should you be doing free shipping or not what is the most money you've made in a month on Etsy and when will our new software Etso be available in today's video I'm going to cover all of these questions and way more we haven't done a Q&A in quite a while so I thought it'd be great to answer your burning Etsy questions if you're new here my name is Dylan Jaris I'm an Etsy seller of eight years I've made over a million dollars on the platform I also sell on Amazon and Shopify and my entire background
is Corporate e-commerce I worked for some big big giants like zapo and Zulily and now I have a company of about 31 people and we are helping Etsy sellers scale their businesses let's get into your questions you've submitted these on Instagram and I'm going to go through one by one you're new around here and new to Etsy where to begin I always recommend beginning with deciding who you're selling to stop focusing on the least saturated product you could get into instead focus on who you want to sell to and who you want to rely on
for your income and then focus on items that have purpose and utility my teen girls want to start a company what product should they start with this is interesting so again I would focus on starting with the customer who they want to sell to and then the product now it kind of depends on where their interests lie right CU sometimes to keep teen girls engaged they want to like the customer relate to the customer like the product also are they really into graphic design digital products are they always playing in canva if not I might
recommend starting with physical products because there's I would say a lot more to learn when it comes to physical products and and maybe more ways to compete especially when you're a teen you want to get some quick wins you want to see some results that'll keep you motivated to stay engaged and then you can start learning canva in design and adding in digital and print on demand all right is there a wait list for the Etso software yes there is we are going to put it in the comments and the description so you can check
that out if you have not heard we are launching a software it's called ETO and this tool is going to really optimize your listings for you it's so simple I cannot wait for to see how it works because it takes less than 60 seconds per listing and this is not only SEO it's actually a lot more than just SEO but we as a company we are known for the results of our SEO strategies we have thousands of testimonials that show in their stats what the results look like when they Implement our SEO strategies so that's
why we have infused those strategies into this software and it is going to save you so much time so make sure you're on the list to get access all right is Q4 a good time to test out a variety of products and expand your product mix to see what works absolutely Q4 is such an opportunity for you to be testing things on Etsy and it's simply because the traffic that Etsy is paying to bring over during this time I always say this is the best time this will be the easiest time for you to get
that quick customer feedback because of the influx of traffic now if you want to sit out Q4 this year and wait till next year to take advantage of it that's fine but if it is Q4 and you were wanting to get ramped up it is absolutely not too late when will be available it will be available within about four to 5 weeks of this filming so I would say potentially by the time this video is released it is available if it's not yet out get on the wait list because it'll be very very very soon
how to boost your sales on Etsy lots of love from India lots of love from San Diego make sure your listings are fully optimized right SEO included and then drive external traffic in that external traffic and there's so many ways you can do that social media is one of those but that is going to be to give those listings a boost so it's not just your SEO working for you it's also you putting in some leg work and driving that external traffic on top of your SEO working for you so that's one of the easiest
ways to get a boost and it's a way that not many of your competitors are doing okay what gets a listing removed as opposed to having a listing that closes your store so this would be highly dependent on the number of violations here let's say a listing is removed deactivated by Etsy because because you Ed the words Tiffany blue and Tiffany came after that listing because of their trademark around the word so that first time might that listing just might get deactivated if you continue to put up listings that get violations it does get to
a point where Etsy doesn't give you any more chances I would say usually the first time it happens sometimes the second time it happens listings are just deactivated but if it continues to happen over and over and maybe you didn't see the violations or the emails they ended up in your spam previously so maybe you didn't even know it could be a shop shutdown situation is it true that Etsy can ban your store if you are working overseas no we have Etsy sellers in our program who are digital Nomads they travel all over the world
uh sometimes you know every few weeks they're moving and this is not a situation where their shop is getting shut down now they typically use a VPN just because they don't want to be logging into all these different public Wi-Fi situations just to protect everything including Etsy when testing a design how many different products would you recommend trying to start I really find people are focusing way too much of their time testing one design many products and they're forgetting to be testing many designs on a couple of products if you have a new design you
don't have proof of concept you don't know if it's a good design if it's something that your customer would like so no matter if you put that on a beach towel or a pillow if it's a bad design that your customers don't like it's not going to sell no matter how many products you put it on so early on focus on testing multiple designs instead of one design on tons of products when split testing a product listing how many Renditions of a thumbnail do you test I would say what we're testing in our thumbnail images
is different value propositions and the value proposition is your combination of your listing photo and your price so there's so many ways to increase the perceived value in your thumbnail some of this could be through the quantity of the items in the thumbnail could be through certain messaging I would probably test I would say at least 2 to four per product if you get any more than that it's probably not going to be enough of a difference right testing like free shipping versus fast shipping this is assuming that you have unique thumbnail images that are
good as many good thumbnail images between 2 to four if your store has a niche but are feeling inspired to design something unrelated yes this is exactly why we don't recommend picking a niche because you will be boxed in you will feel boxed in and you will have the tendency to just stick within that Niche which severely limits the opportunities that you can take advantage of so I would say pull yourself back from the niche situation and focus on what customers are coming to your shop let's say you have a dog themed shop is that
