524: Insider Tips On How To Sell Profitably On Etsy With Scott Voelker

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. And today I have my good friend Scott Volcker back on the show. And if you don’t remember Scott, he was one of the OG podcasters covering Amazon over at The Amazing Seller. But since then, he’s pivoted and now he’s kicking butt on Etsy and teaching others how to do so over at Brand Creators. Now in this episode, Scott is gonna teach us how to sell on Etsy.

00:28
But before we begin, want to let you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. And right now, actually, they’re almost sold out. We only have seven mastermind passes left. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based event where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business.

00:56
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01:23
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01:52
and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube, and podcasting when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form, and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:12
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have my long friend and colleague Scotty V back on the show. And personally, I like to call Scott the grandfather of selling on Amazon, as he was one of the first and most popular podcasts in the space. And today he runs Brand Creators, where he teaches others how to start their own brand and future proof their business. But the reason why I decided to have him on the show today,

02:40
is because he’s been doing a lot of work and a lot of content on YouTube about Etsy as he and his wife run a thriving Etsy business as well. And my daughter has been dabbling with Etsy and I’m pretty sure she’s going to be thrilled and she’s going to actually listen to this episode. And with that, welcome to show, Scott, how are doing? I am doing fantastic. And I just, I think it’s great that you do that intro right on the fly like that. That’s pretty impressive there.

03:08
So good job for that. wouldn’t expect anything less, but that was pretty good. Good little intro. So my daughter’s selling an Etsy and she’s actually watched a couple of your videos. Okay. And I think she’s a fan. think she’s a really, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think if, if she takes with what you have taught with e-commerce and what I’m sharing with the Etsy side, she could probably do pretty good. Cause the crazy thing is though, with this whole Etsy thing is it’s

03:36
To me, it is untapped as far as like with what we bring to the game. It’s like a lot of Etsy sellers right now are not using the marketing stuff that you and I have been using for years. Whether it’s even the Amazon space, there was a lot of people when I was in that space teaching it, they weren’t doing the marketing stuff, right? They’re just doing whatever.

04:03
whatever the platform would allow them to do a lot of the things. And there’s a lot of good things that that does, but they never really did anything externally. And that’s really what I’ve been trying to teach and preach. And it’s what we’ve been doing with my wife’s little Etsy shop. it’s been really, really working. And I’m excited because I get to teach with what we’re doing and it feels good because it’s what we’re doing, but it’s also, I think, an underserved market.

04:30
And I just, I like being in the forefront of that right now because a lot of people are benefiting from it, from what I can tell. I’m just curious, why did your wife decide to sell an Etsy? Cause you know a lot about Amazon and some of the other marketplaces. Why did she choose Etsy? Okay. This is a great question, Steven. I don’t think you and I’ve ever had this conversation, but okay. So back in the day when I was selling on Amazon, you know, a neighbor of mine, we had a brand that we started together, right? And

04:58
Uh, you know, we started, it was in the cooking niche. Okay. And so we were selling accessories for some of the top brands and just things like that. Right. So, and we built a blog on the backend of that, that was getting a significant amount of traffic. Um, and we just launched products, built an email list, like did all that stuff. And to be honest with you, I got tired. Uh, and so did she, and that’s when she messaged me she’s like, I think I want to sell. And I’m like, okay, let’s do it. Like I’m, I’m fine with it. Right.

05:28
And again, that was a way for me, like it was a way to make money. We made good money. We sold the business. We made a good chunk of change, but, uh, it also allowed me to teach the thing that I really love doing. Like I love talking about marketing. I love talking about email. I love talking about all that stuff. It’s like, how can I be in the trenches and do it, but really also be able to teach it. And so when we got all done, I was like, all right.

05:54
kind of I’m done with Amazon for right now. I’m not saying I’m retiring from it, but I’m kind of done and her and my wife are friends and she’s now Debbie. That’s her name. She, she basically said, I’m going to just go and start playing on Etsy. And so she started doing Etsy and then she starts sending me screenshots. Look at, made 20,000. Oh, look at this. I’m going to do a hundred thousand this year. Oh my gosh. I’m going to do 250,000 this year. Debbie, what are you doing?

06:17
Right? Like what’s going on? She’s like, I’m doing print on demand, Scott. It’s beautiful. We don’t have no inventory. We got nothing. I’m like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. No inventory. Like the things that we were struggling with, like warehousing, like all that stuff. And she’s like, yeah. And I said, all right, you got to tell me more. And so then her and her husband, we went out to dinner and then she kind of explained it. And then my wife was interested. So she actually came over to our house and helped my wife set her little shop up and, and got started. And,

06:44
And then from there, it’s kind of been just like a little bit of a side hustle. And, and then from, you know, I say probably about eight months in after my wife had her first fourth quarter, which wasn’t, it wasn’t huge. was like 20, 30,000. That’s a lot, man. That’s a lot. It was, it was, and it got my attention and I was like, well, wait a minute here. Maybe I should kind of come in here and try to work in the business a little bit, like everything that we’ve done before.

