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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. Okay, guys, I'm so excited. I just can't even do a normal intro. I've been looking forward to this episode and I have so much to tell you. I am literally vibrating. I'm so excited. Hey guys and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here and if you're new here, I'm sending you such a big hug. Let's be honest. I'm sending you a big hug even if you're not new and even if you're not a hugger. So excited you're here. This is one of my favorite kinds of episodes to do because I get to be my ADHD queen self and just read through FAQs and I get to bounce from subject to subject and talk really fast. So slow me down now if that's not your thing and you want me slower. Most of you though, I'm literally the only person you don't have to speed up. Cause I'm like Alvin and the Chipmunks. So first things first, when you're listening to this. If you're listening to this today, it drops Thursday. We have begun our three day trek to our summer home. So every year we spend fall and winter, like up until like, you know, usually end of May. Well, usually we're going early this year, usually until June. In South Texas, we have a farm. That's where you see a lot of. You've seen a lot of my content on Instagram. And then it gets really hot in Texas and we go to where I'M from to northern Wisconsin. We have a lake house. It's just a cabin. Don't get too excited about this two house thing. It's a cabin, but it is on a lake. And we get to enjoy just the most gorgeous northern woods. It's just my thing. And we spend summer and fall there and the kids get to play in the water and I get to breathe really fresh like oxygenated from trees air. And it's the best ever. And my family does the same thing. They're in a different house, but we all go up. And when we're in Texas, we're like over an hour away from each other. Almost an hour and a half. And there we're like five minutes away. We're like on connecting lakes so we can like take a boat to each other's house anyway, so that's really exciting. That's literally happening. Say a prayer for us for safe travels because we want no drama. We're pulling RV with all of our pets and all. Obviously my kids and I get to be a little workaholic in the front seat for those three days. It's gonna be great. So that's what's happening when you're listening and you need to know we're going way early this year because if you've been here a while, you'll know what a big deal this. My husband got a job. So for nine months I was the only income earner. He was out of work. It was completely crazy, random, unexpected. He'd only been in his last job for like 50 something days that that company had scouted him from another company that he had been at for a while and liked. But like this was a really cool opportunity. It was so crazy. So like my heart really goes out to you if you have been only on living on one income or maybe not even having any income like it gets, it's like kind of rough out there and I just want you to know like there is hope. We are so excited. So we are getting up to the lake before he starts and so thank you for everyone who prayed for us, who sent us all the good vibes. I'm really, really excited. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you need to know that our first cohort, I did like a six week cohort. It called it the Shop Sprint intensive for new Etsy sellers to go from zero to 50 listings in six weeks. We just wrapped that like a week or two ago. I don't know, it's all blur in my head. And that went so well, we're definitely going to do more, so make sure that you get on one of our wait lists for that if you want to be joining us. We're going to do a print on Demand 1 In the fall, so that's going to be incredible. It'll be for beginners, but you guys know we're not supposed to wait till fall to be getting things. We want to be ready for Q4 immediately going now. But really, really, really good results and feedback from that. I'm sure we'll talk about the cohort more. But one of the special things we did for our cohort members, we had 42 people go through with us and we, we. So they got to, they could purchase the cohort to come through the intensive. We met every week for six weeks. We had a school community. They got access to lots and we just kind of were able to help them, you know, get through those early days of getting the shop launched. We offered them an optional, totally optional done for you package where if they wanted to cut their time in half because it was going to be an intensive, we were going to give them really high quality prompts for their, for their listings. Done for you SEO blocks, like for all of the different, like niches and holidays and things like that. Done for you listing description templates. Done for you listing images and thumbnails mockups. All the other listing images, all of it was just provided and it cut their time even more than in half. And I, I need to, like, I need to tell you that I always say I would, said I would never do that. I think I just didn't envision like how I could do it, but we did it for them because we're like, some of these folks are going to need help. I need you to know that there were people who bought this who really had no experience and they like, they'd not, hadn't even opened their Etsy shop before and they got sales off of these things. Like I, some of the people were really like, you know, we had a few women who were like over 60, like our beloved Rose and had done nothing like this before and they got these things to help them and it got freaking sales. And they were so excited. They're like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do now. And so we like helped them through that. And then, let's see, like, so 12 out of the 42 took it and the ones who did loved it. I want to tell you. So Amanda said I loved the done for you package. I was really struggling to get started and found keyword research completely overwhelming. I felt so lost and honestly had major analysis paralysis. I wasn't creating designs because I kept getting stuck trying to find the right keywords. The done for you package gave me a clear starting point and helped me eventually understand what I should be doing. It got me moving instead of overthinking everything and seeing a few sales come in was so rewarding. You say you don't gatekeep and you truly mean it. I felt like I've learned so much already. So thank you for offering this. I am genuinely so excited to keep working at it and I've only made it through about a third of the listings you gave us so far and I plan to work through the rest over the next couple of weeks. I would absolutely buy another done for you package again. I'm honestly bummed so I would totally buy it again. And she was bummed that it was almost that. She says, I'm honestly bummed that I did not pick wall art. So she didn't do the wall art listings. So I would totally buy it again to get started in the right direction. Thanks so much. Okay, so that's the first one. So why am I telling you this? Because we are releasing done for you packages to everyone. So if you we have three different tiers of like depending on how big you want this done for you package, it's going to have