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- [00:01]
Nick Loper
The path to $1,000 a month with digital products. You know, money doesn't grow on trees, but you do know that you can plant your own money seeds. And by the end of the episode today, you're going to have a path forward on how to do just that on one of the biggest marketplaces in the world. This is the side Hustle show. It's the business podcast. You can actually apply today's guest, it's a long time listener. He's a serial side hustler, real estate investor, digital product seller, seller, online course entrepreneur from Gold City Ventures and the FI Show. Cody Berman. Welcome to the side Hustle Show.
- [00:34]
Cody Berman
I am very excited to be here, Nick, and talking with you today and hopefully drop some knowledge bombs on the listeners.
- [00:39]
Nick Loper
Yeah, you bet. It has been a long time coming. We've got three rounds with Cody today, including donate a business idea, but we're going to start with his latest side Hustle, a brand new Etsy store that started last summer and a few months in was earning $1,000 a month. And now Cody, you're known online as like the print seller's guy. And my understanding is you get an email or you get a comment that says something to the effect of, well, sure, it must be nice, you know, having started in 2018, but what about us? What about today when the marketplace is so much more crowded, all the good niches are already taken and you're like, okay, challenge accepted, let's do this. Let's start a brand new store and see what we can do with this.
- [01:19]
Cody Berman
Yeah. So as a online content creator, I'm sure you're no stranger to this, Nick. There are haters out there. And so you get hateful comments on all your videos, all your podcasts. There's always one and someone on. I think it was in a YouTube video or maybe it was a short. They said something to the effect of, well, of course you were successful. You did this in 2018. The Etsy market's so different now. You could never repeat your success. And I'm like, okay, buddy, like I can do this. I'm going to repeat my success. So I started a brand new shop, didn't tell anybody about it, didn't post it on social, didn't market it to my email list, didn't mention it on the website, like completely in a silo blank from scratch and was able to get that shop up to $1,000 per month in revenue in 116 days.
- [02:01]
Nick Loper
Love it, love it. So we're going to break down how that Works starting with the, maybe the high level of, well, what am I going to sell? How do I figure out what the demand is? The keyword research behind that, or the product creation strategies behind that. But where do you start? What do you say, like, okay, I'm looking at this blank slate. What kind of product could I sell?
- [02:19]
Cody Berman
The best thing with your audience. And I am catering these answers specifically to some people who are already entrepreneurs or side hustlers. If you're already a side hust, look at what you already have and what you're already using. So some easy examples. If you're someone who's in the personal finance niche and you already have this amazing debt pay down tracker, or you already have this amazing net worth tracker, or maybe you have a tracker for your side hustles, you can very easily just kind of white label it, templatize it and flip that. And now instead of just a product that you're using for yourself, like a random Google sheet, now you can actually go and sell this thing on marketplaces like Etsy. And I've seen this work so many times over. We're both podcasters, Nick. I'm sure you have a media kit or something that you can send to potential sponsors like, hey, here's my downloads, here's my stats. So a couple years ago for the financial independent show my podcast, we put together like this really extensive media kit. And I'm like, well, I just spent all this time on Canva making this like awesome media kit. What if I just white label it and resell it as an editable media kit and it sold a bunch of times. So there's so many examples that sod hustlers like us, people who are already doing something entrepreneurial, you might have resources in your own life that you're using that you can just easily repurpose, turn into a template and then sell to other people. I mean, there's been six and seven figure businesses built off this stuff. I was actually on a real estate show a couple weeks ago talking about digital products and printables, and you look at a company like BiggerPockets and they're selling all these different calculators and spreadsheets and things like that. I mean, that's probably adding six or seven figures to their bottom line, just basically taking one template for a thing that they're already doing and then white labeling it and then reselling it to, you know, hundreds and thousands of people in their case.
- [04:00]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's an interesting selling your sawdust type of example where it's like, I created this thing and the ideas I've kicked around, like a habit tracker or a podcast production checklist planner or sponsorship tracker. There's all sorts of these different tools that you may already be using. It may be an incremental revenue stream to the business that you already have, the side hustle that you already have. Or it could be a completely new thing that is kind of a standalone entity. So it sounds like the new shop was more of that standalone type of variety.
- [04:32]
Cody Berman
Yeah, the new shop was more of a standalone. I just wanted to mention the use what you already have because that's often the easiest place to start. Now, if you're someone who's listening, you're like, well, I don't already have a side hustle. I don't have any awesome spreadsheets or any cool tools that I'm using myself for this new shop. Here was my basic strategy. So I would just brainstorm a giant list of potential ideas. This would be from my own head. I would also use ChatGPT to come up with ideas, although it's hit or miss. And then once I would have like a massive list of product ideas. And these could be anything from. I should probably define what printables are. Digital downloads, just so people aren't just thinking abstractly about this. So printables and digital downloads is basically a digital file that you create in a program like canva. You then upload that digital file into your Etsy shop. When someone buys it, the digital file would automatically be delivered to the buyer. So I already mentioned some of them, like a media kit template, for example, but other ones like checklists, planners, calendars, games, invitations. There's thousands of different types of printables. So just wanted to set the stage what printables are. So I create this massive list, like literally 250 different printable ideas. Again, these are just things that I think maybe could make good printables or things that ChatGPT thinks could make good printables.
- [05:39]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [05:40]
Cody Berman
And then once I have that monster list, that's when I start to plug them into like a keyword research tool. So for Etsy, specifically ones I use Erank and ever be. If you aren't as familiar with Etsy or even if you want to sell outside, like let's say you want to open up Shopify store or WooCommerce, you can use other keyword research tools. Maybe you already have ahrefs, or maybe you already use ubersuggest, or maybe you're using some of these other tools like you can use any keyword research tool as well. I'm trying to say I will plug those 250 different ideas into the keyword research tools to see one, if there's search demand, are people actually searching for this thing that I want to create? And two, is there a ton of competition? Because the last thing I want to do is compete with everyone and their mother on some generic digital product that I'm probably not going to stand out with because again, everybody is selling it. So that was kind of my general strategy, my 10,000 foot view of my strategy for this new Etsy shop.
