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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. Hello my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited that you clicked play on this week's episode because I have put together some of my best timeline strategies and tips to help you crush Q4. We are going to address whether or not you're in the digital product space, print on demand and handmade. I've got little special tips for all, all of you. The only ones I don't know about are vintage products and like Etsy's, if you sell supplies, those are things I haven't done before. But I have really racked my brain about my over 10 years of experience on Etsy and thinking about, you know, what really makes that difference, what really helps you Prepare for that Q4 push because that's when the majority of sales happen, right? We are having so much fun right now. Chatting in my scaling society because, and this is, this is actually why I'm doing this episode in July is that it's really a year round effort to plan for Q4. Like, I'm going to talk about this again later, but your Q4 planning really starts in January. Because the beautiful thing is if things are selling for you all throughout the year, they're not specific to a season or to a holiday. They will sell even more at Q4 because people will buy them as gifts. And so we've been having success stories every single month of the year, every single week of the year Inside Scaling Society. In fact, like, like if you want a little insider info. So this month we're doing Kittle month, Kittl's doing some really amazing things for, like, if you're at the place in your business where you, you kind of know what you're doing, you know what you're selling, you know what works, and you just need to be able to do more of it. Like, we kind of go through phases, right? We're like in the planning phase, trying to figure out what we're going to sell. We're in the, like, okay, we're going to try to sell this and you're figuring out what's the best way to make this and what will actually sell and what niches or designs or concepts actually work for me, where people buy them from me. And then you kind of get to a point where you're like, okay, I know what to do now. I just need to scale. And then it goes more from a learning, like a learning mindset and trying to, like, slowly piece everything together to I need efficiency, I need to save time, I need to do more, faster. And that's where Kittle just like, literally owns the show. And that's where we have people in scaling society all the way from brand new and they haven't quite opened their shop yet, all the way to our coach, Tina, who's literally this month clearing 7, 000 figures in her Etsy shop. She sells, reads, she's been on the podcast before. We've got the whole gamut and we all just kind of do life together. So actually, if you are, like feeling lonely on your Etsy journey, you have a lot of questions. You feel like you have trouble making decisions because you just don't know if you're making. If you're like, you need a pulse check. You don't know if you're doing it right. You don't even know what to do next. That is what we are there for. Our community is so kind and helpful. It's like having. And it's, it's men and women, but it's just like having the best big sister who's actually nice and, like, looks out for you and, like, shows you the ropes so you don't have to learn everything the hard way, like she did, you know, so we're doing that. They help me all the time. Like, I feel like all of our eyes on it. We're able to gather so much wisdom. Also, side note, I am an introvert. You guys don't necessarily know this about me because I'm very outgoing, I'm very friendly. I'm not, you know, I can talk to anybody, but I Am not a joiner. I am somebody who I kind of want to get to the point. I'm not big on small talk. I'm not like I don't need rah rah. I want to just do the work. And so I kind of created the group that I wish I had that's just like can you get encouragement and all of that if you want. Oh, a million percent. These people are so friendly. You know me, I encourage everybody, but it's just like no one's tracking you down. You don't have to show up for anything, all of that. And then we meet live four times a month and there's a lot of resources in there. So if you are at the place where you need to stop doing Etsy alone, you could really use some help. I want you to join us in Scaling Society and I want you to do it now because if you wait until, until October, you're going to be playing a lot of catch up, right? You're going to be like trying to scramble, getting things ready to make money in those last few months of the year. Whereas if you start now, you've got a Runway, you can get the things that you need to learn figured out now. You can get shop audits with us now. You can get peer feedback, you can figure out what you're doing so that like come August, September, you are scaling, you are getting everything like in place. So this is your sign. And, and just to make it easier for you, use the code 50scale to get your first month for just $97 and then it going forward it renews at 147amonth. We jam packed the value. August is going to be print on demand month. So we have some big announcements coming then, but all of that will be in the show notes. So you know what, hold on. I did have one other plan. I wanted to read you a couple of these testimonials that just came in. So Alex Johnson is a handmade seller. She sells sensory kits mostly for kids, but for adult like sensory kits. And she's been on the podcast before. You might recognize the name Alex. So she posted this the other day in the Scaling Society. The title line is like so pumped. She goes, ah, you guys, I just got my first $2000 month. My closest month before this was 1300 dollars in December last year. This is my first time trying Etsy ads and honestly so worth it. I made the choice to start ads on the 10th of this month and have been refining every two to three days since which, which listings to Keep on ads based on the click through rates. So if you're getting regular sales but want more traffic and orders, give it a go and let me know how it works for you. And she shared a Screenshot of her $2,067.87 for the month and she just I'm so excited for her. And she's right, you don't want to start Etsy ads until you're already making regular sales. So she already figured out what worked for her and now it's helping her scale. And the same thing happened in my sign shop and then we have Fatima and she sells print on demand and digital products and she says on the title it says celebrating 100 sales. I'm so grateful to celebrate my 100th sale in my Etsy shop today and I wanted to share this milestone with this amazing community. My shop has been open for about nine months, but I really started taking it seriously in February and that's when the sales started rolling in. A huge thank you to the undisputed queen of trendspotting, Lizzie Smiley for her guidance, weekly trend reports, niche blasting strategies and all the incredible resources she shares. Honestly, all I did was niche blast the heck out of the faux patchwork trend and it worked. I'm so glad he never gave up. And it was Lizzie's encouragement and positive energy that brought my shop back from the dead. Yeah, Fatima almost quit. I had to. I had to revive her. Becca Miller's daily prompts and SEO guidance have also been such a huge blessing and I'm learning so much from all of our mentors and community members here. Here's to more growing learning and many more sales ahead for all of us in Lizzie's iconic line. I'm so glad I'm here. And she shared her little shop screenshot showing her sales and like congratulations on reaching 100 sales. And then Joanna, who's new, she goes stop everything. Euphoric mood. I made three sales and didn't even notice and two of them came with five star reviews and I still only have 20 listings. Yes, it's embarrassing but I haven't had time for everything in my life and I have about eight designs on my computer and that just need mockups before I can upload them. I'll have to get that sorted today so I can post them this