← How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
Ep 161 | POD Mockups Just Got Wayyyy Easier—with Cassiy Johnson
00:49:01
Save mountains of time with your POD and Etsy listings with this new MOCKUP automation tool from Etsy YouTuber Cassiy Johnson! Tune in to hear print on demand tips and insights for your Etsy shop--- and learn how you can save even more time working on...
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- [00:01]
Lizzy Smiley
Hey, my name is Lizzy 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 you guys, welcome back to the show this week. I'm so excited you're here. Happy holidays. It's. We're like so close to the end of the year. I can't believe it. But I had to bring you one last freaking phenomenal episode to just finish off 2024. I don't think this one's going to disappoint at all. I hope that even if you are not in the print on demand space that you are listening to this one because it is so exciting. What is coming down the pike for, for like all of us who use mockups? It's just going to be really crazy. So there's your little teaser. We recently. Here's one thing I want to tell you. We recently had that AI workshop where I showed how I was making Tumblr wrap designs and PNG designs that I am selling on Etsy and I have a bestseller badge, I have several listings people's cards. It's been amazing how fast I've been able to scale up this shop and get over 100 sales, have lots of products selling. It's really, really fun when you don't just have one or two that take off, but you've got a bunch that are selling. So it's been a whirlwind. And you know that when I like hit on something like that, I love to share it with you. So we did a live workshop and it was incredible. Okay. Not only like was it super fun to just get into mid journey and show you how to actually create these designs, make them high enough quality to sell on Etsy if you want a semi passive income from digital products. But like I kind of like pulled out all the stops and I was showing how I find opportunities of what to sell, like what to design for, how to write the SEO for it so that you can compete and then hopefully get into, get, get from some of the smaller micro niches into the bigger, into the bigger niches and really compete. We went over like how to do mockups, how to set up the listing. I, I gave my listing descriptions like here's what I use.
- [02:37]
Cassie Johnson
We.
- [02:37]
Lizzy Smiley
There's so many things I like gave a whole list of prompts of. Here's some great prompts to help get you started with designs. I did a whole video where I showed 20 different opportunities of things you could design for Tumblr wraps right now that would be like hot. Anyway, all of that to say the workshop went amazing. And literally the next day was it 48 hours the next. Okay, so I got an email 48 hours later from a person who attended the shop, this or the workshop. This man knew mid journey already. He actually, there was a time in the workshop where he corrected me. There was something that I had done wrong and he corrected me. So I'm sitting there thinking, well, gosh, maybe he knows more than me. But he came away from this class. He had learned so much about not just how to create the designs better and get better results than what he was getting before, but he learned how to write the SEO. He learned how to design what was in Demand. He got five listings up the day after the workshop. And by 48 hours after the workshop, he was already getting sales, sales and favorites. And he's continued to get them on multiple things he's created since the workshop. So that's like the real thing. Like great if I'm getting results, but the whole point of a workshop is for you to get results. So it was so fun to have this gentleman already just be. And I'm getting like DMS from him every day. Like this just happened and this just sold. And this is. So I'm, I want you to grab it if it's something that would be interesting to you. If you would like to learn the workshop, the replay is available with all of the goodies and it'll be linked down in the show notes with a coupon code for you if you want to grab that for yourself as a little belated Christmas present or Happy New Year present or whatever that is there. So that aside I just wanted you to know because I had a chance to tell you how awesome it was that he'd had those results so fast. So today we are having the one and only Cassie Johnson from YouTube here on the podcast. She is going to be sharing like her story, students success stories and an incredible new tool that she's developed to help print on Demand sellers. And very soon it's going to be iterated to also help digital product sellers. I literally cannot wait. This is going to save us so much time. So if you have not met Cassie, like, if you've been on YouTube at all for Print on Demand, you probably know exactly who she is. She is a doll. She's very good friends with Heather and Jenny, two of our other Print on Demand girls. And so it was actually kind of a long time coming. Like she and I should have done this a long time ago. But let me, let me read you her bio. She says, hi, my name is Cassie Johnson. I've been selling Print on Demand products on Etsy for four and a half years, have been able to quit my full time job and have taught thousands of other students how to start and scale successful Print on Demand stores as well. I've recently also created my new mockup automation tool, Simply Listed, to help Etsy sellers automate mockups and listing videos so that they can get more items listed in their store in less time so they can spend time on the tasks that actually make them money instead. So if you have done anything in Print on demand or digital products for that matter, you know what a headache mockups can be. They can take forever. They just add this whole other layer of work that can be kind of. So the fact that she has now created a tool where I think she recently did a YouTube video on this, where in like just a few minutes you can generate a thousand mockups. Like you spit the stuff, you put the stuff in and it can just like spit them out for you. That is crazy time saving and really takes a headache away from us. So I'm very excited to chat about it, to hear more about it and please help me welcome Cassie to the podcast. Yay, Cassie. I'm so excited to finally be with you. Welcome to the podcast.
- [05:50]
Cassie Johnson
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to finally meet you and come onto your podcast as well. We have so many friends in common and you are such a light in this space of Etsy and I'm just so happy to get to chat.
