[2023 Journey] to $10,000/ month Selling Digital Products on ETSY

First time posting something like this online. Thought it would be a good way to track my progress while staying motivated from all the others on BHW making gains on their own journey, as well as learn from others who might want to point me in the right direction if you see me doing something stupid.

Goal: Get a monthly average of $10,000/ month in NET profit from selling digital products on Etsy by end of 2023.​

Why Etsy: A marketplace makes selling a product easier because of existing traffic. Etsy is smaller than the other mainstream marketplaces such as amazon and ebay. The fees are lower and etsy customers are less price sensitive.

The plan: 10k on etsy in net profit is not easy to do in 1 year. It is also not easy to do with one shop. My plan is to start with the easiest product first and build it until I reach a plateau in sales where I would need a significant spend increase in ads to drive more sales before moving onto a second shop.

What I've done so far
January:
- Market research and found a few digital products with potential
- Decided on a product to start with for the first store
- Competition research on the current market leaders for my product on etsy
- Created an initial forecasting for costs, expected revenue & profit according to my budget
- Locked in a store name for etsy, instagram, Pinterest and gmail
February:
- Figured out production process
- Mapped out competition traffic sources
- Signed up for all necessary software/ services
- Figure out external traffic strategy
March:
- Uploaded listings to shop
- Started etsy ads (etsy capped me at $1 daily spend, not sure how to increase it)
- Study etsy SEO best practices
- Starting instagram account

Sales so far: 0

Good luck for your journey.
Are you following any course?

Etsy is a potential platform .
I just started making money on Etsy too .
Good luck to you bro .

Lancers983 said:

Good luck for your journey.
Are you following any course?

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No, but I use to sell on etsy many years ago. It was actually the first thing I did in terms of starting a business online. I got to a steady 2k a month and got bored AND overly confident which resulted in an account ban.

James Si said:

Etsy is a potential platform .
I just started making money on Etsy too .
Good luck to you bro .

Click to expand...

Thanks! if you're interested, we can keep each other updated like an accountability partner. What's your year 1 goal?

Panadol said:

No, but I use to sell on etsy many years ago. It was actually the first thing I did in terms of starting a business online. I got to a steady 2k a month and got bored AND overly confident which resulted in an account ban.

Thanks! if you're interested, we can keep each other updated like an accountability partner. What's your year 1 goal?

Click to expand...

James Si said:

Etsy is a potential platform .
I just started making money on Etsy too .
Good luck to you bro .

Click to expand...

Any good place to learn from?

Joseph Ghou said:

Any good place to learn from?

Click to expand...

I didn't use any courses, just googled stuff as I go along and keep experimenting. But etsy is much more saturated compared to the first time I did it, so ranking seems to be harder and slower.

Good Idea. Let's hope for the best and Looking forward for your updates. Good Luck

What niches are you going to start working on?

SERP Tank said:

What niches are you going to start working on?

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Without giving away too much, it's in the arts & crafts niche. Target audience is Etsy's main customer base - young female professionals.

Don't forget to create upsells to increase CLV

For the Etsy Ads part. they will increase the limit every week +/-
in 1 month you can reach 25 spend daily.

Panadol said:

No, but I use to sell on etsy many years ago. It was actually the first thing I did in terms of starting a business online. I got to a steady 2k a month and got bored AND overly confident which resulted in an account ban.

Thanks! if you're interested, we can keep each other updated like an accountability partner. What's your year 1 goal?

Click to expand...

account ban for which reason?

blanye said:

Don't forget to create upsells to increase CLV

Click to expand...

Do you have any experience upselling on etsy? I have thought of after sales support add ons eventually once there's enough orders to justify a VA to take care of that stuff for me.

Tony Soprano said:

For the Etsy Ads part. they will increase the limit every week +/-
in 1 month you can reach 25 spend daily.

Click to expand...

Thanks! actually sent a support ticket to them today asking them to increase it, but waiting one month isn't bad.

Lancers983 said:

account ban for which reason?

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I wasn't selling handmade goods and someone must have reported me because over half of the sellers in that niche are selling China goods. Some of them are still running strong on etsy. It was in the alternative jewelry niche.

I was planning something similar. Monitoring the thread.

Panadol said:

Do you have any experience upselling on etsy? I have thought of after sales support add ons eventually once there's enough orders to justify a VA to take care of that stuff for me.

Thanks! actually sent a support ticket to them today asking them to increase it, but waiting one month isn't bad.

I wasn't selling handmade goods and someone must have reported me because over half of the sellers in that niche are selling China goods. Some of them are still running strong on etsy. It was in the alternative jewelry niche.

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Not on etsy, digistore24 for example, etsy got no one-click-upsell? Then try to crosssell on membership side. But best would be a ocu solution as its the best selling point while they get there creditcard on table you make them an one time offer they can't refuse. Thats where the $$$$ made from with low price digital products.

I'm also trying with the digital downloads products on Etsy, still no sales but I've started doing Pinterest marketing since last week so I hope to boost stuff without having to pay for Etsy ads.

blanye said:

Not on etsy, digistore24 for example, etsy got no one-click-upsell? Then try to crosssell on membership side. But best would be a ocu solution as its the best selling point while they get there creditcard on table you make them an one time offer they can't refuse. Thats where the $$$$ made from with low price digital products.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if something like that exists for etsy, but I do know you can give coupons to encourage return customers.

Gebb said:

I'm also trying with the digital downloads products on Etsy, still no sales but I've started doing Pinterest marketing since last week so I hope to boost stuff without having to pay for Etsy ads.

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How long has it been since you uploaded your listings?

Quick Update:
- I have 100 listings up, not too sure about the product images but will leave it for now.
- I'm running etsy ads on a few listings at a time, swapping low CTR listings out every few days.
- Running a shop wide sale for the next 30 days.

Task for the rest of the month:
- Focus on building the social media accounts

жhat product do u sell?

Panadol said:

I'm not sure if something like that exists for etsy, but I do know you can give coupons to encourage return customers.

How long has it been since you uploaded your listings?

Quick Update:
- I have 100 listings up, not too sure about the product images but will leave it for now.
- I'm running etsy ads on a few listings at a time, swapping low CTR listings out every few days.
- Running a shop wide sale for the next 30 days.

Task for the rest of the month:
- Focus on building the social media accounts

Click to expand...

From the beginning of January, but for a month and half didn't make any marketing and just uploaded listing. Now I'm focusing more on marketing side.

Quick update because it might help someone in the same boat.

I contacted etsy about the $1 ad limit and they got back to me quickly with a generic reply explaining they can't do anything manually about it. HOWEVER, my limit is $25 a day now. It's been only a few days since starting ads.

I plan to increase to $5 a day, still keeping to the same strategy to identify the best converting listings to see what works.