Are you an artistic person? Then you should definitely check out Etsy! Etsy is a marketplace for creatives to make money selling things they made. You can sell all kinds of things on Etsy. This will be a full guide on how you can make money on Etsy today!
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Table of Contents
What is Etsy?
Etsy is an e-commerce company. They have a platform for everyone to upload a product and sell from Etsy.
Etsy is also a marketplace for everyone to find unique handmade products to buy. They connect buyers with sellers.
Etsy is used primarily for selling hand-crafted items, vintage items, art, and even printables.
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Does it cost any money to sell on Etsy?
Yes, it cost $0.20 to list an item on Etsy and it’ll be on Etsy for 4 months or until the item is sold. You can renew the listing for another $0.20 if you got more than one of the same items to sell. There’s a 5% transaction fee for every sale made on Etsy.
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Who pays for shipping on Etsy?
Most of the time, the buyer will pay for the shipping but you can choose to cover the shipping fee for them.
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Can you make a good income on Etsy?
Making a good income or a living on Etsy is quite possible. As long as your product is good and you’re getting good reviews, it can be quite a sustainable business model.
Good reviews are vital so make sure you encourage your buyers to leave a good review for you. With more positive reviews, scoring the next sale would be a lot easier.
Let’s say you list an item at $35 and it cost you $5 to produce and you have your customers pay for their own shipping. You’d make $30 per sale.
If you want to make $3000 per month, you’ll have to sell 100 candles per month in order to make that much money.
It’ll take you quite a bit of time to get that first 100 sales and 100 reviews but the income is exponential.
Take a look at the following graph I made.
The orange line is how we expect our effort and time to translate to actual results but we often find ourselves working far more for less than expected because the reality is the purple line.
The start is slow. It’s hard to see any result despite our hard work but soon we start to see results and the income growth is exponential.
Before we start to see that rapid growth in our income on Etsy, we experience a period known as the valley of disappointment. Our hard work doesn’t match the expected result.
This is why we must give it time. Too many of us give up too soon. This also applies to any other business model.
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What can you sell on Etsy?
You can sell all kinds of things on Etsy. Let’s discuss a few of these items you can easily make and sell on Etsy!
1. Candles
You can sell candles on Etsy without knowing how to make candles. You can go to Dollar Tree to buy unscented candles and add your own scent to them.
You’ll also need to have candle jars to store your candles. You can buy them easily online or in dollar stores.
As well as some stickers to place on the jars. You can make your own custom stickers on sites like Uline, Vistaprints, and StickerYou.
The more aesthetically pleasing you make your candles, the more they could sell for. Buy some ribbons and glue guns to decorate the jar lid with pretty bows for instance. Let your creativity decide how you should decorate your candles.
You can get the shipping materials like boxes to store your candles for free at most postal office websites. You just have to sign up for an account with them online.
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2. Coloring printables
It’s easier to make coloring pages for kids than for adults since the drawings are less complicated. You don’t need to learn how to draw. You can hire someone on Fiverr to make coloring pages for you for cheap.
Or, you can pay for a drawing app like Procreate if you got an iPad. It takes less than 15 minutes to learn how to trace an object from a real-life picture that you can get for free on sites like Pexels.com
You can download a free high-quality picture from Pexels.com like this:
And start tracing over it. It’ll come out looking like this:
You can then sell the coloring pages on Etsy in PDF formats. It’ll take you much less time if you can hire someone to do it for you but if you love the process of tracing, then, go do it yourself! You can save money that way too.
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3. Clay art
Look at this jewelry dish made with clay art.
All you need is the following to start:
How to make clay art
Mold the clay into the shape you want, wait 1–4 days for it to dry completely, color the clay art with acrylic paint, and apply gloss over the clay art. Voila, you’re done!
Depending on your skill, you may be able to fetch $100–300+ for every item you listed.
Ceramic clay art can sell for more but because it’s not made with air-dry clay, you’d have to use a kiln to burn it. Check your local area for a kiln for rent by the hour.
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4. Slimes
Did you know that people are making $65k/month selling slimes? Check out this article to learn everything you need to know about setting up a slime shop!
Each type of slimes has different ingredients but the basic ingredients for slimes include:
This is what shows up on the first page when I type in ‘slimes’ on Etsy. You’ll see a lot of pictures where the slimes don’t look too great or the lighting or angle is wrong but they still have quite a bit of sale.
Now look at the slimes from SlimeFantasy.com They have their own store on their own website. Their slimes look amazing as you can see. The quality is high, pictures are taken from the right angle with the right lighting. Product display is on point. Look at the dust sprinkled at the base of the containers.
If you can produce high-quality slimes and make a high-quality product listing, you have quite a good chance of beating your competition.
