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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. Merry Christmas to everyone who is celebrating. I hope it's an amazing, amazing day filled with great memories and family and delicious food and feeling really loved. And for those of you who are either maybe you don't celebrate or it's not a very happy day, I just want you to know that I am sitting here with you. I am literally recording this on Christmas Eve. You can see piles of presents behind me and I just want you to know how valued you are, how much I care about you, and how much I'm cheering for you. Happy Holidays. We've got a big Everyone should be celebrating New Year's coming up. And I'm just saying I can like feel it in my feeler. It is like so entrenched in me that 2026 is about to be an incredible year for us. I'm so glad you're part of this family with me. I feel so honored to guide you and I am so ready and fired up for what is coming. So we're going to do one of your favorite episodes ever. We're going to do an FAQ episode. I'm going to do my best to choke it out. I literally should have recorded this over a week ago and I've had laryngitis so you can probably even hear my voice isn't perfect. And I'm sorry about that, but I had to get you this information and I had to have a Christmas episode for you. So here we are. The first thing I want to let you know about is there's a really big news with Profit Tree. I'll tell you what it is in a second. But for those of you who already know, Profit Tree is an amazing research tool that helps you like see what's happening on Etsy. The In Demand badge is back. Completely amazing, completely insane. And they now have the tags for every single listing shared within like the, the Profit Tree data. So those of you who already have Profit Tree, if you haven't seen this yet, it's really, really exciting. This tool just got so much better. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, that is. Okay, sister brother, I've got you. So basically when you start on Etsy or when you try to grow on Etsy, one of like the biggest, I think like secrets of those of us who have a lot of success is we know how to do our research. Okay? Because a lot of times crafters, you know, they come to Etsy at first because they like love crafting and they're like, I could turn this into, you know, maybe someone said, hey, why don't you try selling that on Etsy? And that's not a bad thing. It's actually an amazing thing. But sometimes what is in demand, perhaps at like a craft fair or what you love to make isn't necessarily what people are searching for. Like demand is a huge deal. You have to make sure that there is demand, that people are actually looking on Etsy for the thing. And you'd be surprised sometimes, sometimes we get really surprised about what they're not. Well, the only way to really figure that out and to understand how big the demand is is to use a third party tool. Etsy doesn't tell you, you know, like you can see a bestseller badge, that kind of helps. But Etsy doesn't otherwise tell you. And so these tools will tell us things like, like for example, the In Demand badge. So when you look at what Profit Tree will, you can go to like a search result. Let's say I search mom shirt and I'm looking at the search results. My Profit Tree tool, which it's a chrome extension, I can click on it on that page and it will tell me like, it'll tell me how much every single listing is making, how many views it gets, how much money it makes monthly, how you know, how many sales it gets. And now it'll also tell me that if it has an In Demand badge, because sometimes something's flying off the shelves, but it doesn't have a bestseller badge yet, but it's in Demand and it's selling and we need to know that. So being able to see data like this for whatever it is you want to sell or before you sell is a huge game changer in what helps people actually start making real money with Etsy. In fact if you listened to episode 212 last week with Trista, she's a brand new Etsy seller. She started listening to my podcast about like maybe six months ago, launched her Etsy shop four months ago she had negative 400 in her bank account. She's got five boys, they were laid off from work, they'd been in full time ministry and they were in bad shape and she started an Etsy shop and she did what I told her, she did the research, she found out what was in demand and now her she has made so much money this season. Like her shop has over 300 sales in the handmade space which is thousands and thousands of dollars. It's really really exciting. So all about that. I just want you to know that Profit Tree now has leveled up the in demand badges back. It shows the tags which what that means is you can get keyword research from Profit Tree. You can see what keywords are helping a listing to rank. I have a tutorial below. It's not with this new stuff yet. I've got to record a new one for you guys. But if you guys want to see what Profit Tree is all about, check out my tutorial and it'll kind of show you a little bit how I use the tool. You know without these, these extras. What's really special about Profit Tree is that you can, you can pay one fee a light like you pay once and you have lifetime access so you're going to pay one time fee of 67. This is a special that they're running right now and you get lifetime access to a lot of these tools. It's not going to be every single tool they have but the main things and if there's anything I know about new Etsy sellers is they don't necessarily have the budget to pay for monthly memberships and things like that. So like the keyword research tool I use ever be it's a separate tool, it's got a monthly fee and this one you pay 67 once, that's it and then you get access to all of this. So check out for more below. I just totally word vomited on you guys. I'm really excited about these new tools Profit she's been really big for me because I'm not great at numbers. I'm not naturally inclined at numbers. And so it's got like a tool that helps you figure out what your profit is so you can be like Shark Tank ready, you know, so if you were on Shark Tank and they're like, well, how much are you, how much are you netting? How much are you profiting? What is your ad spend? And I'd usually be like, I don't know. But this, it just tells me, I click in there and it tells me so. It's so cool. Check it out. Big things happening there. I'm excited for them. I'm excited for you guys to have this data for just $67. It's completely crazy. The other like big announcement, the big thing I want to tell you about and it's not even ready yet. I just have a link below so you can let me know if you're interested in this. In the, in 2025. I've worked now with like thousands of students and we are getting insane results for people. I took all of my expertise from years on Etsy and then I've been working with students since 20 and it's only grown, you know, just like how your social media following will grow over the years. Well, my student base has grown over the years and we saw better results this year than every other year combined. By teaching people how to use trends, by teaching people how to use emotional connection in their designs, by teaching people how to do the research, by just providing that pathway for success. Just like your customer has a journey they take and you have to understand