- [06:03]
Lizzy Smiley
Thank you. Yeah, I've always been just like, oh, is it okay if I Just keep inviting other print on demand people. It's not about scarcity. It's about like, I'm always just like, I don't want to seem like I'm constantly switching to a different person. I want the listeners to know, like, I love all y'all, like, y'all are amazing. And now, honestly, Cassie, you're doing such just game changing stuff that we have to talk about it. This is like, I've been looking forward to this conversation for weeks, so. But here's the thing. I want to come out heavy hitting today. So I want to ask you, for the people listening, what would you say is like the most important thing that print on demand sellers need to know going into 2025? Like, what is happening in the space that they need to know about?
- [06:40]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, that's a super great question. So I think the biggest things to keep in mind with your print on demand business is that consistency and having a bias towards action are going to be your best friends no matter what year it is and no matter what the trends are. As much as I might say on YouTube and other people might say that, like, oh, if you're not doing this in 2025, you won't be successful. There's always little teeny things that like, if you did, you might be more successful. But I think it really comes down to the foundational pieces of your business are way more important to master than any kind of quick tip or trick. Like, there's no secret out there if you're not getting the success that you want. It really is as simple as figuring out what's selling right now on Etsy and posting a really great version of it for sale yourself. And I think that's like the littlest thing I can boil it down to that if you spend all your time making sure that you're seeing what's selling now and then posting something as quickly for sale in that niche that people are currently looking for, currently buying right now that you can get sales in your store.
- [07:47]
Lizzy Smiley
Okay. But I love that you didn't go for like the flashy thing. You weren't like, you have to get additional automation or you have to go for the coquette trend. You were literally like, grind is grind is the thing you need to know going into it. Thank you. That is absolutely beautiful. I love it and it's so true. I know, like every time I get into a student's shop, a coaching student's shop, again and again I see the same thing and it's. And I'm just like, when's the last time you added new listings, like, are you continuing to grind although you use a different word? You said be consistent.
- [08:21]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah. I think consistency is really important. Obviously there's little things that you do need to tweak and, you know, get just right. Like your mock ups need to be really good. Not too zoomed in, not too zoomed out. You need to be using really good mock ups. You know, there are little things, but if you do that research once and then just execute on it really consistently, you'll go so much further than kind of like half doing the little things until you get success and then you're gonna come back and do it. It's like, no, I'd rather you spend a bunch of time picking your pricing, picking your mock ups, making your description, getting all the little things right. That way, every time you go to make a listing, the only decision you have to make is what design am I gonna make and what niche? And then you just post it for sale. You shouldn't be making a hundred decisions for every single listing, like what colors you want to post it on, what products you're going to post. It's like you need to take all the little decisions out of it, get all that set up in advance. So that way you can just take action and get really, really good flow with your business. So it's not feeling like this uphill battle where every day you're like, what should I be doing with my time? You should have a battle plan and just execute it.
- [09:33]
Lizzy Smiley
So there's a lot of new people listening right now work at that time of year and they are like New Year's resolution Etsy shop. I'm going to change my finances in 20. And I know the majority of them are thinking print on demand, but. But the question going through people's minds, I did not warn you I was going to ask you this, Cassie. It just came out of nowhere because that's me. Okay? I know it blew up in 2020 with the. That's like when all these people hit it big with the. The COVID boom. But what about market saturation now? Are there too many print on demand sellers in the space already?
- [10:03]
Cassie Johnson
Absolutely not. Oh my gosh. Could I tell you a million stories of brand new sellers making sales literally today? I think that is the most beautiful thing about and the most beautiful thing about print on demand is there's always new trends, there's always new niches, new products. You know, like the same things I Posted for sale 4 years ago Aren't the same things selling Today, you know, Etsy does a really good job of putting new listings up that can really thrive and be successful. Like right before I jumped on this call, I was actually specifically looking for brand new listings that are doing really well for a YouTube video I'm about to record. And I found a Tumblr that's one month old and has sold 1300 times. I found a blanket that is just a couple months old that is sold a few thousand times. I found a stocking that's three months old that sold 30,000 times.
- [10:59]
Lizzy Smiley
Yeah, I was literally doing a coaching call earlier today for someone in print on demand and we found two different T shirts that were two months old or less and one was bringing in 4,000amonth and was bringing in 6,000amonth and they were doing print on demand embroidery. I will add that. Not that that has to be the only thing, there's plenty of others, but those are just the examples I came up with today. Literally endless, endless possibilities. For sure.
- [11:22]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, I don't think it's ever going to be oversaturated. Etsy is going to grow, the opportunities are going to grow. And I think people underestimate how often other Etsy sellers give up. You know, it might feel like there's a lot of sellers, but I think a lot less of them list every week than you'd think. It doesn't take much to get in the top 1% of Etsy sellers.
- [11:44]
Lizzy Smiley
I agree, I agree. And what has really struck me ever since I started looking at the weekly opportunities, it all changes so often. Okay, I'm just gonna throw out an example because I know people are like, give us a specific. Okay, Coquette trend. So if you're new here, coquette are like, are bows. Bows are everywhere, typically in pink, but you'll see all different things. Well, like I was doing some research the other day and coquette has reached into plenty of places. But for example, in like the golf niche, there weren't there. You could not find a really cute grid or their brand new listings of like that, that three by three type of grid that you see everywhere that had really cute golf stuff. There were some that were eh, but they weren't good ones. And the same thing for certain dog breeds, like you can't find them with like the head of certain dog breeds. And it's just the opportunity, the possibilities are endless, Endless, endless, endless. But you touched on something that I love for you to expound on. I know that you work with so many students, you have unbelievable success stories coming out of your course out of your memberships. Honestly, Cassie, you're one of those people. I feel like everything you touch turns to gold. But would you share? I know you do this on your YouTube channel, so we'll need to direct people over there too. Could you tell us a success story? Someone you're really proud of right now, who's doing cool things that would just inspire, you know, folks who are, who are newer and getting started?
