← How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
Are Etsy Ads Worth it? – with EcomHannah
00:48:56
Have you ever wondered if Etsy Ads would help your shop sales? According to EcomHannah, they are PROVEN to improve revenue in every product category when combined with the correct strategy! Tune in to hear the most in depth break down of Etsy Ads...
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, my name is Lizzie Smiley and I absolutely love helping people connect with their calling and all the tools they need to kick roadblocks and excuses right out the door so they can cultivate the life they dream about. If you want to launch, grow, pivot or scale your Etsy shop, or you've always wanted to develop the mindset and skills to run your own business, then I'm your girl. I've had that entrepreneurial spirit going strong since my very first lemonade stand and now I'm a work at home mama with multiple online companies and a full time Etsy shop. All while being present with my kids for the everyday chaos and most important milestones. On this podcast we'll talk about all things business, mindset, Etsy, creativity, dazzling our customers, and so much more. There's plenty of room at this table for you, so scooch on in and let's go. I'm holding nothing back. Welcome to how to sell your stuff on Etsy. I'm so glad you're here. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I have a meaty one for you today. I hope you are ready. Put your little brain caps on because we are going to dig into it. Hannah's it's just so brilliant. Real quick. Tonight, literally tonight, Thursday, March. What's the date? 27th is the live AI coloring page workshop. So many of you are already signed up. If you're not, you want to join us live and you do it today, go for it. If not, you can actually purchase the replay so link will be in the show notes. Also coming up soon, we're doing a beginner workshop. If you are a beginner, you're not even sure what you want to sell yet. You're in the early stages, you're not getting results and you need beginner. I am going to do a live beginner workshop in April and it is going to be for you, super, super simplified. And I'm also going to do 30 minutes of Q&A. You can get personal one on one coaching from me. You can get shop audits, whatever you need. Make sure you come to that. The early bird pricing will be ending soon, so lock in your seat if you're wanting to do that. Let's get fired up about Etsy ads. This is going to be such an interesting conversation. I learned so much. Hannah, our guest today is a seven figure Etsy and Shopify seller with experience on Amazon and Wayfair as well. She started in e Commerce in 2018 and has been documenting her journey on YouTube ever since. Great YouTube channel. From sleeping on her grandma's couch to save money to invest in her startup, to getting banned on Etsy for nine months and almost losing everything to getting it all back and rebuilding, Hannah has learned a lot about the online business landscape. She was able to make an exit from her first brand and take all her newfound knowledge into starting a new ven in the tech space where she's now helping to solve a huge pain point. She had her own business, real time profit tracking for an Etsy shop. So she built Profit Tree, which we'll talk about. It's a freaking incredible tool. Nothing excites her more than helping the movers and shakers of the world achieve their ideal dream version of success. She aims to do just that with her brand new tool, Profit Tree, to give Etsy sellers the actionable insights they need to grow and scale successful businesses. So let's talk about ads. Are they worth it? How do you not lose a ton of money? What is the deal? What is the tea? Let's welcome Hannah to the podcast. Hey Hannah, welcome back to the podcast.
- [03:03]
B
Hi, Leslie, thank you so much for having me. This is number two.
- [03:07]
A
Number two. And you are one of the smartest people I know. The way that you can talk about numbers, I don't know the acronyms that you use that make me feel like an idiot, but also that I'm in the company of greatness.
- [03:17]
B
Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm sorry, I will try to make it not that experience.
- [03:27]
A
You don't need to apologize. It just makes us, it makes us all just bask in your glow. So, so thank you so much for being willing to come and share. I get a lot of questions about Etsy ads and I really want to start like, I think so, like on, on my podcast and channel. It's a lot of just like trying to keep it very real. And my whole approach is just like, simplify things, explain things, but I also keep it really positive. Like, I don't, I don't like, buy into the, you know, I'm going to talk about something really intense to upset everybody. That's just not my approach. So I just kind of want to disp and talk right now out of the gates. Why are Etsy ads so controversial? Like, there's so much heat from both directions. What are your thoughts on that as like the ads person?