- [06:32]
Nick Loper
Okay, no, that, that's helpful. And even I remember talking with Debbie Gartner who was selling all these different games like holiday related trivia games and there's like once I've got this template, well just lather, rinse and repeat toward the next holiday that's coming out. It was like, oh, I was able to create dozens of these different things which I thought was really creative. And then we talked to Becky beach as well who really leaned into this chatgpt for, for product creation. And I remember prompting it like while we were live on the call, like what are some you know, side hustle related digital printables, digital products. And it actually came back with some decent suggestions, you know, business planning template, you know, side hustle budget template, like oh this, this is not bad. One thing I wanted to get your take on was the idea of static printables versus a customizable spreadsheet file. My gut is, and correct me if I'm wrong, is like the customizable spreadsheet thing may be able to command a little bit of a higher price, like higher perceived value for the end user.
- [07:26]
Cody Berman
You could definitely charge more with editable printables and especially just the bigger the print in general, the more you can charge. If you have a bundle of a bunch of resources, you're going to be able to charge more than just for one of those standalone resources. So to answer your question, yes. But with that being said, if you do have just like a simple one pager that you're selling for $43994 99, you can probably make a ton of different variations very, very quickly. Whereas a Google sheet, a very complicated say personal finance tracker with a bunch of tabs, is going to take you a whole lot longer to create like different variations of that. So for me I to lean on the side of simpler printables just because I can pump out so many different variations. And for me, and we can get into this New shop. It was a numbers game. I was just like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what would sell in Erank.
- [08:15]
Nick Loper
And it looks like they have a free version which is somewhat limited to five keyword lookups per day, but pretty affordable plans if you want up to 200 keyword lookups a day. So just to get an idea there of filling demand versus creating demand, obviously I want to go where the there is some search volume versus like trying to create demand from scratch. If nobody knows you exist and you create some random product that nobody's looking for, it's a recipe for disappointment. Nobody's ever going to find you on Etsy. So in these tools are there certain metrics? I don't know if they do. They spit out like a, like tubebuddy will give you a metric. Oh, this keyword variation on YouTube gave you like a 95. Like okay. It's got a good mix of search volume and competitiveness. Is there a metric where you're like, yes, this is worth going for.
- [08:59]
Cody Berman
It's not a numerical score, but they do make it very easy and color coded. So on Erank, I don't know if here sounds like you're on the website. For example, if you type in a keyword, you'll see the search volume and competition. The search volume and competition both range with like a color coded scale. So for search volume, green means a lot of people are searching for it. Yellow is like a couple, like a medium amount of people are searching for it and red means not that many people are searching for it. Conversely for competition, if it's red, it means a ton of people are competing on that product. If it's yellow, not as many if it's, if it's green, that means there's like no competition for that product. Like you might be one of the few players selling that thing. So I typically liked, I mean in an ideal world I love to be green. Green and we call those unicorns at Gold City Ventures where you have like a ton of search volume and no competition. Those are very difficult to find and few and far between. I usually, and especially for this new shop would create something that has usually yellow search demand and then green competition.
- [09:55]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [09:55]
Cody Berman
So not many people are competing on it and like a medium amount of people are searching for it. So that's kind of the two metrics that I pay closest attention to in these keyword research tools.
- [10:04]
Nick Loper
Okay. All else being equal, go where there's less competition. It's going to be easier to find some eyeballs and some buyers that way.
- [10:10]
Cody Berman
Yes. And I love the phrase the riches are in the niches for this side hustle specifically because one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is they'll go on and they'll just try to sell a very generic printable or digital product. I always use a thank you card. For example, if you type in thank you card to erank, you'll see the competition is through the roof.
- [10:29]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [10:29]
Cody Berman
It's so bright red. Every single person on Etsy tries to sell like a thank you card. But if you niche down a couple layers and instead of just a generic thank you card, you have maybe a teacher, like first grade teacher thank you card, you have a soccer coach thank you card, you have a ballerina instructor thank you card. Like these. Now that you're niching down a couple layers, you're competing with far fewer people. And so, and even from the buyer's perspective, like getting closer aligned to what the person is searching for, they're gonna have a higher likelihood to buy. Like just imagine somebody who's buying a thank you card for their ballerina teacher and they type in ballerina thank you card. Yeah, they're going to choose your ballerina thank you card over just, you know, Joe Schmo's generic thank you card. So it's much more aligned with the buyer. And again, you're competing with less people because the riches are in the niches.
- [11:16]
Nick Loper
As Canva gets better and better, do you find that like people would just go and make it themselves? It's always, and I ask the same question to the spreadsheet sellers. It's like, who doesn't know how to make a spreadsheet? Who's buying this stuff? But what's your take on that?
- [11:32]
Cody Berman
It's convenience at the end of the day. I mean, a lot of it is a skill gap as well. The average person does not know how to use Canva. If we took a poll of a random 100 people on the street, I don't know what percentage are actually going to be able to know how to create like a nice looking invitation in Canva. But probably not a huge percentage of them. But the ones that do are often willing to trade 5, 10, 20 bucks just for convenience and not having to spend their time on it.
- [11:54]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [11:54]
Cody Berman
Like, I can easily go out and mow my lawn. I pay a guy to do it because it's convenient. I have the time, I have the skills. It's just like I'd rather, I'd rather pay him to do it than do it myself.
- [12:04]
Nick Loper
Okay. And so first grade teacher. Thank you card. Ballet teacher, school bus drive. Okay. So now my thinking is, well, once you have this template, okay, I'm going to swap out the clip art or swap out the graphic and the rest of it is kind of the same. So it makes this product creation process, once you have that base template, really, really fast. Where the, maybe where the next challenge comes in is in the shotgun approach or this listing approach to put all this stuff up on Etsy because they're going to charge you their 20 cent fee. Not a ton, but it does add up. If you're really trying to upload a hundred products, a thousand products. Like what was the, the volume of products that you had to put up there to start seeing sales?