- [12:57]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. So I just posted an interview last week on my YouTube channel, so this one's nice and fresh. One of my students, Christine, from my group, she started Print on Demand and she I think posted like 40 or 50 things her first year and it took her about eight months to get her first sale. So if you post 40 or 50 things in your store, you might get similar results. It's going to take a while to get sales. Print On Demand is simple, but I wouldn't say it's easy. Takes a little bit to get it just right of like posting things at the right time, understanding what designs sell well and all the little things. It's simple, but, you know, it's not necessarily easy. It takes a minute to get the pieces put together. So she starts like beginning of 2022. Takes her like eight months to get one sale. And then by like April of 2023, she had gotten her first hundred sales. And that's when she joined my course, the POD Roadmap. And after that it took her about two months to get another hundred sales. And then now here we are at the end of 2024 and it was so fun because she really started to hit her stride. November 1st she sold 11,000 sales total in her store. By November 19th, she had sold. Oh no, I think it was November 1st she had sold 10,000 things. 19 days later she had sold another thousand. And I think now it's 10 days after that and she sold another thousand. So now she's at 12,000 sales, sold over 2,000 things in about five weeks and made just a bunch of profit. And she still works full time and has three kids in trash sports. And so she is really doing this like in spare pockets of her time. And I think her story is really, really inspiring because echoes a lot of exactly what I believe with Print on Demand and that is that simple sells. She has a philosophy that I love and that's if a design takes her longer than five minutes to make, she doesn't make it and she moves on.
- [14:47]
Lizzy Smiley
What? Oh my gosh. Okay.
- [14:49]
Cassie Johnson
And so I think that's a really important thing to Remember? Is that like you're talking about? I love the coquette trend. I think it's really cute, I think it's fun. I think you might as well try it. But I think people sleep on basic text designs. They think it's only that people don't love it. I could show you thousands of bestsellers that have one word in one font on the front of that shirt in one color.
- [15:17]
Lizzy Smiley
What fonts should we be looking at right now? I'm seeing a lot of the collegiate, still the 90s style collegiate fonts. But like I'm thinking, I'm usually thinking a little more of a elaborate design. I love what you're saying though. I don't disagree. What if you're going to do one word or something really simple, what style of fonts should we be going for?
- [15:33]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of different fonts depending on what you're doing. Let's say you're doing like a couple words, right? You might do like a text to the left design with like a distressed font. That's a really popular style. If you're doing one word across the chest, I think collegiate, like you're saying like a university type font is killer. It's so good. If you don't have a collegiate type font in your store, you're missing out because people love those types of designs. So it could be solid collegiate, it could be outlined collegiate or it could be a pattern collegiate. Those are kind of like the three most popular ways to do that style where you have like a pattern in there, but I think just a cursive piece of text or a typewriter text, like super teeny text typewriter, like auntie. I saw a bestseller the other day. The design's like that big and says auntie and it has sold a bunch of times. And so I think there is space for the more complex designs. But I do think that a lot of people, myself included, actually prefer really simple designs on our clothes a lot of the time. And if you look at the listings on Etsy that have sold the most, like if you're trying to be like, okay, if I made one listing and I wanted it to sell it 10,000 times, oh gosh, it's going to be a design that says mama or teacher or nurse and that's it. Like the majority of like the huge, huge, well selling listings on Etsy are so simple and it's for the biggest niche possible. But meanwhile brand new sellers were like, well, I can't make a design for that. And so they'll post for like geometry teacher because they think there's more space there and well, sure, maybe you'll get seen better. That listing is going to sell 50 times ever, which is great, but you can't only list for these teeny tiny niches. The big niches are where the big money is. And again, with new trends and new styles, new mock ups, like, there really is room for you, I promise. And you don't have to take my word for that. One thing I always say is I don't want you to take my word for anything. All of the proof that you need is on Etsy. That's the only place you need to listen to what works and what doesn't. Like, go find the proof for yourself. That way your brain can really start to understand that this really is possible for you. You just have to get better at one particular skill. And I think if you could master this one skill, you could conquer the world. But mostly print on demand and that is pattern recognition.
- [18:06]
Lizzy Smiley
Yeah. Wow.
- [18:08]
Cassie Johnson
If you can look at Etsy and really pay attention to. I keep seeing the same mock ups over and over again on the bestsellers. There's probably a reason why I'm going to buy those. I keep seeing the same fonts on tons of bestsellers. I'm going to use that font and maybe make it this color instead, do something different with it instead. But it's like just recognizing what's working really well on Etsy and finding unique ways to kind of combine it with something else is like absolutely what I think is the best way to success.