- [04:05]
B
Yes, for sure. Well, ads are scary, right? Like, not just on Etsy, but like in business, right? There's a huge variable cost, a cost that changes from month to month that you don't know. And that is a marketing cost. And your marketing cost in business can make or break whether or not you make money at the end of the month. And so the nature of that or the product of that is that it's scary. And it's understandably so, especially if, especially Etsy sellers that have families, sometimes this is their side hustle. They have, you know, second, they have a job. Right. And so the idea that they then have to allocate more money to go towards an unknown thing is a really scary thing. And so I think the controversy comes from, you know, people dipping their toes in the sand and not realizing that when you just tip your, like with ads specifically, I mean, arguably with business, when you're just your toes in the sand, it's kind of like playing the stock market. And like, the only time you lose is when you pull out, especially if you pull out when you're on the low. And so, and that's what happens is people are already nervous. They don't know what they're doing. And then, so they'll go in there and they'll turn on ads on for a couple of days and then they're like, oh, they don't see immediate return and so they automatically think that it's not working. In reality, you just can't do that. Like, you can't, you can't get any real valuable data out of Etsy ads by spending, spending $3 for only six days or whatever. It means you need to spend and invest month over month to collect data to then make decisions. And that is a really, that key thing that I just said there, month over month. That's even more scary, right? Especially if you're new, you don't have a ton of confidence in what you're doing yet because you're new. And so that's why we kind of always recommend don't turn on Etsy ads unless you've proven to make listings that sell well organically and consistently. But yeah, I think that's where it comes from when you, when you see the big things like Etsy ads don't work, grow your shop without ads, all that stuff. When in reality it's like, you know, if I told you that if you did this properly, it's going to at minimum, 2 extra revenue, like on the very worst case, and increase your profit by at least 20%, right? You'd be like, oh, wow, okay. It kind of becomes like an atm. Like, if I know that I'm putting in a dollar and I'm going to get, you know, X back. It's like, wow, great. If I was going to give you a dollar and you gave me back $5, right, surely I'd be comfortable giving you $5 to then get back $50 or whatever the return is, right? And so that's how ads should be looked at, obviously, when you're ready for it. So, like, when you're financially ready for. If you're not financially sound or you have other commitments, right? Etsy ads are something that comes after you've made cash flow or money is comfortable to then invest back in your business, to then scale it up, if that is what you want to do. Hopefully that answers your question.
- [07:15]
A
No, I think it. I think it definitely does. So I'm actually, actually in my. In my coaching business. I'm at that threshold right now where I have a bunch of, you know, basically digital products, right? Courses that do really, really, really well. And I haven't put ad spend behind them. And I'm literally at that place where I need to start running them. Like, I should have started probably a year ago on Facebook. And there's this kind of just like, just to relate to the listeners, like, there's this slight trepidation, like I. The tech, you know, it feels overwhelming. Have I even clicked in there to look at it? No, have not. I used to run Facebook ads many, many years ago for social when I did social media consulting, but I haven't touched it. So I feel. I feel like I don't have enough time. I feel overwhelmed by the tech. I feel like, you know, just kind of, oh, my gosh, is my copy perfect? Is my image perfect? Is. I'm having all of these feelings and I love. I don't know if you. If you follow her at all. I love Maria Went. She's like my digital market. Do you know who she is?
- [08:06]
B
You show me her.
- [08:07]
A
Yes, I do.
- [08:08]
B
Okay, that makes sense. For 40 bucks or something. Or something like her.
- [08:12]
A
Okay, now her, like, intro offer that she runs ads on is 24 courses for 24. So actually, anyone listening who wants. And you know what? Maria Went should pay me. The way I talk about her and sell her stuff. And I am not connected in any way. I've just made a ton of money since I started learning from her. Okay, but the point is, ads can feel overwhelming, but at the same time, they can change your life. Like in my Etsy shop, when I added, when I had my signs, right, my reclaimed wood signs, and I didn't try ads until I was already selling things. I had things that were performing well. I had a proven product that sold. And so I felt com. I was making enough money to feel comfortable to try ads. And it literally like, I don't have the math. I'm not a math person like you, Hannah. This is why we're friends. But more than doubled my sales easily, easily. And so I would spend at my height just to cast vision for people. When I had signs that were selling, I spent like $40 a day on Etsy ads and I always made way more money as a result.
- [09:09]
B
Yeah.
- [09:09]
A
So I mean, where would you start? Like someone's like, you know, they have a proven product. I don't recommend new sellers with no extra money trying to turn on ads on. Do you agree with that on a new.
- [09:19]
B
Yes, 1,000%. It's how, how risky are you? And have you made products? Have you had that shift yet? There's like this universal shift that happens that when you're, when you're starting an Etsy shop for the first time where there's a shift that happens where you're like, I get it, I know how to make listings that sell. I'm making sales every day, I'm making a few sales every day. You haven't had that shift yet. Then ads may not be the solution to your traffic problem. Right. You might just be burning money. Right. So I always say like your surefire sign is when you have that thing that hits you and you're like, oh, I get it. Or you get a bestseller badge or you're getting listings that have add to carts in them. Right. That's that green light that says you are ready basically.
- [10:01]
A
So then if someone's at that point, how much do you recommend they start by? And I know this is so personal to the product, but do you have any guidelines for what they should start advertising at? Meaning daily ad spend on individual listing.
- [10:13]
B
Your daily. We'll talk about your, your daily budget and then we'll talk about the individual listing, the amount of that individual listing spend. So your daily budget is something is better than nothing. So the idea is, is that when you go to $5 and then you go to $10, you don't go back to $5. You only continue to hedge up. So if you're going from 5 to 10, right. You're just then optimizing what's underneath that spend, aka your listings to then shed the fat on the listings that aren't making you the money or the good money, the good return. It's kind of like this filtration system, right. The same way that the organic algorithm works. So you launch 100 listings, there's going to be a percentage that the algorithm likes. Yeah. Organically, right. There's going to be a small out of that pool, there's going to be a smaller pool that says with ads on, these financially make sense with ads on. So just because something sells well organically does not mean that it's a good fit for ads. It means that it's your best shot at testing it with ads, but it doesn't mean that it's going to deserve to be turned on financially. After you factor in, is it actually making you more profit or the hitting your target profit goals. So back to your question. The goal is to, once you turn on your ads, you're not going back down. So if you're going from 10 to 20, you're not going from 20 back down to 15. Right. Your goal is to, as you're increasing, you're optimizing below the listings that live in the listings that basically die or get turned off. So then that dollar in is ensuring that the dollar coming back out is getting more fine tuned and more fine tuned by turning off the ones that aren't hitting your target profit. And so does that make sense?
