← How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy
Ep 215 | Tools I use in my Etsy shops to save time and scale faster
00:57:27
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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. I hope you loved last week's episode. I got so much good feedback and I was really surprised because some of the most advanced sellers that I work with, they're just die hard. They listen to every episode. Last one last week was literally called like how to start an etsy shop in 2026 the right way. And even experienced sellers were like, this was awesome. It fired me up for the year. It got me motivated, reminded me of what was important. I was like, wow, okay. I thought this was just gonna appeal to brand new folks, but no, it was a good one. So if you're needing some motivation or you wanna refocus, you're feeling scattered, you wanna get energized, that's a good one. Go back. And then right now I gotta tell you, next week I'm doing a roundtable episode with Becca and Preston. Preston does handmade products, Becca's in digital, and we're doing a what we wish we knew before we launched our Etsy Shop episode. It turned out so great. I literally cannot wait to share it with you. So that's gonna be a good one to watch for. In other news, I launched a brand new free training. Okay. So over the past year in my coaching group, I've gotten to work really closely with a number of sellers and see them go from 0 to like $1500 a month or 0 to 2000 sales in just a couple of months. Like, really, really great success stories. You know, around here, I keep it very real and While there are some people who have breakout success and make a lot of money really fast on Etsy and I've had students like that, it's not the norm. And so while I know that those are exciting stories and share those too, I also like to keep it really practical and help help us as new sellers have really healthy expectations for like the kind of timeline and what it can take. And so in my coaching group I started testing with them this principle that the mega sellers use, including what I did in my sign shop. The, the it's kind of this like secret that no one really talks about of what we did to really blow up our Etsy shop. Like what is that kind of thing? And you know me, I'm not big on like there's this like hot take and I mean there are hot takes but a lot of times it's just like put in the reps, you know what I mean? It's like be consistent, show up, actually list, do it regularly, like you know, level up your designs. But sometimes there are strategies that are hot takes. And so I put it into a free training. Literally people are calling me crazy. I'm sure there's coaches who are not thrilled and I just like gave this away for free. But it's called how to blow up your Etsy shop and it's just a 36 minute training. And I'm teaching you the principle that the mega sellers use that blow up their Etsy shops. And it's exactly what we've been testing. In my coaching group I took new ish sellers and I taught them trends and then I taught them how to use this principle. And that's why we're getting crazy testimonials. I'm really amazing results where in 3, 6, 9, 12 months people are replacing full time incomes, people are replacing part time incomes, people are paying off debt, people are like paid for their whole Christmas. Really, really great like life changing stories. So it's a free training. There's no. Every single one of you can listen to it. There is a link below for you to request it. You can watch it right now. Maybe wait till after this episode because I'm going to give you some really good tips here. That's a good one. And then I also in December, like you know, because it wasn't busy enough, I went ahead and like wrote an ebook and it's called how to earn your first $10,000 on Etsy or first 10K to keep it snappy. And I got, I actually got a lot of emails from you guys Saying, you know what, Lizzie, I know you do a lot of video content. I'm more of a reader. I want to hold physical pages in my hand. I want to highlight and make notes. I want to read. I'm like, okay, cool, let's put all my best stuff into a book. So how to earn your first 10k on Etsy. It's currently just getting formatted right now. You're going to want to join the wait list because I'm going to send you a discount when it comes out in a few weeks. So if you're a reader and you want to get at the best possible price, it's not going to be expensive either way. But if you want a discount, because who doesn't love one? Jump on that wait list and when it comes out, I will pop an email over to you with a coupon code. And so that's a really fun thing coming up. Also, like, I'm just really curious how many of you are going to be interested in that because like I said, I got a bunch of emails, but people typically want to watch video, right? And so I was excited. I'm like, okay, this is fun. This is a new format. So today I want to kind of demystify something because I think a lot of people come to Etsy and they're just like, everyone's talking about all of these different tools. I'm not making any money yet. I need to fix my finances, actually, I need to make money. I can't be paying for memberships and things like that, programs. I really want to talk to you about all of the tools that I use for my Etsy shop, but I'm going to break this down to here's helpful free stuff that you can get right away. Here's what I think you need to have. Like to actually start what I think is best to have that really I've seen with my students actually makes the difference between slow growth and faster growth. And then number four, what's nice to have the luxury things that I use, you know, because I am very fortunate to, like, have the income and that helped me just do things faster, more efficiently, and they're nice to have. So I thought that would be really helpful, not just, like, rattle off all of the tools and make you feel overwhelmed. This is the year of clarity, okay? Like, my whole focus in this business for you. I want you to feel super clear about what to do next on Etsy. I want you to know what stage you're at and what you need to do there. What you need to learn and how you can learn it. Because I think the biggest issue that holds people up, like, yeah, are there skills people need to sharpen and learn? Yeah. The biggest problem, though, is clarity. It's overwhelm because the world is overwhelming. We're already pulled in too many different directions. And then you come become part of, like, the Etsy culture. And if you're consuming a lot of people's content, which PS I love most of them, most of them are really dear friends. I'm not saying they're bad. I'm saying it creates more overwhelm to have a lot of different information thrown at you. So I thought it'd be really, really helpful to say here's what you really need to have and not just here's everything. But for those of you who are in the position where you're an advanced seller, you're scaling, and a lot of you. This is another email I get a lot of Lizzie, how do I get more efficient? How can I do this faster? Because there is a point where you reach that and you need to go faster and you need to spend money on tools to do that. So just to set all of that up, especially, like, if you are brand new, you're just getting started on Etsy, you don't have a budget. Let me tell you about some free things that can make a huge difference. Obviously, they're like, actually super, super underrated. The Etsy Seller Handbook, totally free. It will teach you everything. Like, it's actually kind of funny, really, that that seller handbook should put all the coaches out of a job. It. It doesn't