- [18:37]
Lizzy Smiley
You know, we always. I'll often talk about, when I do like a solo episode about getting into the micro niches to be able to break out on Etsy because sometimes it's harder to find the opportunities, like kind of the ways in with the SEO into the bigger niches. But just the other day I was doing trend research and I saw a mama shirt. It was like collegiate font mama, but it was filled with that toile de joie or chinoiserie pattern. And that those were the keywords and that was how that was a brand new shop and they had broken out into the mama. Just not, not. I always joke, I say, I say don't try when you're new, don't try to just get into the mama niche. Like do the. What is it? Like the, the doxy. A dachshund mama. I always joke that because it's just so random and it's a micro niche. But she, she was able to break into the big mama niche by just doing a trend combination with the toile de joie.
- [19:28]
Cassie Johnson
See proof right there. You didn't have to take my word for it. You saw it yourself and you're saying the exact same thing that a lot of people say, which I think is generally good advice. That you know, the micro niches, there's a bunch of money there, but I think a lot of new sellers miss the mark and miss the idea that the big niches can absolutely be for you too. My very first bestseller ever in my store just said the word teacher and that's it. And my highest it was a sweatshirt. My highest search term was teacher sweatshirt. That's how people found it. That's how people bought it. It wasn't some like low competition, high volume keyword. It was the biggest, baddest teacher keyword at the time because it was fall. And there we go. There we were.
- [20:16]
Lizzy Smiley
Are you a print on demand or digital product Etsy seller who's tight on time or still learning all of the Etsy secrets? I totally remember the days of having no idea what product to create next before I learned how to make those informed decisions. So I can really identify with where you're at. I know how stressful and frustrating it can be to just create listing after listing and see little to no results. You wonder what you're doing wrong and just you just want someone to tell you what to create that's actually going to sell. Where are those opportunities? So let me give you a leg up with my weekly trends and opportunities report. You just join my membership and every Monday I'm going to send you an email with a list of exactly what is trending right now with a video tutorial showing you how I found those trends and how to apply them in your shop. We're taking guesswork and time, extensive time off of your table. I'm also going to send you five print on demand and digital product opportunities that are growing in demand right now, helping new shops make sales and still have very low saturation in the marketplace. So your tight schedule, your newbie status doesn't have to hold you back anymore. I'm going to help you earn while you learn. You can grab my free demo to start and see an example of what the weekly trends and opportunities email looks like right from the show notes. See what you're going to get and I will see you on the inside soon. Okay, so here's I'm always, I'm always amazed by this and I I one of the things I love about Etsy is there's so many different ways to be successful. Like if you talk to every single coach expert, multiple six figure earner, they have a different path to success and sometimes a really, really different strategy. So I'm actually like, I actually love right now that you're teaching literally the opposite of me.
- [21:55]
Cassie Johnson
And it still works exact one way.
- [21:58]
Lizzy Smiley
Isn't that the best though? Okay, so without like we, we have other things we want to talk about today, but just in a, in like a nutshell, how do you, how do you help your students break into one of those massive niches and even get their listing seen?
- [22:13]
Cassie Johnson
It's funny you say that because like I said, it's not as complicated as you're even making it in your mind right now. Like sometimes it is combining a new niche, like the one, I don't know how to say that you said a minute ago, blue and white style and combining it with something like mama. Sometimes it's that and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just mama text and that's it.
- [22:38]
Lizzy Smiley
And you're running an ad to it so you actually show up.
- [22:41]
Cassie Johnson
No, Etsy shows new listings, they give new listings a chance. So if you don't do a good job, like sure, it might not get seen, but like I've seen really simple designs in really big niches just do really well. And it's just based off of like posting things that people are looking for right now, like for Christmas coming up. Mama stuff is selling really well because that's stuff that people like to buy people.
- [23:06]
Lizzy Smiley
I think it's brilliant and I just love that there are so many different approaches. I think it's spectacular. It's, it's got my curiosity going because that's not typically what the way that I go about it. But there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with it. Tell me. Okay, you know what, I don't know. Cassie, how did you get into Etsy? Like what, what did you do before this? How did you get into Etsy?
- [23:23]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, great question. So I had always wanted to start a side hustle. That was like always my dream. You know, I wanted to start some kind of side hustle. So I'm looking and looking for years. You know, my parents were in multilevel marketing businesses when I was growing up.
- [23:36]
Lizzy Smiley
Which one?
- [23:37]
Cassie Johnson
Amway?
- [23:38]
Lizzy Smiley
Yes, ma'am. Keep going.
- [23:40]
Cassie Johnson
And so I grew up reading all these books, you know, like knowing that the word job meant just over broke, you know, like I was brainwashed from like 12 with like rich dad, poor dad and the magic thinking big and so it was always the plan to own my own business or have my own side hustle. And so just to like prime it, you know, I was looking, I tried making like concrete candles, I tried making like nail polish dipped mugs. You know, I tried a bunch of random stuff. And it wasn't until Covid happened that I actually had time to really look into something or think about it. That's the first time I ever went like, looking on YouTube for how to make money online and what that would look like. And because I got laid off at my job at first, I was furloughed for like eight weeks. So I worked at a company, it was a corporate company that owned daycares and I was like a salesperson for daycare spots. So like I sold spots in high end daycares around the country. So that's what I was a thing.
- [24:34]
Lizzy Smiley
Wow.