- [12:01]
A
Can I say that back to you? Because I'm actually learning something here too. I mean, always ran ads but can't talk about it like you can in your sleep. So because, okay, so let's say you're spending $10 a day on ads. You've kind of moved up into that, but it's not working as well. Like you're not getting the same kind of percentage win that you did when you were at $5. But you're saying then don't go back to $5. That's interesting to me. Why not? Okay, so is that okay to ask you?
- [12:29]
B
No. No. Yes. Let me explain better. Okay, so I want everyone to visualize a pie chart, pie chart. Okay, so we're visualizing a pie chart. That pie chart resembles your total sales in your business. Inside of that pie chart, you have different pieces of the pie. You have a piece of a pie that says this is your profit percentage. Right. You have a piece of a pie that is your marketing cost, your shipping costs, your selling fees, your product costs, all of that stuff. In that pie chart. You want your profit piece of the pie to be as big as possible. I'm using my hands. Right. But you also have a marketing piece of a pie percentage that says this is how much I'm spending against my total amount of sales. That is going to that piece of the pie, which is marketing. And you want to keep that marketing cost percentage as skinny as possible, as little as possible, so that you're increasing your profit margin. So when it comes to running ads, you are by turning off ads that are not hitting your target profit. What that does, it allows the money going in to only go to listings that are going to make you that target profit. Which we'll talk more about how to figure out what your target profit is actually is. So to answer your question, okay, so why did I just explain that right? You want your marketing cost percentage piece of the pie to be as skinny as possible. So if you're running a 20% profit and 10% is in your, your marketing cost percentage is 10%, you want to try to get that to 8%. So then now your profit margin goes to 22%. Does that make sense? Okay, one thing that you have to understand when it comes to your budget, your Etsy ads are being shown to the hottest traffic people on the Internet, which are people that are typing in words for what you have to sell, right? And that's you're paying for positions at the top of the Etsy search page. Right? And you investing $5 on that ad versus $50 is not going to change that 10% marketing cost percentage. It's just going to proportionally scale your top line revenue. So just because you change your budget from $5 to $500 in theory, if you don't change anything else, like you don't launch a bunch of new listings, that 10% cost to your 20% profit isn't all of a sudden going to jump to 20% and 10% profit. So 20% ad cost and 10% profit just because you increase your budget. Why is that? Is because your ad is being shown to the same quality data sample of people at $5 versus $50 versus $500. So if you've locked in a 10% ad cost percentage and you're spending 5, historically you were spending $5 a day for the last three months. You increasing that to $50 doesn't mean that the 10% is going to turn to 30% because the ad is being shown to the same quality, the same data sample of people. And this is also true for seasonality. So like a lot of people say, oh, I can only run list like ads during the holidays, yes, for holiday specific products, yes. But for evergreen products, no. Because the amount of clicks you're paying for, because again, Etsy ads are they charge you in something called pay per Click, which means you don't actually pay until you get a click. So if the traffic, the overall traffic that's hitting Etsy is increased during the holidays, then what you're going to see is that your ads are going to spend more, but your revenue is proportionally going to scale. And then in January when Christmas is over, you're going to see that you spend less on your ads and your revenue also goes down, but it's proportional to the spend. So again, it's not that in December your ad cost is 10% and then in January, all of a sudden your ad cost is 40%. No, because it's proportional to the amount of clicks that are even available to get of the amount of traffic that's hitting Etsy. And the quality doesn't say the same. Sometimes it will fluctuate. You know that percent, you know, a couple percentages up and down. But compared to like meta ads or Google Ads and stuff like that, you'll see like this, like really fluctuate, like they don't give a crap, like they're, they're going to spend your budget whether it's like quality traffic or not. But does that. I'm trying to make the visual. I think.
- [16:45]
A
So let me like say this back in obviously very layman's terms. So what you're saying is if it's working, it's working toward the keywords you're using anyway. So you should see this, you should see it scale likewise. Otherwise Etsy just won't spend the whole spend. Yeah, if it's spending, it's getting in front of the right people. And if it was converting before, it should continue to convert unless a trend changed, a season changed. And so that makes it really important to go in and pay attention to what listings you have your ads turned onto and be regularly monitoring that piece instead and turning them off or being selective about what new listings you maybe try ad spend behind.
- [17:21]
B
Exactly, exactly. So without a visual, it's kind of hard to show you the pie chart. But basically, yeah, so yeah, you just want to when, when you're tracking it. And so also just side note, so Profit Tree, my tool that I launched, is what shows you this pie chart that I'm trying to explain. And so basically your goal with your ads become very black and white. What is your ad cost percentage? Are you still making your target profit? Is Your target profit 20%? Is it 30%? If your target profit for your business is for print on demand, I would say most people are trying to shoot for 20% for print on for digital downloads, you have much more margin to play with, which makes ads even more fun because you have more margins. But let's just say for handmade.
- [18:08]
A
What about handmade?
