the customer that choice and getting that kind of preferred ranking in Etsy both ways.
- [15:07]
A
Right? Yeah. And you never know like to your point, what thumbnail is going to be the most clickable. So you don't want to necessarily bury it. Yeah, that's, that's definitely a good option. And we love getting those listings expanded for sure. Giving people choices. So Chris, I want to sign off, I just want to ask you this. The more we're talking, I'm getting excited about how I could do this with my 6 year old because we've been doing a lot of projects together. We just made a book, like an AI book for her sister's birthday that she made. And I'm thinking, I'm like, well, we're going to get dad a father's Day present. Why not have her like do this? You know what I mean? Have you ever done any of this with your kids or have you ever thought about doing that?
- [15:49]
B
Yeah, actually, I have with my kids. It's always fun to have them, you know, walk in on dad over the shoulder, hey, what are you working on, dad? And we'll sit down. I've even had them write AI prompts, you know, hey, I got, you know, I'll show them, show them the product and some of the ideas that they come up with. It's, it's, it's always interesting when you take the ideas that a 10 year old can come up with and sometimes they're better than the ideas that you come up with because we tend to think about things in a very kind of traditional boxed in way. Whereas like your, your 10 year old doesn't, right. They've, they've grown up with AI a lot more than we have. And a lot of times even a 10 year old is able to kind of think outside of the box a little bit better and come up with those kind of new unique ideas a lot easier than we can.
- [16:35]
A
I find the same thing with my daughter. And it's more, I think they're used to creating things from scratch and kind of imagining because as an Etsy seller, right, we're saying, okay, deco plates, these plates, these are a big opportunity. Someone's gonna look on Etsy, they're gonna see what other people are doing and it's gonna be hard to kind of come up with a spin on it. Obviously, AI and you can, you can do ways to do better brainstorming with, with ChatGPT and things like that. But I find my daughter, she can just come up with like, well, what if, what if this unicorn was flying and had, oh, I want it to have a cookie in its hand. You're like, what? We wanted to have a cookie. But they, they kind of like, they, they know trends because they see it in their clothes when, what their friends are talking about and activities and such. And then they also just have this way of like, oh, they're not, they don't need to see anything to come up with something. So anyways, I bring this up because maybe someone listening, this could be a fun thing that you do with your kids or maybe like grandkids or whatever. You don't have to do this with kids. But I found a lot of joy in trying to bring my daughter more into my Etsy business. It's been fun.
- [17:34]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And to be honest, sometimes they have A better design eye than I do. You'd be surprised. Yeah.
- [17:41]
A
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so Anywhere Pod, I know some people are new to it. This is not a replacement for Printify. It's an. And it's like the way to save time between using. If your tech stack is like a fulfillment provider, like Printify are one of them. Plus you use Canva. This is a way that you just kind of like smush a lot of that into less steps. So I would describe it as like the time saver personalizer, I guess, if those are the two. Two words. Would you agree with that?
- [18:10]
B
Yeah. So we are. We kind of sit on top of the print suppliers that you're using, like the Printify, and really are able to bring in this additional functionality that isn't normally available to other Pod sellers. So it kind of gives you that edge in the marketplace. Right. So, like, when you look at Etsy, there are so many sellers on there now. It can be really easy to kind of be another drop in the ocean. And you have to find those ways to. To set yourself apart. One of the most common ways that everybody always talks about is having that, like, unique artwork that's going to resonate with your customer. Right. That's one of the. One of the key ways that you can kind of stand out. But then the other key ways is one offering personalization, because that's something that not every seller is going to take the time to go through and do, or they don't know that they can automate with Anywhere Pod yet. Personalization is another great way to stand out. And then the third kind of main way to stand out is with these kind of unique products, products that aren't available from the big suppliers. So not only do you have access to Printify inside of Anywhere Pod, but we have six or seven other suppliers, some of which are exclusive to Anywhere pod. So you're not able to, like, readily find those products from other suppliers, which means your competition's a lot lower. So if you can combine that unique design with the personalization, with a product that is highly in demand, but not something that a lot of people have access to, that really kind of gives you the trifecta, especially as a new seller, to be able to stand out and start getting those sales sooner than if you're just listing the same products and the same designs that everybody else
- [19:42]
A
is, makes a lot of sense. All right, so, Chris, I'm going to include the link for the special Gold City Ventures deal. If they want to check out Anywhere Pod, we're linking that below or if you're listening in the podcast, you'll see it in the description. And I want to also mention that some of you may get this information and you're ready and you're like, I'm ready to start pod. Some of you are like, all right, I sell printables or I'm just getting started and you need more instruction. Well, we have a free webinar coming up on April 29, which is a Wednesday night at 8pm Eastern. If you register, you'll get the emails, you can get the replay, but there'll be like bonuses and fun stuff happening live. And Emily, who is our coach that he, she works closely with with Chris regarding Anywhere POD and bringing the latest information, how she uses it to build her shop that's about to close in on $900,000 revenue earned in the last couple years on Etsy. She's, she just crushes on Print on Demand and she's an expert at understanding how all these tools work, how to use them, how to, how to create personalized gifts that customers love on Etsy. So she'll be presenting along with Courtney, one of our coaches that started more recently with POD and sort of talking about what they're selling. And I'm sure they'll discuss elements of it that they, they use Anywhere POD for. So you can check that out at 8pm Eastern on Wednesday, April 29. And then we also have Emily's course, the Gift Lab, which we partnered with her on, which kind of takes you step by step setting up your Print on Demand shop. And it's our, we have a course eprintables that's just digital products. This is the equivalent on the Print on Demand side. I'll take you through the A to Z of it. And that's going to be open for public enrollment until May 4th. So check out the links for all of that below. And Chris, thank you so much for being on. This has, like, really gotten my wheels turning. And I'm not kidding. We're going to do the Father's Day platter, so hopefully I'm not talking too loud right now. My husband, you know, can't hear it. It's gonna be a big secret, but I'm sure my, my daughter's gonna get a kick out of designing it and then maybe we'll listen to my Etsy shop and make some sales, too.
- [21:32]
B
Yeah, there you go. You might as well. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for, thanks for the time and thanks for having me on. It was great.