really high quality prompts that take into consideration trends and high demand niches. It's going to come with blocks of like a done for you SEO kit and it's going to have done for you listing description templates done for you mockups done for you listing graphics. Like you're going to be able to get off on such a strong foot so fast. There's also a teacher specific bundle. So if you are a teacher or you love the teacher niche and that sounds really fun to you, it's a very specific bundle that that has a lot of designs and things specifically for teachers and so you guys are gonna wanna grab that down in the show notes if you wanna have like the advantage that Amanda did to go so much faster. I also have another one I wanna read to you. This one was anonymous, but feedback was provided. She said, I absolutely love the done for you package and it saved me so much time. Learning all of this for the very first time can honestly feel really overwhelming, especially with how many steps are involved in the process. Having everything laid out visually made such a huge difference for me because it helped me see all the pieces organized which made it so much easier to understand how everything actually works together. I've learned so much already and it's made me feel way more comfortable moving forward with my shops and designs. It truly took away so much of the guesswork and I would absolutely buy it again. So, so much good feedback. Let me now just play for you. I had someone send a video and audio so you could hear what Katie thought of the done for you packages.
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Hey, Lizzy and Becca, I just wanted to say thank you so much for the done for you templates. They have really been great in order to get my shop up and running and I've seen success with them. I love the way that Becca has the design eye when creating the prompts in order to hit both what will work and what is trending. The keyword buckets really help and I was able to get listed listings up much faster in order to drive traffic. I have started to see sales because the trends are hitting and they have really been an increase in my shop traffic and sales.
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So if you would like to check those out, like I said, there's three tiers. We've made them like different, different budget options so that you can dig into that and really this summer, like get going, especially if you're trying to get going or you haven't made sales yet, we are going to really, really help you out. Grab one of those. Literally can't believe I made them. The final thing is you're going to want to watch this week's YouTube video that I published. It is down in the show notes and you need to know that our man Jason, he is one of the coaches inside my scaling society. He works for me and he's kind of our tech genius. He has cracked KITTL Automations. You guys. Here's what that means. KITTL has some amazing technology to where you can use prompts and set up art boards to generate products and mockups and everything for you. So he's literally figured out how you can take, you can create like a whole more complicated digital product. Let's say it's multiple pages that you sell in your digital products and you can have KITTL create them for you by just putting in the prompts and a couple of clicks. Then take those designs and mock them up for you and create all of your listing images for you and then create your listing video for you all in kittl, all in one flow. So if you are into that tech or you are into saving a ton of time and making your products so much faster, you're gonna wanna Check that out. He has really cracked this code. And we had one student who is literally in tears. Being like, this is going to propel me so so far so fast. Because the biggest bottleneck in digital products like multi pages is how long it takes to create it. So we're gonna get into FAQs now, but you're gonna wanna check that out. Loved this little catch up moment with you guys. So let's dig in. Okay, let me see. I've got like this list in front of me. Wait, hold on. Where is. Okay, she says my shop has been open one month, I need to pop on the glasses and I've had 100 sales already. Holy cow, girl. I hope you know what a big deal that is. All thanks to your tips and tricks. Oh, currently the most daunting thing to me is taxes. Can you talk about how taxes work with an Etsy shop? I'm a nurse, so everything I've done with the business is so over my head. Okay, this is a great question and I am the furthest thing from a tax expert on the planet, so I cannot give tax advice. But here's what I'm going to tell you. Number one, keep track of all of your expenses. Anything like anything that, that costs you money in your business, whether it's like your Etsy signup fee, your listing fees, your transaction fees, people who are doing physical products, your shipping, any supplies products, anything like subscriptions that you have. Get receipts for all of those. Keep track of all of them because that's going to help you so much. And then one of two things, if you, if it's in the budget, I highly recommend a CPA because these things do get complicated and it can really help you out. It's like one of those things that maybe at this point might be worth it to do that. If that is definitely not an option. I want you to know that using TurboTax is going to make this so easy for you. Just keep all of your receipts, organize all of your expenses. When it's tax time, like Etsy is going to send you a tax form, but you're going to have other things that you want to like write off off from your business. That's why you want to keep those receipts. When I tell you that TurboTax is literally going to take your hand and walk you through and file everything correctly for you, that's the way to go. Like that's something I can actually legally tell you without giving you tax advice. And also it's literally what my husband did every year until we hired an accountant, so do that. You could also TurboTax has like a little chat search feature where you could literally type in like Etsy shop business and it'll give you. You could like go look at some of their tutorials now if you kind of wanted to be ahead. So congratulations on absolutely killing it. That is amazing. I hope that you're enjoying the creative outlet from your business. Okay, next up, I noticed that some sellers have may have products from the dollar store or other wholesale companies. Is that allowed on Etsy? No. Everything on Etsy has to either be made or like curated by the seller themselves or designed by. So that's like drop shippers and they end up getting shut down. Great question for sellers who stick with long with Etsy long term, how common is it to eventually get a bestseller badge on a listing? My shop is almost two years old. I sell print on demand Accessories with about 350 active listings and 700 sales. Go, good job. I've never had a bestseller badge. Does it typically take years for that first one to happen or do most shops get one earlier? And once someone gets their first bestseller badge, does it actually change the trajectory of the shop? Okay, I can tell you were like an analytical queen and I love that. So first of all, amazing job getting to 700 