- [18:10]
B
Handmade? It's contingent on your, it's contingent on your sale prices and the process that expenses make your products. Like for us, we're shooting for at least a 30% profit profit because we have to make our goods, we have to do logistics, we have to quality control fabric, and we have to do all these things. So for us, we want to make more profit. So that means we're going to be more strict on the ads. Like so how, how drastic we let our ad cost percentage go up or down. And so the only thing that matters with ads is is it giving you the return that you want? Is it making the profit? So like cost per click, views, impressions, all that stuff really doesn't matter. All that matters is is your listing profitable? Are you hitting the target profit of the listing? Right? And you're only keeping the listings on that are making you the most profit and turning off the listings that aren't. And so that's basically what we've been teaching, because even I was teaching ads incorrectly before we launched Profit Tree, basically. And we've done so many thought experiments on this, try to analyze it backwards and forwards. And this is like what we've come up with. It's like what actually matters? Well, it actually matters that your listing is making you profit. And so it goes back to that idea. It's like, okay, if you're hitting target profits at $5 a day as is, why would you not put your budget to $10 a day? Right? Because it's not going to kill your profit. It's just going to make you more money proportional to your spend. So if you are you locked in a 10% ad cost percentage in, that clears you your target profit of 20% for print on demand, which those are. You know, usually the goal for POD is you want your ad cost to be less than 10%, then why would you not put your budget to a hundred dollars a day or 300 a day if it's just going to scale proportionally as is. And so we show you that and then we also show you on the listing level something called what your ad cost percentage, AKA your something called tacos. Tacos is the same thing as your ad costs. And you just want to make sure that that ad cost is as low as possible on the listing level. So then for your overall store level, it's you're maintaining that low 10%, does that make sense?
- [20:18]
A
Yeah, you're, I mean, you're just a savant. It's fine, no problem. Are you brand new to Etsy, about to get started, or struggling a bit to find your groove? What I'm about to say is just for you, okay? I can completely relate to where you're at because I think I can help you achieve success faster. When I first started my Etsy shop, it was not one of those success stories that we hear, you know, on the big YouTube channels, even on this podcast where I just had crazy success and it took off right away, right? I all but failed for my first six months, just like a lot of new sellers. And so it's very relatable. And the issue for me was I didn't understand demand for one, I didn't understand SEO. I was way too broad in my search terms and I didn't know how to position my product so that customers just couldn't help but click add to cart. And so once I learned those things, I went from making about $25 a month in sales to $6,000 a month and up. And in the holidays, I would even have $13,000 months, like at my shop's peak. And the thing about me, if you've been here for a minute, you already know this. I'm a terrible gatekeeper, okay? When I figure something out, when I crack a code, when I get excited, I cannot help but tell everybody who wants to listen. It's like either my, my best asset or my toxic trait. I can't decide. But I put everything that you need to know to fill that beginner knowledge gap into a low ticket, just under three hours beginner course that I have called Six Figure Secrets to getting started on Etsy. In it, I'm teaching you how to find what's in demand for your niche, how to find and use trends, how to start your shop. If you're worried about that part, SEO strategy to find the micro niches where the opportunity is, how to understand the Etsy algorithm and a ton more. The whole thing is bite sized videos, not long form, just small bite sized videos, zero fluff and to the point. You could get the course today, go through the less than three hours over the next couple days, launch your shop this weekend and have sales coming in as soon as Sunday. So let's get you the few missing pieces of the Etsy success puzzle, those little tweaks you need to make so you can start making the sales that you deserve. Because I have never been more convinced that There is room at this table on Etsy for everyone and the opportunity is so ripe right now. I am in the numbers in the data every day and my mind just keeps expanding on the possibilities. Okay, so as a special treat, use the code save50 to save $50 on the Six Figure Secrets course today. That's $50 off with a coupon. Save 50 and by all means DM me or shoot me an email when those sales start popping because I want to celebrate with you. So actually let me ask a really like simple question. This is such a simple so just to like help the people whose brains are exp. Right now. This is something I hear like different answers on. So I'm so curious what you're going to say. If someone's deciding what listings to turn on ad spend and turn them off and their listing is already a bestseller that's showing up on first page of search, does it make sense to keep to have ads on for that if they're already showing up on the first page?
- [23:16]
B
That is a great question. Okay, so first and foremost you 100% want to keep your ads on number.
- [23:26]
A
Really? They're gonna be like right next to each other like ad and then listing.
- [23:30]
B
So you can't actually check your rank. So like even if you go into an incognito window, it's still geographically gonna probably show you your listings at the top. So you're, you're, you're, your personal rank of listings, when you go into your personal computer with your IP address is gonna show you one set of listings. If I'm in New York versus California, it's gonna be different. So if you're trying to look where your position is on Etsy, it's not real. And it's also variable, it's changing. And so, and even for the percentage of the times where you are showing up 1 to 1, 1000%, the pros still outweigh the cons because you're still going to make more profit if you otherwise wouldn't. And so yeah, I get that question a lot. I'm already on page one. Why would I run the ads? No, and you're not guaranteed to stay on page one. If you look at any top seller on Amaz, on Etsy, they have their Etsy ads budget maxed out to the max because it holds your rank, it makes sure you're making more profit and it makes sure that that listing is set up for the best case scenario of potential of outcomes as long as the listing is still now if the listing is not like we go back to that scenario of those pools. You could have something has a bestseller badge with a bunch of added cards. But financially the ads kill your profit. Right. Then you turn it off. That's the only thing that matters. Right. And that's what again, profitry shows you.
