He Sells WHAT On Etsy And Has Made Over 400+ Sales?! No Way…

we did not sell anything for like 3 months really well on the getaway gear and then suddenly we accidentally found like our niche our thing like Etsy can like go 0 to 100 yep really fast what if I told you the opportunity on Etsy is better now than ever before in today's case study we're going to pull back the curtain on a local friend of mine who has been able to build not one but two thriving Etsy shops in the past six months had over 400 sales and has been doing it all in his own favorite family passions i'm so excited jared welcome to the show oh thanks man it's great to be here so good tell us before we dive into the Etsy shops i think the coolest part of hearing people's Etsy shop story is like what they what their day job is like I have so many friends that are curious about Etsy and think they're too busy and just everything tell me about your family your day job you you also have three kids i do as myself like that is keeps you busy by itself yeah a badge of honor so tell us all about yourself yeah okay so actually I have I feel like I have a thousand jobs but my main job I'm actually an executive pastor at a church at a local church but my passion is I just like to make stuff so sometimes that stuff that I like to make is like you know HR policies for a church or like spreadsheets i love that you love that right it works out really well but you know I also I'm a graphic designer uh it's my background as well and so I like to make stuff just for my family all the time i have for years and so you you can relate to that I'm sure like I you know if we have like a family trip or something I'm going to design a t-shirt how can I make this extra yeah how can I make this like extra special and I'm going to make something that's like just for my kids or just for my wife um and so that's been our relationship for like the last decade in our family and at some point we were like why aren't we selling this some of this stuff on Etsy that you know it's not just something that our family enjoys but someone else might enjoy so we launched our Etsy shop like 6 months ago our first one and honestly didn't think anyone would buy anything um because we have other real jobs we were not looking for more jobs to do sure and so when you started did you have any sort of goal other than like the curiosity of like wonder what would happen i mean it was one of those things where it was like it would be nice if we had a little extra income from something like Etsy but honestly we were pretty I was pretty skeptical my wife was very optimistic i was pretty skeptical i don't actually buy this and it turns out you know you say a second ago that it's not too late to jump in it really hasn't been for us it's been a great time where people have we found our niche and people it turns out a lot of other people are interested in the same kind of stuff yeah now with your shop you do print on demand yes we do and digital downloads yep which we're going to have to talk about because it's such a it's such a debate you know with our like little phase of the internet we kind of have like three tracks and you either gravitate to one or another and sometimes like layer them in um you know a lot can do physical then there's print on demand which I love and of course digital which is probably the highest profit um least amount of leg work like easy delivery which is so fun when you were doing the research what led you to pretty much say print on demand is the starting point well like I said we weren't trying to create a full-time job for myself or my wife and so we were really looking at what would be the lowest barrier to entry for us and a lot of that was cost right like if you have we sell shirts so if you have you know three different shirts colors and you have to stock them in every kind of size I mean your inventory quickly gets gigantic and we just couldn't do that and so we were looking at the print on demand options as really the only way without that it wouldn't have been possible for us and it seems like that's probably the case for a lot of people yeah a lot of my clients that we have actually coached and helped they get so busy with local orders that they never have time to kind of take on the thought of selling to strangers and I believe and I would love to know your thought too i believe selling to strangers is the most rewarding and easiest thing to do yeah it is like you're not having to like awkwardly have a conversation with your aunt or your third cousin you're able to list something do really great research and let the algorithm see what happens yep so you went print on demand we did what was your pro like how did it feel getting it set up like was it overwhelming was it simple for you it was a task yeah i mean it's not something you can just like sit down and do having never done it before it takes a little bit um and so we carved out a weekend where my wife and I were like we're just going to knock this out and one step at a time you know I think they're all pretty good we use Printful yeah and we've really liked it they're all they're probably very similar yeah very similar it just walks you through like step one step two step three you know connect your bank account create your listings set up your design or whatever and there was an experiment period right so like we set all this up and if I go back to the the listings that we made even 5 months ago I would do it completely differently now because I've learned a lot right but you didn't know what you didn't know exactly so the only way you learn is just by doing it right and so it really