sales. That's awesome. As far as a bestseller badge, it's all over the map. Like some people come in and they're really good designers and they'll have a bestseller badge within a few months of getting started. Some never have one, Some it's like a year or two in. It all has to do with like the velocity of a particular listing and how many people purchase it within a. Within a period of time. So Etsy is looking for things that like a lot of people buy in a period of time. They say when you like hover over a bestseller badge, that it's six months, but they don't track a listing for six months before giving you a bestseller badge. So here's the thing I would tell you. First of all, bestseller badges are obviously great, right? They when someone sees sees that on a listing, they are more likely like that kind of pushes them over the edge to buy, right? Because it's like this social proof thing. But there's a downside too because competitors tend to find people through bestseller badges. So actually I would be very excited to be. You have a lot of listings that are performing well for me, but kind of flying under the radar. I don't know. You said you're selling print on demand Accessories with print on demand. Like I don't know what your income goals are, but let's say you'd like to make like a full time income, like 5 to 10,000amonth or more. I would be working towards like first goal, 500 listings, then a thousand listings, then 2,000 listings. Adding gradually, usually not every time. Okay, some people every. It's all subjective, right? But I have noticed that sellers in print on demand who make 5 to 10,000amonth have usually have 1 to 2000 listings minimum. And then because sometimes too they'll phase out over time, they won't be as popular anymore and you need to continue to add listings. It kind of slow. You don't have to do it once you get to that level, you don't have to add them as often as in the beginning when I'm saying like can you try to get two up a day minimum would be great. So I, I don't think. If I were you, I wouldn't even be thinking about the bestseller badge. I'd be like cool. I'm making sales flying under the radar. Focus on the products that sell the best for you because you should know from your like looking at your orders which ones are doing are performing well and selling most often and use those as your teachers to inform what to create next. And rather than worrying about the badge. I think you're doing awesome. Like I actually think you have a huge advantage kind of flying under the radar. The next one says most POD advice seems to focus on text based designs for apparel like sayings or slogans. But I sell phone cases where the best selling designs tend to be more visual or aesthetic rather than text based. And your experience working with sellers, Is it harder to succeed with print on demand when you're selling visual designs instead of text based ones? And do most successful POD sellers rely mainly on text designs or are there also shops doing well with purely aesthetic designs? Thank you, Lizzie. Okay, so you have already like you are so on top of this. I love like you're literally your research told you the answer. This is a great question. When we study the trends, we study the PNGs, right? Because they are the first places that trends show up. But you are brilliant that you're doing your own research in your specific product category. And every single one of us should do this for get my trend report to tell you what the visual esthetic trends are so that you can try to break them into your niches faster. Get there before other sellers, but really be paying attention to the trends and what sells well, in your particular product category? I. Yes. For, for like apparel designers, simple sells, especially when people aren't good designers yet. But I actually don't think that. I think that print on demand sellers can do great with text based and with like aesthetic designs. The, the main thing that they have to have, whether it's text based or aesthetic design, is emotional connection. Every listing, thumbnail is going to be stronger if it has emotional connection. And that's why sometimes like words can really, can really create that for us. Right? Like we can connect emotionally really easily with words. But a, like. So for example, let's say in like the homesteader niche, if you have a design that that's like, that's like maybe doodle and has like, it has some sourdough and it has, you know, some chickens and it has an apron, it has like some things that feel very homesteader. There can be no words on there. It could be totally aesthetic and sell like hotcakes because it's emotionally connected to the homesteader who loves those things. Right. So you keep going. I think with, with like cell phone cases, patterns are great. Like seamless patterns do great paying attention to the trends. So for example, summer 2026, lots of people are loving fruits and vegetables. It'd be really cool to have some cell phone cases that had fruits and vegetables patterned on them. So like we see a lot of strawberries, we see a lot of tomatoes right now. Like, I don't know, vegetables are having a moment. So that's something that you could, that you could do that would be maybe like a pattern. So what I'm telling you ultimately is follow your instincts. Aesthetic designs for phone cases is spectacular. I'd actually, you could test some text only I don't know how well they'd actually work in phone cases. The next one says for SEO, should we use the same keywords in the title and the tags, exact matches or should they be completely different? I think they should be different. So when you do your keyword research, you know, hopefully you'll have like, you know, quite a bit to choose from to build your listing. And I always say you want to use some low competition keywords, some middle competition keywords and some high competition keywords. This is something I teach in detail, how to research and actually write the SEO in my Etsy SEO course. So if you really wanted to drill down into the strategy. But so here's, here's what I suggest. So you like use that strategy, the low, medium and high in your tags, especially the title on Etsy. I like the very first part of my title to be the most helpful keywords for the customer. So I may have found I'm going to totally make this stuff up. Okay, I'm going to say words that I haven't researched, but let's say I sell a boho bookmark for readers. Okay? And I found that the keyword let me think of a term. And I found in my research that 70s wildflowers bookmark had an incredible keyword ratio. That kind of applies to my, to my bookmark. So I'm going to use it on there. I would use that in my tags, but I want the first part of my listing title to be literally like boho wildflower bookmark for book lovers, something like that, or for book talkers. It's because you want the customer to look at your title and immediately know what they're getting. So rather than really being focused on that first fragment of your keywords in your title being like, oh, I've got to follow this SEO strategy. I'd love for you to make it like a, a mini sentence that makes sense to the shopper to answer your question. If that mini keyword phrase or mini sentence directly correlates with a