the customer path for how they choose to buy your thing, you as an Etsy seller need to have a path. We're going to talk about more about this in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to be doing a bunch of solo episodes just teaching, teaching, teaching, giving you as much free teaching as I possibly can. You need to know what your, what your journey needs to be your student journey. And so I'm going to be launching something called the Scaling Society for Serious Etsy sellers. For people who want to work more closely with me, who want to have access to all of the tools that I've created because I have an enormous library of tools and it's just going to be a monthly membership if you're. You can also get trend spotting when you're in there. You can also get template drop when you're in there. You're going to get daily prompts. If you like to do the AI stuff, which is great for digital product sellers or print on demand sellers, you're Going to be getting a weekly design videos from Becca, who was just on the podcast two weeks ago. Her success story has been amazing. We're going to have every single thing in there and every workshop I come out with this year is going to go in there. So you're going to have access to that. And also you will have access to my coaching group. In fact, going forward, the doors are going to be closed for new people just joining at the one time fee for the coaching group. If you're already in there, just check in there. I've got details for you. Nothing's changing for you, but for new folks coming in, if you're going to want to work with us in the coaching group and get your questions answered, be able to come on the coaching calls. That's going to be part of my Scaling society. Some of you, this is a perfect fit for. Because you're already in trendspotting and you're already in Template drop and you always buy all of my work. Whenever I come up with something new, you buy it. This is going to save you money because you're just going to be on a monthly thing and you'll get access to literally everything, most importantly the student journey. Because what happens is you guys come into my stuff and you're like, where do I start? So this is going to show you exactly where you need to go, what you need to master step by step by step. So more coming soon. I just wanted to like throw it out there because it's burbling up in me and I want you to know what's coming. And those of you who are new here, you couldn't have come at a better time. Because I have never helped so many people be successful on Etsy. I've never been more sure how to get you from your shops, not even open to whatever level. There's a part time income, it's being able to pay for a vacation a year, it's being able to pay off debt, it's being able to replace your full time income. I've helped people do all of that and so I know exactly what to do to get you there. You need to be inside Scaling Society if you want to do that with me in 2026. So I want you guys in there. Go ahead and click the link below and let me know if you're interested so I can send you more information as it rolls out in the next several weeks. Um, we're putting the finishing touches on it now and then. You're able to see everything that's going to be in there. It's completely bananas. Just click below, drop your name and email. Let me know if you want me to know more, if you want me to tell you more and we'll go from there. Alrighty. Thanks for sticking with me through all that. I am getting all of the words out. I only sound somewhat hoarse. Let's get into these FAQs, should we? Shall we? So Jan asked me, she actually emailed this to me. She said you mentioned something called a no brainer listing. Can you expand on that a bit? And this is a great question. We talk about it a lot in my coaching group as we're like, you know, kind of looking at examples, also trend spotting. We talk about this a lot. A no brainer listing is something that a customer looks at in the, in the feed, in the, in the search results of Etsy and they say, oh my gosh, that's a no brainer. I'm buying it. And what makes it a no brainer is usually either the value, like how much is in it. You know, it'd be like instead of just buying one PNG, it's a bundle of three 30 PNGs that are perfect for that customer and they're like, well that's a no brainer. I want that bundle. I don't, I have to go buy all of them individually. It might be templates, it might be a, it might be like all of these different designs in a certain design trend that are for that are like, so you've got mama but you've also got the aunties and you got the grandmas and the Gigi's and all of that all in one bundle. It's usually volume. So you'll see it, you'll see there's a lot in it and then typically the price is very affordable. So it's very low ticket. The reason that that works is because instead of having it like let's say you've got this really valuable bundle but you're selling it at a higher price point, you're only going to sell it so many times because it's not necessarily a no brainer. Someone's got to think about it, they got to check their budget. But if you have it at a price point like it's usually under $10, it's like that's a no brainer. You don't have to think about it, you have to go ask your husband, you have to check your budget. For most people, they can just buy it and what you do rather than trying to sell it at high Ticket. This is a choice, right? Are you choose, you choose in your shop to be more boutique, which for a lot of handmade shops that's the way to go for sure. Some digital and print on demand shops, that's a good way to go is boutique or are you going value? Are you trying to hit the masses? Are you going for volume? So you think of yourself more as like Walmart or Target or Amazon where you're thinking, no, I'm going to go after the money in volume rather than just selling, you know, a hundred things that are a hundred dollars, I'm going to sell a thousand things that are $5 and you make up the money in the volume. So Jan, no brainer just means that someone doesn't have to think about it. It's so packed with value, the shopper's eyes almost get big when they see it there in the search results because it's like, oh my gosh, I'm getting so much for my money. And this is like, you know, sometimes you'll see me do this as well. You know, if any of you this past year bought my 2,000 digital product prompts, it was literally like I gave you, I gave you prompts for all these different products to create with different trends that were happening and it was just $17. That's a no brainer thing. You're getting a bundle of prompts for $17 or like I did done for you digital products for like $27. You got like, you got a thousand of them. That's a no brainer. Like of course I'm going to take that. You'll also see some, some content creators do this with like courses. So like if you're in a funnel for them and you're purchasing some other things or, or they'll run a sale and they'll be like, all right, my course is usually 299, but today in this, like in this bundle, whatever, you can get it for just 47. And like it's like, oh my gosh. Yeah, that's a huge savings. So hopefully that kind of sheds some light on that concept. Just provide a ton of value and make it a price point that no one bats an eyelash at in digital products under $10. A lot of times for these no brainer listings, it's