week. A stagnant shop with one year and one listing that I reopened a few months back that has 20 listings. I must be doing something right. And nobody knows about this shop. It's all the algorithm. So cool. I haven't listened to the Cha Ching yet. I still need to check if that's enabled, but since I'm a few hours ahead of you. She's in another country, so if you're somewhere else, you please know there's people all over the world in the group. I may have been distracted by sleep. Thank you to each of you as I learn from you every day, especially Lizzie and Becca. Two of the sales I made after learning and tweaking the daily prompts, one of them got a five star rating. I'm so happy. It gave me a boost. So she's seeing faster success because we were able to help her. And then I'll give you one more. Julie just surpassed 400 sales. She came over from the Jenna Kutcher podcast. That's how she found me when I was on Jenna's podcast last year. 2024, I think at this time, just surpassed 400 sales. Hoping for more momentum as back to school approaches. As most of my sales are in the education niche. Julie was another one who almost quit at the beginning of this year and we had a little chat and here we are. And she's so glad she stuck with it. So if you want some friendly help, you need some resources, you need to figure out what's working, what's not working. You want to scale faster, join us. And I have a question for you guys. I'm chewing on something because I did a little survey inside the group about a month ago. I was, you know, I always want to find out pulse check with you guys. Pulse check with my members. Like, where are you struggling? What do you need help with? Like, what is the biggest hurdle for you and you guys? Like, I know so many of you have some kind of ADHD or Squirrel syndrome, whatever. Because if you listen to me talk so fast, if you like me at all, you're probably in that camp, right? I also think, by the way, that this is the majority of culture now. Like, this is almost what social media and tech and AI are doing to us. Or, like getting our brains on overdrive. And so we all feel like we have ADHD, even if we're not diagnosed. But I ran this survey in there to find out what people were struggling with. And you need to know that, like, overwhelmingly the response was decision, decision making. I don't know what to do next. I don't need more ideas. I have so many ideas. I have squirrel syndrome. I'm excited about too many different things. I don't know what the smart thing is to do next. I don't know how to decide what to do next. It was so common. And I was just like, yeah, you know what? I feel like this is a thing for us. Like, we're all the decision fatigue. And if you're a mom too, I don't know if you guys ever look at your partner or your older kids and be like, no, dude, you're gonna, you need to make a decision for like, I'm not making another decision. I'm so tired of it. So then you come to your business and it's, it's the decision fatigue. I have been reading a lot about, like, ADHD and then just our culture and the way we think now. And I have some ideas on how to help people with this. And I'm thinking about creating something that would be like a Lizzie bot. And yes, it's packed with everything I know about Etsy and it knows all the strategy because we all know that Chatgpt and Claude lie to us. All the AIs lie to us. They, like, scour the Internet. They aren't necessarily following a proven strategy. And it's really helpful. Like, if you and I were sitting together, you wouldn't be worried about what we were saying you should do next in your shop. You'd be like, okay, Lizzie knows from over 10 years of experience what to do. I'm thinking I'm going to train a bot on everything I know and most importantly, how I make decisions. And so that you could interact with me via that bot and be like, okay, Lizzie, I have these three ideas of things to test in my shop. I don't know which one to do. I have all these things and you can just brain dump. You can just just word vomit all over everything you're thinking. And it'll in my reasoning, in my way, think through it and say, I think you should do this next and here's why. And back it up with data from the Etsy marketplace. Like, it integrates with Etsy, it knows what to tell you, and it'll help you make decisions so much faster that you don't have to just spin your wheels on and give you the information you need to do the next best thing. Please let me know. I'm going to put in the show notes a link that'll say, like, should I create a Lizzie bot for decision making? Click that and drop your email and let me know if you'd be interested in something like that before I go build it all, because I don't even know. I always want to check with you first. Like, would this even help you in my mind it would right. Because I'm hearing from so many people. It's the decision making and it's not trusting myself and not knowing and then knowing the AI won't necessarily tell me the right advice. It'll just maybe give me a tell me I'm doing a great job. It's like complete trash. And ChatGPT is like Lizzie, honestly this is brilliant. And I'm just like, no dude. So let me know, drop your drop, let me know, drop your name if that's something that you would be like, heck yes, this would be a game changer for me. And I'm going to gauge based on Yalls feedback and response whether or not that's something I should look into doing. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to Talk through a Q4 planning timeline starting in July. What I would do every month or two up until Q4 to prepare. Then I'm going to give you my top tips. Like other things that aren't necessarily do this at a certain time but things that you should know to plan for Q4 to be the best it can be. And then stick around because at the end after we go through the timeline and everything, I'm going to tell you the one thing that you should be doing that differentiates the sellers who grow and hit their goals versus the sellers who stay stuck wondering why it isn't working. Because there's one main thing that I've noticed and if you do this, it's going to be a game changer for you. It's why we're having I pound this and teach this so much in scaling society. It's why we have like testimonial after testimonial after testimonial after testimonial every single day. So let's get ready, get ready to take some notes and I'm going to talk through some of these things Lizzie style. So here are Your steps, your Q4 planning timeline and then these are your steps for July and August. Planning ahead. Number one, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to audit your listings for the top performers. I want you to look at what is selling right now. What they don't have to have a bestseller badge, just what items have sold for you at all. What items sell for you the most often? If you were on Etsy last year, what sold for you the most? Q4 because you can create more of that too. And then I want you to evaluate how can you niche blast Those things what other customers might love a product like it. So for example, let's say you have a Mother's Day principle that sold a bunch at Mother's Day. How could you reimagine it for a gift for mom for Christmas or Hanukkah? How could you reformat it for fathers or for students to give their teachers or pastors or other beloved people? How could you take that concept that worked really well and just tweak it to apply it to a different customer base? And if you're in the handmade space, the same thing. So for example, in my sign shop, I discovered that kitchen signs did really well for me. So I had a kitchen sign that was just. It said, how did it start? The first one said, our kitchen is for dancing. It was a long thin sign that you could kind of, you know, put over a doorway or frame over a gallery, whatever. And I then niche blasted that by changing, putting out a couple different sizes, doing a couple of different backgrounds. So the original one was this is back in the like farmhouse crazy days. It was slightly off white, hand painted. And then it was a. If you are on Canva, you'll know that. You'll know great vibes. It's a