07:09
We start a blog, we do an email list, we do all the things that we did before and maybe I can do that and I can also teach and share. And so that’s what happened. But I didn’t really get into it too much until actually Cody from Everbee, who’s a good friend of mine now and it reminds me a lot of Greg Mercer. It’s almost the same pattern of how it happened because Greg came to me.

07:32
years ago, like he did you and said, Hey, I got this little Chrome extension. It helps you find products on Amazon, whatever. And, uh, and then we became friends and then his thing blew up. mean, the thing is, um, you know, I don’t even know how much it’s valued at now millions. Um, but it’s a great company, big company, hundreds of employees. Um, and now Cody reminds me of this same guy. And so of, of Greg, and he just said to me, you go Scott.

07:58
we need someone like you in this space. There’s no one in there doing this right now. And he was a fan of the podcast before and he sold on Amazon and all that stuff. And he’s like, we need someone like you. I’m like, I don’t know. And I kicked it around for probably six months. And then I said, all right, I’m going to do it. And then talking with you about YouTube, said, let’s just, let’s just start helping people and see where this leads. And that’s kind of what I’ve been doing. So yeah, I mean, to answer your question, she got referred to by my ex business partner.

08:26
No, we didn’t leave on bad terms. We just sold the business. Is she, is your wife doing print on demand then? Yeah. All print on, you know, what’s ironic about this is that we just bought a printer. we’re, doing the printing on demand now in our shop. Yeah. So it’s actually there’s a, there’s a guy I know, uh, Steven Chin who actually, um, they built their business through COVID doing masks, right. And customizing masks. then he did over a million dollars in masks on Etsy.

08:56
And then they obviously went out of business. You know, it didn’t go out of business, but the business stopped. So he’s like, what do we do? And he bought all this equipment to print them in-house. So then they ended up doing their own print on demand and they, do it all in-house though. But he had hundreds of employees and then he went out and built a tool that basically now will automate that through the backend and the API and stuff. But, he still does in-house. Awesome. I just don’t want anything to do with employees. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have the employees are ready for Bumblebee doing the embroidery.

09:26
Printing is actually easier. Yeah. So Etsy in terms of like the numbers in the marketplace, it’s probably like a thousand times smaller than Amazon literally. So I actually looked at that before I jumped on her because I knew you’d want some numbers. Um, I think right now, I think right now the last that I checked it was 7.5 million sellers. Okay. Etsy sellers and they’re like 95 to a hundred million buyers. Right. And I think Amazon right now,

09:55
is around million shoppers, buyers. So that’s the number that I came up with. Could I be off? Could be, but yeah, Amazon is a lot bigger and I think e-commerce in general is pretty large. But the numbers that you were just quoting, those are really high numbers. There’s this common misconception that you can’t make that much money on Etsy. For the people that you’ve interacted with, what would you say like the revenue potential is for a business like your wife’s?

10:22
Gosh. Well, we just had this conversation the other day, Steve, because we also built out a Shopify store. We got that going. Um, we actually just did that recently. I’ve had a blog that’s been attached to this, a content site that gets about 30,000 views a month. So that’s a blog. is. Yeah. And I’ve got it. I’ve got Mediavine on it. So we’ve got Mediavine that’s making maybe 1500 bucks a month and just passive, you know, kind of media money when

10:46
You know, when, when I was looking at like the whole thing, I’m like, we could build this into a sizable business, like seven figure plus easy, right? But I’m like, you know, I don’t know if I want to, I literally said that to my wife. I’m like, I don’t know if I want to, let’s just keep doing what we’re doing. I keep teaching. Yeah. You know, we’ll make enough money. Like, like we’ll do what we love to do, but you have to also look at like when you’re doing print on demand, even if you’re using another third party company to do it, like printify.

11:14
You still have customer support. You got people saying like, Oh, I didn’t want it to say that. I wanted it to say this. Right. Cause my wife’s doing personalization. She is doing that. So she is personalizing things and she just had it happen the other day where, someone’s like, no, I wanted it to be this year. I put in the wrong year. Right. So now you got to go back in and hopefully you can catch it and printify and, and all of that stuff. So yeah, it’s still, um, there’s a ton of potential. So to answer your question, I, uh, I, uh, did an interview.

11:44
with one of the, actually not one of the number one seller in Etsy. And they have been for like the past five years and they sell jewelry and they have over 2 million sales. Like, yeah, crazy. And up till recently, they were just doing Etsy. And I say recently, probably in 2021, I think is what he said.

12:10
Um, that they, uh, they, decided to do a Shopify store and I think they have about 30 employees now. Right. But yeah, that’s a multimillion dollar business. So is the numbers there, depending on the products, depending on all that stuff comes into it. I think that it doesn’t matter what platform you’re selling on it still, but I think handmade is always going to be bigger on Etsy, right? But it’s not only handmade anymore. Everybody thinks it’s only got to be handmade. Um, now there are people coming in trying to do drop shipping. That’s going to get kicked off pretty soon. Like.