because it's just written form. Sometimes it's not accurate. Like, for example, Etsy just this past fall went ahead and emailed every single seller and said, we're changing how we rank your. You like how we do SEO and you need to shorten your titles and get rid of all of these keywords so that you can rank going forward because the customer needs a neater title. And then they had an automate, like an AI automate button that automatically changed everyone's titles if you change, if you click that button. And everyone's shops just tanked. So most, there are exceptions, but most of the people who tried to follow Etsy's instruction, which is, you know, otherwise usually you would think, like, listen to what they say, right? They're going to reward it. Like when you listen to TikTok, they reward you. When you listen to Instagram, they reward you when you listen to Etsy. Usually they do. But like, listening to that instruction tanked bunch of shops all of their cause they're the algorithm hadn't actually been changed yet to catch up with this advice and re like reorient everything. Anyway, I digress. You're hearing like a Lizzie moment. But for the most part the Etsy Seller handbook has everything in it and it's super, super helpful. It's totally free. So when you have a question like what are the Etsy fees Or what is the best practice for a listing thumbnail, like what size do I need? Like just go to the Etsy Seller handbook from your shop or even in the browser just type in Etsy Seller handbook and you can find all of that in there. You don't have to go to Google or come find me or whatever. I mean you're welcome to but I'm just saying it's all right there. The other thing that is super helpful for new sellers, it's completely free is using the Etsy platform itself. So Etsy.com, using that search bar just like a customer can teach you so much and help you so much in getting like those early days of your shop even just like, like let's say you go to the search bar and you want to look at what the competition might be for watercolor, watercolor landscape postcards. Let's say you're a painter or you're in procreate and you like to make watercolor images and you're like what if I sold these on postcards? When you go type that into the search bar. When you start typing the there's going to be a little dropdown menu that appears that auto suggests high demand keywords. So you can learn a lot about what's in demand and get other product ideas that are that are specific to Etsy by typing in that search engine. And then when you use the search engine and you get the results, you can see things like what's. What's at the top of the search results is typically a higher demand item. You know, they're usually near the, near the top. They're putting things that are best sellers or that are in demand or that are brand new, like things that are interesting right now. You can learn a lot from that. Another thing that I recommend that's totally free that you're going to probably need is a Google Drive. So depending on the type of laptop or whatever that you're using, you're going to need storage space and especially if you're doing any digital products that you're going to be sharing with your sharing On Etsy with your customers. Having a free Google Drive is a really good one to have. If you already have a Gmail account, you already actually have a Google Drive. So you just go to Google on your browser and in the upper right hand corner there's a little icon and if you click it, it'll have all of these options. There'll be the email there, there'll be Google Drive there, there'll be just options. And so that's where you can find it, what it basically is. Here's all if that's. If you're not a techie person, Google Drive is just a place to store files because when you're an Etsy seller, the files can stack up. And this is a way to not overwhelm your computer, fill up your hard drive. So the other thing is your phone, camera, something free that you've already got. I have never used a professional camera or photo for anything and I've made hundreds and hundreds of thousand thousands of dollars on Etsy. Use your phone camera. The iPhone and Samsung cameras now are so good. That's all you really need. So don't feel overwhelmed or like you need to invest in anything else. YouTube, great resource for learning. A ton. I would just tell you, as I said before, be careful about overwhelm. If you start listening to too many different people, it's actually, it's actually not that one is right and one is wrong. There are so many different paths to the top of being a successful Etsy seller. Most of us are right. We just have our own way. And so you just need to find the person that you resonate with and stick mostly to just their content. Because otherwise what happens is a lot of people who listen to my podcast are either undiagnosed or they, they definitely have adhd. And if you don't, if you don't like that term or whatever, like squirrel syndrome, you know, where you can get just distracted and overwhelmed easily. One of the wor. One of the fastest ways to do that is to consume a lot on YouTube. So use it as a helpful tool to answer questions to find the people you resonate with. I have a lot of tutorials over there, especially if you're interested in, there's like SEO tutorials, if you're interested in AI design, stuff like that. Lots of just helpful stuff over there. And then the other free thing that we have is a Facebook group. I have a totally free Facebook group. It's not super, super active, but there's people in there who ask questions every day that we're all answering and you can get some just free help there. What's different about my Facebook group is that I have extremely high standards for conduct. So while a lot of the Facebook groups out there have a lot of complaining, a lot of negativity, they have people being nasty to each other. I have zero tolerance for that. So I call mine the friendly, helpful Facebook group. You can post in there and if someone's nasty they're going to get banned. You have to say when you request to join that you understand the rules. So we also just keep it positive. I'm not over there just like bashing Printify, bashing Etsy, talking about all the negative things, we are focusing on the positive. So those are some free resources just right off the bat that are helpful. Let's move into the tools I think you need to have so kind of the non negotiables. This is what you need to plan to invest in from my perspective to start on Etsy and be successful. So number one, you do need to open up an Etsy shop. I don't know why I can't talk. They have a startup fee and this is why I can't talk. So I've been getting these messages. Etsy is testing a few different workflows for people opening a new shop. It's not always the, it's not the exact same steps for everybody. So, so just know that there, it's really, really intuitive actually if you go, if you go to the very bottom of Etsy.com, there will be a link down there for like open an Etsy shop, become a seller, look for that. Or you can literally go to Google and say become an Etsy seller and it'll give you a link straight to that page where you can go through the steps. So you need to have an Etsy shop and they are charging a startup fee and it varies. So for some people it's like $15, for some people it's $30. I think they're the algorithms trying to just throw a stab out there of like the risk that you're a fraudulent account or a drop shipper somewhere or from a place, you know, selling from a country that's really not allowed. So there's a startup fee, but it's not crazy, but it is something to plan for. And then the other thing that you