even under $5. Just depends on how much is in there and what it is. You can figure out the best price point by looking at the best sellers that are there for already there for that kind of a product. And that'll give you a sense of what you're looking at. The next question was someone asked, what are your thoughts on Insight Factory? Is it worth the price? So Insight Factory is another tool, like an SEO tool, a search tool that integrates into Etsy and then provides you a bunch of data. It's similar to Erank or Everbee or what are some of the others? Allure is another one and Sales Samurai is another one. So there's a bunch of these tools. Most of them are very good, not all of them. I'm not, I'm definitely not a huge fan of Sales Samurai. I used to use it back in the day, but I have found much better data from them. I'm not familiar with Insight Factory. I've never created an account, I've never used it, so I cannot speak on the value of it. To me it would be comparable to an Everbee, which I am extremely familiar with and is completely worth the price because what you can do with what sets ever be apart for me other than the fact that their user interface is so easy, they give you, there's so much data in there and there's so much training in there. I feel like they make it really easy. But let's say you go and you've got your, it's again it's another Chrome extension. So real simple, you couple of clicks and you integrate it with Chrome and then it connects to your Etsy shop and and it gets all of the data from the that it gathers from the Etsy platform and it has its own built in algorithms to, to guess these numbers. They all have that, they're all kind of guessing. Okay, this one's selling this listing is selling this many times in a month. It's making this much based on the price point, things like that ever be will provide the tags like we were talking about earlier with Profit Tree for, for the listing so you can see how a computer competing listing is ranking in the algorithm. So if you've heard about SEO, search engine optimization or keywords, it's because Etsy is a search engine. So when a shopper comes to Etsy they go to that search bar, they type in what they're looking for. Etsy uses those words that they typed in to match them with the perfect products. So if your product has those keywords, then it helps Etsy match you to that customer. Okay, ever be tells you what tags that our listing is using because it's otherwise kind of hidden like Etsy doesn't show it to you. So it shows you what tags they're using to Rank and it tells you how strong they are. So it tells you how many times a month shoppers are searching for that tag for those keywords. And it shows you how many other listings on Etsy are competing for it. So you can see A, the demand and B, the competition for a particular keyword. And this just lets you take keyword strategy to a whole new level. This is something I love teaching on that. It's like in my courses in my scaling society, we talk about how, how do you do keywords, how do you actually rank? Because that's like one of the first battles, right? So I don't know about Insight Factory, I have never used it. But Ever be is a competitor to Inside Factory and it's very well worth the price. And they have a free account where you can access a lot of keywords. You can access a lot of this data for free and it's completely worth it. Like, like, yes, do it 100%. Because if you don't know what the demand or the competition is for a keyword, you never know how strong your keywords are. So I highly recommend that the next question was what's the best way to start and build an email list in Etsy? This is a great question. This is part of what you want to be doing after you're past 100 sales on Etsy. Once you're kind of established, you know what you're doing, you've gotten past the early, the early kind of painful phase of figuring out proof of concept, figuring out what product works best for you, getting it to sell on repeat. You definitely want to start scaling by building your own email list. And one of the reasons for that is it helps you to not put all your eggs in one basket. If anything were to happen on Etsy, either to the platform or to your shop or, you know, to your like someone's copying some something. You just never know what can happen in this crazy world. Etsy owns their own customers, right? You otherwise can't reach back out to those customers again. But if they are on your email list, you own your email list. So the one of the best ways. Everbee has a tool called Everby Email that can help you do this and automate it a little bit by sending by reaching out to customers that have bought from you already to like invite them to your email list. A really, really easy way to do this. And you don't have to use Ever be email. You can use a free mailchimp account to begin with. It's up to a certain number of contacts you'll have to pay down the road. But you can start with a free email service. And what I would recommend that you do is in your photo gallery, have a QR code with the discount code so you know, save 10% on your purchase. And then you have the QR code there and then a shopper can scan it, they can sign up for your email list and you will email them over a QR code. So that's a great way, like also putting that, if you putting that in a physical package, if you're sending it out. If you're using Printify, I know that you can pay to have an insert put in inviting people to like thanking them for their order, inviting them to your email list. Maybe it's giving them a coupon code for their next purchase. That could even be like a bit of a higher discount. You can also include it in your listing description, kind of like, you know, get x percent off. I will tell you this though, most shoppers never look at that description. Super, super type A, people do, but Etsy even kind of hides it. You want everything that matters for a customer to see in the photo gallery. So I recommend something like that. It's a great way to. Oh, and if you're selling a digital product, you can add that as a separate, like when you give them the digital download, you can add another file because you can add up to five files on the back end for a digital download. There can be like a PDF or a P, a JPEG there that has the QR code on it. So that is exactly how I would do it. If you don't know how to do a QR code, literally just Google like create my own QR code and you'll find a service that'll help you do that. You can usually do it for free or super cheap. That is how I would recommend it. And I, like I said, once you're at about 100 sales, you want to start building your email list. You want to regularly reach out to them, I'd say at least twice a month you want to be emailing them. It's like letting them know what's new in your shop, letting them know about special promotions, anything like that. But you, you want to be, you want to be like kind of, you can always schedule it out. You don't have to like have, you know, sit down one day a month and schedule it out for a few months, even get ahead of it. But that's going to help you so much to be able to drive your own traffic to your new your new listings and it's going to help you if you ever go to build your own website. It's a great thing to do. Number four, this is a really interesting question. I don't think I have been asked it before here