- [24:35]
Cassie Johnson
Is the thing either. But yeah, that's, that's what I did for like a year and a half or two years before I started Etsy. And so yeah, obviously daycares weren't open, they didn't need me. And so I had like eight weeks to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. And then eventually I got completely laid off, but I found Etsy just on a YouTube video and started it the very next day and made my first sale that day. So it was just a real quick turnaround. But before that, you know, just to give you some context, you know, I was teen mom, dropped out of high school, got my ged, worked as a waitress, got a job as a furniture salesperson, all commission furniture salesperson. And I did that for like eight years. And that's my story.
- [25:16]
Lizzy Smiley
Oh my gosh. Okay. I love that I just got to hear that for the first time because I feel like you got a lot of, like a lot of mic drops in there.
- [25:25]
Cassie Johnson
So like, I didn't have any. I. My corporate job I had for the daycare was the only job I even ever had on a computer, you know, so like, I'm definitely not like a graphic designer. I wouldn't say like I had any skills coming into this that would have made me be really good at it. I think sometimes people who are like, really creative or like have experience in graphic design almost have a harder time with print on demand sometimes because they have a. They just like to make things they like instead of what sells.
- [25:56]
Lizzy Smiley
Are you like, because your space is cute? Are you like a decor person? Do you have a good eye for design or decorating or anything and stuff like that?
- [26:03]
Cassie Johnson
I'd say yeah. After working in a furniture store for like eight years, you know, I did get a good eye for like, decorating somewhat. But, you know, most of my designs that I've sold on clothing are super simple. Like I'm talking about. I'm definitely not like a crazy good designer. I think my first bestseller was just like white distressed text on a shirt where like one part of it was curved and one part of it was straight and that was like the whole design, you know.
- [26:30]
Lizzy Smiley
Wow. I will say a lot of the people that I come across who tend to, like, do well right out of the gates with Print on Demand, they have a good eye. Like, if you go to their house or they could come to your house and like redecorate it and it would look incredible. And they're not necessarily formally trained, but then they get into Canva or they get onto those mock ups and they just, they can just know how to, how to place it. I am not like that. I am an utter disaster. Like, I have never been good at it. I've had to teach myself. So this is to encourage everybody. If you've got a good eye, great. You've got an advantage. You've got a bad eye, great. You've got something else to learn and you can. Because if I can do it, you can do it. When did it click, though, Cassie? So I'm impressed. You got the sale right away. When was it? When did it, like, go full time? And you were like, yeah, we're onto something.
- [27:15]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, yeah, good question. So I got my first sale and that was really exciting because it was like a Covid themed item and that was what was selling really well at the time. And so that makes sense. Again, see what's selling right now and post for it right now is how I got that for sale. And then my shop got suspended for a month because, you know, Etsy likes to do that. But then I did get my shop back after complaining to the bbb. Between you and I, it says back in action on Etsy after a month. I tried shopify for a couple of weeks and it was way harder. Oh, my gosh, so much harder. It was way, way, way too hard. So back on Etsy and it took me a couple months, I feel like, to really get it going. You know, I got like 40 sales my first month, kind of back at it. But it wasn't until I think three months after that that I made like $4,000 in profit for the first time because I had the whole summer off. I hadn't started back working yet. And so this was like I was putting 20, 30 hours a week into it in that summer where I had time off. So I probably had 5, 6, 700 designs in my store. And a couple of them really started to take off for fall. And so that's when it was the first time where I was like, I just made $4,000 profit. I think I sold 12,000 total. And so that was when I was like, ooh, okay. And so instead of going back to work at like a really well paying job that like I probably could have gotten with my work experience, I actually took a like really not very well paying customer service work from home job that I found so then I could secretly work on Etsy all day.
- [28:52]
Lizzy Smiley
Wow. Like meanwhile you're working on it like in between getting calls and things like that.
- [28:57]
Cassie Johnson
Yep. So I had like my two work computers and then I had my Etsy computer and just worked on my Etsy shop before work. Any chance I got during the workday at night, like I was just absolutely obsessed.
- [29:09]
Lizzy Smiley
Oh my gosh, I had no idea. That is such. Your story is incredible. You. Gosh, you did it pretty fast though, Cassie.
- [29:16]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, I posted a lot.
- [29:18]
Lizzy Smiley
You were posting? Yeah. You know, I'm weird. You and I were talking about how much we love Bailey before we started recording. And that girl, she said that when she started her first shop, the one that like went totally crazy with the Tumblr wrap designs, she was doing like 20 a day listing like 20 new listings a day. But she built it really fast to a six figure income that was mostly passive. So fascinating. So yeah, there you go. You had the, you had just had the gumption, the chutzpah. You made it happen. What's so interesting about Print on Demand? And I've been hearing this more lately, so it's so, it's. This is also kismet that we're having this conversation. I literally even the coaching client I had today talking about the kind of minutia, like all of the different pieces of the getting the Print on Demand. So you're doing your research, you're getting your SEO, you're creating a design like, and so for the people who just don't know Print on Demand. So then you're loading it into Printify, you're getting your listing set up and all of that stuff and then you're having to go create all of these mock ups. There's just a lot of steps before you're actually live on Etsy, which compared to like a physical product Or a digital product. There's just more tech steps. It's really not that bad. As someone who would do like 2 to 300 signs a month by hand, like from literally getting the wood to packaging it and send, I can't even tell.