need is there's, there's no other startup costs other than when you create listings. There's a 20 cent fee for each listing. So otherwise you're not paying anything until you sell Something and then you're just paying a percentage of what you made. I have a link that you can use. It'll be in the show Notes where you can get 40 listings for free. So you still have to pay your startup fee of 15 to 13, $30, whatever they ask you. And then you can. But if you use my link, rather than even going to Google or the bottom of Etsy, just use my starting link, you'll get automatically get 40 listings for free. So that saves you about $8. That's that matters, right? That's lunch, possibly dinner, I don't know. So you have to have an Etsy Shop and there is a little bit of a startup fee there. The other thing that you need to have, if you don't already have one, is some kind of a laptop. Now I know some people can do some of these things from their phone or tablet, but the, the app is very limited compared to the browser. So could you possibly hack it together from like an iPad? And then you'd have to use like the Safari, you'd have to use the browser. You could. Because like from the app, it's hard to even like issue refunds. There's things you can't see that are from the Etsy seller app, which is otherwise very helpful to have. I think you need a laptop. I think you could settle for a Chromebook. Part of this is too, because you're using image generators, you're dealing with files. It's just, you're a business now. This is something I recommend. You can get a chromebook from between 100 and $300. There's not going to be super high powered, it's not gonna have tons of storage, but you've got that free Google Drive. And I've linked in the show notes like a, a Chromebook from Amazon that I think is reasonable. My daughter has one and that can get you started. So I think that's something that you need to have for this. Some people will disagree and say hack it together with an iPad. Try it. You know what the worst is gonna happen? You open the Etsy Shop with the iPad in the browser there and you're like, yeah, this really isn't working. I need a laptop. So that's just my two cents. The other thing that I think you need to have is a Canva account. I think you can start with the free version of Canva. And if you're not familiar, most people are at this stage. But Canva is both on an app and a browser. Canva.com and it is A creative design platform. So it's where you can create images or you can create a banner. You could create, you can edit a photo, you could create a graphic that talks about your product. You can create products in there. So tons and tons of resources to help create the visuals of your business, which is important for every business, especially in today's day and age. What do they say a picture is worth a thousand words. So you can start with a free account. Unless you are. Well, I mean, I guess let me back this up. So the Canva Free account has a lot of features, but you can't do a few things that I think are really important. One is you can't export a file with a transparent background. So let's say you're doing print on demand and you create a T shirt design in Canva and then you want to export that PNG file so you can pull it into Printify to put on your T shirt to sell. You can't export it from Canva with a transparent background. It's going to have a color on it and that's not going to sell. Now you could just export it with the free version of Canva and then literally go to Google and type in free background remover and go through the extra step. You can take the time and go through the steps to do it for free. But it's really nice to have Canva Pro so that you can automatically like, you know, export it with a transparent background. Also, Canva Free does not allow you to remove the background for something. So that's really, really helpful. Is like, let's say you, you know, you have an image and you want to, you want to use that image, but there's a weird background on it. Canva will let you remove that background. It's like an AI tool in the Canva. They have a whole magic studio full of AI tools that don't come with Canva Free but you can start with it. And that's what. So you need to have Canva Free to start. You're ultimately going to want to upgrade to Canva Pro for some of these features. Okay, so you guys know I am constantly testing strategies and frameworks on Etsy so I can tell you what's actually working and what's just noise. And one thing I've noticed over the years is this. Most sellers aren't stuck because they're lazy or doing nothing. They're stuck because they're second guessing everything. What to work on. What matters right now, like whether you're even on the right path and that just becomes exhausting. Like, tell me I'm wrong. So after years of teaching Etsy sellers through courses and workshops and transbotting and coaching and this podcast, I built something that brings everything together in one place and it's called Scaling Society. Scaling Society is my all inclusive Etsy membership for sellers who want clarity and a clear plan without hopping between programs or wondering what to focus on next. Inside, you get my Etsy Seller roadmap so you know exactly what to work on and when and have direction on what resources will help you master that thing. You get all of my courses and workshops. You get access to transpotting the Template Drop SEO training. You get a bunch of done for you resources like prompts and SEO and branding templates. You get a coaching group with real support. So whether you're into community and you like to hang out with others, or you just know you need regular feedback, the coaching community is included. You also get two live coaching calls with me every single month where you can come on live. You can ask me questions, you can request a shop audit and just get that more one on one feel type of feedback. Plus you're going to get automatic access to all of the new trainings and resources I have planned for the year, including guest teachers. So it's designed to meet you right where you are, whether you're brand new or you're ready to scale and help you build intentionally instead of guessing your way forward. And honestly, the biggest feedback I hear from members isn't just about sales, it's relief. It's they finally know what to focus on. So if Etsy feels harder than it should right now, if you're putting in effort but you need more clarity and direction, or if you're ready to treat your shop like a real business with support behind you. You can learn more about scaling Society in the link in the show notes. So there's monthly and annual options. You can cancel absolutely anytime. I'd love to support you inside. The third thing, fourth thing that I think you need to have is a research tool. And you know this is all over the map. You can get them anywhere from hundreds a month to free to what you know, whatever. Etsy. When you go to Etsy.com, you only can get so much information about listings. So let's say you're trying to figure out, you're trying to establish demand for an idea. You're like I want to sell engraved necklaces. And so you go to Etsy.com and you search engraved necklaces and you're trying to look at, you know, look at the search results to figure out is there enough demand for this? Where is there maybe an opportunity like is there something in this space where people are searching for it? But it's not. There aren't a lot of options yet and I could kind of penetrate the market that way. Etsy itself is not going to tell you that information, but there are third party research tools that you can integrate with Etsy through