- [24:54]
A
Yeah. Where do you teach that? Because that's beyond like I feel like I need a visual for that. Where can we learn more about that piece?
- [25:00]
B
Yes, yes. So this visual can be found. I have a free Etsy ads master training that I can give you and we can make sure that we link that below just so we're not just talking about hypothetical, hypothetical pie charts here. But yeah, I mean Etsy ads were. There were something similarly like they were scary to me as well. Like when I first started, I mean I had no money when I first started my first shop. I was in the fast fashion niche which was the most competitive space at the time. So it was just, it was jewelry, cheaper, middle priced jewelry items. We did not offer personalization so we were not going to be able to compete with Caitlin Middle US. And I actually met with Dave from Add to Cart who was like the only YouTuber at the time and maybe Starla Moore. And yeah, he sat on a call with me one time and just unlocked my brain about Etsy ad. So that one concept about increasing your budget doesn't change. Like it proportionally scales. Your business was just like a unlock. And so I was scaling my shop and basically he just told me put $15 a day on all your listings. Which that's really risky and that's really aggressive. But I just did it. But I also already had that shift. I was already live for like two months where I was like getting consistent sales. I already had the shift where I'm like, oh, I know how to make listings that sell, I know how to make photography that sells. I know how to make a value proposition that sells. And so when I did that it really just put fueled on the fire. And also Etsy is a competition whether you know it or not. So they're not just judging you on having high average order values, good click through rates, good images, good dropdown menus. They're judging on all those things. But on some level you have to think if I'm putting my hand up saying I'm willing to spend $1,000 a day even though it's not going to spend $1,000 a Day, I'm just setting my budget to that. Right. And my neighbor down the street says I'm willing to invest $5 a day. Who's going to earn that position and that top page, the guy that's saying I'm willing to out you or this guy that's saying I'm only willing to put $5 a day. And so that's also when I talk about setting up yourself for the best case scenarios. Etsy. Like there's really only two ways to make money on Etsy. Get your ads budget to the max, even though it's not going to spend the max. And launch more things to sell. Once your Etsy ad budget is set to the max, there's no other way to make more money other than launching more things to sell. I mean, arguably, follow up marketing, whatever, you can do all that low hanging fruit stuff, but the bulk of your money is coming from paid ads and on in organic traffic, right? And if you rely only on organic traffic, you're just prematurely capping out your potential of what could be for your store and that's okay. And you might not even care because you make organic sales regularly and you're okay with that. But the day that competition arises and it does become more competitive and you wake up and you're like, wait a second, this engine that I was running is becoming harder because more competition is coming in, right? Etsy ads are going to be that extra layer of protection that holds your positions a lot longer than other people. And so this is kind of true. I mean, not kind of. It's true for Amazon, it's true for basically anything where the platform says, hey, give me money and I will give you more exposure. If that makes sense.
- [28:22]
A
It does. And I totally believe that. One of the reasons that my sign shop stayed in a, in a space that was very saturated, because it was, I was like farmhouse style with the trend that was fading out. And I was able to maintain sales because I was running a semi aggressive ad budget. Like it was definitely. I have so many questions, Hannah. I want like a whole, I'm, oh my gosh, like I'm sitting here thinking, like when I turn off listings right now, like I, when I go in and I look at my, you know, my AI PNGs that I sell and many of them sell very well. And you can see that the ads are getting them more views, they're getting them more clicks, they're getting them more purchases and that's great. And then I have others that aren't, they're still getting views but they're not really getting clicks or sales. Like, do I turn those off or do I leave them on? What would you do.
- [29:07]
B
Okay. So when it comes to when things live or die. So when do you turn things on or off? Right. When you start investing in your listings, there is a number. I call this your threshold of comfortability. Comfortable.
- [29:22]
A
I love it.
- [29:23]
B
Whatever. Okay. So there's a threshold number that you are going to have in your mind. For me, I am going to invest. I don't care so much about time. Like, I don't care how fast or slow it spends the money. But all I care is focusing on looking at the ones that are spending my money because I care about where my money is going. Right. And so this number is how much you are going to be willing to invest in the listing that you can then say, this listing. I can say it's clearing my target profit or it's not. This one stays on. This one turns off. For me, our sale prices are a little bit on the higher end. So I like to invest at least the sale price, which for us is maybe around 40 to 50, $60 in a listing to then say that listing has collected enough data, I should be able to make a decision, let me turn it on or turn it off. So to your point, yeah, you have some listings that spend fast, some listings that spend slow. I don't care about the ones that are spending slow until they've hit their threshold. So let them spend low. I don't care about the time it takes. I just want to see did it spend my 15, 20 bucks before? And at 15 $20, I know I can make a decision to turn it off. If you're somebody that has thousands of listings that are selling regularly or you have a lot of listings. Right. Just in general, maybe you want to find out your answer a lot faster because you have a lot of listings to test. So. Or if you're selling low ticket digital downloads. Right. A lot. Big misconception with the digital downloads is that, oh, I have. I'm selling $4 digital downloads. You know, I. It eats all my sale price and basically I can't. It's not. It doesn't work. Well, the reason it doesn't work is because you're looking at your ROAS column, which is always going to look bad. ROAS means return on ad spend, which is the amount of money that you put in versus the amount of money that the ad ad only gave to you. Whereas what we show you is the money that you put in and all of the money that came out of the listing, whether it was paid or organic or they clicked on the listing and they went into your shop and purchased something else. Looking at this ratio gives you the holistic picture of all of the quality clicks that happen because of that initial, all the money that came out of the quality clicks of that listing. So like if someone clicked on your ad and then went into your shop and purchased something else, that sale would not have happened if the discovery of your shop didn't happen from that initial click.