- [30:32]
Cassie Johnson
It's.
- [30:32]
Lizzy Smiley
It hurts my brain to think about. But I would love to talk about what you've been doing to help fix that problem. Like make it a little more automated. Take some of that off of our plate. You've come out with this incredible new tool called Simply Listed. Would you please tell us like all about it? I want, I want all the tea.
- [30:49]
Cassie Johnson
Absolutely. I'm so excited to tell you about it. So mock ups have always been a little bit of the bane of my existence. And if you're listening to this and you don't know what a mock up is, all it is is a blank picture of a product. So a blank. A picture of a white mug or a picture of a T shirt with no design on it. And then you put your digital design that you created and you put it on top of that photo to pretend like it's already made. That way you can sell that item without it having to be made. And then when someone buys it, someone like Printify, who is who I use for my printing, prints it and ships it for you. So that way you don't have to buy the products and take any pictures. You could never buy a single product sample ever, if you wanted with Print on Demand, which is great. I do have a lot of product sample videos on my channel. You can watch mine instead if you want. And so mock ups don't take that much time. But once you get good at it, I'd say for listing photos, it could take you two to five minutes to put that image on each of the photos, lower the opacity so it looks right, maybe position it, put it behind a necklace, like whatever you have to do to make it look really good. And then save those and download those to Etsy. It doesn't take that long, but it's just enough that it's enough to keep people from doing it. People will make a bunch of designs that they never even list for sale, which is such a waste of your time. Please don't do that. If you make a design, please post it. You never know which one's going to be your next bestseller. And so my whole thought with Simply Listed is I wanted to make the listing process more simple and easy. And so Simply Listed is a mockup automation tool. So what it does is really simple and Easy. Especially if you've already made mockups on Canva. You'd upload all your mockups like you normally would in like Canva to make them. And then you're going to upload something called like a print area where you actually upload a little box to each of the images to tell me where the design is going to go. And then we actually grab the design from Printify and put it within that box right where you told us you wanted it. And we make the mockups and even publish them to Etsy for you. And so you can make like a thousand mock ups in three minutes if you wanted.
- [33:01]
Lizzy Smiley
That's insane.
- [33:02]
Cassie Johnson
Literally less time to make, you know, photo. Say you're making 10 photos for 100 listings. You could literally do that in three minutes. Whereas normally doing that for like one or two listings would take you three minutes. So think about having all that time back that you can make more designs, you can do more research, you can actually do the things that are actually making you money in your store instead of these little tedious tasks that need to be done but don't actually make you money.
- [33:30]
Lizzy Smiley
It is such a big deal. Cassie. Okay. For the people who are more advanced print on demanders though, will you talk? You have to share about the SKUs that you do as well because that's. There's this other piece. If you're a little more advanced, this is going to help save you an enormous amounts of time.
- [33:45]
Cassie Johnson
Absolutely. So I did some research a couple months ago. I used Erank and I looked at the top 100 clothing stores, stores that opened in 2024 and I looked through every single one. I weeded out all the ones that are just Disney sellers, I weeded out all the ones that are selling things that we can't sell with Print on Demand. And I think 40 or 50 stores total and I went through each and every one of those stores and analyzed it by hand, which took a really long time. What I found is that probably 70% of those sellers, I think it was 30 out of the 40 or something, actually had multi item listings. So they weren't just selling a shirt when you clicked on it. You could buy the design on a shirt or a sweatshirt or maybe a long sleeve shirt or maybe even a baby shirt. You know, you could buy the same design in one listing on multiple different types of products. The way it is with Printify right now though, that is a beast to try and list in your store. I do have a YouTube video on how to list multi item listings in my on my YouTube channel. And it's not like crazy hard, but it is a little bit more complicated. So the reason how like Printify knows what to print for you is a SKU number, like Printify creates a SKU number for each and every variation. So what color, what design, what size they know. When you get an order, this is what you should make. And that's what makes print on demand automated. But if you have to make one of these multi product listings, you have to manually do it. And if you wanted to connect it to Printify to have the orders be automated, you'd have to copy and paste like 120 to 300, 400 SKU numbers which would just. It doesn't make sense. It really doesn't make sense. So then your business is not automated and every time you get an order for that product you're having to manually tell it which one you got.
- [35:33]
Lizzy Smiley
Which.
- [35:33]
Cassie Johnson
If you're sitting there with not very many sales right now, that might not sound like a big deal. You're like, oh, I have the time. But imagine the world just actually sit there in your mind right now and imagine it. You're getting 50 sales today because that's possible for you. It's possible for all of us. 50 sales, 100 sales, 500 sales, it's all possible. But if you don't build your business in a way that makes that achievable, then it's not going to grow there because your brain can't see the vision you need to plan for the future success you're going to have. And so what I built with SKU linking is you can just click I want this Printify product, these things, 2, 3, 4, 5 Printify products connected to this one Etsy listing and click Go. And it'll copy and paste all the SKU numbers for you. So any orders you get for that product will be completely connected to print to buy in literally a second. And so that's what I really wanted to bring is again making multi item listings really easy and possible for print on demand sellers and then also make mockups really easy. And I will stop really quick because I want to make sure this is super clear with what Simply Listed does and doesn't do. You use your own mockups that you purchase, say on Etsy to upload to Simply Listed so you can make mockups for anything you like. Right this moment it only connects to Printify, but in just a few weeks we are working on a custom version where you'll be able to make mockups for printful or gelato or digital downloads, anything you'll be able to make the mockups for. So that is coming down the line. So just have to stay tuned for those updates. So it will be very soon that it will be opened up to some other options as well. So super excited to share it and I did give Lizzie a special for you guys. Normally it's only a seven day free trial, but if you use her link, you'll get a 14 day free trial to check it out and see if it's for you.