12:39
It is gonna happen. But print on demand is pretty big as long as you’re designing the design, know, and you’re making the design and stuff, it’s handmade in their eyes. So walk me through the process of getting visibility on Etsy. And let’s say you’re launching a new design or your wife’s launching a new design. Walk me through the steps. Is it like Amazon, keyword dominated, that sort of thing? Yeah, so keyword, yes, keyword. I would say keywords is definitely a big deal.

13:08
But again, it’s exactly, this is what I love about this because everything I was teaching on Amazon, it’s pretty much the same over on Etsy as far as like the algorithm goes. You know, like we all know that if you wanted to rank a product, but again, you got to know that what you’re targeting, right? Like I just had a conversation with one of my students the other day and she has a great product. It’s doing great on Tik Tok. It’s getting like, she made like $4,000 on this product, which is like a $30 product on Tik Tok, but she’s not really selling anything on Etsy with that one product.

13:38
And I’m like, well, what’s the difference here? And I looked at the titling and I’m like, it’s, just doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense. We have, we have to fix the title. Um, and then you’ll start getting traffic. But to your point, as long as you’re, you look at the numbers and that this is where a tool comes in to show you like, what’s the potential for a product. Right? So in her case, she sells like reclaimed wood, right? And she created this reclaimed wood personalized. Uh, it’s a little sign for Christmas that has, uh,

14:08
that has all of the different days of the Christmas that you put a candy cane through. Right. And so we did great on Tik TOK, but she didn’t have it labeled like farmhouse Christmas decoration. Right. We know farmhouse is a really popular search term. And if people see that, even though they’re not searching for a candy cane, you know, Advent calendar type thing, if they see that they might want to buy it because it’s, it’s rustic wood and it’s farmhouse. So if you took that same idea, right, let’s say that that is being searched for

14:38
And then you get an influx of sales. It’s going to automatically, uh, get the attention of the algorithm because Etsy, like any other platform is going to promote products that are selling. Right. So to me, our launch plan is very, very simple. And it’s very similar to what we used to do on that on Amazon. You launch the product, we discount the product pretty heavily. We run Etsy ads, push it as hard as we can. We have an email list. We tell them that this week only it’s 40 % off because we’re doing a launch special.

15:08
Um, and then basically that’s it, right? We just want to try to get as many sales through that listing as possible. Number one, it’s going to get sales. We’re going to spike the algorithm, but then we’re also going to be able to start getting reviews on that item. What’s what a review is going to do. That’s going to help us convert hire when people land there and all of this stuff that we all know, um, turns people into buyers. So yeah, it’s pretty, that’s pretty much what you’re going to do. The people that are like, I’m just going to launch a product and let organic take over. Good luck. You know I mean? Like it’s just like,

15:38
Everyone else is doing that. What’s going to separate you? You’ve got, I mean, think about it logically, 50 listings of almost the same type of product. What is, what is Etsy going to promote? What are they going to put at the top? Because you’ve got better SEO. Who cares? Right. So with print on demand specifically though, can you just kind of walk me through what your margins look like? What do you sell? First of all, print on demand wise? Yeah, it’s typically going to be a sweatshirts, shirts, obviously, pillows.

16:07
Flags, yard flags are big. Regular flags that you hang up are big. Obviously this time of year, stockings, ornaments, all of those things. And there’s other things, blankets. Blankets are a great one. They’re great margins. We’ve got a couple on our couch. Basically like a fleecy type of blanket that you can use for the couch. You can print the whole one side. They might sell for 79, 89 bucks and the margins on those are about 40%.

16:36
That’s not bad. That’s pretty good. It’s not. It’s not for completely like to me, automated in a sense to like, literally you put up the product, you got no inventory. If it sells great, if it doesn’t, you’re out 20 cents for the listing fee for three months. Right. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course.

17:04
on how to get started in eCommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

17:33
And in terms of choosing the keywords, I imagine you’re using Everbee to figure out what keywords are special, but a lot of times it comes out of the design though, right? 100%. Yeah. It does come down to keywords. Now the other cool thing is, like what we’ll use Everbee for is like, like Everbee is like any other tool though that has like keyword data. It’s not exact. It’s guesses. Right. And so what I like to look at more than anything is I like to look at the products that are selling that are similar. And then I look at their title. What did they use?

18:03
And then I look at their tags because we can expose their tags using a tool like ever be. Right. And then I can go, Oh, they’re using these. didn’t think about putting in there, uh, you know, uh, you know, sweatshirt for Nick, you nurse, right? Like that’s a tag. Okay. Well, maybe I should use that. Um, so that’s how I think about it, but honestly, your SEO can be 80%. You know, good, but if you’re getting sales, just.