- [31:55]
A
Yeah.
- [31:55]
B
And so when you look at revenue, like your revenue including organic and from the ads, and if they clicked on an ad and purchase something else, right. This is saying that's that percentage, right. You're pulling out what did it spend versus what was the total money that came out of the listing. And when you look at that ratio, that gives you that add percentage, that cost percentage, the tacos percentage, whatever you want to call it, right. That, that piece of the pie, that look that, that 10 sliver before. Right. And if that's a healthy sliver of in that percentage is 10%. Or if you're in digital download space and it's 20% and you're still clearing a 60% profit, you're not going to turn it off because the ads are contributing to the organic growth of your shop. And that snowball effect, right, when you get, when you get a sale from an ad, then you may get a five star review. That review now converts organic traffic coming in. You get more add to carts. That creates urgency. Right. That whole snowball effect happens. I think I'm rambling. I don't know.
- [32:59]
A
No, I'm over here, like amazed by you. I love it because these are things that I don't know how to articulate yet. So even I am learning and I'm, I'm so happy right now.
- [33:10]
B
That's okay. But I'm not losing you. But tell me if I'm losing you at any, at any point.
- [33:14]
A
I mean, I think we're. Everyone's different. I'm probably catching about 70% of it, Hannah. Just knowing that I'm not a math brain. And on all of that, I think.
- [33:23]
B
It was going back to budget. So spending. Well, when do you decide when to turn it off or on or off? Okay, so the threshold. Right, Sorry, we got off on a tangent. So for. I invest at least 40 to $50 in my listing before making a decision. If you're selling, selling low ticket digital downloads, maybe you only want to invest 10 to $15 before you have collected enough data to make a decision. So the end amount of money that you need to invest in an individual listing is not going to change. Right. It's not about time. It's just about did it spend enough money to collect enough views, clicks and impressions that then says, did we hit our target profit? And unfortunately in the Etsy Dashboard, it doesn't show you that. Right. So that's why, that's where Profit Tree comes in. Because we're showing you your actual profit or showing you your profit like on the actual ad. Right. And if it's clearing a healthy profit, you would not want to turn off the ad whether your return Roas column looks bad or not. And so like I said, Roas, if you go into your marketing tab, you have this column that says Roas for low ticket digital downloads and sometimes even in print on demand. This column looks bad all the time. It looks like 0.05 or 1:1. Right. But then you look at your profit and you're like, wait a second, my profit's actually really healthy. Still, I don't want to kill the momentum on this ad, if that makes sense.
- [34:44]
A
Yep, it totally does. And I think that's such an important nuance to be taught about.
- [34:48]
B
Yep.
- [34:49]
A
Let's. What's. Pardon me.
- [34:51]
B
Profit.
- [34:53]
A
Profit. Look at your profit. Yeah, it's because it's hard to, it's hard to judge how, what other value that that ad is giving you, especially in a digital product where you have no expenses. Hey. Hey guys. Today's episode is sponsored by Profit Tree, which is a new and incredible tool that will massively help your Etsy shop grow. My friend and fellow Etsy coach, Hannah Gardner, she's been on the podcast and you may know her from her massive, incredible YouTube channel, Ecom Hannah. Highly recommend. She's a seven figure seller who's obsessed with data tracking. This is like her superpower. I love it. Profit Tree is a service that's going to seamlessly integrate with your Etsy shop to give you automated real time profit tracking for your store. So for the first time ever, you can now obtain meaningful, actionable insights on core metrics of your Etsy Shop. No more Excel sheets. Vlookup. I don't even know what that is. Or exporting reports. Y'all have been asking for this and Hannah, her team have over delivered. This is like one of those new tools that I'm so stinking excited about. With Profit Tree, you can spend less time playing catch up and more time growing your shop. So the integration will allow you to easily import and track your business expenses and product costs, which means that you can maximize sales of each item in your collection by seeing the true profit breakdown in the blink of an eye. Forget about hours of manual work to only get outdated data. No kidding. Not to mention if you're like me and you don't even try because the numbers make your eyes bleed. So embarrassing, but it's true. But Profitree is going to do the work for you so you can get clear insights of all of your unique product variations, which is so helpful. Additional features to Profit Tree include real time calculations, low stock alerts, one click print on demand integrations, trend spot your product. That's helpful. Track duplicated products so you can see which one's doing better and why. Add custom expenses, optimize listings profitability and identify listing issues like missing skus and cogs. Right now when you sign up, you can start with a seven day free trial and make sure to use code Tree10T R E E10 to save 10% on your membership. And as someone who knows how important the tracking piece is, you guys, but I don't feel like it's a strength of mine in that area. I am so super excited about this service because it's going to take the piece off of my plate that I'm not good at, but still give me the benefit of having that work done. Super stoked. So check it out. Start gathering the best possible data for your shop, for your listings and it's going to help you grow and scale your business. So thank you so much, Hannah and Profit Tree. You guys are lifesavers. Let's talk about Profit Tree. Hannah. What, what made you decide to build it? It's such a, it's an amazing, amazing tool, especially for someone who struggles with the numbers. I've never thought that Etsy's data was sufficient. I remember back in the day having my dad, who's like a really geeky programmer, like literally build me just super, super basic things to help me understand my numbers better. And like here you are with this tool that I can understand so easily. So like where did that come from? What made you, what made you build that? I mean that was an expense and golly girl, I don't know. Tell me about it.