tag, it's totally cool to repeat it there. Because what, you want that beginning of that title to be so helpful to the shopper? Then use the rest of your title to use other keywords that maybe you couldn't fit into your tags that you want to put emphasis on. Great question. The next one says, is SEO case sensitive? Like do capital letters matter? What about apostrophes, periods, hashtags and dashes, both in our titles and title and tags? None of that matters. It's not case sensitive. It is not. It totally ignores any punctuation. Great question. If you sell PNGs, is it a bad idea to start print on demand and use those PNGS if they are performing well? Not at all, no. And I think you could do it all in the same shop. The next one says, is it okay to sell digital and physical products in the same Etsy shop if they're in the same niche that is faith based. Yes, absolutely. That's a great idea. Would you recommend trying to revive an old Etsy shop or starting a new one? Okay, well, that's a separate question. So first of all, especially if everything in your shop is for the same type of shopper, you can have handmade print on demand digital products, everything in the same shop. You could even be throwing in like supplies or vintage items. Like, the idea is your Shop is for a particular type of person. So don't even hesitate if you're creating for one niche. To have products in different categories there, that is great. I also think if you're brand new and you're testing some different things out, it's okay to have a few different things in your shop, like different types of products while you're figuring out what's going to work. Because a lot of times, and this has happened to me repeatedly, what I start out to sell isn't what ends up working for me. And I feel like a lot of times we get really wrapped around the axle about like, okay, but this is my niche. I can't create that. I've got to only create this. And that can actually slow people down. I'd much rather you, in the beginning try a bunch of things in the same Etsy shop. And what's gonna happen is something is gonna emerge as the thing that works and then you're gonna lean into that and the other things are gonna fade out over time. So let that natural process happen. But would you recommend trying to revive an old Etsy store or starting a new one? That depends. Okay, so I've done both and they both work. When you're trying to revive an old one, the advantage is if you have a lot of really great reviews, if it shows a lot of sales, then when you go to revive it and other new shoppers come and see it, they automatically have trust, you know, Whereas a brand new shop, you've got to start from zero with trust. There's no reviews, there's no sales, there's no time that you've been on Etsy that can, you know. So then you've got to make up for it with just like incredible products and competitive prices. You've got to kind of feed that, feed that flow. Whereas the older shop will help you look good. But here's what I'm gonna tell you. Here's the other side of the coin. When you're reviving an old shop, you've gotta be patient because your listings are gonna take a little longer at first to build traction. So you have to. And it really is true. Either way, whether you're doing reviving an old shop or starting a new one, you need to be consistently listing like several times a week, if not every day, to kind of awaken the algorithm. And I do feel like I don't have anecdotal data for this, but this is what I kind of like feel has been my experience. It's a bit easier to get traction in a new shop than reviving the old one. So just be ready to have it take a little bit longer and know that when people do come and they do find your listings that the existing reviews and sales and time on Etsy is going to help you. So it's totally up to you. If it was for the same niche, I'd probably go ahead and, you know, revive the old one. If it was some a completely new product, I'd start a new one. Probably just confuse you all more with that, but it's the truthful answer. I'd rather just give you the full truth. The next one says, I know it takes a while for the Etsy algorithm to pick up a new listing and show it to people, but I'm trying to work out at what point I should be seeing lots of views. I've heard it be said that you should wait for 30 days before assessing results. So I would expect for the first few weeks I might get no views at all and then they would start to come in at once if my SEO is right or would they gradually build up? Just want to better understand what I should expect in the early weeks and months. Okay, so I get this question a lot. It so it can take time. So sometimes I'll get up a new listing and it'll sell right away, like same day or within 48 hours. Sometimes I'll get up a listing and it's usually because I'm working in the trends, right. So I'm usually taking a trend into a new niche a little early and it'll be a few months before it actually sells. And it gets really frustrating for me because I'm like, I know this is hot. Sometimes I get up a listing and it doesn't sell until a year later. Those are the most frustrating. Okay. And that's usually seasonal stuff. So it doesn't sell in the first season. Maybe I got it up too late or whatever. So it's all relative. I rather than here like. So let me tell you how I think about this because I'm not trying to skirt the question. It's just like it's we. You may want to do a like a private Etsy coaching call with one of our coaches. Those are available on my website. We have a number of different coaches to pick from. So like you could see look for the one that's work, that does the type of product you're selling if they're print, on demand, digital or handmade. Because it could. It totally depends. It would need to be like, I need to look and see, like, well, what is your SEO? Is that the actual problem? Or are your thumbnails maybe not going to convert in the feed? Or is it a product that there actually isn't demand for? There's so many different things it could be. So this is one of those things that getting actual personalized feedback would be helpful. And I like, if you didn't want to do that or for everyone else listening, I wouldn't actually focus on this. So like especially in the beginning, your first, until you get to like even a hundred sales, just keep adding listings. Don't go back and look at the ones before on what you need to fix. Don't go back and worry about the SEO. Don't go back and wonder. Look at the data, the analytics, because it could be a million different things. The better thing to use your time for is before you sit down to create the next thing, do market research, build your brain cash. Go and look at the best sellers in the space that you're you're going to be creating in. Go like actually refine your skills. Get better at designing or creating whatever it is. Like, look at the best sellers and be like, how can I make my thumbnails better like these? How does my pricing match these? What do these reviews say that make this great or that I could make something better or different? What keywords are they using that I could incorporate next time? I always encourage my students, don't look in the rear view mirror. Move forward and figure out how you can get better. Because