Chrome, through a, through a Chrome extension that will read the Etsy algorithm and be able to give you guesses for these things. So now when I use a tool I can search engraved necklace and I can see, oh wow, this listing here is only a month old and it's already made $4,000 and it's like priced at X and it's like got this many favorites and it's really helpful to know how old a listing is and how much money it's made. Okay. That's like data you can't get from Etsy that you need. So since there's tools all over the map, many of them are very good. But I personally recommend to beginners the tool Profit Tree because you can pay a one time fee and get lifetime access as opposed to a monthly membership. The other thing Profit Tree is going to give you that I think is important is an Etsy fee calculator so you can put in all of your expenses for creating a product and it's going to, it's going to take like, look at your, the, how you're pricing the product, take out all the expenses and tell you what net profit you have. So if you're not naturally really good at mental math, it's going to tell you what, it's going to tell you if your pricing is correct. That's really, really helpful. It's also going to give you all of that information about demand, how, how old listings are, how many times they've sold, how much money they're making, how in demand they are. And what's special about Profit Tree is it has the most recent data. So there's some other tools that are great and some of them even have free. I'm going to talk about them in a little bit, have like a free option but their data is 30 days old. Profit trees is like 24 to 48 hours old. So I like it for beginners because it gives you the best bang for your buck. You're able to see the tags on a listing so you can kind of guess at SEO. You're able to do your, your Profit calculator. You're able to get demand information and it's just one fee. So you can be $67 one time fee, have lifetime access. So that's something to consider. I have a link for that special lifetime access in the show notes and I also have and make a note to link it for you guys. I also have a tutorial so you can see how this thing works. Because I don't know about you, anytime I have like a new software to learn or like I just got one of those vacuums that vacuums and mops at the same time and it sat in the box for like a month because I didn't want to have to figure out how it works. That kind of thing just drains my capacity. So if you would much rather just watch me show you how it works, I've got a short training video totally free on YouTube where you can see how profit tree works. Okay, but you need, the point is you need some kind of, some kind of third party tool to help you do research. I also think you need a free ChatGPT account. It's going to help you compete much better because it's going to tell you you can use it to like write your listing descriptions. You can use it to come up with customer responses that are professional. You can use it to craft the perfect about me section. Like it's just going to help. And it's free. I also have a free tool that you are welcome to to use. It's a, it's a, a custom chat GPT that I literally taught everything from my 10 years plus of experience. It's like if you were to sit down with me for coffee and we were going to try to decide what you were going to sell on Etsy. So I've taught this tool how to walk you through what would be the best thing for you to consider and give you actual listing ideas for what to create. So use ChatGPT to help with your listing descriptions. Use my product picker within there for. It's totally free for product ideas. Customer responses do not come back to me if you're multitasking. Do not use ChatGPT for SEO. Why? Because it's not integrated with Etsy and it cannot tell you what is actually being searched, what keywords are actually being searched and how much, how many times are being searched and how much competition is there for it. So I actually kind of want to run a test for this this year, like run some listings with ChatGPT provided SEO versus actual keyword research. So that's Kind of a misnomer. If you really want to do it the right way. I'm going to talk about it in a little bit in the nice to have tool section. You want a tool like ever be that's actually going to really do SEO research and not just suggest it based on. I mean, ChatGPT is just like basing it on Google, which is completely different from Etsy. The next one I have is kind of on the fringe. So it's on the fringe of need to have and best to have. But if you're a print on demand seller or a digital product seller, either one of them, and you're going to be using AI to create design tools, which these days most of us do, because it makes it much faster, it makes us create better designs earlier, and it helps us keep up with trends. So there's a lot of amazing AI image generators and that's how we're creating our designs. So for print on demand or digital products, I think you need an AI image generator you can use. Well, it would be a paid chatgpt to do this, but I think that there are other options. So my, my recommendation for new sellers is Ideogram. There is a free version, so start with that. It won't cost you anything and you can kind of play with it. Why I like Ideogram is because you can go to the community tab and you can search for what other people have created. And if you're brand new to this, this is going to help a lot. You like? Let's say I wanted to create a grunge style raccoon for the feral girl trend and it was going to have some sassy saying like cuddly on the outside, sassy on the inside. I just made that up. I'm probably going to forget it in 10 seconds. But anyway, I could go to the community like tab of Ideogram and type in the search grunge raccoon and see what everyone else has generated and I can go in and actually see what prompts they wrote to generate. So a prompt is the words that you put into the tool to tell it what to give you. And this is a whole skill to learn. It's really fun. We work on this a lot inside my memberships. So is prompt writing. But you can, this is my cheat sheet for you. Look at what other people have created and then you can pull elements of their prompts to go craft your own. And then I can add on with the text in grunge distressed font, cuddly on the outside, spicy on the inside. Did I just change? I said sassy before, didn't I? This is classic Lizzie. Okay, so I think you need a tool like that. I like that. I can see in the community what other people have created. It can help me Prompt and Ideogram is going to give me four options. It's not just going to give me one design. It's going to give me choices. And I like that as well. It's going to generate, like, alternatives for me. There is a free version of Ideogram, there's a basic $7 a month version of ideogram, and then there's like a $15 per month more intermediate version of Ideogram. So again, you can start it basically free, but I think it's something that you need and you probably pretty quickly will have to upgrade to seven a month. But it's not crazy. Again, this is fringe. Okay? We're moving into best to have. So if you're just getting started, if money is super tight and you really like this needs to be more aspirational for later, that's totally fine. That's why I broke it down this way. But these are tools that my students, when they use them, makes the difference between a slow start without a lot, like kind of slower progress and a harder learning curve to faster progress, better results, better, you know, making money earlier in the process. And it's because these things make it easier, they make it higher quality, they help train your brain better, they just, they get you there faster. But they are best to have, not need to have. The first one is a membership to my trendspotting group. And the reason that this helps is because what I have noticed with new sellers is that if they, if they start learning about trends early on, how to spot them, how to create them, how to leverage them, how to apply them to their own niches, how to get really good at them, they make more money faster. All of my really big success stories are using trends. Now, don't get me wrong, when I first started, I never used trends. I was way too. Well, that's partly true. I was literally doing Joanna Gaines style farmhouse signs. So I had that trend, but I didn't understand font trends or element trends or niche trends or design trends. I didn't under. All of that intimidated me because I felt like I don't have the I. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not naturally good at that. But everything is figureoutable. You can learn anything. And if you learn this, you're gonna have a better chance of competing than if you don't. So if you know nothing, let me teach you. I am literally the one who figured out how to teach this because I wasn't good at it. So I got really good at it. Now I'm like a recognized Etsy trend expert. Every Monday, you're gonna get an email from me with a PDF download that's gonna have all, everything that's happening in trends. Like, here are the new emerging trends, here are the really hot trends, Here are the ones that are steady. You're going to see what they're called. You're going to see pictures that show, you know, like, what they are, what they look like to give you the, the idea to show you the vibe. You're going to get a trend training. So I'm going to literally go through Etsy and show you how to spot the trends, what's happening, how they're showing up. You're also going to get six. No, yeah, six listing ideas. So three print on demand, three digital products. Here are ideas that are high demand, low competition. I'm going to give you done for you SEO, already researched and written for those things. So you're going to see a picture of what the concept is that I'm suggesting you create. And then the SEO, you're going to have access to a monthly coaching call with me where you can get on there. This is, what's really important is this community aspect because you can get on there and ask me questions. You can get, we can get into the weeds together a little more personally. This is the closest we get to like one on one. And then you can also request a shop audit. So this is where people really leveled up is they'd come in one month, I'd look at their shop. I'd say, here's, here's where you need to work on. This is what this is. What's missing, this is, you know, I can, I have over 10 years of experience here. Like, here's what you need to do. Then they can go do it, come back to me a few months later and say, look at it now. And I'm like, yes, okay, you've nailed this. You've done this. You still need to work on this. But hey, like for example, you really get watercolor brushstroke. You do it really well when you create it. This, this is why it's working. Take this and apply it to these other niches and I can throw out the suggestions so you get a little more personalized. So trend spotting, the being able to like learn these trends, start Seeing what they look like, start creating them. It's a $37 a month membership for a weekly, a weekly report and a monthly coaching call. But you can get your first month for just $17. Use the code, keep 20 at checkout. All of this is in the show notes, but it's really, really good to have this. I've noticed it's the biggest differentiator between my new students. Kind of taking longer, maybe really struggling in the early stages. There's enough to struggle with without struggling with this to like clicking it in faster and getting better results in their first six months to a year. Moving on. Another best to have is Canva Pro. We talked about this earlier. It's the paid version of canva that's about $15 a month and is going to get you access to their AI tools, their background remover, exporting with a transparent background, being able to touch up pictures. So let's say I created something in AI and it had a weird element in it. I can go into the pixel remover in the. What is it called in the. Oh, Magic Studio tool and I can you. I can just erase it right out of there. It's. It's like using. It's crazy. It's like using a paintbrush and erasing it. I use it all the time. And then the other thing is, if I get something weird in AI where like the text is wrong, I can use the magic Text Grab and it'll. It'll highlight the text on your design. It'll look in its own library of fonts and find the closest thing to what you had. And then make it editable where you can go in and then like, let's say it misspelled the word feral. Let's say it spelled it F E R E L. I can click Magic Grab for the text. It'll pull up the closest font and then it'll let me edit the font so I can change it to F E R A L. And like, just crazy. It's just so worth it. 15amonth. The other thing, another thing I think you really need is Everby and Everbee is another, another research tool. Like I said, we're going to start with Profit Tree because it's more affordable. You can get a free Ever Be account and it will, it'll be a little limited, but it will give you some great information. It'll help you see keywords. And this is why I think Everbee is so important if you're going to have a really solid SEO strategy. SEO is just your keywords the words that you put in your title, your listing title, your description, and your tags that Etsy looks at. The algorithm looks at the words that you use, and it tries to match it to the right customer. So if a customer is searching in the search bar for words that are on your listing, you have a better chance of being shown to them. That's why your SEO really matters and your strategy really matters. Everbee is going to show you on. You can click on a listing, there's like a little B icon and it'll show you all of the tags on that listing. So I can go to a bestseller, Feral Girl, Raccoon. I can see what tags they've used to rank and I. And I can see how many searches there are per month for that word, and I can see how many people I'd be competing with if I use it. So if you can imagine, the sweet spot is there's a good number of searches and there's low competition. Everbee's great for that. You can start with the free version. Middle of the ground is $29 a month, and then the, the luxury version is $99 a month. Most people can, can hack it with the free to $29. But that tool is really important. I've actually got a tutorial for that as well. I should really link for you guys because again, it's like the vacuum cleaner. We don't want to have to figure it out. I do think pretty quickly you're going to need to upgrade to a paid ChatGPT account or other. What is it called? LLM, large language model. So there's also Grok, Gemini, there's other ones. I just always talk about ChatGPT. We're friends. I call her Gigi. So you can start with the free and you could even go, there's like a $20 a month version that. This is more of a nice to have. You can start with the free version. The next thing I think that you need is professional mockups. So what this is a mockup is a base product picture. But then you can customize what goes on it. So think of it like this. It's a professional picture of a T shirt. Like so it's. It's a lifestyle. The girl looks really cute. Like maybe she's in a, like a. This is one of the trends right now. Maybe she's in like a western kind