- [12:45]
Cody Berman
I was putting up about 20 to 30 products per week. I actually got my first sale on day three. And so for those who don't know, I actually documented this whole process. Like day one to 116. I took a video almost every single day, kind of just sharing live updates. I was sharing screenshots, my shop and on day three, I had my first sale, which was great. I think I probably only had five or six products up at that point, but I was adding like 20 to 30 a week during this whole process.
- [13:10]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And that's cool because, because there's not a lot of social proof on the channel.
- [13:14]
Cody Berman
Yeah.
- [13:14]
Nick Loper
Where it's like it shows zero sales, zero reviews. Like, I'm taking a chance on this guy. Yeah.
- [13:19]
Cody Berman
That's the beauty of this side hustle though, is you don't need an audience, you don't need an email list, you don't need really anything. Like, if you understand keyword research and SEO, that is the most important skill, you can be a 5 out of 10 graphic designer. A lot of people think they have to be like this graphic design wizard in to sell this stuff. You could be a 5 out of 10 graphic designer. As long as you understand keyword research and SEO and you go after those, the riches in the niches and you go after those kind of longer tail, less targeted keywords, people are going to buy your stuff. Like I'm, I'm still not a great graphic designer. Maybe, maybe a six or seven. Seven on a great day. But I'm not the best graphic designer. I'm just really good at keyword research and SEO. So if there's, you know, someone looking for a dinosaur themed thank you card for like boys, like a boy themed dinosaur themed thank you card, like, and I see that I might not be the best designer, but if I'M one of the only few people selling that thing. The people who are typing that into the search bar are going to come find me. And the cool thing about these keyword research tools, let's you know, go back to Erank. For example, if I type in thank you card, Erank is going to spit out all of the things that people are typing in all the different variations. So it's not just me guessing. Using your examples from earlier. It's not me guessing ballet teacher, school bus driver, gym coach. Like Erank will actually tell me there's 116 people every month searching for gym coach thank you card. There's like 187 people searching for a ballet. There's 450 people searching for nurse thank you card. Like it'll actually give me the data. And I'm a very data driven decision maker. I don't like to just make things willy nilly, which was a mistake I made when I first started the side hustle back in 2018.
- [14:50]
Nick Loper
More with Cody in just a moment, including the minimum search volume that he might target a product for, the power of templates for both products and itsy listings, and the conversion rate you need to hit before you ever spend a dollar on Etsy ads. All that and more coming up right after this. Do you say data or data? I think I'm a data guy and one thing I love about Mint Mobile is I can get all the data I need for one low monthly price. That's right. Our sponsor Mint Mobile is here to rescue you from overpriced wireless in their jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. All Mint Mobile plans come with high speed data or data your choice and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring over your existing phone number and all your existing contacts. Join me in ditching overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service for Mint mobile for just 15 bucks a month. No matter how you say it, don't overpay for it. Shop data plans@mintmobile.com Sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month new customer offer for first 3 months only. Price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Free audio post production by alphonic.com when you're growing your business in your team, you need a hiring partner that can help you rise to the challenge you need Indeed our sponsor. Indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract, interview and hire all in one place. Here's our recent guest, skyler from episode 645. What's your recruiting look like?
- [16:31]
Cody Berman
I would use Indeed. Indeed was really, really helpful at first.
- [16:35]
Nick Loper
Plus, with Indeed sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed in this 60 second commercial, 23 businesses just hired their next team member. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.comsideh just go to indeed.comsidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Is there a minimum search volume that's too low to bother with.
- [17:21]
Cody Berman
I usually don't touch anything under 50 and some people think that's crazy. Some people, some other Etsy quote unquote gurus don't touch things that are under like 200. But for me, I'm like, if there's 50 people searching for this a month and there's zero, zero competition.
- [17:34]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [17:34]
Cody Berman
And I can scoop up say even 20% of them, 10 people buy my $5 thing.
- [17:39]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [17:39]
Cody Berman
I like to think of these each as like a little mini passive income machine. Like that's 50 extra dollars per month and that 50 adds up. Like if you can get an army of these $50 per month products, even if they don't have a lot of search volume, you get 20 of those going, you have that's a thousand dollars per month. And mostly passive income.
- [17:55]
Nick Loper
Yeah. It goes back to the beginning of, you know, planting these little digital money seeds. It cost you a little bit of time and 20 cents to create this thing. And now it's out there in the world and can earn passive income for you. I think that's, I think that's really exciting. Now the deliverable file itself. This is a PDF. This is like a link to a Canva template. I know I don't want to get too in the weeds, but like, mechanically, what does that look like?
- [18:20]
Cody Berman
Yeah, so it'll be a PDF and for, I'll call it done for you printable one that's not editable, it would just be a PDF file. So if you were buying say a checklist or a planner from me, you just might get the Checklist or planner entered, delivered to your Etsy inbox. And then you download it and then you use it for an editable file. You'll have a PDF and then you'll have a hyperlink on that PDF. Like it could be to Dropbox or Google Drive or to Canva itself if it's an editable thing. Like there's, you know, editable files via Canva, there's another program called Cordial and Template. There's a bunch of these like editable design softwares. And then on the deliverable PDF you just have like a URL so they click, you know, edit my template and then they can go and edit it.
- [19:00]
Nick Loper
Got it. That helps. But. And this is all automated. When somebody hits the buy button, then Etsy sends them this thing that you have set up on the back end.