- [38:04]
B
Yeah, Profit Tree was built primarily first to solve my own problems because I was running a shop that had thousands of products and it was a physical good shop. There was no way to see in real time are we actually like making money or not. And the truth of it is is if you don't know your profit, right, and this is also goes back to your ads, it's really hard to scale because if you don't know what margins you have left to give to marketing. That's also another big why controversy of why it is a controversy is because people already don't know their profit and their numbers month over month. And when I say profit, I'm talking in terms of margins and percentages, right? So your shipping cost is a piece of that pie. Your fees are a piece of that pie. And when you don't know how much off profit you have at the end of the month, that piece of the pie percentage, you then you can't justify spending more money on something because it's just like you don't visually see what's going on already. So if you do turn on ads, you're like, I'm gonna turn them on. Because I think, but I don't really, there's no number to support that this is actually gonna help me. And so the goal with Profit Tree was to really bridge that gap for sellers that like, hey guys, like Etsy ads are after making organic listings. They're the second most important part of running an Etsy shop. If you want to be competing at the highest level or not even the highest level, just, it's just like a necessary thing as the way that I see it. And again, it doesn't mean that tomorrow you're turning on your ads and maxing out your ad budget. That's not, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that your goal, like it should be your goal to get there. Because a shop that has a 10 day budget and a shop that's on a thousand dollar day budget, even though it's not going to spend the whole budget, you're just competing in a whole different realm. It's a whole different shop at that level in terms of revenue, in terms of customers, in terms of, of reviews, all of that stuff and just the vastness, the speed of which things start moving. And so yeah, Profit Tree was designed to help my, to help me basically give a visual of my own daily profits. But then we found that gap or this other gap which was ads and like how much people really struggle with ads. And so now that's why we have that free course. We have lifetime offers to get access to profitry. We're just trying to make it as easy as possible for people to understand. Make it as easy because it really is, people are very scared. But it is when you take, you know, 30 minutes to learn it, it's really not that hard, you know, and it makes such a difference. Like the worst case scenario we saw with all of our case studies is at least doubling your revenue at minimum increasing your profit by 20% when you're doing it properly. Right. Actually, I don't even think I've seen any one case study where people are losing money from ads, honestly. Because it's like you know when you're ready, you know when you're ready because you know how to make listings that sell.
- [40:53]
A
And that's the key. That's the key is making sure you've got conversions. The only way you're going to lose money on ads is if you don't already have conversions on. On something that you're trying to run.
- [41:02]
B
Out or just blindly turn them on and don't ever look at them, which that happens sometimes too where you just turn them on and then you don't go in and look at the profit on the individual listings and turn off the ones that aren't clearing the profile profit basically. So that will also contribute. But yeah, I think that answered your question. Right.
- [41:19]
A
Yeah, so. So like Prop Tree is so good for helping like a just understand your numbers and being able to properly price things, being able to understand like what direction your business is going in, what kind of profit you're making, but also that next level, that intermediate to advanced level on Etsy of being able to run ads with more data and having a better understanding of how they're performing for you so you can make better decisions. Is that a fair assess?
- [41:44]
B
Yes. 1,000%. 1,000.
- [41:47]
A
I love that you are. You now have this like lifetime offer for Profit Tree. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Because we didn't talk about that last time you were here.
- [41:54]
B
Yes, for sure. So we launched a lifetime offer which gives you lifetime access to profitry. Our. We have two plans. We have a starter plan and a pro plan. And that lifetime offer gives you access to the starter plan. It also has bonuses, it comes with a free SKU generator. If your physical goods, it comes with a starter Etsy course. If you're really, really new, it gives you access to our community. We have a private community where I personally answer every single question myself still. I mean it's like basically like access to a community that you would have otherwise be paying for. Yeah. So there's like a lot of, a lot of perks. Starter. The lifetime plan is a really good for someone just start starting out, wanting to understand their numbers and then the pro plan gives you access to everything. We also have a lot of new upgrades happening this year which I can't really talk about. Everything yet. But basically the idea is, you know, you get grandfathered into all these future upgrades as well. But yeah, that's kind of what. Where we're at with the lifetime. Again, also free. We also have a specific free Etsy ads masterclass that we can give you as well.