here's what happens when we get on my trendspotting coaching calls or my scaling society coaching calls or doing shop audits, I look at the, at their listings. Like if I look at a shop and they're just starting to like get some traction. If I go back and look at their first listings. And this is the same for me too, guys, when I start something new, like the first several aren't very good and I thought when I created them they were incredible, but they really weren't. They weren't going to actually compete. And so I think that we can get into analysis paralysis. Do I think you should never go back and look at them? No, but I would actually wait until you get some sales under your belt. I would like continue learning forward and continuing adding listings. Then once you kind of know what you're doing, you're getting some traction. Maybe go back and look and see. Okay, so here are my older listings. Okay, so these designs would never sell. I can even just maybe deactivate those. These have some promise. But oh my gosh, that thumbnail. I could really improve that. Or oh my gosh, I've learned such better SEO strategy since then. Let me refine it with this. So wait until you're down the road quite a bit and you know what's going to work before you go back and fix the old ones. Instead, spend your energy on creating the new ones. So I hope that helps. That was a really good question. Next one says newbie here. With a lot of observations in my head before opening my shop, I've noticed a lot of listings that have a thumbnail with a play button in the bottom right corner. So I'm guessing the first listing image is a video. Have you played around with that? And do you think having a video first is beneficial? Okay, so when you're in the Etsy feed looking at listings, looking at other look at, like looking at the, you know, the search results, when you see a little play button, it just means that that listing has a listing video in it. And so if you went in there or you like, if you're on a browser and you hover over it, it'll play the listing video for you. So it's not the first image. The first image is always a thumbnail, a static thumbnail. If it had that little video icon, it also that listing has as its second thing a listing video. They are incredibly helpful. So Etsy has done a lot of research on this and listings that have videos on them are more likely to sell. Like there's like some, I think it's like 20% more likely to sell because it has a listing video on it. I will tell you, for my digital products, I never take the time to create listing videos. Although frankly now I'm changing that strategy because of the Kittl automations from that YouTube video I mentioned that I published this week. So go take a look at that if you want to see what I'm talking about. But now I am having I'm using kittl to create listing videos for me for everything because it's so quick and easy and I can do it off of one of my own mockups. Otherwise, unless digital products, I never did them before, I will now with kittl for print on demand and handmade products. I think you should always have a listing video. And again for both of those, you could use kittl automations to create them. You don't have to be filming or creating video like complex videos. So great question for sure. Do the listing video. How do we spot trends in the digital invitations niche? Okay, so this is great. So our coach, Becca, who you guys have heard of before on the podcast, she sells digital invitations and does extremely well and she spots trends using my trend guide. Because the same trends that we're seeing show up in the PNGs are the trends that translate into digital invitations. So that's one way is you can literally take that data that I provide every week and, and apply it. The other thing you can do is you can go do your own research in digital invitations and notice what patterns you're seeing. So you would go search maybe like pick, maybe drill down a little bit. Maybe it's. How about a book club invitations? Let's say you go and you search book club invitations, you filter by bestseller in the search results and you can look and see what patterns you notice on the best sellers. What aesthetics are really common, what fonts are really common, what colors do really well, what aesthetic trends are you seeing? What information do they have on there, or layouts are they using that are maybe different from yours? So that's how I would do that. It's a great question. Okay, I sell digital products. I'm British, but also want to sell in the US Market. I've made variations of my products using American English and UK English. Should I list the variations under one listing or list them separately? If separately, is it okay to have items targeting different countries in the same shop? I just don't want to miss out on selling opportunities, and my products are useful in both countries. Okay, so I understand some of this. First of all, if you're selling digital products, you can sell worldwide. There's no shipping headache. I usually suggest, like when you're doing handmade or print on demand in the beginning when you're figuring things out, only sell in your country. The US Is for sure the biggest market for, for Etsy, but there are other markets and I just don't want you to have to deal with shipping across the world until you really know what you're doing and you've gotten good at doing it locally. For digital products, like what you're doing sell everywhere. And actually that should automatically be happening just by virtue of it being digital products. Like Etsy is not. There's no like. Like it's in the shipping section for other shops that we set up limitations on where things could sell. In terms of American English and UK English, I would have those on two separate listings because even the search terms will be different. Right. So like, for example, in America we use the word flashlight. In the UK they use the word torch. So you Want those to be like, let's say you were doing something related to a flashlight. I don't know if you would be, but like you want those listings separate because the SEO is going to be different. In the uk, someone's going to be searching the term torch. In the us someone's going to be searching the term flashlight. So separate those out. Currently I have the variations listed in the same listing, but then I never know whether to use American. Yeah, that. This is. So this, this is. That's a great question. Separate them out. That'll solve the whole problem. Can you recommend a bank with a free checking account to link to Etsy? I don't like that Plaid can look at my balance. I'm not sure if they let you anymore. Set it up without using Plaid. I've had no problems with Plaid. Also I would suggest for your Etsy shop, you actually want to use a business account because of like for tax purposes. You want to be careful about like especially it depends on how you structured yourself. This isn't like legal advice. You want page holes to tell you about how to structure it. But like if you're doing an LLC or anything like that, you want to, you want to have a business account. I use Chase because it's available everywhere. So otherwise I'm not sure. You know what would be maybe like free checking accounts. A lot of times maybe you