18:29
it takes it up a notch because you’re getting those sales as long as you, and you know it Steve, like there’s going to be probably a handful of keywords that are driving a bulk of the traffic. Right. Walk me through Etsy ads. Is it just like running Google ads or Amazon sponsored it? No, it’s okay. The one thing that’s, that’s good about it is there’s not a lot of knobs to turn. I’m not a lot of buttons to click. Okay. It’s very, very basic. You can’t isolate keywords. You can’t isolate, uh,

18:57
You can’t isolate a certain product. You can’t do any of that. All you do is you basically say, I want to advertise these five listings. I want my budget to be 25 bucks a day. Right. And that’s basically all you can choose. Huh? So you can’t really, there’s no knobs to turn really. There’s really isn’t the only thing you can do.

19:19
is on the backend. Once you start getting traffic through there, you can see the impressions, which is a good thing. So I always tell people like, even if you ran ads just to get the data to say, okay, we’re not relying on a keyword tool so much, but we’re relying on true data. I can see the impressions. I can see my clicks and I can see my sales. The other thing I can see is keywords that drove people to the listing. Okay. That’s important. Right. So now what I can do is I can go, Oh,

19:47
I’m selling a reclaimed rustic wood sign, right? Christmas sign, but I’m showing up for the keyword wood. Nah, I’m to turn that one off. I don’t want to show up for just wood because if someone goes there, they might click on it, but they’re not really targeted for what I’m selling. Okay. So you can do negatives. You just don’t have control over the positive keywords. Exactly right. You just turn them off and then that way they’re, you’re training, you’re training the, uh, you know, the Etsy ads algorithm.

20:16
to not show up for that because it’s not relevant. So in terms of return on ad spend and cost per click, I imagine it’s significantly lower than, I mean, I guess it’s hard to generalize, but compared to Amazon, I mean, are we talking lower CPCs and? Yeah. And that’s the other thing that Etsy really doesn’t have. They don’t have a really good way of tracking. They show you the sales that came from it. They will show you that.

20:45
Um, so we can look at it look at ROAS and all that stuff. But again, when you have your ROAS in there, it’s not taking what you paid for the product. Of course. Yes. Yes, of course. So we still have to figure that stuff out. Well, yeah, but a lot of people don’t realize that they’re like, Oh, look at that. I got a 15 % ROAS. You’re like, did you? You know, like, no, because we need to take out the money. So how much did you really make on that? So, um, and there’s not a lot that you can do from someone clicked on it.

21:12
Uh, they didn’t purchase it right now, but maybe they bought 30 days from now. Right. Right. So we, don’t have a lot of that. So I don’t look at it like that. I look at it like I use the Etsy ads to get those, that sales velocity. I also think that when you’re running Etsy ads, and this is just my hunch that I do believe that Etsy might give you a little nudge in your organic because they’re like, Oh, they’re spending money. They’re a real business. They’re like, they’re trying to push their business. I think it gives you a good check.

21:42
mark against your, your brand. Um, but the other cool thing that it does though, is it will show you, you know, the orders that came from it, but not just the order that they clicked on. It’ll show you everything that that customer purchased from you or anywhere from us. like in, the shop, if, if they clicked on the, the wood reclaimed sign would sign, but then they also bought a sweatshirt and they bought a pillow.

22:11
I can see that underneath there. So that one customer now didn’t just buy the one they actually bought. You see, so we can get to see that. But the other cool thing is too, is, and this is what they have set up inside of the Etsy platform for, for sellers is you have the, call them internal email triggers. So if someone favorites one of your items, you can set up a coupon code to go out to that person. It’s all built into the Etsy backend.

22:38
So let’s say that you drive someone over from a ad on Etsy, but they favorite a bunch of your items. can have one of those favorites become a email that gets sent out to them on the behalf of you from Etsy that’ll say, hey, we noticed that you liked this item. Why don’t you take 10 % off? So it’ll do that. The other one it’ll do is it’ll do add to cart. So if you have someone add to cart,

23:04
You can set up a trigger there that’ll basically say, Hey, we saw that you, uh, that you wanted to buy this thing. You haven’t purchased yet. Why don’t you take 15 % off and buy today? So you can set that up. And then the other one that they have is if someone buys a product, you can send out a thank you. Here’s 20 % offer for buying it from our shop. That’s all internal within, within that. So what’s the timeframe on like the add to cart and not purchase? Like you obviously don’t want the email to go out right away, right? Yeah. I don’t know what the exact is, to be honest with you. They don’t tell you, um,

23:34
but I’m assuming it’s going to be within that same kind of time period that has been kind of proven over time for e-commerce. I would say like it’s going to be soon, but it’s, not going to wait a week. Um, you know what mean? And also you have to keep in mind that Etsy also is only sending this out to people that have, um, basically raised their hand to receive Etsy emails. Sure. Yes. And this doesn’t cost any money. No. Do you need to discount the product?

24:02
You do need to give them some type of coupon, a reason to do it. So, I mean, you can give them a 5%. I was doing 5 % for the favorites for a while, but then I opted for 10%. I’m like, ah, what the hell? Let’s see what happens. And then they’ll show you the numbers. They’ll, they’ll show you like, okay. Um, a hundred emails got sent out and you got three sales from that. So it’ll show you that. Okay. Um, one little trick though, that I figured out and I did it by accident was if you go in there, I’m going to do this after the holidays, because what you can do is if you.