- [37:27]
Lizzy Smiley
Thank you so much. I'm. I am so excited. You guys can rest assured I will be letting you know when this is available for digital products as well. Although the vast majority I feel like of my listeners are print on band or at least playing it. But for us, like for digital, I will be using that on a daily basis. You can, you can rest assured. So I'll let you guys know and I'll probably do, I'll probably do some videos too because, yes, that saves me enormous amounts of time. Cassie, you're a genius. Like, what a, what a wonderful thing to take off of our plate. And I can't even imagine, like, thank you. I can't even imagine the work that, that took, the time, the effort, the energy, the money, the expense, the research, the tears and blood and sweat. I can't even fathom. So spectacular. Thank you so much.
- [38:11]
Cassie Johnson
Yes, yes, thank you. Me and my husband went in on it together. It's our first joint business venture which has been really, really fun and interesting to figure out how to work together in that way. So we've had a really interesting year. But yeah, it's been a long, I think eight months and more money than I'm willing to admit to build.
- [38:30]
Lizzy Smiley
Yes.
- [38:31]
Cassie Johnson
But I'm really proud of it. Like, honestly, especially if you're sitting here and you're like, oh, I can't learn another software. I'm too overwhelmed, I promise. I tried to make it the simplest print on demand software you've ever seen. And on my. I started a new YouTube channel called Simply Listed. It's just tutorials. If you have requests for me to make tutorials for a specific product, I'm making new tutorials basically every week. I made one already for ornaments, for mugs, tote bags, phone cases. So, you know, if you're like, can you just make me an exact walkthrough of how to do it? Then I will be making lots more tutorials in the future.
- [39:10]
Lizzy Smiley
Yeah, I bet. Actually, you're probably all ears. Like you want all of those you can get. Okay, real quick, can someone use it with hello Custom?
- [39:17]
Cassie Johnson
It doesn't really have anything to do with hello Custom, but yes. So if you're doing personalized products, then what you do is upload your design to Printify just like normal, publish it to Etsy just like normal, connect it to hello Custom just like normal, and then because you uploaded it to Printify already, then yes, we can grab the design where it has the fake name like Johnson Family Christmas and we can put that on all the mockups for you. Absolutely.
- [39:47]
Lizzy Smiley
All right, guys, so as you know, I've been on a print on demand journey with my new Etsy shop. I opened just a while back and I'm having the best time ever and learning so much. But I really wanted to give you a little update and tell you how sold out I am for Printify as my print on demand provider. So they were my go to in the very beginning because my POD experts all told me that they were the way to go. And Printify has not disappointed me a bit. I'm very happy with the quality of the products that are going out. The turnaround time has been good. I love their interface and I feel like it's very user friendly and integrates well with Etsy. I am super happy with the margins I'm bringing in, especially using Printify Premium compared with the other print on demand providers. So it's just been a win win all around. Basically happens is this. So I set up a listing mostly over on Printify and I have it all synced up with my Etsy shop. So over on the Printify site I get the product all ready to go with my design properly placed, all the colors I want selected, the title written, the description written, and the correct pricing and shipping already in place. Like it's all done on Printify. The only thing I don't sync is the product photos because I create of course all of my own mockups for a better quality. So then I click Publish over on Printify and within about a minute the product shows up over in my Etsy Shop listings as an active listing listing. At this point it's live. So then I go right away over there and I upload my product photos and any other graphics that I need. I set my categories shop section and tags like all the things that I have to do over on Etsy and usually I'll link my variations to a corresponding picture in my photo gallery. So I'll give it a quick once over and then click Publish again on Etsy. So that my updates will show to everyone who sees the listing. The great thing about doing it this way is that when an order comes in within one to two hours, typically the order then syncs over to Printify back again. And so all of the product and customer details are there. And Printify just makes it crazy easy to run my print on demand shop. I can't believe it. Like, golly, after making, you know, wood signs for six years, this is a dream. So Printify has over 850 products to choose from. You can customize and create new designs to your heart's content. And the best part is you don't have to worry about keeping an inventory or shipping products yourself. Printify handles all of it for you. And seriously, their production costs are unbeatable. So if you're considering print on demand, give Printify a try. I recommend it. Feel free to grab my link in the show notes waiting for you. And if you use my code lizziesmiley, which is no spaces, all caps, L I Z Z I E S M I L E Y, you can get 30 days free of Printify Premium, which gets you even lower production costs. So again, that's Lizzie Smiley, no cat, no spaces, all caps apps. It's an absolute steal. And I always use Printify Premium. So the whole experience getting going in print demand has been wonderful. I love it. 10 out of 10 recommend. And I hope this helps you with the production partner decision. If you're on the fence and planning a shop as well, I'm excited for you. The other thing I have to know because I'm just nosy is what piece is your husband doing? Like, what did he bring to it?