would want to use like a, a local credit union would be good but otherwise I'm not sure because I've never done it without Plaid. I've never had a problem with plaid. Hi, I have a successful handmade Etsy shop. Amazing. So almost 2,000 sales in three years. Almost. A less gen, a less successful general shop. 132 sales in two and a half years. It's too general, not niche. I know but I would love to get into the digital space, make money and not use all my time making. I hear you girl or guy. Would you suggest starting a new shop for digital products listing, listing niche related Only digital products in my shop or something else wanting to contribute to our family income in the, in the off season. I'm not sharing what her. Her niche is. Love the podcast. Thank you. Okay, in your case this is really interesting. There's really like no wrong answer. Okay. So I'm not sharing what this person is saying. Their, their shop names are extremely niche. They're for a very specific customer and they've developed it over years and they are established in those shops. So in your case, I would open a new shop for your Digital products. That way you have a blank slate. You can create anything you want and you're not creating any confusion in your established super niche shops by adding other things. So that's what I would do in your case. Oh, interesting. This next one, it's almost like you guys were like on the same wavelength. Like a lot of these I feel like, because I'm literally reading them off of the survey itself and a lot of them like kind of talk to each other or like the one like one after another will be on a similar topic. If I have a digital shop, is it okay to sell a range of digital products? For example, I sell party games, faith based games and activities. Could I branch out into PNGs or digital planners in the same shop even though they don't fit my niche? Or can my niche be digital products? Yes, your niche can be digital products. So for sure feel very comfortable. You can add whatever you want to that digital product shop. That's totally fine. Hey Lizzie, I'm a scaling print on demand seller with about 1800 sales since I started in November 2024. Can you tell me how I would open a second store with only one product? So they want to do specifically print on demand blankets. And if I can move my blankets from the first store over, would you recommend opening a second print on demand store in general? Thanks for considering my question. Okay, so if I were you, I wouldn't open a separate shop. I would do the blankets in the same shop and just make it its own section. But if you really want to open a second shop that's just theme, just that just does blankets, you can move your blanket listings from your first store over, but you can't. What you can't do is have the same listing in more than one shop. Okay, so what I'm wondering is if you kind of open this. I'm making an assumption here so I can answer this question more thoroughly. You opened your print on demand shop and like you've had a number of different variety things sell, but then these blankets kind of took off a little bit, which is why you're thinking, oh, I want to take this whole thing and move it to a separate shop and make it all. I actually, if you have blanket listings that are performing really, really well in that shop, don't move them. I think actually like the Etsy algorithm is smart and could tell that the same exact listing is what, like was in the old shop and is now in the new shop. And I think it would hurt you so you could move them over. But I Just want you to know like if it's because the blankets are doing so well. If you keep. Keep the blanket listings in the original shop. If you are trying to go to the totally new. Because if they're. I'm sorry, I'm not saying this clearly. If they're selling really well in your original shop, leave them there and either continue adding blanket listings in its own section in that shop or start a new shop but start with new listings. I think that hopefully got clearer as I went there. I was like wait, this is kind of word salad and I apologize for that. So that's what I think you should do. Hopefully that helps like giving you some nuance there Help with no views. I restarted an old shop in 1-1-2026. So four months ago. I have a mix of handmade and digital products in the mom niche and currently have 50 listings. I research products and trends using ever be and using your Trendspotting membership. Awesome. I select all my keywords with ever be and include them in my title and description. I'm hoping you're doing your tags too, but feel like my views are so low this year. Total I'm at 250 views and 150 visits and 5 sales and the majority of my listings have 0 views. I know I need to keep adding more listings. I'm working on doing one a day but when else am I doing wrong? Isn't no views an SEO problem? Would love any insight. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, so this is another case where you would be a great candidate for a one on one with digital products. Oh, you're doing a mix of handmade and digital products. Yeah, we've got coaches that can do that for you for sure. Because I'd love for them to look at your shop holistically and see diagnose what's actually happening. Often no views is an SEO problem. So I would be very curious to know if your tags have a mix of low competition, medium competition and high competition keywords that are very specific to what you're selling because sometimes two people follow that strategy but the keywords don't actually totally line up with what they're selling. So I'd want to look at that first. But then. But even if you have great SEO, if your thumbnails aren't strong enough, it won't sell anyway. You still won't get. You still won't even get views because the algorithm is so AI like smart now. Like yes, we can look at SEO first, but it could be that as well. So you might Want to get some more personalized help with that? It would either be. So the no views is either like a demand problem. People aren't shopping for what you're selling. An SEO problem. Like your, your keywords are not in the, like you don't have a good mix of the low, medium and high and. Or they're not specific to what you're selling, they're too vague. Or your thumbnails or product. Product designs aren't strong enough to. For Etsy to show them, to convert them. So hopefully that helps because you're in a great niche. I love that you're doing handmade and digital. Also, I will say, I do feel like I was saying earlier, restarting a new shop, you've really got to be patient. It does. Restarting an old shop, you have to kind of be extra patient. I'm doing that right now and it's a little bit of a slow burn. Next up. Okay. Etsy seems to be testing a forced physical item filter for some searches on the website. I have not seen it yet on the app. That's all correct. Like things like digital or things like if someone types in invitations, if they don't type the word digital, like let's say they type in wedding invite. Etsy's right now automatically putting on the physical product filter rather than showing in the search results both digital products and handmade products. They say, oh yeah. So they're explaining it here like I just did. What do you recommend for digital