24:31
If you turn one of them off and then turn it back on again, you can, you can choose to send it out to customers 90 days in the past. Ah, okay. So if you, if you kill it, let’s say you kill it you go, Oh, I want to take my 5 % and make it 10%. It’ll say, start, you know, create a new campaign. And then it’ll say, um, would you like this to go out to the customers in the last 90 days or people in the last 90 days that added it to their cart, but didn’t purchase or favorited the item and didn’t purchase.

24:59
So you can actually do that and they don’t really tell you that until you actually do it and then you can check that box, which is pretty cool. So for the people who shop on Etsy, they probably know this, right? So are they just favoriting and adding stuff to cart and I don’t know, Steve, they’re not as slick as you and Well, no, I’m just, I’m just wondering. Yeah. That’s all automated. I know earlier you were saying that you were really excited about email, specifically email that you control, right? In this case, you don’t have their actual email address. It’s all built in internal to Etsy, right? This is

25:27
This is true, but the cool thing that Etsy does that Amazon doesn’t do is they do want us to email market and they actually have an integration right now with a Weber, which by the way, on the record, I don’t like a Weber. Um, I’ve used them for years. Uh, I used to use them for years. I did when I first started, it was my first provider and they somehow got to be promoted by Etsy in the integrations. I used them because it was the only way that I can make it work because that was the only integration.

25:56
But now the guy I was talking about, Cody, they just created Everbee email, which is now part of their suite of tools, which allows us to do that, but way more. Um, but yeah, Etsy says right in their documentation that you can collect an email from your customer. You do have to get their consent. You have to let them know what you’ll be emailing them and you have to get them to double opt in. Basically that’s what you’re doing. Um, and there’s ways that you can, that you can do it just like we used to do it years ago with, you know, tools like feedback genius or.

26:26
sales backer or any of those. but yeah, we get to have their email address now, um, which is really awesome because, you know, let’s say that you have a great Q four, which we’re going to all of those people now can become subscribers, which then I can get repeat customers from. Um, so yeah, and they become part of my email list so I can port them right. I can export them out of my ever be account. And then now all of a sudden I can put them wherever I want, or I can keep them right in there.

26:54
So how can Etsy enforce what you’re emailing if it’s the real email address of the customer? They can’t, right? Oh, I don’t follow you. What do mean? You just said, uh, well, okay. Maybe let’s take a step back. How do you actually get the email of the customer? The real one? Okay. Yeah. Right. Okay. So the email is automatically given to you from Etsy and it’s, it’s automatically exposed. Like I can see it right in.

27:19
the orders, right? I can see that. And there’s tools out there right now that have been scraping them for years. It’s not legal, it’s not terms of service, but people have been doing it. All Etsy is doing right now, and this is one thing I’ve noticed with Etsy, they’re not that sophisticated, right? Like they’re still kind of behind on their UI and just certain things, right? Like it’s just, it kind of reminds me of like 1990s, right? Like with AOL and stuff, that’s kind of what I think of. I really do. I’m like,

27:47
Guys, we can step this up a little bit, but with that being said, you can take that or that email is automatically given to you, but it’s almost like they’re not making it. Like if you don’t get a double opt in, you can’t email them. But what they’re saying is in so many words is if we get complaints that customers are saying, Hey, this, these people are emailing me for my Etsy order, you’re probably going to get flagged. if you get flagged, you’re going to probably get banned, right? That’s, that’s what’s going to happen. So.

28:16
It’s kind of like, don’t want to call it the honor system, but in a sense it kind of is you could just skip the double opt-in and get them on your email list. I wouldn’t, um, just cause I wouldn’t want to take that risk. Uh, but yeah, that’s there’s, there’s nothing holding you back from just getting the email addresses. in terms of the automated integration of taking that email and adding it to an email provider, as far as you know, only a WebRN ever be have this capability right now. Yeah. I think Alora.

28:45
might as well. think that’s how you pronounce them. Yeah, I think they might as well. I don’t know. But the only one that’s publicly in there right now, like if you went into your integration in Etsy, the only one that you can see is a Weber pretty soon. Ever be will be in there, but you can connect with ever be. I mean, they’ve got the integration all in there. It’s like one click. It just connects to your shop. The minute it connects to your shop. The cool thing is, and I don’t want this to be a big promotion for ever be, although I love those guys. But basically now it just, once you, you sync it up and connect it.

29:15
It immediately goes into a sequence where you will, um, you can basically send an email out to, cause Etsy has said you can send emails to your customers about an order. Okay. That’s in their terms of service. So if you, if you’re going to confirm your order, uh, you can basically send an email about that. Hey, just got your order. We’re preparing it. We’re going to ship it, whatever. When items shipped, Hey, just want to let you know your items being shipped. Uh, if you need anything in the meantime, let us know. And then when it’s delivered, Hey, we just.