really kind of romantic, traditional cursive font. So it said our kitchen is for dancing in that font. When that did really well, I tried some with distressed. I tried some that was a stained background with just white lettering. I changed it and I did this kitchen is for dancing. I tried in this kitchen we dance. I so like sizes, aesthetics and phrases. I just took what I knew, sold really well and extended, expanded upon it. I niche blasted it. And then, I mean, that's in the handmade space. It's not as broad as niche blasting. Like if you have something that does really well right now with the western bubble type type typography, like the kind of bubble font that looks westerny and it works really well for like the homesteading niche to go. Then just use that same kind of font and blast it into like the teacher niche and the other occupations and the hobbies and the other, other lifestyles. Like you go and you just blast it everywhere. It's a little different in handmade, right? But then the other thing I did for handmade was I leaned more into kitchen signs. I'm like, okay, what other kitchen signs can I create? So that's the first thing. And if you don't have any sales yet, I'm not going to forget about you. So it's hard to audit what, you know, what's already working. Instead, I want you to go look at the best sellers in your niche, like people who are selling what you want to sell and they're doing it really well. I want you to study what are the best sellers that you're going to be competing with. What are the aesthetics, if it applies, what are the fonts or elements, what are the colors they choose, what do their mockups look like, what do their listings look like, what is their pricing? What do their reviews say? And catalog all of that so that you're not just going to go create things blind. You've got some data that you're basing off of the marketplace. Number two, I want you to identify gaps in your catalog for gift giving occasions. This is such a flex, you guys. I can't emphasize enough that you need to take the things that are working or you need to look for opportunities in your shop to create your products to be giftable. Like, how could you position them as stocking stuffers? Teacher gifts, Hostess gifts, personalized gifts? How could you create more opportunities for gift giving in your shop? Because it's especially going into Q4. The more you can take that decision making, like, oh, I could give this as a gift and you're framing it as a gift, you will make more sales. So here's an example. Let's say you have a bachelorette tank top that did great in spring and summer. Could you take that theme and tweak it a little bit? Put it on a hoodie or a crew neck so it works really well for like Q4 weddings. Could you reimagine the concept? Was there something about it that would work for matching family photos? Like, was there a piece of the aesthetic that would translate also for gifting? Like, anything you can personalize does super well. Something I've done before in the digital product space because I've been more focused on that the past couple years, is creating bundles that I frame as gifting. So like for example, I copy the original bundle listing and I change out the thumbnail to make it and the SEO to use all giftable SEO, like gift for like, let's say it's for book lovers. Let's say it's for kindergarten teachers. Let's say it's for triplet moms. Let's say it's for nursing students. Okay, so like I make the bundle for them with but. But I make that thumbnail emphasize the gift nature. I use SEO that's that people are searching for gifts. And then a key for digital products as well is in that listing and in your listing photos you tell them you're giving them a gift certificate so they're going to have something I can print out and give on the day. It literally I made like hundreds and hundreds of dollars on, in digital sales on selling those over the course of like several years in a row. It worked great. And then number three, I want you to duplicate your best performing listings and then update the SEO and the thumbnail for to make it holiday or seasonal. So, so the key here is do not update your original listing. If you have one that's performing, you're going to maybe feel inclined. Like I want to give this like a holiday spin. Like I want to change the thumbnail so it looks like it's more for the holidays. No, never change the first picture or your SEO, your titles or your tags on a listing that is selling for you. Because what that does is it triggers the algorithm to reevaluate it. And you want it to be evaluating it based on the fact that it's sold a lot, not based on the fact that you made changes. So if it's working well and you want to have it have the holiday flair and use the holiday SEO, great hit copy. Copy the listing and just make changes on the new one and then you get the best of both worlds and the original one will continue performing and the new one will give it the holiday vibe. It's like such a, such a pro tip that I would do every year with the sign shop number four is to continue adding new listings regularly. So little, little like algorithm lesson here. We were just talking about this last night on the, on our Scaling Society coaching call. We all met up for about an hour and a half and we were doing shop audits and answering questions and this, I thought this came up and I thought this was so good actually too fun fact. I recorded this entire episode yesterday and boy, I was in a funny mood too. You guys would have been super entertained, but none of the audio recorded so I'm redoing it. So you're getting this little anecdote, this little updated piece of training because of, because of that snafu. So just so you know, really awful things happen in business and you have to start over and do things you don't want to do no matter what level you're at. I was so upset and one thing you did miss was I stopped mid flow because I'm sitting here at my, at my lake house looking at our. I sit and record in front of a window looking at our lake and I could not hold it in. I'm looking out at the lake, and anyone who understands water sports at all will appreciate this so much. There was this little putt, putt, like, fishing boat. Literally just a little fishing boat that had a tiny engine on the back. Like, it's the kind. It's like. It was like a rowboat with an engine pulling a water skier. And that is just not something that typically happens. Okay. There are like, speedboats and ski boats that are for that. I have. I personally, and I have been doing this for over 30 years now. More than that. Oh, Lord, I'm getting old. Over 35 years now I've been up here. I've never seen a putt putt fishing boat pulling a water skier. And it kept going by, and I just kept just giggling into the recording. So I just needed you to not miss out on that. Here's. Here's the algorithm piece that I want you to take away. The algorithm. We actually had a funny anecdote about this. The algorithm is stimulated by movement. And so I was so goofy last night. I was like, so basically, you have to feed the monster. Think of the algorithm as a little monster. It's a friendly monster, but it does growl if you don't feed it. And there's two ways to feed the monster. One of them is by adding new listings. It makes the algorithm happy, kind of stokes the fires, gets it moving, gets your shop more visible or getting sales. So if a listing sells, it's the same as if you. It's the same to the algorithm. Like, in the sense of it, it's a positive movement forward, as if you create a new listing. In fact, I almost argue the sale weighs a little heavier. And that's why once you've got a bunch of listings in your shop, you can kind of slow down your listing cadence because the constant sales keeps giving you more visibility. You can't never add something new again, but you can slow it down. It's in the beginning where you've really got to be adding. So the happiest you can make the algorithm is daily activity, right? But that's not practical for everybody. So you need to look at your schedule, your product. What are you reasonably capable of? How many listings can you get up a day or a