sellers who are affected by this forced filter? Most of my shop's products are niche with both physical and handmade or in digital offerings. And my digital products are getting buried in search. So this is, this is really interesting. So first of all, I did find out that Etsy is just running a test on this. They don't know for sure if this is what they're going to do going forward. They're trying to see if it like affects sales. But in my membership, my scaling society, and Becca in particular is who I've been talking to the most about this, we have a bunch of people who sell digital invites where this applies. And so because anytime someone's searching for an invitation, if they don't use the word digital, if the, if the customer doesn't use the word digital, that filter is getting put on but it has not affected our sales. So Becca has a digital invite shop. She and I have a digital shop together and we are not seeing a dip because of that. So it really should. I don't think they're going to keep it long term we'll have to see. But I don't think that it should. It should, it should really be hurting you. If it is hurt. If you are actually seeing a decrease in sales, I would pivot to a different product. I would be like working on digital products where there is not. That's really our only right. I like wish there was a better thing I could tell you but. But if you're really seeing that it's harming your business, I would start creating new listings for other products like PNGs, coloring pages, wall art. Things where that's not happening. Actually test Walmart wall art and see if they've added that to it. But I know for sure, yeah, it's happening in the digital invitations. Did you actually say gift tags? It was a force applied for gift tags. Yeah. Isn't that an interesting one for them to be testing? So hopefully that helps. If you're really having a problem with it. I would pivot a little bit. How do I handle a bestseller handcrafted item that I cannot keep up with? I'm still working a full time job. Oh my gosh. I just let it go out of stock until I catch up with orders. Will this hurt my ranking? So if you can. What I would do, obviously like I first of all, I have so been there. Tina, Wreaths of Bloom. She's our, she's one of my coaches. She's a coach in her group. She's a multiple, multiple six figure Etsy seller. She'll hit seven figures this year. We both have this issue. Okay, so I totally hear you. The first thing I would do is push out your turnaround time. That's the best thing is like if you can't catch up, literally put it out as far out as you can go. So you're not totally turning off the listing. Second thing is raising the price point. You can, you can, you can like let it sell out and that's fine. And another option is a vacation mode is something that I would do when I was like getting inundated with stuff that I couldn't keep up and it was multiple listings that it was happening to. So yeah, I think letting it go out of stock is fine, but it would be better. It doesn't hurt your ranking. But that's what they ask. Will this hurt my ranking? It it. Whether or not you put your shop on vacation mode or put that as sold out, it's gonna have to kind of go through the algorithm process again. When you relist it, you know what I mean? Whether you're turning your shop back on or you're turning the listing back on, it's gonna doesn't hurt you, but it will take some time for it to get back up there. So just be prepared for that. It's one of those kind of bummers about it. Etsy's algorithm will remember when you relist it how popular it was. But what it, what the algorithm goes off of mostly is sales. So what triggers something to become to be given more? This is like a really good question. This is a really detailed answer for a listing to have the highest possible reputation in the algorithm. It's constantly selling. So yes, it will help you and it will remember that when it was live before it was selling repeatedly. But the best thing is to let it keep selling and have that turnaround time be longer. So hopefully that helps. I know it's not easy and that's not, it's not the best answer, right? It's not easy. Okay, let's do like two more and we'll wrap it up for today because this is getting long. I kept hearing you and other creators recommend not using Etsy ads until you have organic sales, then use them to double down on those sales. I couldn't find anyone talking about off site ads so I turned them off. Then very quickly realized I probably should not have done that. I turned them back on but have lost tons of views and traffic. How can I recoup and how long might that take? I'm a new seller of just two months of PNGs and have 85 listings up with at least one new one going up daily. Thanks, that's great. I'm glad you're getting up a new listing every day. So off site ads are optional until you're making 12 or $10,000 in a 12 month period and then they make it not optional anymore. You have to have them on so. But the bummer about off site ads is you have to pay for like a percentage of the ad spend if something sells. And so it gets kind of complicated. I won't go into all the details right now. So I'm glad that you turned them back on because on digital products there's kind of no reason, there's kind of no reason not to have them on. I know that you have that you want to like watch your profit margins, but in terms of how long I can recoup, I've actually never personally seen where off sites ads being offer on directly affected views and traffic. I get what you're saying. It logically makes sense that it would Affect that. Um, but I've never, like. See, like, usually off site ads are icing on the cake. Like they're the cherry on top. They're not the main driver of it. So for you, the best thing you can do. Glad you turn them back on. I would keep them on especially for digital products. Just keep adding listings because there's not like a set time, I can tell you. I actually haven't seen what you're describing. Like, all of the traffic going away because all site ads are odd. There's probably another reason why that happened. And if I had to venture a guess, since you submitted this question, I bet your stuff picked up again. It's really funny. In our group, there will be times. Okay, have you guys ever experienced this? Have you ever, like, gone into a restaurant and you get your table and then all of a sudden the place gets swamped like a few minutes after you're seated. So many people show up or like at the grocery store or whatever. There's these interesting cyclical things about human nature, and one of them is massively around payday. So you would see, like, even the sellers in my group, we all go through lulls at some points because, like, there's just not as much happening on in the marketplace generally on a particular day or like around holidays. So, like, for example, this came up in Scaling Society where a few weeks to a month before Mother's Day, everyone was popping. And then right before and right after Mother's Day, everyone was dead. And people were panicking like, oh my gosh, it's not working anymore. I'm not getting any views, I'm not getting any sales. What's going on? And I'm like, people spend all their money on their moms and they don't have money right now. That's what's