- [42:58]
A
I've got that. So I will link the lifetime. It's like extremely. And I know I never say the prices on the podcast, guys, because sometimes people listen to this years later and the price changes and then people are confused. And so just for that sake, if you go look in the show notes, it's super affordable. You can get in on profitree for a lifetime access. And then what about you, Hannah? Where can we find you and connect with you? Or are you hiding these days? Where are you at?
- [43:20]
B
I am not hiding, man. I am on my channel. I'm on Ecom Hannah. Ecom Hannah is my YouTube name. I'm also in profitree sometimes. I'm sitting in customer service myself, so sometimes you'll catch me in there. But yeah, YouTube is primarily the main thing. Ecom Hannah on Instagram as well.
- [43:39]
A
Okay. And I. Are you a reader? Do you like to read a lot?
- [43:42]
B
I like to read business books.
- [43:44]
A
Yeah. That's what I was hoping you would say. What is the best business book you've read like in the last couple years that's just really opened your brain.
- [43:51]
B
Oh, gosh. Traction.
- [43:53]
A
I know I didn't warn you. Did I tell you about this distraction?
- [43:56]
B
Tell me.
- [43:56]
A
Okay.
- [43:57]
B
Traction. Traction. Traction. Close, but no traction. Who's that by? Do you remember Traction? Traction is by. I don't remember.
- [44:11]
A
But really, what's it about?
- [44:14]
B
It's. It makes you set. Okay. Like I made a video about this and it's just like it's all about how to take your business and turn it into a legitimate organization. So for me, even if you don't have any employees or anything, it's such a quick read. I don't even like reading. But it's. It was just so mind blowing. It's taking basic concepts of business and just making it like, oh, that's how a business is supposed to be run. That is how you hire and fire people. That is how you set goals for yourself. And so like one of the core fundamentals is goal setting, right? And you would say you think to yourself, oh, goal setting, like black and white, that's super simple. But we don't even realize like how important goals are. And the book breaks it down like very black and white. From a three year plan to your One year plan to your quarterly, to your weekly. Because as business owners like the biggest thing that's working against us. And I'm actually really passionate about talking about this type of stuff as well. It's like one of the biggest things working against us is our time. When you're a solopreneur, your customer service, your front of, front of house, doing fulfillment or design or all the things listing, optimization, research, SEO, you're doing everything. You're wearing all these different hats. Your goal in business is to eventually one day position yourself somewhere in your organization where you get to do only what you like doing, right? And that's where you, that's how businesses thrive. Like, like when people quit or give up or prematurely sell their companies. I would say more than half of those cases are because they didn't figure out how to really delegate and elevate or position themselves in their business where they actually enjoy what they're doing. And so that's why entrepreneurs get really jaded because, you know, they, they don't, you know, they, they sign up for the business for the this one aspect, but then they don't realize that there's so much other work that comes with it that you can't even do that thing. And so that book really paints a picture of like, okay, what is your goal? What is your, what is your real goal? What, what is your dream day to day look like? And it gets you to build, I don't want to say key performance indicators, but set, you know, milestones of how you're actually going to get there. And so then it just becomes very black and white and everything is tied to a goal and a number. A goal and a number, right? And then it keeps you accountable to keep showing up to achieve that thing that you said that you want to achieve in the first place. So anyway, it's a really easy read and I definitely recommend it. I read it early on and after I read it, I realized all the mistakes that I made in my first company. And yeah, I should have read it a lot sooner.
- [46:59]
A
That sounds awesome. I will link it for you guys. Traction by Gino Wickman. Something like that.
- [47:03]
B
Yeah, There you go. There you go.
- [47:05]
A
I'll get that linked. I love asking that question. Thank you for like thinking on your feet right there. I'm sorry about that. It's always a pleasure. We need a girls chat soon because I need to hear all the things, but this is so fun and I've learned so much and oh my gosh, I just hope you know how much value you bring because yeah, you talk in a way that. And you know what I love? I love hearing it from a woman. I'm. I love guys. There are so many guys who listen. I like so many dudes that I love. But to hear a woman talk on this level about ads makes me really, really happy. So thank you for being you and thank you for sharing your time and your gift with us.
- [47:40]
B
Thank you so much, Lizzie. Always, always, always a pleasure.
- [47:44]
A
You guys, we're so glad you got to hang out and hear about all of this. I hope we have convinced you that Etsy Arts Etsy ads are absolutely worth it. Let us know what you think. Absolutely. Join Profit Tree, but look for the ads class as well. If you're already in Trendspotting or with me or you're in my six Figure Secrets class, it's already going to be there for you in those as like bonuses so you don't have to do anything down below. So little perk of that. And until next week, y'all go make something awesome. I love you so much. Bye guys. And that's a wrap on this episode of how to sell your stuff on Etsy. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. If you're looking for more resources resources, head on over to howtosellyourstuff.com where you'll find podcast show notes, all the links from today's episode, the blog courses, coaching, and more. If this episode was helpful to you, awesome. The greatest compliment I can receive from you is a rate, review and subscribe on this podcast. Not only will it allow us to connect again on a future episode, it lets me know I'm providing you with value and helps other people find this content more easily. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support. Have a great day and see you next time.