of a vibe. And it's just like the pit. The shirt is perfectly straight and it's a blank shirt. So you pull that mock up, that blank that blank shirt picture into Canva and you can put your design on it and the girl and the vibe of the mockup helps sells your design if you, if you do it right, as opposed to just a, just a shirt on a white background or a crummy picture. So this makes a really big difference in conversion, which means people see your product and then they buy it. The emotional connection of that, that first impression, that listing thumbnail image is so important for making sales. So I really recommend this, this helps people get sales faster. Is investing in some professional mockups. They're usually about three to seven dollars each, so you could get a decent library in the beginning for $20 to $50. Investment. I have a free resource that will tell you I will literally link for you all of the mockups that convert the best. So I've done a lot of like watching this to see which ones of these can you buy that have the best, that get the best results for people. So you don't have to go figure it out. They're linked for you. There's digital products on there, there's, there's apparel, all kinds of mockups. It's totally free resource. Grab it and you'll know which ones to buy. The next thing that's nice to have or best to have is an LLC for your Etsy shop. This is not legal advice. I'd get us both in trouble if it were. I'm just going to tell you what's worked for me and then what I recommend is that you go, I should link this as well. I have a, like a legal topics page on my website that will first of all link all of the topic. All of the episodes on the podcast where attorney Paige Hulse came on and talked and gave us, gave us like feedback and told us what to do. She's an intellectual property attorney, which is exactly the specialty you want for this kind of a thing. So go and listen to that episode, those episodes for even more. But bottom line, what she has suggested for Etsy sellers is that as soon as you can, when you've got the money to make the investment, you want to set up an LLC for your Etsy shop so that there is a division between your business assets and your personal assets. So if you get into any kind of legal scuffle about something to do with Etsy, that people can't come after your personal assets, that there's a division there. It depends on the state, it varies widely how much it costs to set up your llc. So you're going to want to Google, you know, Nevada LLC and see what the, see what the process is, what it costs to do that. It literally, it's literally all over the map. So check that out. It's something I recommend that and Paige Halls recommends, more importantly, in addition to setting up your llc, which will be anywhere from, anywhere from a couple hundred to $1,000, depending on where you live, you're also going to need to make it like legal an operating agreement. So it's something that you give your, your bank where you have your business account that specifies the terms of the llc, it talks about who it includes, what the, how it's governed, all of the, you know, all of the legal stuff. And so pagehulse has a operating agreement that I will link below. There's one for if it's just one of you in the LLC and there's one if there's multiple people, you want to make sure you get the right one. And if you use their, they're pricey. So if you use the code smiley, S M I L E Y 10 Again, all in the show notes, you can get 10% off. Save some money on this. It kind of will help bring the investment down a little bit. But that's something that is important to have as you scale because at the end of the day like I love what Etsy can do for us, but like how awful if we were to have a legal problem that affected our personal like our, our home, our family or you want to take these steps once you can, you don't want to put it off too long. So listen to those episodes. First and foremost, grab these resources when you're ready for them. The next thing that is best to have is to use QuickBooks for all of your expenses. It is like a web based program that helps you do your bookkeeping, track your expenses, track your Etsy fees, all of it, so that when tax time comes, either you or your accountant can really easily do your taxes and stay compliant and do things on the up and up. So what's really nice is that if you go into your Etsy account dashboard, once you open up your shop, there's something called your Etsy Shop. There's a finances tab and in there you can go and sign up for QuickBooks and they've got discounted rates there. It's going to be anywhere, depending on the size of your business and the complexity of it, from $10 to $57 a month. It's nothing crazy. If you're super math inclined, you can obviously do this in Excel on your own. But Most businesses use QuickBooks no matter what their size is because it helps you do it more efficiently. The next thing that I think is best to have is a business credit card, especially if you're in Print on demand. Because when the order is coming in from Etsy it's linking right to like let's say your Print Printify account or whoever you're using to fulfill your Print on demand products. And Printify is going to bill you right away. So the customer paid Etsy, Printify is billing you and it'll be a beat before you get the money from Etsy and then you're gonna have to go like, you know, reconcile so you're out the cash in the beginning. So I for Print on Demand recommend a Chase credit card because they have. It's really easy to apply for and get one. It's what a lot of Print on a mail Print on Demand sellers start with has really, really good points and reward system. So I have a link below that you can use. It'll get give both of us bonus points which is a nice little perk they love when you do that. So if you want to use the one that I use or if you've ever listened to Jenny from the shop, I think even Heather Studio, we all use the same one. So it's linked down there below. And then the other need to have or I'm sorry, best to have is obviously a Printify account. If you're doing print on Demand it's actually a need to have and you can do the free one. But I wanted to take a second to recommend Printify Premium. I actually don't like affiliate for them anymore or anything but when you start moving volume, paying $29 a month for Printify Premium, it reduces your out of pocket expense. So I don't know what the prices are right now, but let's say a shirt order, let's say a large shirt is typically $20. Having Printify Premium is going to give you a better rate like 15 for that same shirt so you've got more of a profit margin. I made those numbers up so don't take it to the bank. But I think that's important to have for those of you who are in handmade products. I learned a lot about shipping as you can imagine and there's a lot of tools that can help do that better. And because this is this, one of the things you've really got to figure out is shipping. I will tell you the good news is is once you have figured it out, it's not going to constantly change. So it's going to take some energy up front to get your process down and then it's not going to be nearly as overwhelming. I promise. What I have linked for you are all the best deals. So cost effective. Shipping tape, standardized boxes where you can buy them, the label printer and labels that I recommend if you don't want to use a labor printer. I have printer label sheets that I used for years. I have fragile stickers linked in there and then a scale so you can weigh your packages. So I just did this for years and years. These are the things that I liked. They're linked for you