going on. Give it a week or two and it'll come back. So probably by the time since you post, since you submitted this, I bet it's picked up again. But the best thing to do to stimulate traffic and views is to continue adding new listings. That's the best thing that you can do because, yeah, I would wait for. I would wait on Etsy ads. How much does star seller status help sales? It really doesn't. This is the thing. Star seller status is something that, like, customers don't really even notice. Maybe it kind of gives you, like, if they actually go to your shop, maybe it gives you a little more credibility. I think that it increases your trust score with Etsy because Etsy's always analyzing these Things because they know that you're doing great customer service. You're getting good reviews, you're shipping things on time. But it's like, it's really not that big of a deal. I wouldn't focus on it too much at all. Like, yes, take good care of your customers. You know, yes, do what you can to get good reviews, but that's it. Okay, I'm gonna do one more. Wait, that one's a duplicate that someone asked earlier. Okay, we're gonna end on this 1. What AI tool is best for creating digital art? I generally feel like midjourney gives a good product, but getting gives a good product, but getting what I want by prompting can be very frustrating and I often give up. I feel like ChatGPT does not give me good prompts to get the results I want. How do others achieve this? I'm looking for consistency, or maybe I need to loosen up and not have an image in my mind that I want and more. Go with the flow from what comes out of Mid Journey. Okay, so first of all, I don't use Mid Journey at all anymore. I use Nano Banana Pro, which you can access either through kittl or you can use it free through Google Flow. You're just going to search Google Flow and you can With a goo. With a Gmail account, Google account, you can use Nanobanana Pro and Nanobanana 2 for free. You get certain number of images a day. It's great. The quality is so far superior to Mid Journey, I can't even believe it. So that's my suggestion for that. But the other thing you said that I'm curious about is that you feel like ChatGPT does not give you good prompts. I. ChatGPT, I think, gives spectacular prompts, but you have to kind of feed it a little bit. So let's say there's a certain aesthetic that I want to create. Let's say, like right now there's a huge trend that graphic designs are put on top of vertical stripes. So the design has vertical stripes all the way across the background and then the design on top of it. Let's say I wanted to create something totally new for the camping niche with the vertical stripes. I would take screenshots of three to five really great images that are like, similar, that are vertical stripes on Etsy. Similar in the sense of, like, you don't want one to be doodle and one to be watercolor and one to be grunge. You want to kind of be in the same lane. Okay. And then say upload them to ChatGPT and say, describe this design aesthetic for me and it'll, it'll just, it'll describe it to you. Then I would say I want to create a design for the camping niche in this aesthetic. Maybe you can tell it like I want it to have a tent and I want it to have s' mores and I want it to have a raccoon or whatever it is and then say, please write me a prompt for nanobananapro. Capturing this aesthetic for this niche, that's how I get really, really specific prompts. We're working, my team is working on a really detailed prompt builder to be able to help you guys with this because I think this is a really common problem. And inside scaling society we already have one in there. It's called the prompt archite that our members get access to in there. That really helps. We're looking for like, we're looking to create one that we can actually like provide as a membership to anybody even if they're not in scaling society, which is like, you know, a bit more of an investment for people. So keep, keep your ears open for that. That's kind of like in the works. But otherwise that's how I would go about prompting, getting ChatGPT to write you better prompts is give it more information. Don't say copy this for this niche. Upload several and say describe this aesthetic. That's how you stay ethical. But also, and also just get a better quality design. It's frankly just like the best way to go. So I hope that really helps. Helps you guys. This was so freaking fun. I feel like I'm already. I feel like I'm hoarse after talking for so long. This was so freaking fun. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I hope that if it feels like a good fit for you, you'll grab one of our done for you packages or you'll at least go watch that video on those KITTL automations because we are blowing minds over here with what can you imagine having kittl like let's say you're print on demand and it just creates all your like mock ups are no longer the thing. It literally just like creates them for you. You upload your design and you're done. Or like it creates your listing video for you. Create insane. What if you're in digital products and it's literally like we have one set up. It's. I'll show you on that YouTube video that creates an entire ABC toddler coloring page book like creates the entire book, creates all the listing images creates the listing video. And then you could even set it up to create a Pinterest pin and an Instagram reel and an Instagram post. Whatever else. It's completely insane. So go check that out. Some of you for sure. I'd never actually mentioned this before, so. And I wasn't even planning on it. But we do have private coaching calls. I will be linking that below. We have several coaches to pick from, depending on, you know, what you want. All of them have been on the podcast, so you can go listen to an episode with them and see if you like their vibe. We've got so much cooking over here, you guys. Like, I am so freaking excited. Honestly, how to sell your stuff is, like growing so crazy right now. We're able to do so many cool things. I just wanna thank you so much for being on the ride with us because the podcast is the heart and soul of what I do. You guys are everything to me and this is like the place that everyone starts with me, right? So I really. Anything, anything that's blessing me today is because of you. And I just wanna pour it right back and help you get your goals because there's just never been a better time to start on Etsy. And for crying out loud, if you need a coaching moment, don't wait until fall to get going to leverage Q4. You need to do it right now. Come on. This summer. Let's go. Okay. Great episode. I love you guys. I hope this was so helpful. We'll do another print on or we'll do another. Oh, my gosh. I'm actually. Do you know what's crazy? That was the last question. I've been in this, like, big scrolling thing, so I didn't even know we actually hit them all. Oh, my gosh. I had to skip a few because, you know, because they were like, too detailed for the podcast. But super cool. Go make something awesome. I love you guys and I'll see you next week. Take care. And that's a wrap on this episode of how to Sell youl 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, 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.