- [19:08]
Cody Berman
Everything is automated. I like to say it's a 95% passive income side hustle, because about 1 in 20 people will message me asking for clarification with a purchase. They're like, oh, I can't access my template or this or that. So about. Again, 1 in 20. So 5% of the time I'll have someone message me and ask for some specific advice which I've built like a bunch of what they're called quick, quick replies in Etsy. So I can just basically like click here's how to download your editable file and then I don't have to go type it out every single time.
- [19:38]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Frequently asked questions. Text expander or keyboard short?
- [19:41]
Cody Berman
Yeah, same exact thing. Yep.
- [19:43]
Nick Loper
I was going to ask if you're leveraging AI on the, on the product creation side at all. Yes, there's some element here on the ideation, but then to, to make the thing itself, is there any sort of like, you know, prompting ChatGPT or even Canva to be like, I'm looking for a printable file that does this, this and this.
- [20:02]
Cody Berman
I have done some experimenting, but honestly, for the printables that I'm creating, again, most of these are simple type printables that I can then pump out a million different variations based on different niches and holidays and trends and things like that. I do not use AI to create printables.
- [20:17]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [20:18]
Cody Berman
Another reason I do this is because you do have to disclose in your Etsy listing, like, this is AI generated. There's no hard data on this, but my, my gut just tells me like they're probably slightly lowering the like, SEO juice, the algorithm for these types of printables. If someone's just putting up like a Thousand printables in a day. And all of them you have checked off like this was made by AI. Just something tells me that Etsy's probably weighting that a little bit less than the algorithm. Again, I don't have hard data on this. It's just, that's just my gut feeling.
- [20:47]
Nick Loper
Yeah, there's something about the Etsy community too, where it started as a handmade marketplace, people doing business with people. So I wouldn't be surprised if you're correct on that one. It's like we're going to diminish those in the, in the listings just a little bit, but just a little bit. Okay, so we talked about product creation, we talked about the power of templates once the listing is live or maybe any listing best practices, obviously we want to put the primary keyword in the title of the listing, the description of the listing, anything else that you found to speed up that process, or product images that you found to work well, pricing points that, that have help. Do you have to price low when your shop doesn't have any reviews? Like, what have you found here?
- [21:24]
Cody Berman
So I'll start with templates because we did talk about product templates. Like you just take the base template, let's use a thank you card, for example, and then you could go create a million different variations of thank you card. We mentioned that before. What I didn't mention though is that you can actually have the entire Etsy listing as a quote unquote template. So if I'm going to create, let's say I already have a Father's Day card on my, in my Etsy shop and I want to create a Mother's Day card, I can literally duplicate the listing and then I just go back into Canva. I just like change the listing images, I change the actual product itself, I changed some of the tags, I slightly altered the description, but I can actually use a lot of the same features from that initial listing. So for me now, if I were to actually do that using this real example, like if I were to have a Father's Day card that I want to make into a Mother's Day card, it would probably take me like 15 to 20 minutes total. I might, on the actual design, change the colors from blue to pink. And I'm obviously going to change the word father to mother and some other changes like the tag. You can use 13 tags per Etsy listing. I would change some of those to be specific to the holiday. But using the entirety of your Etsy listing as a template is something not many people do like, even the listing images you were just asking about, Nick. I have eight listing images that I'm using for all my products and it's just drag and drop. Like I'm using Canva templates using like the frames feature. And so when I create the new product, I'm just like dragging and dropping back into those same templates so I'm not having to recreate the wheel every single time with my listing images. In terms of what works, clarity is key. So something I see new sellers do so often is it's either their title or their description or their listing images, especially that main listing image. I like to think of that as the gatekeeper to sales because like, if someone's scrolling through Etsy, let's say they type in Mother's Day card and your listing image doesn't attract them at the start. Art. Even if you have the best product in the world with the best title and the best description and you have an ugly main listing image, you're not gonna make the sale. It's the gatekeeper. It's kind of like a thumbnail on YouTube. Like you need a good thumbnail to get people attracted in clicking into your video. Now once they get in, there's a whole bunch of other different things that you can do to make them convert. But if they don't get in in the first place, then you're screwed. So I like to say that clarity is key. Like you want your title to be exactly, exactly what the person is going to get. You want that main listing image to be very clear on what that person is going. A concrete example from our community. Someone posted a couple weeks ago, they're like, hey, this is my first listing. And they were making holiday gift tags. I think it was gift tags for Valentine's Day.
- [23:56]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [23:57]
Cody Berman
And for their main listing image, it was like an 8 by 5, 8 by 5. It was an 8.5 by 11, just like letter size sheet of paper with all of the gift tags on it. Like it was very unclear what the actual product that the end user would be getting. So we in the community were like, oh, actually it would probably make a lot more sense if you were to mock this up and like show this gift tag on an actual, actual Valentine's gift. And someone is, it's a lot more clear what the end user is buying. So clarity is key. And far too many people make the mistake of just like having this like abstract. Maybe they're trying to like keyword stuff in the title or the description or their, their main listing image. Just looks weird. There's too much information on it and it's kind of difficult to tell what the person is getting. The less confusion that your buyers are going to have when they see your product show up in search, the more likely they're going to buy.
- [24:45]
Nick Loper
And because people are still buying convenience, you're not worried about what, just, you know, if it's a simple printable and I'm just, I just literally gave it away. Like there's an image of the thing. Not really worried about that because it's a different buyer mindset than the do it yourselfer.
- [24:59]
Cody Berman
So to be clear, it's not just a PNG or a JPEG of the finished product. Like, that's not the main listing image. It's usually mocked up. Maybe there's like a nice like wood background or something like that with shadows. You're still showing exactly what the printable is or what the digital product is. You're not, but you're not just giving it away. You're not just like having the PDF as the, the, the front runner, the showcase of what the product is. Because to your point, you don't want people just going in, screenshotting it and then printing it out and using it. That's, that's not what I'm recommending at all.
- [25:27]
Nick Loper
Okay, what do you recommend? I mean, how do you show it without showing it?
