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EXTENDED CUT: The Million-Dollar Etsy Shop

2017-06-25

Most Etsy shops don’t make money—or if they do, they make a small amount of money. But some make *a lot* of money. What separates them? This special episode takes a detailed look at the online storefront for a million-dollar Etsy shop whose full story is coming up next week on the show.  Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are. You need a hustle! Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeauInstagram: @193countries

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hello and greetings. This is crystal about with side hustle school special extra episode for you today. This is our sixth extended cut. Extended cut is a special episode. I do just once a month to take a deep dive into a specific topic, usually as requested by you, or, if not you, We utter westerners and this one is a bit different because it wasn't specifically requested by you, the listeners, but I'm pretty sure it something that a lot of listeners are gonna be interested in. The first is to recap: it's been thirty episode. Since our last act, any cut we ve had five of them so far. The first one was about the power of observation: how to spot and identify different hustle ideas. Second episode was caught: nine starter platforms that was about using sites like at sea, which I want to talk about a bit more today and also fibre up work, some others and how you can quickly get started with those platforms. Even if you do
the website. Now. Having said that, I kept getting a lot of questions about starting a website or a building. Your first website so extended cut. Number three was about how to build a website in ninety minutes, went through a pretty detailed plan with you right here. You don't have to make things complicated. You can in fact get started in just that amount of time. The fourth one was called simple marketing plan. Once again, indirect response a lot of questions I received about marketing and how to get the word out. If you made this product or service, will how do people actually find out about it? That episode tells you exactly how to do it in the fifth one was about how to choose between different ideas, because if you like me, you often have a lot of ideas in the problem. Isn't so much coming up with ideas, at least once she required that power of observation it? How do I know what to do next, and why should I choose to focus on using my limited time trying to put this into my busy life? Not a links to all of those episodes are at sight us all school dot com, slash extended, it must have some pretty lengthy notes as well. It's a bit different than the normal show nuts we use for each daily episode
like they build a website, and ninety minutes episode that something like two thousand or three thousand words as a written tutorial as well with lots of links to everything I discussed. Any episode see my check some of those out once again at sight us all school dotcom, slashing and it s a day is gonna go behind the scenes of Anne S shop, whose full story I have coming, when a regular episode I believe next week, but in an episode I'll tell you a bit more about Jennifer the person who started this Etsy Shop, how it came to be how she came to grow it so much, but in this extended caught I want to do more of a case study. Of the Nazi shop itself, because it is a million dollar at sea shop, its bring and a lot of money and most Etsy shops? Don't do that not everyone's gonna, have a million dollar Etsy shop, not everyone's gonna sell something on Etsy, but whenever see something like this, I always think it's interesting and more than interesting is fascinating. How does someone build this kind of business despite not having I kind of background and despite the fact that most people who sell on sites like at sea,
I really making much money at all or if they do make money, they make some money, but there certainly not getting rich while the goal of a site also is not always to get rid of course, but also the is pretty cool when someone create such a big sex, ass. So that's why we're gonna look out today and all the information for today's episode, including links as well, will be on that same web page. I just mentioned sawdust school dotcom, Slash extended. It will jump right into that after this brief sponsor message, support for these punkahs comes from progressive. What would you do with an extra aid two dollars by a plane. Ticket pay down your student loan treat yourself to those shoes you been with progressive. You can find out drivers who switch and save save an average of seven hundred. Ninety six dollars on car insurance, get your quote online at progressive dot com and see how much you can be saving national average
we'll car insurance savings by new customer surveyed who saved with progressive in twenty nineteen The other day I told you about Jennifer Brown, who started this business called, hang out lighting and like just about business redrawn, Sicel swore I use the word business, but she didn't really plan to start as a business. In that episode, I told you her origin story, which is simply about how she was into arts and crafts, and she had all kinds of different projects and when she found this website called Etsy, she thought maybe I'll try selling something on it. So it's very what a side hustle story, but now, as I mentioned in episode, she does have employees She hasn't actual storefront in Chicago, I believe, or at least a studio, and, as you know, from the title of this episode, she's bringing in some like a million dollars a year. Thank the average income each month is around seventy thousand dollars. Then she has some big holiday months as well, which pushes it into that seventeen