the only thing your customers care about do they also have kids do they also have cats do they have horses you know what what else are they doing are they involved in sports is this a family who does RV trips we want to think about what else that customer spends their time and money on and pull yourself back from that focus on the customer and if you're in our program fill out module 2's worksheet in the workbook and that will guide you with what else to add to your shop and transition you from a niche
to a customer based shop and some people ask well is a customer a niche no it's not because customers preferences and the Aesthetics that they like that evolves when you're focused on the customer you're serving them for at least four to 7 years that's how we drive up the LTV the lifetime value of your customer if you're focusing on a niche that's not focused on it LTV that's focused on staying in a box you can definitely make that transition but use our worksheets in module 2 to do so okay free shipping or not I recommend
testing both for at least a period of 3 weeks if you do not do a test I would say you don't have enough data because it's not a black and white answer it depends on your price points it depends on your customers it also depends on who your audience is so are you a European shop that sells mostly to the US are you a Us shop that sells mostly to the US two different shipping strategies for free shipping or not free shipping test both on the entire shop for at least a period of 3 weeks
and I say test the entire shop and not just split your listings in half where half of your listings are free shipping and half they pay shipping because your data is going to be much cleaner if you do everything for 3 we period what is your take on Etsy sellers with crappy listings no SEO one picture and huge success so 99% of the time this means they are what I call cemented in Search and it's usually because of a revenue history behind that listing now that Revenue history could have been really built up in 2019
2020 we don't know that what I would say is they had a high velocity of sales they have a strong Revenue history behind that one listing shell and that is usually why they are still cemented at the top of search where it does take a lot to get that listing knocked down it doesn't mean you can't knock them down you absolutely can you just have to really focus on the velocity of sales behind your listing and making sure that that is much higher than the velocity of sales behind their listing what this doesn't mean is
to go take their SEO their descriptions and their photo strategy that was good enough to get them sales way back when but today that's not going to work so don't even try it what is the most money you've made in a month on Etsy so this is talking about profit so over 40,000 and that is mostly because our margins are quite High okay tips to transition from a corporate job to Etsy so one of my biggest pieces of advice here is you don't want to put a ton of pressure on your Etsy shop where you
cannot survive or pay your rent or pay your bills now if your corporate job would ever allow you to go part-time that is a great stepping stone otherwise I recommend maintaining your corporate job spending all your possible free time doing Etsy get your Etsy Shop up to a consistent you know 3 to four months of sales that are close to your corporate income or the month over month increases are such where you will be exceeding your corporate income in the next you know four to 6 months mons and I would make sure you have you
know at least 6 months of savings saved up let's say you want to leave the corporate job and because it's just not giving you the flexibility but to put into your Etsy shop so what I did when I was building my Etsy Shop up until I was well over $10,000 a month I was house sitting and dog walking I would do that every single day for about 2 hours a day and I was making thousands a month just doing that so I was doing that through Rover and then IID actually started my own business off
of Rover called Community K9 care like dog walking babysitting cleaning clean houses washing cars that type of stuff that's instant money right they're paying you right there Etsy can take time to build up right cuz you are pulling levers with the algorithm having that balance of something that's a little bit more of a long game which is Etsy or e-commerce with something where you can get money today to pay a bill tomorrow that's always a good idea so don't be afraid you know if Etsy is not quite where you need it to be you could
still replace the difference between Etsy and your corporate job with putting in some hours locally on your own time don't be afraid to fill in that income with some jobs that you might feel like are below you or beneath you it's really worth it it will give you the flexibility you need to put more focus into Etsy and let me say this there is no reason in today's world that you cannot go out and make a few hundred in a weekend you just have to be resourceful and have some work ethic do you need 100
listings to be successful on Etsy absolutely not I have students who are making over $20,000 a month with less than 30 listings it's quality over quantity how long does it take to see Improvement in your shop I always say when you make updates give it at least 3 to 4 weeks Etsy is not a getri quick scheme sometimes now like I had a student who updated her listings she saw within a few hours of making the update that she got several sales and three add to carts that is because when you do make it an
update to a listing Etsy does give you a temporary boost and they say this is as short as a few hours typically though give it a few weeks I always say be patient how did you find an employee to run your shop and did you still make money when you did that Facebook I love hiring moms who are military spouses who can't really go get a corporate job they need a job with flexibility and they value that Facebook is a great place to find them Facebook groups and I have an amazing ad that I use
to find every single employee now this is specifically employees for the Etsy Shop did I still make money absolutely yes because when you're working on your business and your your shop you want to be making at least $100 an hour that's the place you want to get your business to you're not hiring someone when your shop is at the point where you're making $20 an hour when you get to the point where you are maxed out and your hourly wage is about $20 an hour then you're pulling the lever to increase prices and you're adding
in products that give you a higher hourly wage and then at that point when you run out of time in your day when you're at the let's say $100 an hour that's when you want to start hiring and that's when you can afford to hire someone at $20 an hour you can absolutely still make money if you hire someone at the right time the key is not hiring someone too soon hopefully this was an interesting Q&A I would love to do another Q&A at some point but if you have any burning questions just put them
in the comments and we'd be happy to jump in make sure to subscribe if you like the video if you want to see more of our corporate e-commerce principles applied to Etsy and I will see you all in the next one I've gone from about 1,500 to $2,000 in Revenue a month to currently before the month's finished $4,200 $ in Revenue I only joined multi6 figure um Etsy blueprint about 4 weeks ago now