- [25:31]
Cody Berman
Okay, let me try to think of a good example. So let's just use, I'm using thank you cards a lot in Mother's Day and Father's Day cards. Let's use a Mother's Day card. So Mother's Day card, I might have the 5x7 card, like add an angle kind of with like a shadow effect on it to make it pop on like a, a wooden background or maybe on a table with flowers in the corner. And so it's not just, it's not just the piece of paper. Like it's a whole mockup.
- [25:54]
Nick Loper
Sure, sure.
- [25:54]
Cody Berman
So like if someone were to go in and try to like screenshot at it, like, and you know, try to crop it, it's not going to look great. It's not going to look great. They're just going to pay the four or five bucks for the finished product. So that's what I mean. Like you are showing the entire printable or the entire digital product, but it's not in a way where someone can just like screenshot it or download it and use it immediately.
- [26:14]
Nick Loper
Do you use Etsy ads at all? Are you relying 100% on just the SEO of these listings or the search.
- [26:20]
Cody Berman
Volume that's there for this Etsy challenge. I tried not to use ads for the beginning part when I made it to a thousand dollars per month. But after that I was like, okay, no holds barred. Let's see how much I can pump up this revenue with ads. And it was actually like the week before Christmas, and I started pumping out my ad spend, like a hundred dollars a day just to see what I could do. Because Christmas is huge, holidays are huge on Etsy. And so with this new shop, I spent just over $900 in 10 days on ads, and that ended up bringing in an extra $2200 in revenue. So, like 1300 in profit if I can do live math on a podcast. Yeah, so, yeah, I, I do use ads. I, I use ads in my main shop. I was trying to use ads very sparingly in this new shop until I hit that goal. Cause I didn't want to. I didn't want people to be like, well, the only reason you got there was cause of ads. I was like, no, I'm getting here because of keyword research and SEO. But then I turn the ads dial up to 10.
- [27:16]
Nick Loper
That's work. Yeah, I'll trade 900 for 2200 all day.
- [27:19]
Cody Berman
Yes, ads do work if done correctly. But I also didn't want to teach people the wrong lessons if people think that they can just solve problems with ads. What I like to say is ads buy you eyeballs. So if you already have a product that's converting, like, people are already buying your product here and there. Sure, you can throw some ad money at it, see if it works. But if you just have a shop full of stuff that's not selling and you're paying for ads, all you're doing is buying more eyeballs that are probably not going to buy the thing because it doesn't have any proof of conversion. So, like, I don't want people to think or get the idea that just spending money on ads is going to solve their problems. And all of a sudden this side hustle that's bringing in zero for them is going to be $1,000 per month overnight. Like, you have to do the hard work of the keyword research and the SEO and figuring out what buyers are searching for. Then once you figure that out, then you can start experimenting with ads.
- [28:05]
Nick Loper
Does Etsy give you data on. You had a thousand views on this product and 50 people bought, so you had a 5% conversion. Like, what's. Do you get any of those metrics? Or what's good or what's a good benchmark?
- [28:16]
Cody Berman
Ye Etsy does give you those metrics. I like to be anywhere between 3 and 5% conversion rate on visitors. So I was actually, when I was publicly documenting this, I was like, okay, I'm getting a hundred visits a day. Hopefully that means three to five sales.
- [28:30]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [28:31]
Cody Berman
And it actually did end up being around that. So basically to hit my goal of $1,000 per month, I needed to get somewhere between like 175 and 200 visits a day. And so I'm like publicly tracking the first day is like, you know, 12 visits. The, the end of the second week's like 25 visits. But yeah, that's, that's a good benchmark. To get back to Your question, like 3 to 5% conversion rate is awesome.
- [28:51]
Nick Loper
But even then to be able to put something out onto the Internet and get views even if it's just 10, 12, 20, you know, in the first couple days. Yeah. Compare that to starting a brand new blog and shouting into the void of the Internet. I think Google's not going to rank your brand new site, you know, right out of the gate. I think it's an important contrast to draw, you know, some of the other Etsy sellers that we've talked to to have been trying to collect emails from their shop. Oh, get a free bonus template when you enter your email here. And they're trying to like wean themselves off or maybe you know, build up their own traffic source to their own self hosted storefront or their own Shopify store for digital products. You doing any of that or is it just like I just want to take what this marketplace is going to.
- [29:30]
Cody Berman
Give me with this new shop? No, I really wanted to just focus on Etsy generated traffic. So I didn't do the email list stuff. I didn't really lean into ads, I didn't do social media for it. For my like main business goal, Estate adventures. Absolutely. Like we are collecting email addresses using printables as lead magnets, which is something I was going to talk about later today. But yeah, in my main business I'm all for it. But the reason I started this new shop was like I don't want people to think they need all that stuff because you don't, you really don't like you. You just need the keyword research and SEO. But if you do want to scale this and build a bigger business out of it, definitely go for it. Like there are tons of ways. And I listen to those other episodes you had with Debbie and Becky. There are great ways to get people on your email list, whether that's with a freebie or like a bonus or a bundle or other. Other ways. And then you can, obviously, once they're on your list, you can then sell them similar products to what they've already bought. But it's not a necessity. You don't have to do that to be successful on Etsy.
- [30:23]
Nick Loper
Yeah, we'll work your way up the value chain while you bought this. So the next thing you might need.
- [30:27]
Cody Berman
Yeah, exactly.
- [30:27]
Nick Loper
Lots of different marketing things you can play around with once, once you get going. There was a question I wanted to ask to the extent that it matters, do you need to have your shop niched down like, you know, the thank you card emporium and that's all we sell, or could it be be a little bit broader or does you find that that matters?