week? So let's say, because in the digital product space, a lot of times we can be a little more prolific with how many we get up. You know, when I was in the handmade space, I was adding maybe one new listing a week or two a month, right? It's a different ball game because you're taking all the photos. Still easier now with the AI tools, but it's going to be harder for physical products. I mean, sub note pro tip there. If you're selling handmade products, if you can do anything that's standardized, like basically a product where you can use a mock up so the base product is the same every time, I had pictures, photos taken of my blank signs so that I could test different sayings and things and fonts and colors on signs before I ever had to make one. So right now, if you're in handmade and you have to go make something new to be able to test it, you have to be able to take pictures of it and see, that's great, that's fine. The customers are going to love it. But this is going to be harder and take longer for you than if you can have a base product where every time, every time it's the same and then you're putting something personalized or customized on there. So like the signs worked because I could have a blank sign that I could take a picture of anything like laser engraved. The base product is always the same. So you can just get pictures of that base product and then test different designs. You know, using Canva or using AI before you ever have to laser engrave anything, you know, anything, anything where you can use a mock up for your product is a great thing to think about for handmade. So right now you need to consistently continue and especially if you haven't been doing this, get on a listing schedule. Whether it's, you know, you can do two listings a week, you can do three listings a day, you can do, you can do two listings a month. Whatever it is, get on a schedule and stick with it. And if you are somebody who tends to batch your work so you don't work every single day on your shop, but you on the weekends, you do everything. Create all the listings for the week or for the month, whatever you need to do, and put them in the drafts. So rather than publishing them right away, save them to drafts and then just log in each day, even from the app on your phone, and publish however many you want per day. So you keep the cadence. We want to feed the monster. Okay, feed the monster with listings. If right now you have the availability where you can do more. Now, July, August is a great time to increase your listing volume a little bit so that going into Q4, the monster is happier, the monster has been fed more and that's going to help you. You do want your I had this note as well. You want your listings to go live now, as much as you can, because Etsy needs time to index before October. This is why, like, you could start in October and still make some sales, but you will make more sales if you start now. Okay, number five, this is again for August and September. And this is for Print on Demand sellers. Right now is the time when you want to be taking a little bit of research time to vet your supplier turnaround times. I want you to start figuring out now. How long are they going to take to ship? We don't know for sure, but we can kind of find out what happened last year and the year before. Find out what their turnaround times were over the holidays. Find out what your shipping cutoff dates are approaching Christmas. Get those on your calendar now so that you know, I would be checking out the Facebook groups. Printify Print On Demand Rockstars is a good one. It's not quite as negative as some of the others. Check Reddit for complaint threads. I want you to find out if certain colors you use sell out. I want you to have a, like, make a plan now. Like, what else could I advertise this on? It doesn't mean that you need to take anything down or you need to, you know, change anything. I just want you to have a plan. I want you to know what's going to happen if the. Like, what is it? The. When I was doing Print on Demand a few years ago, the sand gilden crew neck, so the 18,000 crewneck sweatshirt, the sand color would always sell out, but it was my best seller. So I needed to be like, ready to pivot. You know, I needed to know what I was going to do if people, you know, weren't able to, how I wanted to handle it. And I mean, it kind of depends, right? Sometimes you can shuffle to a different provider. So if you're with like Swift Pod, sometimes you can shuffle the order to a different one that's got them in hand. Sometimes you can just be ready to suggest to the customer that one's sold out. But customers also love this color. And you can show them the white or you can show them the four screen. Whatever it is that your design looks great on. I suggest not trying to figure that out when you're feeling panicked and there's a lot more happening in Q4. Look at it now. And the other thing I want to tell you in case, like, this is maybe new to you. Reddit and Facebook tend to be very negative places. It's one of the reasons that I created the school community with scaling society so that I could, I could keep the energy positive and helpful. So you're going to have to put on your, you know, analyzing energy brain. Make sure that when you're reading something that first of all it's rational. Someone's not like, we're all going to have snafus with print on demand. Like, it's just the nature of doing business. You're going to have snafus doing digital, you're going to have snafus doing handmade. There's going to be issues when someone else is fulfilling your order. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It's still leverage. We can't do everything ourselves sometimes, right? We've got to be able to delegate. I want you to read carefully those threads and don't get wrapped up into the emotion when someone's freaking out. I would be. What does the initial post header say? Someone's very upset because some provider in Printify, you know, sent the wrong product to a customer. Look through the thread and see are there a lot of other people that are saying they had the same thing or is the person's story really extreme and seems like a one off, not like a problem that happens constantly. So I want you to use your judgment. Don't take what people say for gospel. We're looking for patterns. Is there a pattern that says, okay, this provider has a track record across a lot of people saying that they take too long to ship at this point. So you want to look at a different provider to use instead. You know, there's the number of misprints for like sometimes the wrong thing will be printed or it'll be printed with errors and it won't be caught in quality control. Is it like tons and tons of people are saying yes, that happened to me too, or was it one just really gruesome story? So just use your judgment, don't just assume based on the really intense Reddit thread header, the initial post, that it's, I want you to, you know, analyze, look at what other people are saying. So, yeah, do that now. Have a plan now. It's gonna help you a lot. The other thing that really helped me was sitting down ahead of time, like now to decide what my customer responses were gonna be. So someone's upset about a misprint. I decide now. I kind of you, you can use your ChatGPT or your Claude, figure out what you're gonna say. It doesn't be perfect. You have to customize a little to the actual scenario. But so you're not in a panic, dealing with an upset customer, trying to figure out how you're gonna talk them down, work through that. Now let's say you're gonna have to at some point have a cutoff, right? Because you can't have things shipped and be there in time. Get your little blurb of how you're gonna explain that to people in the DMs. Now this, this will really help because it's kind of like parenting. I find if I already know how I'm gonna handle a situation before it happens, I am much less stressed and I'm able to actually execute and be the mom I wanna be or be the leader I wanna be, or be the Etsy seller I wanna be if I'm not having to respond in the emotion of the moment. Number six, and this is the last one for