on the FAQ episodes and it says we hear a lot of Etsy shop owners say that they made $5,000 on Etsy last month. And that sounds impressive, but I think they're really saying that they sold $5,000 of product last month. If that's the case, then they have costs that are associated with those sales and they didn't really make 5,000. Would you talk about the profit margins for digital products and Print on Demand products? If someone sells $5,000, how much are they really making? This is a great question. Talking about that profit, which is the total amount you made, like how much you sold versus the net profit, which is what you took home after all of your expenses. And one of the reasons this is really complicated is because or tricky is because every shop is so different. So, so unless they disclose to you I made X and I netted Y, it's really hard to know. Now digital product sellers have extremely low expenses. So honestly, if they said they made $5,000, then maybe knock off like assume a net of that. They had like 10% in expenses, so they made probably $4,500. Like digital product sellers have crazy high profit margins. Print on Demand is going to vary. The profit margins are typically pretty low. I think at a minimum you'd want to assume half, 50% off in expenses. It's probably more than that. But minimum, if you hear someone say, oh, I made $5,000 on Etsy in Print on Demand last month, they probably made 2,500 maybe. I think like that's tricky. And then, and then with handmade you're never going to know because they're. Everyone's expenses are going to be so all over the map. You know, when we were making signs, it was interesting because we were actually able to get our reclaimed wood for free. But if someone ordered a new sign, we were having to buy the new wood. So it even depended like per sign. So the math got really tricky. That's where like a tool like Profit Tree is just a game changer because I'm, I'm not. Some of you are like spreadsheet girlies and I literally worship the ground you walk on. That is not me. I cannot sit there and figure all that out. I never knew what my total net was. So I hope that that helps. I think that's kind of what you can assume. But it's never perfect, right? Because everyone's got different. It's going to be different for every single business. The next one was, oh, they wanted tips and tricks for creating listings quicker. Okay, so this is a good question. This is something that I'm really going to be focusing on in scaling society this year because I get asked a lot like Lizzie, what's your process? How can we do this faster? How can we be more efficient? What do we do with all of our files and everything like this? So some of this is going to depend on what you sell, right. For making listings quicker. But what I will tell you and, and Becca shared on her episode like so this is episode right now we're talking on 2:13. So hers would have been 2:11. And she does the same thing that I do. Actually you can do it two different ways. One, one thing you can do is rather than start by adding a new listing, duplicate a similar one. So like let's say I have a, a faith based png. Do you know what I mean? Like it's a, it's like scripture related or something faith based. And I'm, and that's what I just created is a new, a new one like that. I will go in and I will copy that listing, my original one. Because a lot of the keywords and a lot of what's in the listing description will be the exact same for my new one. I'm just going to have to make a couple of tweaks that saves me a ton of time. Also a lot of times the images will be the same, right? Like the thing in there that says like this is a digital download, nothing will be mailed to you. Like some of it's going to be the same. So that's one thing you can do. What Becca talked about, and this can work really well as well is create yourself a draft or a dummy or listing for every different type of thing that you sell. So like, you know, you might have, you sell clip art bundles and you sell some print on demand sweatshirts and you sell some individual PNGs and you sell some coloring pages. You would want to have a different dummy listing for each one of those because they're going to use the same. Usually they're going to be the same price point. They're going to be the same description. Some of the keywords will transfer over and your dummy listing can have those basic things in there that are going to be rinse and repeat every single time. So then you can Go. When you go into Etsy, rather than again clicking add a listing, go into your listings and go to the drafts, go to the one that correlates with what you just created and hit, go in there and hit copy and then build out your new listing that way. In terms of going faster with like listing images, there's a couple different ways to do that. One of them is in canva. I have a canva like a canvas, like a, like basically like a design file in there that has all of my main mockups that I use for every, everything that I create. You know, again, whether it's I'm selling a shirt or I'm selling a PNG or I'm selling a template. I've got like, I have like a whole canva design that has all of the images that I often use for that. And that way I can go in and there's literally a placeholder on each one. It works kind of like if you know what I'm talking about. When I say a canva frame where you can just drag and drop your element into the frame and it puts it, you know, it kind of just like pops it in there like a photograph. So it's like the placement is already done. I already have my watermarks on it. I just have to move them over, pop it in, pop the new element in or the new upload in, and then move the watermark back over it. It saves me a lot of time. And then I can export all of the ones I'm using for the current listing as one zip file and into like, you know, wherever I'm saving it. So those are some things that I do that, that help. The other thing I will suggest is that you batch create. So I know that a lot of us have adhd, that's why we get along so well. But what you want to do is like, let's say you're working with a particular trend or design style. Don't hop from that one to the next one to the next one. Like stay in that one and create five to ten listings at once. Because then a lot of the basic elements that you have are going to be the same. Like whether you're designing for print on demand or even when I was in, when I was doing handmade signs, I would only sit and design one, one font type and one size at a time. So I did a lot of those. If you like, think of like a long thin sign that maybe you'd put over a door or above an art gallery, I called them my 40 inch signs. They were 40 inches long. I would sit down with one popular font I was using and I create all of them together. So batching like that can help a lot as well. The next question is, should I price my digital products cheaper than most to gain some traction or should I price at a decent price and run regular sales? Is it a good strategy to price lower while I'm getting started or price according to the market and trust the process? There are so many different pricing strategies out there. So I never want you guys to feel like there's only one way. But especially in digital products where we have a really high profit margin and we're not having to physically do anything or like pay printify. I personally