if you want them. Totally up to you. And then as we are kind of like the last one here that I want to talk about is nice to have. So this is where you're moving into. Okay. I have a little more leeway on what I can invest in my business. I want to treat this more like a business and do things more efficiently, do things at like a more luxury level. Many of you are there because you're asking me for these resources. So the first thing that I think is nice to have is a membership to my scaling society. One of the biggest problems that Etsy sellers have, even when they get to this messy middle point where they're starting to scale and make money, but they're a little stuck, is they don't know what to focus on. New sellers have this too. You don't know what to focus on. You don't know where you're even really at in the Etsy seller journey. A lot of times actually people are much more advanced than they think they are and I have to be like, no, you're trying to like play let's start an Etsy shop. When really you're at it's time to scale an Etsy shop. Scaling Society gives you access to my community where we are very interactive in helping each other. Coaching calls, shop audits, lots of trainings, daily prompts, design trainings, access to all of my resources and what's probably most important is my Etsy seller roadmap. So this is a tool that's going to tell you exactly the stages of Etsy Seller growth, what you need to do and learn at every single one of them and what resources you should use to master that piece. And it gives clarity where there's otherwise confusion and overwhelm. It helps to simplify. I think it gives a lot of security because you know what you should be focusing on. You're not in this guessing, like feeling like you're wasting your time spinning your wheels. You're clear, you're focused and you have support. So you're able to get on with me in the coaching calls and get a shop audit every few months. Know exactly where you stand, know what you need to work on, ask questions in the coaching group every single day, get peer reviews on designs or listings or your shop at any time, ask my team of coaches questions and get. It's a. It's a huge help. It's nice to have. It's $147 a month. You can cancel anytime. But it's an. It's my all access, like my all inclusive program. So you're in there for 147. You get everything. You're not buying all of my courses and workshops and resources piecemeal. It's all in there. There's a ton of done for you stuff in there. It's extremely helpful. The second thing that I think is nice to have is upgrading from that MacBook, that basic LA to a much more powerful gaming laptop. This is really great for people doing a lot of AI. Mine was $2800. I have a link to it on Amazon if you want. The one that I have. It's an Alienware and it can handle a lot of AI images, it can handle a lot of files, it can handle a lot of processing. This is what you need as you get faster because you're going to see that that Chromebook is going to get weighed down. So it's obviously a bit of an investment. But this is the. This is kind of big leagues which you're going to need. The next thing I think is nice to have is a kittl account. They do have a free version, but you can also do a $15 a month or a $30 a month depending on what you need and pay a little extra for AI generation credits. KITTL is really nice after that. Kind of need to have Ideogram account because KITTL gives you access to a bunch of image generators. So rather than being boxed into just one, you can use several of them and test. And that can be really, really helpful if you're in scaling society. You'll see in the daily prompts. Becca provides the prompts but also provides what it looks like from the different image generators so you can start to get a feel for which one works well for what you're creating. I also think it's nice to have a midjourney account. This is a separate image generator, runs from 10 to $60 per month. I use Mid Journey for creating my own mockups for both digital and apparel products. I use Midjourney for anything watercolor. I think it's the best for that. I also think Midjourney is the best for wall art for the most part. There's some exceptions where Ideogram's great, but Midjourney is really good for those particular types of files. Like for example, while Ideogram is best for coloring pages like hands down. Or if you want to do any kind of text, Midjourney is terrible at text. If I want my feral girl like cuddly on the outside, spicy on the inside, I would never run that in Midjourney. It would misspell every single word. But I'd put it in Ideogram and it would slap every time. Another nice to have. This is kind of funny. I don't know why I threw this on. Here is a LastPass account. So LastPass is a web based and also app based program that organizes all of your passwords. So if you're like me and you have a hundred thousand different logins and you can never remember your passwords or even the link to log in or your username, all of that thing I use LastPass, it's not expensive. I thought something to consider. It's not expensive. I didn't even write on here. It's so funny. I literally, I just like kind of made lists which is, which is like classic Lizzie. But that's good. Some of you are just like oh my gosh Lizzie, you just changed everything. Because I have everything in a note document or a word document or I have it on a scratch paper. Well these days it's too easy to get hacked when you do that. So you want a secure thing. Lastpasses it. Another really nice to have is a Creative Fabrica membership. Especially if you're doing anything any visual creations, print on demand or digital products. These days you can do a lot with AI, but it can be really nice to have Creative Fabrica. So here's Creative Fabrica has millions of already created graphic elements, fonts, like bundles, things like that that you can use for commercial purposes. So I have a link below where you can get your first month free or like up to 10 downloads like totally free and then it's about 999amonth for all access and especially before AI or if you don't like AI. This is a great tool because you can be creating your own things but like piecing together really professional made images and fonts and things like that. It's really it's this was the before AI. This was the secret to the print on demand sellers. This is where they, how they were able to create quickly and really high quality. So creative fabric is a great resource. And then another really nice to have as you're trying to scale is a tool called simply listed. You can get. Well let me tell you what it is first. So it was created by Cassie Johnson, who's a friend of mine. She's incredible, very talented, print on demand seller and coach. And she created this to help create mockups faster to create your listing images. So especially in print on demand, it's very cumbersome going through all of the steps of creating the design, putting it on the product, putting it on the mockups, putting it in Printify, putting it, it's a lot. Simply listed helps you automate the mockup creation. You like upload all of your favorite mockups in there and then automatically then you upload your design, it automatically puts it on all of them and you can bulk download it all. This is a time saving tool for efficiency. I have a 14, 14 day free trial link which is amazing and then it's just 15 to $30 a month. So once you get to this level, this is one of those like unlocks that you want because it goes faster. In the meantime, what you can do is kind of a side hack. You can create a design file in Canva and put all of your mockups in there and then you can kind of drag