your August and September planning is to start building your email list now. Okay. You're going to need a little time to figure this out. I'm going to talk you through some steps on how you can do this. But what you want to be able to do is not. You don't want to be trying to figure it out when you've got more traffic in Q4. You want to actually have an established, at least you know, a couple people on your list that you can be emailing in Q4 to tell them what's new in your shop and what's happening or you know, what's what. Are you participating in Black Friday, anything like that. So here's how you're going to set up your email list. There's a couple of different ways. The fastest and easiest one, if you've got a little more money to spend and you want convenience, you can upgrade your Ever be your free Ever be account to have Ever be email. And they have got a bunch of YouTube videos that will show you step by step how to set it up. You can do automations. They help you like build inviting people to your email list into your like order flow. That's the easiest and quickest. But it's going to, it's going to cost you a little more if you're on a shoestring budget and you need to do this like very cost effectively. There's more steps, more pieces to it, but you can do it on the cheap. So the first thing you need to do is pick an email provider. I'm trying to think back in the day I used to use mailchimp. I don't know if they have a free plan anymore, but you could literally go to Google and ask or you could go to your AI and ask, hey, I need a free email provider. And through them you will start building your list. So you'll set up your list through that provider and you will, that is where they'll store all of the emails that come in and you'll be able to build through them what's called an opt in page. And it's just a, it's just a page with a link, like a website link where someone can put in their name and email address to join your list. So you're going to set up a page there and then the link to that page is what's going to be going on in your Etsy shop. So whether or not you're going to be, you know, kind of, you're interacting with somebody that's made an order from you and you kind of want to be like, hey, do you want to, if you want to, you know, jump on my email list, I can let you know what else is coming out later this year or you can get a coupon or whatever you want to do to, to encourage people to join and then you would provide them the link to join. What I like to do as well is to get a QR code. So again, go to Google, go to Chat, GPT or whatever, type in, you know, how can I set up a free QR code? And the QR code can then be linked to your opt in page. So the QR code gets attached to the link and you can put a picture of the QR code in your listing images. So someone's scrolling through, they're interested in your product and it says you need to have some kind of carrot. People don't want more emails without a good reason. But a, you know, freebies and, or a coupon code can do really well to get people to join an email list. People like to have those, especially for Etsy sellers. They like to shop small. So you could have something in there that, it's a graphic in your listing images and it says, you know what, 10% off, like join my email list. And then there's the QR code can say on there like scan the QR code to jump on the list and I'll send over the coupon code. So they scan the QR code, they join your email list and then your email automations through your provider sends them the coupon. So you set it up so it automatically, when someone joins the list, it has a trigger to send them the coupon email and then they can Check out through your Etsy shop. So those are the two different ways you can either do ever be email or you can do set up with an email provider, use a QR code, push it in your Etsy shop, people will join to get the discount and then you can grow your email list. And that gives you a lot of leverage as you go into Q4 to let people who have already expressed interest in your products in your shop know what's happening. Stay in touch with them. It's very powerful. So start doing that now because it's going to take a little bit obviously to set all of that up. Okay, September. The first thing that you're going to do in September is since we just talked about setting up your email list, I want you to make sure all of your emails that you're going to send that you have the sequences drafted before the rush hits so you'll have an idea. Some of them you may not know what you want to have yet because you don't know what you're going to release product wise. But if you could get your base emails set up and put into drafts over on your email provider, then when things are busier, you don't have to go figure that out. You've already talked to your AI about what types of emails do really well for your kind of a shop. You've already got an idea, you've got the basics in there, and then later on you can plug and play. Number eight. This is also for September. This is for handmade sellers. In September is when I want you to start investing a little money into stocking up on your packaging and shipping supplies. Something that I had happen more than once was even my shipping supplies kind of got back ordered at times. So all of a sudden I get a flurry of orders. I haven't stayed on top of like planning ahead for my shipping and packaging supplies. And I have to, I have all of my orders ready to go, but I don't have the supplies to ship them out. So even having a little bit of surplus right now really helps if you can throw some dollars at it. September, because September for me was always really busy. Eight or I'm sorry, number nine, start creating extras of your bestsellers so they're ready to go. This is again a handmade tip. So don't wait until you're overwhelmed. You got tons of orders, even if you can't make a whole product because something's going to be personalized. If there are any parts or any steps that you can create now that you can get done now to streamline things for future you. You're going to just be so grateful later if you got some extra space. Now there's some basics that you can like. You can at least get supplies organized. You can at least get a couple of things put together. I recommend anything you can make more efficient now to do it. And finally, we are now in October. So that's actually the first month of Q4. Q4 is going to be October, November, December, you're going to. In the beginning of October, I want you to think ahead and plan your sales events in advance. So if you're going to do any holiday sales, if you're going to do a Black Friday sale, I don't want you deciding like the week before. Okay, I've got to scramble and figure this out in the beginning of October. October, for me was often a little bit slower than September. Because people spend so much money on Halloween, they tend to take a break from their holiday planning. So you got the early birds in September, and I sold a lot in September. October was. I almost had a moment of just like, oh, my gosh, am I doing something wrong? It's like the first month of Q4, and it's so slow. So I don't know. Halloween is huge. So if there's anything you do, it's one of those things where I don't want you to spend a ton of time creating things that aren't evergreen. But Halloween, you can kind of buffer some of that slowness by having some things for Halloween. But beginning of October, plan your Black Friday. And one of the reasons for that is, for some reason, the past couple of years, Black Friday has creeped up earlier and earlier. So a lot of sales for that are run like two weeks earlier than Black Friday. And then by the time you get to Black Friday, if you do your sale, then everyone's spent all their money on the earlier sales. I don't. This is such a funny thing to me. I don't understand why it's happened that way. But so just so you know, start. You're going to want it to run, to start running a few weeks early. And plan that early October so that you kind of know exactly what you're going to do. So that that's kind of my, like, checklist over time. And what I'm going to do is