How I went from 0 to $1000/month on Etsy in only two months
I’m like everybody else — I’ve dreamt about passive income and making money from home for ages.
I’ve read about the people who manage it, and can spend their days laying on a beach somewhere, while the money seem to come flooding in, without them lifting a finger (except to order more Margaritas).
But that person hasn’t been me. Far from it, actually.
I’ve earned plenty of money, but always in corporate jobs where the hours I put in equal the paycheck — it has never been passive income.
Until now. I’ve finally cracked a code and made passive income stream! I finally have a steady, passive income stream, that seems to take care of itself, without me investing any time in it.
(I’m still in my 9–5 job, of course, but I am very excited to finally have a side hustle that works out.)
Getting to $1000/month
For me, it started in July this year (2022). After reading about various ways of creating passive income, and always thinking that the people who succeeded were smarter/luckier/had better timing than me, I finally got off my butt and tried for myself. And you know what? It worked!
I took a course in how to create and sell digital printables on Etsy. In the beginning, my main goal was to learn something new and earn enough to pay for the course.
I know nothing about design. My experience from Etsy was limited to buying some Christmas tags back in 2017. I hadn’t even heard about Canva (which is the tool to use to create printables).
But I really wanted to make it work. I dreamed about being that person on the beach, who could do something fun while passive income streams poured in. So I really dug into it.
I learned Canva in a few days, simply by watching videos and just trying to create stuff. When I look back at it, my first attempts (which I was super-proud of at the time) didn’t look like much.
But, surprisingly, people were actually willing to pay! And I just kept producing more products, and over time, they did improve.
I opened my shop on July 9. In July, I sold for $17. In August, I sold for $320. And in September, October AND November, I sold printables for more than $1 000.
Why Etsy is great for passive income
The genius thing about selling digital products on Etsy (and other places) is that you create the product once and it can be sold hundreds of times without any extra work for you. When someone makes a purchase, Etsy automatically sends the product to the buyer as a file.
Sometimes, the customers have questions, but if you’ve made a good listing where all possible questions are answered, you don’t really need to help the customer with anything. You only hear the cha-ching from the Etsy app, letting you know that you sold a product and that money is on their way to you.
In my case, I’ve probably gotten questions from about 1 out of 25 customers. Answering these takes only a few minutes a week, now that the shop is fully up and running. Pretty good for an income stream of $1000/month!
Get free tips!
You might get interested in trying your luck at Etsy as well? In that case, feel free to head over to my page and sign up for a newsletter that will give you all of my best strategies for free — as well as a 7 steps you have to take in order to set up your Etsy shop selling printables.
In these free emails, I’ll teach you what you need to copy me.
Oh, and if you’re really interested, I also recommend this free workshop. It’s made by Gold City Ventures, which also made the course I took when I first started out. It will teach you lots of the strategies I am using! If you are interested in the course, I’ve written a full review of my experience here.
Five important lessons
In the meantime, these are the five most important things I learned:
The most important thing you can invest time in on Etsy, is SEO. Sure, it is important what your design looks like — but the most important in getting sales will be that you create something that potential customers are actually searching for. If you make an amazing product, but in a niche where there are no customers, then nobody will actually find your product. It is the combination of low competition and high demand that will make you money. I actually tried a different niche as well, and didn’t succeed. So you will need to invest time in SEO in order to make it.
Your need to work strategically and see how you can get the most value out of few hours when you build up your store. For instance, I normally spend between 30 minutes and 1 hour on creating a new listing. Sometimes it only takes me five minutes! (Which is pretty good, given that some of these listings sell for hundreds of dollars per month!) But remember, you will need time for trial and error before you get to that.
In order to succeed, learn from people who have already succeeded. Etsy is not like anything else. There are lots of small — and larger — things that in the end will be the difference between success and flop. And you need to know those things! There is a great community around Etsy, and the information is definitively out there. Make sure you learn from the right people!
Success on Etsy is not just pushing a button and expecting the money to roll in. It took only two months for my shop to go from $0 in revenue to $1000 in revenue. For the past two months (when I’ve sold for over $1000 per month), I have hardly worked on the shop at all. But during those first 6–7 weeks when I was building the shop, I invested a lot of time in SEO research and creating almost 100 products. It’s not a quick fix (I am not sure a quick-fix even exists in this side hustle field) — but it is certainly possible if you’re willing to invest some time.
Customer service is everything! On Etsy, a lot of customers leave feedback. You get from 1 to 5 stars from each person. If you provide a bad product or a bad customer experience, feeedback will be ruthless. And with bad customer feedback, Etsy will punish you with showing your products to less potential customers. However, if you can provide a good customer experience, Etsy will reward you with giving you an edge in search results.
Do your future self a favor!
Do you get inspired? Head over to my page here, and get my full strategy for how I’ve built up a passive income stream of $1000/month in only a couple of months.
Your future self will thank you!