start out low. In fact, I recently started another digital product shop to test, like to test digital invitations that are videos and just see how that niche would do. And I am starting really cheap. Okay. So I usually with a new digital product I start at 70 cents because again, I have nothing to lose. Like who cares? There's nothing, you know, it doesn't matter. And I do that until I have about a hundred sales and at least five really good reviews. Because what happens is even though I'm new and I don't have the credibility, I don't have the reviews, I don't have the badges, I don't have all of that. A new customer is going to look at me and it's kind of a no brainer. Like I'm not worried about 70 cents. Let's try it. And then if it's excellent, they're going to be delighted and give me a good review. So up to 100 sales, that is about what I, I start low. If I get a bestseller badge in the meantime, I do bump it up. Or if I get a lot of sales on something, I do bump it up to maybe 97 cents. Once I have a bestseller badge, I'm usually putting it at 297 or up to 397 and then like from there as my shop gains traction, like Once I'm over 100 sales, then everything is going up in the shop to 197 and that's where I start at. But when you are new, especially if you're in digital products, like there is nothing to lose to start lower. I know that like there's, you know in handmade you have got to cover your prices and, or your expenses and yeah, you want to start as competitive as you can. But also there's this whole thing in handmade where there's perceived value, right? So Customers like, I see if you have a really nice product, customers actually perceive something that's more expensive as more valuable. It's a little different from, from digital products. And with print on demand, I think it really comes down to how good your designs are. If you, once you get really good, like so long as you're not charging something astronomical, it's not really going to matter whether you're the cheapest, you're the median or you're on the high end. If you have emotionally connective designs that people are obsessed with, they are not going to care. They're going to say, that is for me, I want it. And they're not going to care what the price is so much. So the pricing strategy is going to vary a bit. But that's what I think. Digital products, yes. Start like, you know, sometimes I talk to some of you guys and you're like, I just can't bring myself to do it. Like, okay, don't worry about it. Because same thing in digital, once your designs are good enough, you can charge more. Like some people charge up to $10 for things that I'm charging less for, but they're just that much better than me, you know what I mean? Like they've got the Photoshop design, like they just, they can do it better than me and that's fine. I'm not trying to be a high end designer. I'm trying to personally move volume. So that's a great strategy. I love keeping it cheap like that. At least up until 100 sales and 5 and or 5 really good review reviews. Someone said, should I stay away from shiny object syndrome or try a range of products until it becomes clear what is selling. I love this question because again, you guys, there's like, I want you to feel so free to try things there. Like, yes, if you're in handmade, trying to have a certain aesthetic and creating a boutique vibe, same thing even really for kind of print on demand is a good thing. You want a cohesive feel, it's going to give you more credibility, it's going to get you sales faster. But so many of you don't create enough listings to even know what direction to go. And like you've got, you know, 30 listings in there. I'm not talking about handmade. That's different. Print on demand and digital products, you've really got to get a lot of listings in there to know. So I think now don't be so shiny that you're like, all right, I'm going to have 30 different types of Print on demand. I'm going to have mugs and I'm going to have journals and I'm going to have candles and I'm going to have T shirts. I'm going to have sweatshirts and I'm going to try Clipart and I'm going to try templates. I think that's overkill. But for example, if you want to try some, trying selling some things as PNGs, maybe trying to sell some clip art with some coloring pages and also try some shirts and things like that, like, yes, go for it. Because what's going to happen is once you have at least 100 listings up, for sure, once you have 500 listings up, you are going to know what direction to go. You're going to know what you're good at. I do this all the time. When I'm in my coaching group and we're on a coaching call, I'll go in there and we'll. They can ask for shop audits. On the coaching call, I'll go in there and we'll see like what they're really good at. And then, and then we can say like, okay, this thing has sold over and over and over again. This is your thing. And it's not necessarily. They're only creating for Golden Doodle Dog mom sweatshirts. No, no, no. It's usually like a style, an aesthetic, a vibe that they really get that people like what they do. And that's what I say. All right, now go hard on that. So yes, there is like a limit to shiny objects in there. But don't all feel. You guys don't feel like you've got to open up three different shops. One to test templates, one to test coloring pages, one to test print on demand. Stick with one shop, try a couple of things and let yourself, you know. But I will say when you try it, don't just put up one Clipart listing and let that determine whether or not you're good at clipart. Put up 20 clip art listings. You know what I mean? Put up 50 T shirt listings, put up 30 coloring page listings. I am pulling those numbers out a little bit. I'm just saying don't put up two and let that be your cross section of data. I've probably spent enough time on that. I hope that helps. Next up, I recently showed my Traffic stats to ChatGPT and it told me my traffic from Etsy search was very low compared to other shops. I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not. I sell print on demand phone cases My shop is one year old and on average only 6% of my visits come from Etsy. Search is this low. If it is, I'm assuming I have an SEO problem. I've been stuck for months at just one sale per day. I can't figure out why. Actually, one sale per day is pretty great. I'm hoping it's my SEO and that's the problem and not my designs. Thank you for all of your help. I love it when your, your, your pod pops up in my feed each week. All right, well, you're a sweetheart and I love you too. And thank you for listening. All right, so here's the thing. First of all, I, I would really question where ChatGPT is getting that data. I don't. I think Chat GPT is great for idea generation. It's great for coming up with customer service responses. It's great for writing, just listing descriptions. It is great for business expansion ideas. But don't use any, any of these non SEO or non Etsy keyword tools to help you with SEO, you guys. And I don't think it's, I think it's okay to have IT evaluate your stats, but I'm just like, I'm just curious what it's saying about Etsy, like, compared to other shops, like, how does it know? So I agree with you. We have no way of knowing whether or not that's true. I will say it does sound like your views are low, and when views are low, it is typically an SEO problem or