put that into a little PDF for you, and it's down in the show notes. If you want to grab it, grab that freebie. I just want you to have to be able to see this because we covered a lot. Right. So the basics, I want you to have a bit of a checklist and see that written down. I will also the tips I'm about to go over on there for you as well. So let's go into those, let's talk about. I have a couple of tips that kind of, they're not so much of a do these do this now, but just things that I learned over the years that made it easier. Number one, this is for absolutely everybody. You can make a lot of money focusing on seasonal and holiday items. I think that they're great like Gold City Ventures. Cody sells a ton of these things, but he is very prolific. So he has got a lot of different listings for all different times of year. I want to encourage you to have 20% of the products or designs that you create be holiday or seasonal. You know, specifically Christmas themed, Hanukkah themed, Halloween themed, Fall themed, Thanksgiving themed, holiday seasonal and then 80%. So the vast majority of your products or designs should, should be evergreen, which means they could sell at any time of year. They're not specific to Mother's Day, they're not specific to fall vibes, they're not specific to Halloween. They are for people of different occupations, different hobbies, different life stages, different interests. All of these things that define us. All of the things that sell on Etsy that, that aren't specific to a time of year. Someone could gift it to their mom on Mother's Day or their aunt on Easter, or their teacher in teacher appreciation in May, or their daughter for graduation. Or it could be a Christmas gift. You see what I'm saying? So there's nothing holiday specific about it. The thing that I think people don't usually realize because they think I've got to create a bunch of stuff for Q4, create stuff for all year because if it's sells the rest, any time of the rest of the year, it'll sell in Q4 because people will gift it. And that's why I also. We're gonna talk about this again in a second. I, I so encourage positioning your products as giftable because Etsy is just a gift giving platform. Number two tip number two is your Q4 success is earned in January, not in October. Or right now, it's earned in July, not in October. Consistency over time, ideally year round, is what makes Q4 work. Especially if you have a lot of evergreen designs like we just talked about. So again, let this be your sign that you need to sit down and figure this out. Now I know, you know, feeling really excited you can make, maybe even cover Christmas with this. It's going to be so good for you this year. Don't wait until September, October to start. Let's do it now. Tip number three is again, we're going to talk about this a little deeper. Focus on giftable listings. So things that make things more giftable. We talked before about personalization. So anytime that you can add a name or something that helps, just really make it very personal to someone that is. Is always going to make more money. You can charge more for it. You can, it just grabs people quicker. But what's really important about giftable things, items generally is that there's high emotional connection for some reason. So emotional connection can come from a certain aesthetic. Like some people would feel a really high emotional connection to something that feels very witchy or something that feels very preppy or something that feels like for me, very boho. An aesthetic can make someone feel like, oh my gosh, that's so me. I love that. That's just my vibe. Another thing that can make it feel high emotional connection is identity things. So something that really nails an occupation, a hobby or a life stage or a cause. So if you are a special ed preschool teacher, that's a very personal thing to you. If you're gonna buy something on Etsy that like somehow references that, that's just gonna feel so personal. That's gonna feel so high emotional connection. Right? Let's say your hobby is wakeboarding and usually everyone else is talking about other things like skiing or whatever, but yours is wakeboarding and there's something specific to that. It's gonna be like, oh my gosh, I have to get this. That's so perfect for my brother in law who's an avid wakeboarder. It's so high emotional connection, a life stage. If you're a doodle mom or you're a triplet mom, or heck, you're a toddler boy mom. It's a very specific life stage. You're perimenopausal. Maybe don't put that on a shirt or anything. But it's very personal. It feels, if you do something funny though about moms that kind of alludes to that, holy cow. High emotional connection. What you want is for someone to see the listing and be like, that is so me, or that is so my mom. And what it does other than just make it very giftable, very personal, not generic is it also kind of makes the price point less relevant. Like, sure, people are on a budget, but they care a little less if they're just like, this is too perfect. I can't pass it up. So that personalization that really can help. Here are some tips for handmade sellers that really help save my sanity in Q4. Number one is to set a shipping cutoff date. So for me, December 15th was a really solid benchmark. Every year, December 15th, that was, that was when I stopped saying I could have anything to anyone by in time for Christmas. It gave me some breathing room. It allowed for USPS to make a few mistakes. Sometimes we still had some get there late because they got really lost. But for the most part, if I if that was the last date that people could order that I would have it to them in time. That worked out well for me personally. And this is my next tip. I would then put my shop on vacation Mode. As of December 15th, that was it. I was done. And I would then work on getting, getting out my last orders and then I would enjoy, I would enjoy the rest of the holiday month and I'd put my shop back live early in January whenever I felt like it. There is nothing wrong with using vacation mode. If you don't feel comfortable with vacation mode. I would have a cutoff date that's in your shop announcement that you're dming to people when they order so they understand what's happening. Having your listing shipping times set to that. And I would then push out your turnaround after that so that they're seeing just that's again your shipping profile. You want them. You don't want anyone to think, nope, it's that you're somehow going to squeak it out in time. I just, I learned that it was too stressful and that USPS or even FedEx and UPS were too unreliable to go past that. Here's what I want to tell you about about vacation mode because people are like, oh my gosh, no, it's going to tank my shop. Here's my experience with vacation mode. It never, it never ruined my shop. What it does is it temporarily takes you out of the algorithm. One time I had vacation mode on for three or four months during COVID and I still was able to come back and get my shop full throttle again after that. All that happens is you come out of the algorithm. So when you put take your shop off of vacation mode and put it back on, you need to expect it's going to be extra slow for two to three weeks. Well, Etsy is like putting you back in the algorithm. You don't start from scratch like you do with a new listing or a new shop, but they do have to filter you back through and it can help in that time to stimulate things with some new listings that you could have ready. But like, I just want you to know, you have to have the expectation it's going to be slower. Also for most shops, January is slower anyway. The J months, January, June and July are the slowest months of the year for most shops. When I was in the home goods space with the signs, January was actually a very busy month for me because people were taking down their holiday things and they wanted to refresh their space so they would buy signs. So that's something to think about too. Could you have something that people buy in January and think about it like in the summertime, there's things people buy in the summer, right? So you can kind