and drop to your your new design that you created onto each mockup and then export those as a bundle. It's not as fast as simply listed because simply listed will literally like auto pop. Place it on every single mockup and also put your watermark over it. So it's like definitely faster. But just so you know, there's that hack. Another really nice to have thing for automation is hello Custom, which is a web based AI program that is for print on demand sellers. And let's say you want to sell a mug but it has a place where they put someone's name on it. Okay, so every mug is a little different because someone's name is Jenny and someone's name is David and someone's name is Elizabeth and you want it changed. So what they can do is hello Custom connects to your Etsy shop and it connects to Printify. And when someone orders the custom item, they type in the personalization field what the name is. And then hello Custom takes the order, applies the name in the font that you tell it to, so it's all preset up and then you just approve it and it goes to Printify. So you're not having to go for every single mug order which by the way there's not huge profit on mugs. You're not having to go into Canva to manually update the design for every single one. This is like an unlock. Hello. Custom is actually very affordable. It's a one time fee of $67 for a major time saver. So this is really, really nice to have this one I didn't really know where to put. It's kind of just everywhere. I don't recommend really focusing on social media until you're past at least 500 sales. I'm usually suggesting them more like past a thousand sales. The one exception may be Pinterest. I just don't want you to get burnt out because you're doing too many different things. So Pinterest can be great. If you're going to list on Pinterest. I wanted to make sure you knew about this tool. It's called Etsy's Share and Save program. I have a link in the Show Notes where you can. There's not like a direct link I can send you, but you can. It'll. This will take you in your shop to to where you can sign up for Share and Save. It's just literally a click or two and then you can go into any listing in your Etsy shop and click the Share and Save and get a special link to to like let's say a customer asks for something, you can send them the Share and Save link or you're going to post on Pinterest. Use the Share and Save link because what happens is if you. I have a fly going. If you're seeing me flail, there's like a fly in my office. The Share and Save link tells Etsy that you created the sale rather than an Etsy ad or rather than the Etsy Algori or something else, a Google search. You created the sale by sending the link so they reduce your transaction fee. It's going to save you money. So if you're going to do Pinterest I just want to make sure you know, always, always, always link your Share and Save links for your listings so that you save on the transaction fee. The last thing I want to mention is for advanced Etsy sellers. So Once you're at 500 sales I recommend that you start building an email list. You could do it sooner but again I'm worried about you hitting overwhelm. I really want you in the beginning, focusing on mastering the Etsy platform, creating designs that sell with high emotional connection, understanding how to visually represent things. Getting really good at design, getting really good at product positioning where you're converting, you're getting sales. I want you focusing on that. Too many people get distracted with building their own website or adding social media or adding an email list too early and I'm like, no, please get good at selling stuff first. Once you hit 500 sales, it's a great time to start building an email list. You can either use Everbee email, which is really nice. If you're already using Everbee because it's just integrated, it's right there. It can work very seamlessly with your shop. I think actually if you already have an Ever Be you can use Ever Be email free. Up to 250 subscribers and 300 or sorry 3,000 emails a month. That's a really good deal. So it's kind of a no brainer to make it automated. Or you can use there's a free service called Mailerlite M A I L E R L I T E and it starts free. So it's a third party tool. You would set up your email there and you could create like a QR code to that landing page to join that email list and like put it in your listing photos. Like get 10% off when you sign up to get emails here. And then there's a QR code, they click the QR code they put in their email address, they get their coupon and they come back and buy and now they're on your email list where you can follow up with them about, you know, new promotions, new products or whatever, it's really good to start building that. The other thing for advanced sellers, I think if you, you never have to go start building your own shop or your own website. But I do typically recommend as you become a more legacy Etsy seller, so a minimum 500 but probably a thousand sales, you want to start scaling off of Etsy, you can build your own website. And so I recommend either Everbee store which is automatically connected to your Ever Bee any. What's really nice about it is that it just syncs everything. So again, time saving. You don't want to go and upload a new listing to Etsy and then go upload a new listing to like Shopify. It's extra steps. If you use Ever Be Store, it all just syncs it takes care of it for you. It's going to be Everby Store is going to be $29 per month. Up to 399amonth depending on like how many listings, like how advanced you are. So very reasonable. Whereas like Shopify is another option. If you don't use Everbee or you just really have always wanted to use Shopify, you can start a website on Shopify at $20 a month to 299amonth, depending on, you know, the bells and whistles and the size. Again, this is for my advanced sellers. I'm not suggesting you even really consider this until you're at at least 500, if not a thousand sales. And I say that range because people who are in handmade products, after you've sold 500, you're a lot more advanced than someone who's in digital products and has sold 500. So digital products, print on demand, I want you to have a thousand sales. Handmade, you've made a lot more money and you've gone through a lot more reps and ropes at 500 sales. That's why I say that. So I'm super excited to hear your feedback about this. I hope it helps. I hope especially it helps demystify what you really need versus you know, what's good to have, like what I recommend versus what's like kind of luxury nice to have. Send me all of your feedback on Instagram or TikTok on how you liked this episode. Join me back next week for the roundtable with Becca and Preston to talk about the things we wish we knew before we started an Etsy shop for sure. Check out my new free training. It's a no brainer if you're in print on demand or digital products. You want to learn how to blow up your Etsy shop. And this is literally the strategy the mega sellers use to do just that. And you can start doing it today. If you're in handmade products, it'll apply to you if you can personalize your product, if you can customize it. But even if it doesn't apply to you yet, it's what I would recommend you consider as you scale because you can scale a lot further when you can take the same base product and customize it. So I won't tickle the dragon anymore. Check out that free training. Thanks for hanging out with me. This was a lot. I really can't wait to hear what you thought. But until next week, go make something awesome. I love you guys. Have a good one. 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.