either in you're not selling something that has enough demand or you're not using the right keywords to isolate it. I would want to ask you here, if we were talking right now, I would say, okay, well, how many listings do you have? How many of them are selling? What trends are you tapping into, what you know, what is your price point and like what is your conversion rate. So I, I would want to see, I would want to see your visits higher. So I think like, if you've got hundreds of listings for phone cases and this is the situation, you probably need to test a different product. Like this might not be your thing. If you've got like 10 or 20, I'm thrilled then that you're getting a daily sale. You just need to add more. So hopefully that helps that more data. It's hard to kind of direct you. But just first of all, yeah, be careful with, with ChatGPT and all you guys, nine times out of ten, y' all just need to add more listings. You need to keep going. Even like, sure, if you're. If your views are really low, it can be keyword. It could be. Can be SEO and you can level that up. And there's different ways to learn how to do it. You know, get. Ever be. Get a good SEO strategy, come into Scaling Society, and I'll teach you exactly how to do this. And also evaluate what's really happening. But it's hard to know without knowing more data. But typically, guys, your designs aren't good enough. So you need to just keep creating. Because, like, here's the thing. I went to art school for two years. We had to do the same thing over and over and over again until we got good at it. Like, it's like riding a bike. You're not going to get good at it overnight. You've got to do the reps, you've got to get out there and fall. Typically, I'll need to create better listings and then create more listings, and that's the bigger problem. So get after it, my friend. You're gonna do great. I do. I am interested. Heather Studio has been focusing a lot on phone cases and, like, tech stuff. So I do think that's a good space. I know there's gotta be demand there based on what she's saying. Just I would continue to add more listings and be incorporating the trends. This next one's really interesting. They said, I know we can't use intellectual property such as Disney song lyrics and whatnot. I'm curious about quotes from people who have been gone for a long time. Edgar Allan POE, Oscar Wilde, etc. Yes, that's still intellectual property, but I'm not sure if it would apply to them. The same. Thank you. Okay, so first of all, this is not legal advice, guys. I'm just going to like, share kind of what I've learned from my years in the. In the space. But always be really careful that you are not using someone else's intellectual property to make money. And like, you know, listen to my, like, legal episodes. There's a whole legal playlist. Let me actually make a note here to share that with you. So if you guys look below in the show notes, there's going to be a link to all of the episodes with attorney Paige Hulse, who will give more advice on this. But just I have to give the disclaimer. So first of all, I think what this person's asking about are things that are in the public domain. So the public domain refers to creative works that are not protected by copyright. They belong to the public and can be used in any way without permission from the creator. Now, items enter the public domain in several different ways. So first of all, the copyright term can expire and not be renewed. So for in general, like this is, I'm saying this In December of 2025, items published in the United States before 1930 are in the public domain unless they've been renewed. Okay? So you got to watch out for that items. Or it's like, so let me talk about that a little more. So for example, a few years ago, the original Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain, right? The copyright expired on it. And so people are like, oh my gosh, we can use Winnie the Pooh. And it's like, well, here's the thing. The original design, a very certain rendition of Winnie the Pooh was in the public domain, but they had, they've created several renditions of Winnie the Pooh since then that are definitely still protected. So it's not like a carte blanche. Now you can go use Winnie the Pooh. That's why you want to be so careful. So also, items that were published in the U.S. between 1930 and 1964 and are not renewed are in the public domain. Works published without a copyright notice before March 1, 1989 are in the public domain. So there's even, there's like a time thing. There's like they didn't actually file for copyright protection. And then the year the March 1, 1989 came. So you can see that there's like a lot of exceptions. There's general gut, but there's general guidelines. I will link below an article from UT Texas. Their law school is really good and it'll have a little more information about you about that. But that, that should hopefully help with, help you get an idea. So yeah, you can sometimes use them. You need to make sure they're in the public domain and do the due diligence so you don't get in trouble. Someone else asked is another related question. How does someone go about getting licensing rights if they want to sell Disney, a sports team, et cetera, equivalent items without strikes. So typically you, you could, for a lot of things, you can purchase licensing. It's, it's very expensive. So for Disney, for example, I'll have a link to their licensing studio below. Whatever else you'd be interested in sports teams, you'd want to go Google like their team name and then licensing to find information about that. But for example, like this, it gets very expensive. So at a minimum for Disney, you would expect to pay five figures per year per character. And every character is going to have a different price point. Like some of them are higher, are more expensive to license than others. So you're going to pay five figures every year to be able to use it, plus an 18 to 20% in royalties. So whatever you make, you're paying them about 20% on top of paying the five figures. So you really have to be able to move volume. You really have to know what you're doing in order to do that. So hopefully that gives you an idea of how you go about it. You're just going to Google like whatever thing you want to use. Some of them allow licensing, some of them don't. And you need to be prepared to, you know, be like paying them a lot of your profit and also a licensing fee. The next question says, hi, Lizzy, I'm a physical product sewer and other textile arts. I would love to add some passive income to my shop, but not necessarily print on demand. Pattern making would be the most logical pivot, but I'm not sure where or how to get started. I'm intimidated by the idea. I get you. Have you covered anything like this? Yeah, I've listened to almost all episodes, but I don't remember anything like this. Okay, so I. We haven't done an episode specifically on like sewing patterns, but it would be a very similar pivot to. We've done embroidery, embroidery designs and embroidery patterns and we've done crochet patterns before. So here's some episodes to look into. Number 208, 139 and 104 are all embroidery related. So that'd be very similar to sewing. And then numbers 2o episode 206 and 148 are both people who pivoted to crochet patterns from selling like physical crochet items. Now, I know it can feel