Selling on Etsy

Sigh…

I’ve been really wanting to open a selling account on Amazon. It’s doable, but it’s not going to be done anytime soon. I need to get a lot of my banking paperwork in order to be able to sell through Amazon. So, for now, I’m going to continue selling on Etsy. My store is set up, I just have to keep advertising my products and wait. There are other marketplaces that I can sell my products on, and I may try those before Amazon.

What gets me is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of advice on how big to make a storefront. The only advice I have heard is from a single source that said they have 5,000 different products (I think there’s some creative math going on here). Apparently, most don’t sell well, and print-on-demand is “a numbers game.” I don’t buy into this. I don’t want to spam people with a lot of not-great items, and I don’t want most of my effort to be wasted. I’d take quality over quantity any day. And I strive to make one or two mug designs a day. Some days, I get lucky and make three or four. Even if every single day were one of my lucky days, it would take me almost three-and-a-half years to create that many designs!

This person did say that their store makes profits on about 5% of their merchandise, and that number is helpful. That means that, of their 5,000 designs, 250 of them are actually profitable. With that number in mind, I think that 300 designs should be the absolute max for my store. That way, I have some safety in case a few of my designs are a complete flop, but I’m still profiting from my hard work.

Right now, I have 39 mug designs in my Etsy shop. And I think the majority of them are pretty good. When I hit 50 products, I think it will be time for me to pause and evaluate. I think I’m headed in the right direction, but it’s very possible that I could be dead wrong. It’s good that this business model is pretty passive, because I can take a break to wait, see, and evaluate, but my business won’t stop. It’ll go on forever unless I actively take everything down.

As much as I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to sell through Amazon in the near future, I am excited by the new opportunities that this presents. Who knows, maybe Amazon wasn’t going to be the right fit for my business, and a different market will be even better…

Be sure and check out my Etsy shop if you’re curious about my mug designs. You’re also welcome to donate to this blog if you want to support what I do. I really appreciate each donation.