- [42:51]
Cassie Johnson
So my husband was a manager in a past life when we actually met at the furniture store store and so he has just helped me with managing like the daily meetings with our developer team and with our customer service reps. So he is definitely more just kind of on that side. He has never done print on demand, so he's not as much help with like, oh, we need this new feature and those types of things. But he's done really great support in just making sure that everything goes smoothly and all the communications done good.
- [43:20]
Lizzy Smiley
That is worth its weight in gold. A project manager is everything in these, in these scenarios. Like I'm seriously, the more that I think about the beast that you have just built. Like, holy cow, that's amazing. Okay, we gotta wrap up here so I would love to know, do you have any, like a couple suggestions, tips, words of advice for someone just getting started or thinking about starting print on demand.
- [43:39]
Cassie Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. And I promise you it's simpler than you think. Okay? So I'm gonna give you my best tips and I promise it's simple. It's this simple. I want you to open your shop today. If you haven't done that yet, number one, don't wait. I see too many people do like two or three months of research before they get started and then you have to relearn everything because you learn well, you do. So please learn while you do. That way you can learn each piece at a time. There's no way to learn it all before you get going. You'll be doing this a year and you'll still learn something new every day. So please get started right away. Don't overthink it. You don't even need an LLC if you don't want one yet. You can do a sole proprietorship, which is just your own tax boxes. Like really, honestly, don't overthink it. Just get your Etsy shop open and then I want you to within the next 24 to 48 hours, get your first listing for sale. Because that is going to be such a roadblock in your brain that it's going to feel like such a mountain decline. But if you just get it out of the way, you're going to understand everything else you read and see so much better. It's going to make sense. And don't worry if your first one or 50 designs are terrible. That's not the point. This is your learning time. You're in preschool of print on demand.
- [44:50]
Lizzy Smiley
Okay?
- [44:51]
Cassie Johnson
It's more about doing than it is about being the best at it. So from there my best tips are pick one product, just one, I don't care which one it is, but preferably one of the items that is the best selling item on Printify. If you go to Printify, go to the items and look at what their best selling items are. That's a really good sign that if it works for so many other people, that that item is one of the top 15 items that printify sells every day, that that one can be good for you. So you can pick candles, blankets, T shirts, sweatshirts, there's a couple on there. But pick one of those. Make sure you're selling what's selling on Etsy. That's number one. So pick one product and I want you to research it really well. I want you to see what mockups people are using, what pricing people are using, what do their descriptions say. And if you just spend a couple days Getting those pieces right before you do anything else. Then all you have to figure out is how to make designs for niches that are selling right now. But if you're trying to figure it all out at once, you'll never know which parts are working and why. So you need to be a scientist and figure out each piece. And then once you get your listings set up, you're going to use these mock ups every single time. You're going to use these colors every single time. It's going to be this exact price, this exact description. You're not going to go back and rethink this stuff and procraster work every day. That stuff's figured out, then all you're going to do is see what's selling on Etsy literally today. So you can go look at what Sundays it sold five times today. What's a bestseller badge if it's selling right now on Etsy, you can make your own version of a design for it and post it for sale today. And the more times you just do that over and over again, you're going to figure out what works and what doesn't and then you can do more of what's working. And it really is that like simplified and maybe that doesn't sound simple but I hope that it helps.
- [46:43]
Lizzy Smiley
No, I feel like actually that was a pretty powerhouse like set of tips to get started. Like that was like you kind of really brought it there Cassie, to be honest.
- [46:51]
Cassie Johnson
Thank you.
- [46:54]
Lizzy Smiley
Okay, so I'm going to link the 14 day trial of simply listed. I'm also going to link your course because it gets people incredible results if they want more handholding and learn more. I'm going to link your YouTube channel and the simply listed YouTube channel. I'm going to link the your student who did a thousand sales in 19 days. Right. I'm going to link the multi item listing video. Where else though if people want to connect with you, if they want to find you. Where, where are you the most online?
- [47:22]
Cassie Johnson
Just YouTube is basically where I'm at. Just Cassie Johnson on YouTube and CassieJohnson.com is where you can find everything like my course and anything else that I have available. But YouTube is really the only place I hang out. I'm not really on Instagram or Twitter or TikTok. It's just the one place. So.
- [47:37]
Lizzy Smiley
Okay, I love that. That's so smart. I mean that's like rare that you hear that, right? Okay, so that's easy. I'm all of that will be linked and ready to go. It was such a joy to meet you. Thank you so much for coming.
- [47:47]
Cassie Johnson
I appreciate having me on and I hope that you guys walk away with just even one little tip or even just feeling a little bit more inspired that like this really is possible gospel for you. And so keep listening to Lissy, but check out simply listed if you want. And we're just, we're rooting for you 100%.
- [48:03]
Lizzy Smiley
I will keep you posted guys on Simplylisted because you better believe I'll be playing with that very soon. So gosh, it's Christmas, so Merry Christmas everybody that celebrates happy holidays to everyone else, good vibes and blessings to everyone no matter what. And thanks for being with us this week. You guys go make something awesome. I'll talk to you soon. 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, 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 few 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.