of add things into your shop to buffer those times. So I think vacation mode's great, especially for your sanity after a busy, busy Q4. And the last tip is especially for handmade and print on demand sellers that you need to do this every order that you get. You want to DM the customer to thank them but confirm that they understand the turnaround time. I always said something, said, hey, thanks so much for your order. We're so excited to make this special piece for you. It will ship, you know, on or before X date and depending. Sometimes I'd even say like via, you know, USPS priority two to three day mail if I wanted to give them that extra. But I always at least want to let them know when it would ship. And then you can like put a saved reply in your Etsy conversations there so that you don't have to type that 40 times a day. But it helps so much during Q4 because you know how people are now with like Amazon culture. They want things fast, but they also want to support small business, right? So you just need to set the expectations. Some people will be rude about it. For the most part people understand, especially if you communicate with them. So hopefully that was helpful. All of that is going into that just little PDF document for you that you can grab down in the show notes. It'll just say like Q4 planning guide. You can grab it and it'll have everything that I just covered. But now I want to take a few minutes and fulfill my promise and I want to talk to you about that one thing that you need to be doing that differentiates the people who grow and scale and hit their goals and the people that I say see stay stuck just really not understanding why it's not working. So the Sellers who stay stuck tend to have one thing in common. Because we can learn SEO, can learn trends, we can learn how to set up a listing, we can learn how to make better mockups. But this one thing they're not doing, they're creating in a vacuum. They design what they like, what they think is cute, what they would buy, and they never refine their understanding of where there is demand, what the marketplace wants, what people want to buy. Meanwhile, the sellers who grow, they train their eye. They don't just do it once, they do it every day. They train their eye to recognize what the market wants, what are people buying, what will fly off the shelves. They pay attention to what trends are hitting, they know where demand is, and they can anticipate what's about to perform well. And it's all because they constantly spend time refining and building their brain cash. So your brain cache is the mental library you have, and you build and develop it by deliberately studying what's already working on Etsy, you pay attention to products, layouts, colors, fonts, materials, trends, pricing, keywords, cultural movements, customer preferences. The more that you study what's selling well on Etsy already, especially in your product space and in your niche or niches, the more your brain will start to recognize those patterns automatically. In the beginning, it's very clunky because you're just trying to like, okay, if I pair this font with this font, it looks terrible. This best seller is pairing these fonts. They look incredible. This shade of blue, if I'm trying to be fisherman aesthetic, this shade of blue isn't quite right to go with the red orange. I've got to tweak it or man, this, this red's pulling too pink for fisherman aesthetic. I need to go a little more red orange. By paying attention to what's already selling really well, you build the memory into your brain, you build the patterns into your brain. And if you do it long enough, you get to the point where you start becoming a trendsetter. You become one of the people who is doing things so exquisitely, you can actually tweak them and take them a bit further and get the market to start going after a new concept. And I've had students do this in every different product type and niche. After a studying the trend report that I put out every week for sure, because that's a really fast snapshot. B though taking it a step further, unlike, for example, how you would do this research on Etsy, I'm going to give you some tips. Here is you're going to Search by your product type or your niche. So let's say because it's getting a little late here in July to be doing back to school. So why don't we do Halloween? You would go, let's say you wanted to create some Halloween earrings. You would go to Etsy and you would search Halloween earrings and you would filter by Bestseller. And there's a workaround for that because there's not a Bestseller filter. But I have a video on YouTube. Let me make a note, let me make a note here. Bestseller filter. I'll link that video because some of you are brand new here and don't know how to do that and it's a bit finicky. So let me show you how you can get the Bestseller filter. Halloween earrings, search in the search bar, filter by Bestseller and study the listings that do really well for that. One caveat, sometimes you're planning too far in advance and people aren't buying yet. So there's not best sellers for that space. So instead what you need to you do is use the Profit Tree extension. I really recommend Profit Tree and it because it has the most up to date data and you can search by Halloween earrings. And rather than filtering by Bestseller, you're just going to look at the data below the listing, the Profit tree little box that pops up. It'll tell you how much money it's made over time. You don't want to look at how much money it's made in the last month because we're too far out from Halloween. Right. So it works better to use the Bestseller filter for Evergreen products. It works better sometimes to use the Profit tree sales data from what sold, how it sold last year, see how much it's made over time to be able to judge on something that's specific for a holiday or a season. But you're going to look through at those things and you're going to pay attention to what are their mock ups look like, what is their product made of, what does it look like, what colors are they using, what aesthetics are they using, what fonts are they using? What, what layouts are they using? What, what is the customer saying in the, in the reviews, what are they loving? What are they not liking? What can you take away and how can you take that concept that did so well and make it your own? Is there a trend you can lean on? Is there an aesthetic you can lean on? Is there a color combination that really works? Is there a font that works? And all these things, these are going to build into your brain cache. So On Etsy look at what's showing up. Pay attention to all of those details. If you do this consistently, I'm telling you I still 10 years later, before I sit down to create any new product, I do this for 10 to 20 minutes. First, I am looking at it for whatever it is that I'm if I'm making a if I'm making a dog lover png, I am looking at the best sellers first. If I am right now I'm playing with print on demand. If I am making a photo backdrop for like baby showers, I am looking at the best sellers. If I am making what else is something I made recently? A digital invitation for mahjong for book club, I am looking at those bestselling invitations not and there I'm actually going a little more broad. I'm not just looking at the mah jong ones I'm seeing okay, like what other aesthetics? If I just look at invitations, which ones sell the best? What aesthetics do really well? P.S. like pro tip, watercolor does amazing in watercolor. Aesthetic does amazing in invitations. So also okay, side note, if you do invitations and you've been wondering because now Etsy automatically puts on the exclude digital downloads on that. Um, I was talking to Becca just last night. She's an invitation seller. It's how she's become a really successful Etsy seller is digital invitations. She said that filter has not been hurting her sales at all. She actually has been making more and she only sells digital invites. So just so you know, it's not her. It hasn't been hurting sales. So look at the bestseller set, everything. And the goal is not to copy. We're not, we're not going to copy. We're