I would suggest you make a TikTok or Instagram account showing clips of your hands playing with different slimes you made. Once you gain around 1000-5000 followers, you can ask in a story whether your followers would be interested in buying slimes from you. If that’s the case, go and set up your Etsy shop (you should reserve the username as soon as you set up your TikTok account). You’ll be able to sell out your slimes quickly which the Etsy algorithm will pick up. You’ll then be able to sell more slimes from random people searching it up on Etsy.
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5. Sugar scrubs or body scrubs
Sugar scrubs or body scrubs are used for exfoliating skin. People buy it to use in the shower. They would apply the sugar to their body and gently rub it into their skin.
To make sugar scrubs the main ingredients you’ll need are the following:
- Sugar
- Hair conditioner or body lotion
- Coconut or olive oil
All you have to do is to mix the ingredients together and put them in a container which you can buy from Uline.
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6. Bath bombs
Bath bombs are used during bathing. You can toss it into your bath and see it fizzles. Depending on the particular bath bomb, it can moisturizes your skin and nourishes it.
To make bath bombs, you’ll need the following main ingredients:
- Baking soda
- Citric acid
- Cornstarch
- Food coloring
You’ll also need a mold for your bath bombs. You can buy it here.
You can package your bath bombs with plastic bags and then melt the plastic bag around your bath bombs with a hairdryer. This is standard practice with basically all plastic sealed homemade products.
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7. Period care package
Period care packages are offered to women going through their periods. You’ll place all sorts of things in there that you think a girl going through her period would need or want. This may include:
- Chocolate
- Socks
- Soap
- Little notebooks
- Period pads
- Hair ties
You can get the boxes at Uline.
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8. Soap
You don’t need to know how to make soap from scratch. You can buy a soap base to melt and pour into molds. Add your own scents, food coloring, flowers, etc to make it unique.
You can buy all kinds of molds to melt your soap into. Some people are making adult theme soaps. All they do is buy soap base, add food coloring, and melt it into a new shape. People buy them as gag gifts.
You can get the boxes for these soaps from Uline and the shredded paper packaging materials here.
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9. Lotion
You don’t need to know how to make lotions from scratch. You can buy lotions from the store in bulk and then repackage them into tiny bottles that look good with your own labels. This may not be too ethical but you can improve the product by adding certain ingredients to make it better. There are a lot of Etsy sellers doing this and it’s very hard to prove that they did make their hand lotions from scratch.
Get the bottles from Uline and custom stickers from sites like Vistaprint.
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10. Bath salt
This is something you can buy in bulk from stores and then repackage them into pretty little bottles to sell on Etsy. You can of course enhance the bath salts to make them your own.
People add bath salts into their baths to help with cleaning their bodies and as a way to improve the bathing experience.
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How to ship an order on Etsy?
In order to ship an order on Etsy, you’ll need the following:
- Label printer
- Box or bubble mailer (you can get this from your postal office’s website for free, sign up for an account online)
- Scale
Etsy makes it really easy for you to tell what orders you need to ship.
This video explains Etsy shipping really well. Go watch it here.
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Will customers know your address when you ship an order?
The customers will see the name of your shop as your name on the package as for address, they’ll see the address you mailed it from. It’s recommended that you rent a PO box for this reason.
There are cases of buyers coming into the Etsy seller’s house to watch the process of how it was made uninvited.
When the item gets returned, the buyer will need an address to return the item to. All the more reason to set up a PO box.
A PO box typically costs $30–60+ per month.
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Tips on selling on Etsy
- Get your friends and family to buy and review your products
You want to get your family and friends to buy your products because it’s hard to make the first few sales to strangers when you don’t have any reviews. Getting that initial few sales can be great for launching your business forward.
- Include a card in the package to ask for feedback
Feedback is more important than the product itself in the beginning. You want to make sure you get people to provide feedback for you if you can. A card adds a personal touch to it, it’s even better if it’s handwritten. Ask your customers to provide feedback if they like the product.
- Have an active social media account
People are less willing to buy from you if your store looks abandoned. What if they purchase the item but they don’t get the product? They’ll check the review to make sure the reviews are recent and they’ll also search you up on social media.
Having a social media presence can also help you make sales. Make sure you post things regularly.
- Make your product unique
Why would someone buy your product over someone else’s product if they got more reviews? You need to give them a reason. Make your product unique and make it stand out.
- Ship it quickly
It’s vital that you ship out the packages quickly to give your customers a good experience. They’ll be more likely to give you a good review if they see that you have shipped it out very quickly.
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Final thought
For creative people out there, selling on Etsy can be a great way for you to make some extra money or, it can also provide you with a full-time income enough for you to quit your day job.
Tim Koa set up his job and within 1.5 years made $38k from his stickers. He didn’t have any Etsy experience before. He’s seeing continuous growth in his Etsy shop every day.
If you haven’t tried selling on Etsy yet, you should give it a try.
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