range, and the first thing to rise is that not all Etsy shops are created equal much three categories of people who saw at sea there are hobby that don't really make any money, but they do make money to very small amount. There are hobbyist it make some money. And I featured a number of those on the show and then their people like Jennifer, professed those who make a lot of money using the platform. I don't know what it breaks down to percentage wise, but it's probably safe to say people. I jennifer our end at least ninety five percent I'll, if not higher, most people selling on at sea, which is known as the world's largest handcrafted marketplace, but into those first two categories of hobbyist don't make much money or hobbyists it make a small amount of money to any kind of situations. What you want to do is look and study what separates the shop. That work from the ones that dumb and when I say work in this case I mean those that are profitable, those that are making a lot of money seeing aught of sales and the funding is. This is easy to do, because so much of the data is public like there, obviously some
Terry details about Jennifer's business that we would only know from sitting down to talk with her and, of course you have to be willing to share, but on a public platform like at sea, you can see exactly how many items she sold. You can see the sales price they ve sold for you can look at all of your current listings. You can look at her past listings and you can do this for anything. That's out there. You may not know exactly what her costs are, but you can certainly see what's appealing to people and what their buying and if you go back and look at the historical data, you can see how the business has evolved and grown over time, and this is an experiment- should definite consider doing if you're trying to her some kind of shot like this of your own or, if you just want to have a blog of your own or some completely unrelated business. If there is any way to go back and look historical information, its public for someone you want to emulate, not necessarily replicate eggs. They what they ve done, because you are an original of course, but you want to do something I kind of like it. You do want to have a successful crap business or you too, you wanna have a successful blog, an affiliate side hustle, whatever
guys by looking at the publicly available data? You can offer learned some important lessons for gent, as he shot is called, hang out lighting. Let's take a look inside, so I went to look at the homepage for her out lighting, hang out lighting has their own website or focus on her at sea store because at sea as this huge marketplace, it has a lot of fires, and not surprisingly, Jennifer Brown has done a wonderful job with the shop that unity of yourself, you can just go to at sea dot com, slash shy, Slash hang out lighting outlining is just one word for it, for some reason doesn't come off. Just search, hang out lighting on etsy dot com and of course I will take it up in a show nuts as well, and when you go to that page, you can see everything that Jennifer cells you scroll down from the top of the bottom. You can see all of these different items. She does some really fine chandelier ears, like clusters, light wraps design your own lampshade things, rubbish, column,
Things are not very specific point, as you can see Oliver different products there. I wanna talk about her sails and reviews in her about page, but the very first thing I noticed is that these photos look really nice, and I mention this before about sites like at sea or Ebay are pretty much anything you're selling online, especially in a platform, were other people are also saying something having get photos is a must when people are making purchasing decision- and they don't know you they're looking for appendant light or whatever it is. You want yours, the great and right from the beginning, as I would expect, I can see really get photos of olive Jennifer stuff and I A lot of data is public on any kind of platform like at sea, so Etsy uses a system called favorites which are basically like likes on Facebook or somewhere else, and I can see that fourteen thousand people more than fourteen thousand actually have favouritism, hang out lighting. So she has a lot of fans and admirers is not an a lot about the The algorithm- but I would imagine
when someone favorites a page or a vendor, they're gonna, see more of that person's listings. So if you have a shop, you definite want to encourage people to do that. Then you can also see everything that I sold in the shop, and that is interesting because you're trying to figure out something you do you don't just yet what is for sale? You want to look at what has sold if a seller has ten different kinds of items for sale, for example the otter, pretty that some of those items are gonna to sell much more than others. So you want to see what is popular you and see what is selling the most. A conveniently without Sienese other platforms. As I said, you can do that for you. I can see that Jennifer has sold more than five thousand items and if you click you can,
here's, what all the items are that have sold here's the price if they sold for- and you might have some trends when you do that. Remember other stories have done on people making different art projects and selling them. They probably learn at a certain point. It people respond more to some things than others show. The best thing to do in that scenario is to make more of those things and that's exactly what Jennifer has done over time. You can see that her style has developed its very identifiable. Even if you look at this page of like fifty different items that are foresail, there's definite design voice or something else. It's a dinner viable that you look and say. Oh, that looks like Jennifer Brown that looks like hang out light in fact it is now. The other thing I want to mention is the about page for hang out lighting. I strongly believe that the about pages, the most important page on your website and for a listing site like etsy- maybe it's not as important as the listing itself, but it's pretty important. Now, if you look at this page, you'll see this beautiful foot. What at the top has always light bulbs hanging from Iraq and she is out of the text, be unique to it so she's kind of us.