going to calibrate. It's to train your eye. So the distinction is this isn't casual scrolling. This is intentional study of the listings. You know, where are they? What is the spacing of the font? Where is the placement of the little accent elements like the celestial stars or the paint splatter? You know, how intense is the distressing? What is the okay, so raccoons are big. Are they? Are they Ko Kawaii looking raccoons? Are they more retro looking raccoons? Are they colorful? Are they monochromatic? All of these details ask yourself why is this listing performing well? Why is it ranking? If I look at it next to the other one, why would I click on this one versus that one? So this is, this is the whole entire brain cache. This is the entire game. The sellers who grow aren't necessarily the most talented or the most creative of times. They're not. In fact, I am not naturally talented or creative. What I have done over time is study meticulously. Okay, so on Etsy, we talked about how to do that with the Bestseller Filter or the Profit Tree extension. Looking at the rankings, you can also do this on Instagram or TikTok by paying attention to trends. On Instagram, for example, I follow accounts that, like, aren't necessarily in my niche. I love to follow sticker designers, graphic designers, illustrators, T shirt sellers, and then some also bigger brands. Like, depending on what you like to create, there will be like, I don't know, for me, Altered State is a brand that has a similar aesthetic to what I like to create and what works well for me. So you can find like, for some of you it might be like Hot Topic or I don't know, there's other bigger retailers. So you can follow those accounts and you can, you know, I actually have a separate Instagram account that is like my trendspotting account. And I'll follow those accounts and I'll go in and I'll just see what's showing up on my feed. What are they creating? Because if you actually branch off of Etsy and onto Instagram TikTok, you'll even know trends before they hit Etsy. It's even a way to be a little ahead of it. You can do some of this research on Pinterest. It's not necessarily as like, I feel like Instagram is the most relevant TikTok too, but it's a different way to consume content. You're having to kind of pay attention to cultural trends and shifts. Maybe using more of the search like gift ideas on TikTok to see things. You're having to kind of go through content a little differently. Whereas Instagram, you kind of just curate your feed and look at things that way. Pinterest, again, it's great. It just can sometimes be. Sometimes things are a little more dated because it holds content for so much longer. So you can get great ideas, but it may not be as fresh and then something else. That's really fun. Becca and actually did this together in person when we met up in May is you can go to Target or Walmart and just walk through like look at in Target, that front gifting section where they have all the kind of quick buy, like impulsive things. And you, Gosh, we, when we were there in May, it was like everything was stripes and fish. All the things that were on the trend report we were seeing on all those Giftable things. Same thing. If you go to, like, bedding and you can see the patterns on the bedding or the towels, mugs, the, the graphic tees, it was crazy. So that's a way to kind of trend spot in the wild as well. So I hope that that helps. I really. The most common advice I'm giving in shop audits, in scaling society is continue building your brain cash. The translation is your designs aren't quite there yet, but if you continue building your brain cash, you're going to get better and better and better. And it never fails. When I look at someone's shop who's been working for a couple months, and let's say I looked at it in the beginning and their designs were not there yet, I knew they were not strong enough to sell. Even if their SEO was perfect, their listing setup was great. They weren't creating products that were compelling enough yet. It was the same for me. My first wood signs were not good enough. Tina's first reads were not good enough. But over time, we studied what sold well in the marketplace and then we refined to match it. So sure enough, they come back for an audit a few months later and they say, I've actually got a couple sales now. Take a look and see what you think. And if I look at their newest listings versus their first ones, if they have built their brain cache, without fail, their listings are getting better and better and better and better. So I just want this so much for you. I promise I will be the first person to tell you, if Etsy is ever not a good choice anymore, it's not profitable, I will be pivoting. I will be telling you there is none of that on the horizon. Right now. It's actually. We're seeing more success stories with my students than ever before. People are getting it. They're getting it faster. The marketplace is working. There's just a few things you have to learn. And as I'm sitting here, I could get choked up looking out at my lake. There's two loons swimming here in our little bay. I love loons. I know some people think they're creepy. The way that their call is kind of eerie. For me, it's like the most peaceful, comforting sound. So they're sitting out there. I don't think they have their chick yet. And marveling at the life that I've been able to create because of time, freedom, being there for my kids in those early years, just not having to be a slave to the intense stress that is a corporate job, working for someone else. And then for me, it's very personal. Getting to spend half the year in Wisconsin when it's hot in Texas, and then the other half in Texas. This is a lifestyle I never thought I could ever have. And Etsy opened this door. And I don't know if for you it's just feeling the weight lifted of the intense financial. Like, what if Etsy could cover your mortgage? What if Etsy could cover Christmas? But then what if Etsy could cover everything? What if Etsy could cover vacations and memories for your family? What if Etsy lets you cover somebody's hospital bills? I don't know. I just really want it for you. And so I really hope that this very practical. It's probably one of the drier episodes I've done, huh? But I hope that you've taken away the really practical stuff that you can't just. You gotta go through the school. School of house. What is it called? School of hard knocks, usually to learn. I'm trying to pour my heart out of what I've learned and help you if it feels right. And you want to work more closely with my team and me and with really, really good people who will not annoy you if you're an introvert, but who will help you get answers faster and make progress faster and make decisions more easily. Join us in scaling society. Use the discount code down below. Definitely. Let me know if I need to create a Lizzie bot that can help you just make decisions and basically run your Etsy shop with me right next to you like we were doing it together. I need to know if you guys want that or not. I'm trying to remember if there's anything else. You can grab the freebie on this. Otherwise, what's next week? Next week we have Heather's studio back to talk about print on demand. Boy, is she doing some incredible stuff with AI. That was a really fun conversation. I can't wait to share with you. And then the week after that, we're gonna be talking with Jason about Kittl. Jason's Tina's husband. So we've got some really fun stuff coming up. And I just. I love you so much. I believe in you. We have room for you at this table. You can do this. You can do this. It's gonna be a little hard in the beginning. It's gonna be a tough slog in the beginning because it's a learning curve, and you have to. It's like going to the gym. You have to. You have to work out really hard for a long time before you see the results. It's that's that's annoying. But it will pay off in dividends. So know I love you, I am rooting for you and until next week, go make something awesome. Bye my friend. 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 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.