intimidating, but this is actually where AI can be so great. This is where I would go to ChatGPT and I would say or like whatever you use, Claude or Gemini or whatever, and say, I want to take my expertise in sewing or whatever, textile art and start to create patterns. How would I go about this? Like, how can I learn pattern writing? How can you help me with pattern writing? What you want to make sure of is like things that are just created with AI cannot be covered by copyright. So you're going to want to figure out where that line is for your patterns on where you can have the help of the AI but have it not own your basically have it impossible for you to own your own content. So that is literally how I would start. I think these examples would help you a lot. Especially like, who was it who was talking about. I want to say it was the episode 206. Yeah, she. That's a really good one. She was talking a lot about her process of learning how to write patterns. So that is how I would go about it. By the way. I think it's a brilliant idea. I love the idea of being able to kind of feather your. Your nest with some passive income in that space. And people on Etsy freaking love to buy patterns. Like, it's a huge like DIY community. Absolutely loves it. I also think, oh my gosh, like, there's so many business ideas for you because you can leverage the community. Like again, episode 206. Like, all the crocheters all help each other, but the sewers will as well. Where you can get sewing influencers to sew and demo your pattern. They can work with you to get the word out, help you build your own following. You can then like, you can create your get like build a following on social media. Expect it to take a couple of years, but leveraging other creators is a great way to go about it. Don't feel like you've got to win over the ones who have a. Like, like hundreds of thousands of followers. Feel very comfortable using micro influencers who have five to 20,000. 5,000. 20,000 followers. And you could literally then create memberships. So that's recurring monthly revenue where you're creating a pattern a month and every single month. Like someone's just on a monthly rotation membership and they get your, like, it's regular income. I'm really excited for you and anyone else listening who goes about this. I think it's a really, really brilliant way to do it. People love diy. The next one says, I have done your online courses and listen to the podcast nearly every day. Well, hey, hey. But I want. I don't know if you're a girl. I was gonna say hey, sister, but I don't even know. But so hey, friends. I started a print on demand in June and so far have 12 sales and six five star reviews. Good job. I'm happy with my star. Oh, she actually, by the way, they. I shouldn't say she. I don't know who it is. This was a. This was a question that was posted back in the summer. So I literally. They had 12 sales within like the first month or two. What should I be seeing for views and when? I've done a lot of research on SEO like you said, but Should I just give it more time or. Looking back in my SEO, my last 7 day average was just under 150 views. Total shop views is 866. I have about 80 listings up and I know I need to keep going on those, but just wanted to know if I'm headed in the right direction and need to give it more time and patience or if I need to be working more on SEO. It sounds like your SEO is on lock. You're getting views, you're getting sales, your SEO is fine. You just need to keep leveling up your designs and keep adding listings. So yes, I would say you're on the right track. If I looked at your shop, could I make suggestions about SEO? Yeah, probably. But you're getting views and sales, so I wouldn't be worrying about that too much. You really just need to keep going, keep figuring out how to make better and better designs, more emotionally connected listings, making sure that you have the best possible mock ups to demo your product and just keep going. That's all you've got to do. Okay, I'm gonna do one more because I've been yapping at you guys for a while and we're gonna have to just do a part two and that'll be fine. So this person said Etsy versus off site, like Shopify store, Breakdown of difference, Pros and cons of Etsy versus an off site store. So I'm gonna be, first of all, I'm gonna break down the fees for you guys for what they are in the U.S. so in, in the U.S. on Etsy, the shop, there's a shop opening fee of $15, 15 to $29 just depending on there's a $0.20 per listing renewal fee. So you're paying every time you put up a listing or one renews. It's $0.20, 6.5% transaction fee and 3 to 4% plus $0.25 payment processing fee. So you are paying. It's. To me, it's, it's very reasonable. When I think about it, it's like it comes out to about 10%. You're paying Etsy about 10% for being on the platform to have access to over 90 million shoppers. To me this is very well worth it. I initially started trying to sell on my own website and had so much trouble driving traffic. It's not that you can't do it, it's just that you have to wait a long time to get there. You have to be very consistent. Building on social media for minimum six months, but usually more like two to three years before you're going to get to the level that you can get to within a few months on Etsy if you're doing it right. So to pay them 10% to be able to basically right out of the gates, if I, if I have a really good product and know how to position it and put it in front of people, it's like a no brainer. Shopify for example is going to be a monthly fee of $29 to 299 plus a month. Just depends on the level of shop you need. They do not have a transaction fee and their payment processing fee is 2.9% plus 30 cents. So the out of pocket expense for Shopify really comes out to less. Especially once you are making regular sales obviously in the beginning like $29. Like the difference is you can start Etsy with only paying the one time startup fee and on Shopify it's going to be monthly. So it's like some of you for example who are in print on demand, you're like oh my gosh, should I get Printify Premium? I'm not making enough sales every month to like make up for it. And how do you make that choice? So Shopify like whereas Etsy, you really only pay as you, as you make money for the most part there's obviously a little bit with the 20% list or 20 cent listing fee. So Shopify is great, especially when you're a really good established seller and you know what you're doing. Keeping those profit margins and not having to pay a transaction fee is a great thing. But the issue is just like what happened to me, people get, they get discouraged and they get burnt out because it takes so long to be able to get sales and or you're going to come in, you're going to have to pay for ads, right? So on Shopify there is no built in audience, there is no built in shoppers like there is on the Etsy marketplace. You have to send all of your own traffic to your shop so you could have the most beautiful website, you could have the most perfect in demand products. But like nobody ever sees it because you either have to pay for ads to point to them, which is a great thing to do. It's just expensive and there's a big learning curve with it. Or you have to be posting on social media in order to get it in front of people and it just, especially for a new seller, it's a lot to learn how