Hurting her brand identity in this big market place where a lot of people are saying something that might be similar, she's gonna putting herself forward and saying like this is what we're all about, if you dont want, have something tat looks like everyone else. Well, that's why you're on at sea in the first place, because you value handcrafted items and if you're, looking for a good lighting solution for your home. While I have something to offer- and you should take a look at this- not speaking of the about page itself- Manichean about section on at sea- but if you scroll down, you noticed that she tells a story and here's how our story begins its title following dreams and she says a childhood filled with arts and crafts was the beginning of my love for creating. Then what started as a small hobby called stuff by Jan quickly grew into a small storefront with a few friends and now into a forty five hundred square foot warehouse in an always growing team. We haven't herb garden, a treaty printer and ever growing white shop in an endless supply, a banana ice cream, and it goes on a bed a couple more paragraphs. But basically this is an origin story.
This is kind of like who I was before when I was interested in how I followed my dream. It started small and look at us now and even though we ve grown about we're still having fun, we have not only to three printer. We also had the endless supply of banana ice cream and at the bottom it says we would love to build a custom chandelier for you, any questions just ask. So it's very approachable, its functional by the way, she's also kind of countering actions in this copy. Here's one and the second paragraph she says it needed quick are typical. Lead times are a short ass, three five business days with rush options available
and I like that, because when I look at her items I think, while it's interesting but its handcrafted, it's gonna take three weeks to get to me. Maybe I don't have three weeks so right on the about page right in the center, it's kind of countering that objection or that concern and saying. Actually we can give it to you and three or five business days, maybe even sooner, if you need it sooner and if you have any questions, just ask what kind of running style provides reassurance to someone who's browsing? Someone is kind of on the fence whose, like I like the idea, but I'm not sure we'll just makes you feel right at home, makes you feel very comfortable ordering from hang alighting so to wrap it up. I think agendas followed this very wise formula. She, find a way to create something. That's valuable, interesting and useful, while also being very creative, being able to express yourself build something that matters to her and she's involved along the way. She's noticed what works and what doesn't, and instead of trying to fix. What's not working. She focuses more, at least from what I can tell I'm, giving people what they want and making something fun if people are excited to have in their home or their off
getting great reviews. She has all these admirers on Etsy. You can see everything has been sold in what people say about it. Then we didn't talk much about her pricing, but these items are not cheap. There, not terribly expense. But we're talking about chandelier and light clusters. Some items are as low as fifty or sixty dollars, but it looks the average sailors somewhere around two or three hundred dollars and are certainly other items it's a lot more. So I think that's been a big part of being able to be so successful is selling an item that peat expect to spend a bit of money on because it's gonna be in their home or their office or whatever it's a source of light literally and remember as well. Have you been listening and think, while this is interesting for people who make artistic item spite? That's not me, you can apply the same principle to all kinds of projects, especially online projects where there is so much historical public data available you always a look and see what separate something that is successful from something that is not. Of course, you can think of it in relative terms. What product? Seldom what services seem to be the most successful for the most in demand. Why are those
from all the others? And yes, of course, some data is now publicly available. But the point is there so much that is. It should help you make decisions. Should be enough to kind of not you along and give you an indicator of what might be good for you to focus I remember long long long ago when I was selling on Ebay. I learned to do this because I would look at completed listings instead of searching active listings all the time I would search completed listings for various categories for various items, and I would see what was most popular. What was getting the most. What was selling for the highest amount, then, when I would look for items to sell and we base my on what I learned through that process of examination, and I'm sure you could do this in a very sophisticated way, but I'm all about Can simple software to show you a very simple thing to do? If you get into it, of course, you can totally geek out and do much more. I hope this helpful to you. Let me know if it was. I was personally interested this tattoo shop. That's why I wanted to look at it a bit more, but of course I want to make sure that side of the school is helpful to you. So definitely let me know what we should focus on for future. Extended episodes
As well as pretty much everything I'm excited were halfway through the year now got a big buccleuch coming up I'll be out on the road to see you, then and whether I see you then or not, I hope to hear about your site us all about what you're making you yourself, maybe you'll have million dollar eighty shop at some point or something different that relates to your gauze. Remember, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better I'll, be cheering yawned from afar. I'm preschool about this inside US law, school.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-06.