wasn't bad we just had to carve out the time to do it yeah i love to ask people when they're first getting when we're talking about their startup period because I was recently coaching last week my my clients building shops and I'm like "Okay it is common that you do a lot of work." Yeah and then you like look around you're like "I don't see any fruit of it yet." Yep and you feel like it's you know the messy middle is kind of like what I've been calling it what was that like for you after you laid the foundation how long did it take for you to see any sort of like traction or what did that look like we did not sell anything for like 3 months really well on the getaway gear on vacation apparel shop that's a very competitive space to be in there's so many people especially for Disney and initially we were like we love Disney let's make some Disney stuff well it's super competitive and so for like 3 months we sold like three things like one thing a month and it was like okay then we're not going to invest any time into this like we have already made it and it's going on its own but like you know we're not going to spend a whole lot of time and then suddenly we accidentally found like our niche our thing and the thing ended up for us being there's a new theme park that's opening and we happened to be going there in September again made stuff for our family listed it on Etsy and then there were there are no other sellers in the space and were so fast to jump on it yes and so we just happened to be first and with designs that no one else h had then and no one has now still and so that has served us really well i really think it's if you can be at the pulse of a Tik Tok trend or like a park opening or just what people are actually looking for like what is the trend of today like Etsy can like go zero to 100 y really fast which I think is you know interesting with print on demand you're not having to do a ton of testing you're not having to try a bunch of stuff you can I think it's such a blessing that like anyone watching can go home tonight make a listing make a design and see what happens you're not having to invest $50 into doing a test project like you can literally throw some stuff out there and I think that's what I I personally love about it is like so much curiosity um Well and the best stuff too is it's it born out of your own creativity right so it's like when you have something where you know there are a thousand 10,000 designs on Canva already sure what would not be exciting is to just take something that's already there and just throw it up on a print on demand product but when you can bring something of yourself to it and you create something that you love and you're like I genuinely I want to have this yeah right that's where I think the magic is and where other people see the passion they see it in the work and they're like oh this is this is a unique product that I I haven't seen before and you can tell someone cares about it it makes a huge difference what would you say for creatives cuz we have a lot of hobby creatives that may not I mean you obviously have done this for a long time professionally as a graphic designer and all the amazing creative stuff that you do as your job which I think gives maybe people watching at home a little bit more validation of like oh of course this guy can do it what would you say for people that are hobbyists like just like yourself like you they love creating for their family they love creating what would you say was a big switch that some point maybe in your career you had to go through to be like you know what I could charge for this or you know what I could get paid for this to be my full-time job like what would you say for people that are kind of like on the edge of like can I would people would people buy this is this good enough like how did you overcome that well I think it you know for me I I would give two pieces of advice to that one is you got to find your unfair advantage what is the thing that you can do that most people can't um and more than likely there's there's some skill that you have or some passion that you have that if you just took an honest look at the people your friends and family 97% of them could not replicate like you're the only one of the people that you know who can really do that thing i that's your unfair advantage and you can market that that's something that you can turn into revenue in some way or another the other thing is you got to surround yourself with people who when you're not courageous enough they can give you that push yeah um and so you know in my example like with our Etsy shops that was my wife Jill she was like Jared why aren't you selling this stuff no no one wants it yes they do go Jill so having an advocate someone who you know is is encouraging you to put in the effort cuz these things do take effort and that's why you know there's that barrier to entry you have to decide you want to try yeah how Okay let's go back to effort cuz I think this is fascinating you have three kids you have all your day jobs so many things going on how much time realistically from the time you started in October okay what did it look like on a weekly basis bi-weekly basis I don't know how you would judge it of time putting in i mean there was a lot of upfront time right so like when you're getting it set up but how much did how much did you spend yeah I mean maybe to get it all going the first time we did it like 12 hours 12 hours total just to get it all set up you know the listings Canva thumbnails like all that stuff this is everything right the second shop we launched which is Millennial Scribe which is