29:44
Notice that was delivered. Let us know if everything’s cool. You can send those out because it’s pertaining to the order, but where you are able to now get the email to become a subscriber is inside of those emails. You’re going to put a little blurb in there and say, Hey, and by the way, we have a VIP club. If you’d like to be part of it, click here and we will send you, uh, you know, emails about our upcoming specials, something like that. Once they opt in there, it’s fair game, whatever you want to email. It is. is.

30:14
100%. And then once they’re there and they’ve confirmed there, then you could export that list out of that and go to whatever platform you want. If you want to go to convert kit, if you want to go to any of them. Um, I personally wouldn’t because everything’s in house now, right? It’s all under that one, one roof, but you could, right? If Etsy decides to ban you, you can just export your list and take it with you. Do those providers also have knowledge of what the person bought? So you can do cross sells automatically and that sort of thing. Yes.

30:41
Um, yes, they, they absolutely do. And even a Weber does where you could then see a product and then you can create a sequence for that product. Um, now ever be, I believe does they’ll actually, what’s cool with ever be though now too, is it’ll show you like on the order confirmation, it’ll show you your open rate, your click through rate, and it’ll show you if they ordered anything extra from that order confirmation. Nice. Yeah. Cause inside of there too, they’ve got a feature.

31:08
that they built in that’ll pull in your products from your Etsy shop. And you can say, I want it to be my best sellers. And you can put it at the footer there and it’ll show like two of your products or four of your products. So you can actually cross promote right in that one email. What’s funny about this is I feel like Etsy has been around as long as Amazon. Maybe, a lot. But, and this is just starting to happen. That’s, that’s what I’m saying. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. And you know, you know, uh, Scotty V likes email. Yes.

31:38
Yes. Scotty V all over, all over this Steve. Yeah. This is good stuff. So if you’re brand new and you’re starting print on demand, people are listening to this episode. It seems like ads is par for the course. Yeah. Right. And you might not have an email list in the beginning. So what is it? Just list, do a little bit of keyword research ads, press the winners. Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is, and, uh, this is something I know Jackness has done, um,

32:07
I don’t know if you’ve, you’ve probably done these, but just doing your typical giveaway, right? Like, so that’s a big one for us. Like we launched our Amazon brand by building a list of 5,000 people that were interested in cooking, right? And then we were able to launch our products and get a hundred sales on a brand new product and then climb the ranks. Right. And so, and I know Steve or, um, Jack, this has done that before too, for his brand color it.

32:32
Um, but yeah, I mean, that’s my thing right now. I’m not, I’m even doing it for my, my wife’s brand is like, we’re going to take four or five of her products. We’re going to put them in King Sumo and we’re basically going to run a Facebook ad, you know, over, you know, target the right people that would be interested, run them over to the giveaway, let the get giveaway do its thing. And then we’re collecting those emails and then I’m going to add them to my email list. Now they’re not from Etsy, so I don’t have to worry about that. I’ve already got them to opt in and now I can import them into my ever be account and I can start emailing them.

33:02
through that account. But are you driving those people to Etsy? Yes, I will be. Yeah, like right now, like in that, I think that’s a debate too. Like people are like, well, what if I have a Shopify store? Shouldn’t I send them there? I’ll spend in less, less fees. And the answer is yes, but you also won’t be getting the benefits of driving the rank up by getting sales. So you almost have to like in the short term, maybe sacrifice your Shopify and just push to Etsy. So that way there you can spike the algorithm. Cause I know that some people just

33:30
Don’t shop on Etsy. So I guess maybe in your targeting, you target people who are Etsy shoppers. that you could sure. Yeah. Yeah. For you, a hundred percent could do that. Um, but yeah, I mean, think regardless, if people like the product, they’re going to buy it on whatever platform it is, whether it’s your, your site, Amazon. I think the thing with an Etsy or an Amazon is it’s a trusted platform. It’s been around for years, right? So your conversions were going to be higher versus going to, you know, your Shopify store. You gotta have a lot of.

33:58
you and you do on yours, you have a lot of like accolades and things that you guys have accomplished and you’ve been around for this many years. You got a phone number, like all those important things, but you go to Etsy, you’re like, I got a problem. I’m just going to tell Etsy. don’t like it. They’re going to give me a refund. So, but one other thing though, too, Steve, that I don’t know if whoever’s listening, if they do sell on Etsy, if you, if you haven’t heard of this yet, they rolled it out about, actually I know the exact date was September 6th. It’s called their share and save program. Okay. Did you hear about this? No, no, no.

34:29
Okay, good. Let’s come into here live with, with me from me to use them. September 6th. mean, that’s just a couple of months ago. Yeah. Yeah. So share and save what Etsy decided to do is they are giving us Etsy sellers a 4 % refund on our Etsy fees when we drive our own traffic. So if you, um, if you had a hundred dollar order, they’re going to give you four bucks.