- [30:44]
Cody Berman
I find that it doesn't matter much now if you're someone who. It doesn't make any sense. Like, let's say you started to shop for Sod Hustle Nation and it was all about side hustles, but then all of a sudden you started throwing like wedding printables in there. That might just make your audience be like, what the heck, Nick? What are you doing? So if you already have an established brand and you want to be like, you know, the thank you card guy or girl, or you want to be like the personal finance guy or girl, then it might not make sense to branch out. But for the average person, it's totally fine to have a whole hodgepodge, different types of printables in there. And Etsy actually has what's called sections in your shop. So you could silo different stuff. You could be like, oh, here's my thank you card section. Here is my planner section. Here is my editable template section. And so you can silo them off like that. But just in terms of buyer behavior, most people aren't like searching for a shop and then browsing the shop and seeing, like, what's good in there. Most people are typing a product into the search bar, seeing what shows up on search results and then clicking buying that product, and then they might not ever see you again. So it doesn't really matter if you're. You have a whole bunch of different stuff in there.
- [31:45]
Nick Loper
That's fair. That's probably consistent with my own Etsy buying behavior. It's search and discovery. And I don't know if I've ever reordered from the same shop again. It's like they solved my problem. And now I'm gone.
- [31:56]
Cody Berman
What are you buying on Etsy, Nick?
- [31:59]
Nick Loper
We have a cool map downstairs that says adventure awaits. It's like this cool watercolor map. Bought other gifts on there over the years, like maybe birthstone jewelry stuff. A few purchases. Not a prolific Etsy shopper, but I've spent some time on there. I'm kind of inspired to throw up some of these templates. You don't have to clean up some of the templates that I've been using. But, you know, there is a Side Hustle Nation shop with a. I think a handful of T shirt designs up there, but I've failed to prioritize it very well. So I'm excited to maybe, maybe take a crack at it this year.
- [32:34]
Cody Berman
Why not? Extra revenue stream. And for someone like you, we can talk about this later or now, but anyone who's an entrepreneur or side hustler, having an Etsy shop is. It's kind of a different way of advertising, right? Instead of spending money on, say, Facebook ads or Google Ads or YouTube ads or, like, this is a way you can get people into your ecosystem. Like, let's say you had the side Hustle shop and someone downloads your, like, your side Hustle tracker or, you know, your big list of side Hustle ideas, they might not have ever known you before. And you're getting these people. Not only are you getting paid to acquire them as customers, like, you're not paying like a Facebook ad or a Google Ad or YouTube ad, but you're building goodwill with them. Like, if you deliver something of value, if you have, like, this Rockstar side Hustle income tracker, that's like five bucks. You got them into your ecosystem. You figure out a way to get them on your email list. Now, you've already built a good rapport with them. So now when you launch, you know, some kind of a soft hustle course or a membership or some other bigger digital product, like, they're already gonna be like, oh, you know, this guy already delivered so much value for me with this little $5 printable that he sold me. And so, yeah, it's like, it's like a great entry point into your business with these printables. And Etsy is a great search engine to get people into your ecosystem who might have not gotten there before.
- [33:41]
Nick Loper
Yeah, the side Hustle business planning template. We came across some people who were doing. Who were, like, doing this for, like, kids summer. Like, here's the. You know, we want to teach our kids entrepreneurship. Here's the lemonade stand. You know, business plan template that they would buy and like make their kids fill out. It's like, I love it. There's probably a ton of these. We'll plug these into Erank and see what we can get. Now at the time that this episode is airing, Gold City Ventures is in the middle of their semi annual E Printables course launch. So we can link up your reference to that in the show notes for this episode@side hustle nation.com Cody C O D Y and we'll be right back with more with Cody in just a minute, including his business idea donation for side Hustle show listeners right after this. Nobody does selling better than our sponsor Shopify. That's why it's the number one checkout on the planet. We do use Shopify now. A lot of the third party platforms and stuff just integrate a lot better with Shopify. It has made a huge difference in our ability to be more flexible on our site. That was Randall Pulfer from episode 661 and he's just one of many side Hustle show guests who rely on Shopify to power their online sales. One of the things I think is really cool about Shopify is Shop Pay, which basically streamlines the checkout process. If any of your customers have purchased from the millions of other Shopify stores that can boost conversions up to 50%, meaning a whole lot less abandoned carts and a whole lot more sales going. It's no secret businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business today and get the same at checkout used by dozens of successful side Hustle show guests. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comsidehustle all lowercase go to shopify.comsidehustleen to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com Sidehustle Lots of scrappy side hustlers start their business with just their personal phone number. I've been there. I remember checking customer voicemails between classes in college. But at a certain point, you can't be limited to just your cell phone and notes app to get your work done. With our sponsor OpenPhone, you can stay connected while powerful AI features help keep your business on track. What's OpenPhone? It's the number one business phone system to help you separate your personal life from your growing business. For the cost of just a few coffees, your team can have a dedicated, dedicated phone number to manage calls and texts, all from a single platform. Think of it like having a shared inbox for your phone number. You worked hard for those leads. Don't let them slip through the cracks. Join the 50,000 businesses that trust OpenPhone to streamline their customer communications. Right now, OpenPhone is offering Side Hustle show listeners 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com Sidehustle that's O P E S N P-H-O-N-E.com Sidehustle for 20% off six months openphone.com Sidehustlez and if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. All right, we're back with Cody Berman from the five show and Gold City Ventures for round two in this episode. Round two is your business idea donation. This is something, something you think listeners could run with. This is something that you might start yourself if. If you had more hours in the day. What have you got for us here?