to make your product, price your product, position your product, make it aesthetic and then Also create all the social media posts and again expect it to take at least six months to really get a solid income, more like a couple of years to get really good at it and build an audience. It's like not easy to build a social media audience. It's not impossible. You've just got to have the right mindset and a lot of times it creates burnout. What else did I want to say about this? The other thing that you can do is you can work with influencers. So if you don't want to post on social media, you don't want to pay for ads. You can be finding people that you can send samples to and you can leverage their audiences and they basically advertise for you. And then from there you can kind of build your own client client base. Like as people come to your website, you can get them on your own mailing list and things like that. Just know that it's like very slow going. So what I prefer to do is have people start on Etsy and learn all the basics, learn how to learn how to understand trends, make really great products, position, price them well, you know, if it's physical, like package them well, figure all of that out, figure out how to sell it. Etsy teach you how to get a great product and how to get it in front of, you know, like how to get it selling. Then you have proof of concept and you've kind of gotten faster and better at it. Then you can move to building your own email list, starting social media and sending traffic to your own website. It's like less of a burden on you and you already know that you have a product that will sell. So that's how I recommend going about that. So I'm gonna wrap it there for today. I'm really sorry if I didn't get to your question. I had more than I realized. I actually, when I first like kind of like organized it, I was just like, oh, I wonder if this is going to be a short episode. And even though I talked as like faster than Lorelei Gilmore, I. It just was not. So I, I don't want to keep you on for too long. I. It's the holiday so I will do another one soon. But I'm really excited for the next several weeks because we're going to be doing a lot of episodes to help you get a, like get ahead for 2026. We're going to be talking about how to get started if that's what you need, if that's where you're at and you're Just thinking about this, I'm going to be just like pulling out all the stops on here's what you need to do. It's not going to be just your basic click, like click by click setup. I have a free video for that to show you. If you want to, like, see how to click by click, set up your Etsy shop. It's easier than it sounds. I know some of you like that visual though. But we're also going to be talking about, like, things that I, that I wish I knew. I'm actually going to do a round table coming up in a few weeks with Preston, who is in the handmade space and he's done print on demand and Becca, who is in the digital product space. We're going to be talking about what we wish we knew to really help you guys. That's going to be coming up. I'm going to be doing an episode all about the tools that I use that really help me and which ones you need and which ones you don't and how to kind of make those decisions. Because I know it's really helpful to know what the pros use, but sometimes, sometimes we don't have the budget for it. So I just want you to know what's out there and when you know when to choose to invest in it and when you don't need to. And then also we're going to be talking about how to make your first $10,000 on Etsy. And so it's going to be an action packed kickoff to the new year. I'm really excited to be working closely with y' all and set you up for success. So I will see you again, same place, same time next week. I hope you have a very, very happy holiday. I guess I'll be talking to you on New Year's Day, which is perfect. So early. Happy Happy New Year. No, New Year's. Yeah, New Year's Day. I'll probably be recording before then. That's why I was just like, it's not gonna be New Year's yet, but anyway, I want to thank you for, for submitting your questions. Please know that I will address them if I didn't get to them today. They are coming up and I love you so much. I am so in your corner. It's like big sister energy. Like I. What I wouldn't do to help you get there. And you know it. As an entrepreneur, you go through a lot of iterations, right? I have been an entrepreneur since my whole life, but like really, really in the weeds and full time at it since 2012. And if there's anything that I'm learning more and more now, it is how doable this is and also how to exactly how to teach you to get there. And, and the biggest takeaway, and I know we hear people say this all the time, but I want this to hit differently. Like, if there's any way I could get this not just in your head, but in your heart, if you just don't quit, you're going to hit it like, I have a three year old right now. I'm potty training. He sucks at it. He doesn't care. He's over three and he could not care less. But you know What? When he's 20, he's going to be potty trained. If I just don't give up with him, he's going to learn riding a bike, you might fall and even break your arm at some point. And you try and you try and you stink and you stink and you can't get off of the training wheels. And then eventually, see, as kids, we just don't give up because we look around and the story that life tells us is like, oh, this is something people can do and we lose it somewhere and life is rough. Man, I remember being in my 20s and be like, why is everyone older, so disillusioned and they don't dream anymore. And it's because life can be a garbage disposal. It can really grind you up. And our job is to keep our spark. Our job is to find joy. Our job is to find hope and to keep going. And so that same thing that helped you as a kid, learn how to read, learn how to walk, for crying out loud. Kids have to go after that for months, months and months and months, sometimes longer. Learn to ride a bike, Learn to potty train. What about in college when we're learning a new skill, we're learning, we're learning a profession takes time, my friend. So the biggest mistake I see people make is they just give up. And I'm just asking you to believe in yourself and to stick with me. And I, if you're not stubborn enough, I'll be stubborn for you. Just come close, come sit next to me, babe, and let's do this thing, because you can do this. And I am looking at the world ahead of us about to be absorbed by AI and jobs going away. And I want you sitting with me on the beach, okay? Because we made changes and we learned how to work with AI now before it took everything over. And I'm not saying we're going to be doing the exact same thing in three to five years. We're not. But if you stick with me, I'm going to make sure we're doing whatever is cutting edge at the time. And right now, what's important is for you to learn these tools and for you to learn how to make yourself money so that we are not absorbed. So just stick with me, babe, Sir Friend, I know I'm getting all emo again. I love you all so much. We're going to do this until next week. Go make something awesome. Thanks for listening to me crackle my voice for an hour. Bye all. 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 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.