34:57
that you would have paid in fees. Okay. Um, so I just did a little case study, uh, a month ago. Uh, it was, well, it was in October and just from email, think we, I think we generated like maybe 3,100 bucks. Just from email got about $140, $150 in fee money that I would have paid. That’s now in my pocket. That’s profit. So clearly Etsy wants us to drive our own traffic.

35:25
Right? So if they want us to drive our own traffic, they recommend starting a newsletter, right? Using social media, like all of these things. So that’s another reason why I love email so much because I can control that. I can also see it. So now before, when you couldn’t track sales from email that much, cause Etsy didn’t give you the, you couldn’t put a pixel or anything. Now I can see my link. I can see how many times it was clicked. I can see how many times that people bought and I can see how much money I made extra outside of the fees.

35:55
It seems like they’re following an Amazon’s footsteps because Amazon does that stuff too. I’m sure. Yeah. Let’s switch gears a little bit. Let’s talk about the creative side of creating the products. Uh, is the wife, the brains of that operation? Okay. Yeah. Does she have any methods? Like, uh, do you have goals on how many products you release or is it just whenever she feels like creating a product line, she does it. Yeah. Well, okay. So anybody that knows my story, like her and I back in the day, uh,

36:22
We had a photography studio and she was a creative on that, right? That’s her, that’s her almost like a creative outlet and almost Etsy for her as a creative outlet. Like she just loves designing. She loves creating and she loves making people happy and putting a smile on people’s faces. So that’s her thing. The marketing side, not so much. She doesn’t really care to now if I wasn’t around, she would probably figure it out and do it on her own, but that’s kind of my wheelhouse. But for her right now, she’s

36:49
We know that like when you’re leading into the holidays, you that you got to basically take advantage of it. And there’s been so many people that I’ve interviewed and talked to about Etsy that are selling on Etsy, even the million dollar sellers, 80 % of their sales are typically coming from Q4. 80%. Yeah. But you’re talking like I was talking to that Steven and he’s like, yeah, I mean, we’ll do, we’ll do like four or $500,000 in November. And I’m like,

37:17
Okay. I mean, that’s, great. He’s like, you know, and then in December we’ll do a good portion too, but then it kind of, tails down. It’s steady, but it tails down. Um, and so knowing that going into the season, you’re always gonna, even though you might say, well, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, uh, uh, know, create 30 products a month. might say, but I probably should, because I want to take advantage of this traffic that’s going to be coming through the door. Um, so for my wife, I would say she’s in.

37:46
creation mode, I would say leading up to the holidays, she’ll probably stop like right now she’s still creating, but she’s going to slow up and then it’s going to turn into now more or less like support and getting the stuff done. Right. I would say she was probably at the pace where she was doing, I don’t know, a new design a day, you know, like it was a new design, but then sometimes that new design might go on five different products. That’s the beautiful thing is too. You take one design and now it gets put on a pillow, a flag, a blanket.

38:15
Sure. Uh, you know, so now you’re be able to create five products out of one design. Does she pick a certain theme each time? Like I guess, cause I’ve never seen her Etsy store before. Does she say, okay, this is my Christmas line of products. And then she just pumps out a bunch of designs related to that. Yeah, it’ll definitely be theme related for sure. So if it’s like, if it’s like Christmas, you’re going to go down that, that line. Um, and also trying to bring, bring something like new and clever. Um, and, and again, like,

38:44
you’re pulling inspiration off of other products that might’ve did well, but they aren’t even close as far as like what the design is because my wife will come up and she’ll either make it a lot better or she’ll just take the idea and come up with her own. but yeah, it’s definitely theme based. So if you’re heading into Easter, she’s going to be going Easter heavy, right? If she’s, if she’s leading into, um, even fall, right? It might be like fall decor, home decor, right? It might be in that, but

39:12
The cool thing is, is when you’re adding it to your catalog, the stuff is still going to reside there. And we’ve had people buy Christmas stuff in July, right? Because it’s still in the shop. Right. Um, but yeah, I would say typically it’s going to be, um, it’s going to be going down that, that road. mean, and you using, you know, one of my students there who does the reclaim wood, like she’ll do like, she does like reclaim wood where you can buy the wood to put on your wall, but she also sells those big, tall Christmas signs that you lean up near your door that says something cute.

39:41
about Christmas, right? So she’s gonna do a bunch of those leading into the season versus she’s not gonna do those in July. July is gonna be more spring summer, right? What tools does your wife use to create the designs? Can she get away with the Canva or does she use Illustrator? 100%. Like I’m a Photoshop guy, you’re a Photoshop guy. Yeah, Canva 100 % and Canva is crazy because that’s all I pretty much use now for my stuff. Like I don’t even get into Photoshop anymore. Interesting, I didn’t know that.