- [37:03]
Cody Berman
I even have a name for this business for your listeners, Nick. I'm hoping, I'm trying to scratch my own edge here. I'm hoping that someone creates this. I don't have the time. I don't have the resources. I don't have the connection. It's called the hub and it is an all in one business service for entrepreneurs. So this is legal accounting, a development team, marketing, hr, everything that you could possibly want as an entrepreneur all packaged into one. And I'm, I'm sure you have felt these pains, Nick, where you're looking for say a new accountant or you're looking for a legal team. It's like pulling teeth. I'm asking all my mastermind groups, I'm posting in Facebook groups. Everyone's giving you different recommendations. You don't know who's good. You don't. It's so much. And as we've scaled up Gold City Ventures in our company, like there's just all these different pieces in all these different places. If someone were to develop the Hub, like we'd pay, literally, I'm not even joking. We pay like $5,000 a month for that. To get rid of all of the other individual, individual people that are like tangentially attached to our business just to have like this one awesome Rockstar team in place. And obviously there'd be different tiers. Maybe a new entrepreneur is paying 100 bucks a month. The more developed businesses are paying 10,000 plus dollars a month. I don't know. But I would love for someone to do this because it has been so difficult and so much work for us to like to find those key players that again, we don't have the expertise, like we're not developers, we're not legal, we're not accounting, we're not hr. But they're important people. They're important people that you need to make your business succeed and to be compliant. So I would love if someone took this idea and ran with it.
- [38:28]
Nick Loper
Okay, talk me through this. So are we thinking like a directory of sorts of like, here are the top legal professionals that deal with online business, e commerce. Here's the top accounting professionals that know this type of business. Like, you know Sam Parr from Sam's List, right? My first million and hustle. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So he was doing something like this for account accountants, right?
- [38:47]
Cody Berman
Yes. So not that. Not that what I want is. And this is why it's so difficult. You need some kind of attractive reason for these people to want to work directly with you. Like, if I'm paying the hundred dollars a month, $5,000 a month, whatever it is, whatever your scale of business is, I would want them to just assign me, like, here's, you know, here's your lawyer, here's your accountant, here's your dev person. And they're just kind of at your beck and call. Like, if you need a funnel completed or you need like a website thing done, you just hit up the dev guys that's already part of your package and he does it for you. Or if you need a legal contract, you have like a new joint venture that you're doing. You hit up the legal team of the. The Hub subscription that you're already a part of and they take care of it. So not a directory, because I think directories still kind of. You have to go through the hard work. You have to interview a bunch of people. You have to pick one, get recommendations. That's not what I want. I've been there, done that. I want them to just like, have really high quality vetted people that I can trust that I can just give them these tasks that I don't want to do or don't know how to do.
- [39:44]
Nick Loper
Okay. So I'm now understanding it better as a. Have like a on demand fractional agency, fractional support for basically fractional everything. Fractional everything. Okay. It's like it's not worth having somebody on staff full time or even part time. But like, there are needs that come up.
- [40:02]
Cody Berman
Exactly.
- [40:03]
Nick Loper
For legal, for technical stuff and say just I would, you know, I want a resource in my back pocket to, to go to do that and not have to. Somebody else does all the vetting and I don't have to go out and, and ask friends or recommendations on here. I just like have a membership to this thing and people are standing by ready to help me out.
- [40:20]
Cody Berman
That's it. If someone did this, well, I would pay and I'm sure a lot of other people would pay. I talked to a lot of other entrepreneurs who had the same pain points. People would pay a lot of money for this if it was done. Well.
- [40:30]
Nick Loper
Yeah, when I had the, the virtual assistant site, there were, especially in the overseas, these companies in, in India and the Philippines, they would kind of promise this. Like, oh, you need web development done, you need funnel building done, you need copywriting done. Like, hey, look, we've got it all in house. We got the experts to do this design. Whatever you need. The question mark is always the quality component. And so that's kind of the, where the vetting comes in of like, well, how you know and the level of trust you have to build to get somebody to sign up.
- [40:56]
Cody Berman
How tight is this legal contract again? Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [41:00]
Nick Loper
Okay. All right. That's the hub, the all in one business hub for entrepreneurs. Now you've got that business idea as your next side hustle. Maybe you can run with that. Let's go to round three, the triple threat. The first component of this is a marketing tactic that's working right now. This does not have to be Etsy related. This could be related to any of your other businesses.
- [41:20]
Cody Berman
We kind of touched on it before. But one that's working and it's worked for years is printables or digital downloads as lead magnets or low ticket offers. And we discussed a little bit using the side hustle Etsy shop as an example. But it's just such a great way to get people into your ecosystem. It's almost like a tripwire product. I don't really like that term too much because it sounds like you're tricking people into buying something. But it's just a great way to get people exposure to what you've got. Like what, what you've got to offer. And if you can wow people out the gate with something either free like a lead magnet or cheap like a low ticket offer, Maybe it's literally 7 bucks or 17 bucks. They're going to be so much more prone to purchase whatever other things you have to sell, whether it's a course or membership or services or whatever one on one coaching, they're going to be so much more prone to sign up if they already know that you're someone.
- [42:05]
Nick Loper
Who delivers value and you're able to sell these on Etsy. Is that the Primary strategy or is it just through your website, like where, where you find in eyeballs and buyers.
- [42:15]
Cody Berman
For Gold City Ventures? It's a whole bunch of things. So not so much Etsy anymore. But especially, I shouldn't say that. We do have a lot of people who come from Etsy. But like most people who join our email list start off from Etsy, but so we have like, you know, affiliates who promote our stuff. We use SEO. Like we have a huge blog and YouTube channel and we're doing paid ads. So like there's a whole bunch of different ways that we're getting people to download these lead magnets or buy these low ticket products. But again, it's, it's building that trust.
- [42:42]
Nick Loper
Now we did a really fun episode with Pete Boyle who has his $1 product challenge. And his argument was like, yeah, you could build your email list with, you know, a bunch of free lead magnets, but the question is, are you, are you building a list of subscribers? You building a list of buyers? And he's like, that $1 barrier was enough to really accelerate sales of everything else that he had to offer. He's like, obviously I'm not going to make a living off of this $1 product. But it led to, you know, in his case, led to higher ticket consulting business, led to higher ticket digital products sales too. But just that little hurdle, that little bit of commitment. And we talked about people who pay attention and if you can wow people, you deliver, you know, 10x or a hundredx the value for that $1 thing, then all of a sudden that level of trust really skyrockets.