40:09
Okay. I don’t, I kind of retired it, man. I don’t have it on my new laptop and I don’t have it on my other computer. I only have it on my older computer. So if I want it, I’ve got it. But yeah, I mean, I’ve been able to manage myself with Canva as well, Canva pro and, that’s it. And then she’ll use creative fabrica at times to get some fonts or get design elements or something like that. And then she’s also hired a fiber gigs. She’s had people go out there and draw certain

40:36
components that she would want and then she’ll add them to her thing. Um, and that’s pretty much it. So tool wise, I mean for design is like Canva, creative fabrica, you know, maybe fiber. I was going to ask about AI actually that that’s where I was leading. We, we experimented with it. Um, and, we, created a few elements here and there, but, uh, but honestly, uh, she hasn’t really felt the need for it. Okay. You know? Yeah. But

41:03
There’s definitely been times we’ve, we’ve experimented with it. I mean, when it first come out, obviously I was whipping things up and saying, what do think of this? And she’s like, Oh, that’s cool. You know, but at the end of the day, uh, she’s been getting by with what she’s been doing and she kind of has her own system and rhythm. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna mess with you. What’s funny is that we’ve been buying some designs on Etsy for our stuff. Okay. So people buy designs on Etsy too, right? For commercial use. There’s a lot of people that’ll do the SVG files. That’s all that they create.

41:30
It’s a great little business. I don’t love it because it’s so easy to copy and replicate. And also the margins are so they’re good, but the price tag is so small. It’s like what? Three bucks for a graphic. Correct. It is small, but it is a digital thing because it is, it is because we’ve been doing personalization for 15 years. Like people come back. It’s a physical product. They don’t like this or they made a mistake. You kind of have to cater to them. Yeah. So it’s, nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

41:59
That’s cool, Scott. I am curious about like the whole creative process, but it sounds like you guys have been doing a great job with it. I am shocked that 80%, like I’ve heard 50 % for e-commerce, but 80, I guess it makes sense because most people will look on Etsy for gifts, I feel, right? Gifts. It’s a big gift-giving site for a hundred percent sure. Yes. Gifts. It’s big gift-giving. So again, Mother’s Day will do great. Father’s Day will do great. Like all of those major gift-giving holidays and events.

42:28
You know, weddings is big, like weddings is big on Etsy. If you’re like, if you’re in the wedding industry, like, and, so like your audience, like we had talked, right. And you’re like, yeah, my, don’t know if my audience really would care that much about Etsy. And I’m like, I think that they should, because it’s a platform that all they got to do is put their stuff there and pick up another hundred or $200,000. Like who wouldn’t want to do that? Um, like the girl I talk about with the reclaim would, I mean, she does, she does seven figures a year.

42:56
Right. And she does a lot of it on her own website, but she does about, I don’t know, 150 to $200,000 on Etsy. Hmm. And it’s pretty much, she hasn’t put any other, she put like 60 products up, right? And she might sell 20 % of those, but that’s money she wouldn’t have had. And it’s new customers that she wouldn’t have had that are now going to buy on her own, her own Shopify, um, you know, shop. So I think for anyone out there that’s in e-commerce, I don’t care what it is. Um, obviously if you’re selling like, you know, a cell phone.

43:26
You know what mean? Like you’re not going to be doing that, but like cell phone cases. Yeah. Like if you had something unique and original, why not? Why not put it up there? Right. Um, you know, certain things like that. I saw someone that was crushing it and he made like, he made like these X-Box like holder, like cases and stuff. And he was doing like 30 K a month in just those. Um, so I just really feel like it is an opportunity that a lot of people are just like, ah, it’s Etsy. It’s only handmade, right? It’s, only stuff like that. Right.

43:55
It’s really just to me, it’s untapped and it’s a super easy platform to navigate, to manage. I mean, there’s a lot of people on there not selling handmade goods, but if you sell stuff that goes into handmade goods, that counts too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know? So yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity. I mean, we’re having, the big thing is Steve, you know me, like, I just want to have a good time doing what I’m doing and the content that I’m creating or

44:22
Um, the things that my wife, like my wife and I, it’s either we’re talking about her Etsy shop and what’s happening and this, that, and the other on that. And then we’re talking about the stuff that I’m doing with the podcast and with the YouTube, but it all kind of comes together. So her and I are still, and I’ve, we’ve been like this for years, like a team, like I’m going to be married for 30 years coming up here, Steve. 30 years, man. just celebrated our 20. thought that was a long time, but I get the great grandfather of, selling online.

44:50
Yeah, right. Yeah. Hey, Scott, where can people find your channel, your podcast, all the cool content that you create? Yeah. Brand creators.com is home base for me. YouTube brand creators just go there. Um, and basically like you, Steve, mean, everything that I do, I give a lot away for free. I do have some paid things, but for the most part, just go to the YouTube channel, check that out and, you’ll probably get the information that you’re looking for. And if you have anything that you need help with, just reach out to me and I might make a video on it.

45:20
Sounds good. Hey Scott, great to have you back on the show, man. It’s been a while. Yeah, it’s been a while Steve. Appreciate it. Keep working on that backswing.

45:33
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Scott’s got the Midas touch. And if you were interested in selling on Etsy, go check out his YouTube channel. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoder.com slash episode 524. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go over to sellersummit.com. And if you were interested in starting your own e-commerce store,

46:02
Head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.