- [43:32]
Cody Berman
Absolutely.
- [43:33]
Nick Loper
All right, that is our marketing tactic. Digital downloads as lead magnets, low ticket offers. Figure out what you might be able to create. And you probably what Pete recommended was working backwards from your core offer or you know, peeling feeling out a piece of that, that solves some initial pain point. And like, okay, what's the natural progression of somebody going through this if they ultimately are going to need your full service? What's a logical first step there? The next question here of the Triple Threat is a new or new to you tool that you're loving right now. We mentioned Erank, we mentioned Everbee, we mentioned Canva, we had a few different tools here, but what else have you got for us?
- [44:10]
Cody Berman
Something I started using way too late. So I've been using chat GPT for a while, but I hadn't really experimented with custom GPT. I think I actually heard you talk about this on a podcast. Correct me if I'm wrong, Nick, but Now I have custom GPTs for a couple different use cases where, like, I have a custom GPT that can write something in my voice if I need, like a blog post or an email that just kind of will take in information that I give it, kind of spit it out and honestly, like, reason with itself a little bit and then spit out final products. And it honestly doesn't need too much tweaking sometimes. I have another custom GPT for generating and researching Etsy product ideas. I have another custom GPT for basically researching a guest for my podcast, the Financial Independence show, and like, kind of unearthing some interesting questions or things that they've mentioned before. And for those wondering, a custom GPT is like, if you're on ChatGPT, you know, you just type in like, hey, I'm interviewing Nick Loper today. Tell me some interesting things about him. A custom GPT is basically just a string of queries that you have saved. So it's like, hey, you know, search up Nick Loper. What are his, like, top episodes? What are some interesting things that he doesn't talk about too often? And it will. You can add as many queries as you want, as many kind of actions onto this string of instructions. That's basically a custom GPT. And I was way too late to this game. And they're awesome.
- [45:27]
Nick Loper
Okay, is this something you, like, would save in the, in the sidebar of ChatGPT, rather than having to punch in those kind of priming prompts each time?
- [45:36]
Cody Berman
Yes, you do need the paid version, the $20 per month pro version of ChatGPT. And then like in your profile at the top, right, it'll unlock and you'll see, like, there's. I mean, there's a bunch of options that unlock with that tier, but custom GPTs is one of them. I don't think there's any maximum number. I think you can create an unlimited number of custom GPTs for all different use cases.
- [45:55]
Nick Loper
Interesting. I haven't played around with that. I've. I've just gone through the, you know, one specific use case.
- [46:00]
Cody Berman
Maybe I heard a guest mention it. Then.
- [46:02]
Nick Loper
Yeah, the one that I would probably need to create is like, take this article and turn it into a, a compelling YouTube script. That's like kind of the bottleneck in creating more video content. Like, we've got this huge body of library of content on the site, but it's like, how do we translate some of that over to video and do it in a way that is native and natural to YouTube and not just reading a Blog post. I don't think that would necessarily play very well. And so a series of prompts like, you are Nick Loper from side Hustle Nation, and this is your task. Do you understand? Yes.
- [46:31]
Cody Berman
Yes.
- [46:32]
Nick Loper
And like, okay, here's the copy. Can you turn this? And you know, don't include blah, blah, blah. You know, it's okay to use some of the same phrasing, but it doesn't have to be word for word, you understand? Yes. Okay. And go over there. But like, to have that saved. I could see how that would be a time saver.
- [46:46]
Cody Berman
Oh, yeah. Huge timesaver.
- [46:47]
Nick Loper
All right. And last but not least, your favorite book from the last 12 months.
- [46:53]
Cody Berman
One that I didn't think was going to have such a profound impact on me because it was really dense when I started reading it. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so boring. It's called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and it's all about human psychology and why people tend to make certain decisions. It's like, really interesting if you're a marketer and just like kind of like the gambling lottery mentality, like loss aversion. There's a whole, whole bunch of really, really good stuff in there and stuff that we as marketers can use to our advantage.
- [47:20]
Nick Loper
Interesting. I have heard of this book for a long time. It's been out for a while, but have never cracked it open. So Thinking Fast and slow.
- [47:27]
Cody Berman
It is dense. It is dense. It's not like a fun read, but there's just like a lot of info in there. There's a lot of really good stuff.
- [47:34]
Nick Loper
Yeah, you would layer this on with an influence by Robert Cialdini type of thing. Or how do, how do we tap into these psychological benefits or psychological triggers to improve our business?
- [47:45]
Cody Berman
Exactly.
- [47:45]
Nick Loper
Okay, well, very cool. We'll link that up in the show notes as well. Side hustlenation.com Cody, you've got a million different side hustles. Like, what's. What's next for you? What are you focused on? What kind of projects you got going on? More real estate builds.
- [47:58]
Cody Berman
What's new real estate been slowing down on. Honestly, our core focus has been Gold City Ventures and building that out. We have some exciting stuff that I can't announce yet, but just know that we have some exciting projects in the works. Constantly improving, building our community, making the content better and easier to follow. So, yeah, most of the, most of the new stuff for me, Nick, is Gold City Ventures, which, honestly, if you were to ask me this question years ago, when we first became friends I probably would have named 10 news Hot Hustles. I was going to try. I was doing way too much and honestly I think I spread myself too thin. So now I've kind of re narrowed my focus into a couple core things that I'm really good at and just focusing all my time energy into those. So yeah, doing more on Gold City Ventures, continuing the podcast, the Financial Independence show and that's the main focuses for me right now.
- [48:45]
Nick Loper
Very good. Well, we'll link up all of those resources included the eprintables course@sidehustlenation.com Cody, thank you for sharing your insight. This is again very inspiring. Maybe hopefully get off the sidelines and into the Etsy game a little bit myself. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors and one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So help spread the word. Fire off that text message to somebody excited about planting those little digital money seeds, building extra income streams. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.