we haven't really talked about but digital goods digital notebooks um we probably spent half the time six hours cuz we already familiar right we already knew what to do yeah um and I would say nowadays on a weekly basis you know I'm probably spending um a couple of hours a week here and there just you know making sure orders are getting fulfilled if people have messages they're sending us we have something personalized and then my wife's doing the same thing so she's probably spending double or triple the amount of time I am maybe six hours a week cool yeah so really not too bad because it is print on demand we're really just doing customer service and then we're the thing that I'm really paying attention to is the business and the marketing like constantly updating the stuff so like during my lunch break today I updated thumbnails for one of our listings it was like I don't think this is working as well anymore let's try something different yeah spent you know 15 minutes doing that so crazy so let's go back to when you started seeing traction yeah like when you started seeing the tractions how was it i think this is one of the most rewarding parts where you could be like you've done all this base work you laid this what I would call it like a really solid foundation and you're able to then be at the park with your kids or like anything like that and start seeing orders come in how was that for you and Jill that makes it so worth it right so I think that moment really started like I said we didn't make any sales for our first few months and it was kind of discouraging yeah and it's one of those things where you almost just say "Let's shut it down let's give up." Like this this space is too crowded and I'm glad we didn't i'm glad we hung in there because um when we were about halfway through uh like 3 months in um we suddenly started getting traction and then when you're just Yeah exactly what you're saying at the grocery store or at the zoo and you start seeing orders just coming in you're like "Oh my gosh we're making money while we're sleeping." Yeah like what's happening and it's very exciting it's just it's it's fun especially when it is something you care about when it's not just a revenue stream but it's something that you've enjoyed and you know you've put some of your own self into and is the park that you have been designing for did they just open is this what I'm seeing people do this park you're speaking of is Epic Universe it opens May 22nd of 2025 so as of this date our recording date it's still a month out um but we're in that like media season right okay so people are you can buy tickets people are planning their vacations so the hype is building this is this is good i think this is so important for people to think about like what is going on in their own life where are they vacationing where are they what are they excited about like that is probably could be the lowest hanging fruit for someone totally yeah cuz I I do I'm such a firm believer in like thoughtful design that's sort of if I were to distill like my whole professional career that phrase is like you just can't underestimate the value of thoughtfulness right like it's so powerful and when you put your your work when you when you do something thoughtfully maybe it's research like you're saying uh it just shows right and so I think it's not only something that shows up in the art but it's something that shows up in the business practice side of it too so for us yeah we were excited about taking this family vacation and then it you know happened to have our finger on a pulse do you think you'll have made enough profit to like say you paid for your whole trip we already have i mean heck yeah and we could say that today so we're at the point now but like by the time you get to your vacation in September like that's going to be so cool yeah um I mean and what's really cool is because the park that we're talking about Epic Universe in particular has been in like trial season where they're having their employees test out the products and the rides and that kind of thing we're getting messages from Universal employees frequently of like hey I have been wearing this in the park and like everyone wants to know where I'm where I've got it um and so and that has been helpful because we're trying to we're trying to understand where is the line of artful interpretation versus copyright and we're trying to be on the most conservative safest side so like we're not putting characters into our designs right like we're just saying what are we inspired by from this amazing thing that someone else has built and let's create our own artwork from it okay this brings up a big part that I think a lot of my friends at home would love to ask so I'll ask where how have you between reading Etsy policy copyright law like what has how has that been because for so many of us we let the fear of whatifs keep us from even re like researching it and looking into it so have you discovered anything interesting is there any like creative copyright things that you've explored in this process to test like how has that been well it definitely reads to me like if it's something that someone else made you shouldn't use it that's just sort of an easy baseline policy right easy low hanging fruit so like um there are a lot of promotional images that Universal has put out that I have seen Etsy sellers take and put on t-shirts we're not going to do that because it looks like from the policy I didn't make that image someone else made it in this case a very massive multi-billion dollar you know media conglomerate that I do not want to get in trouble with don't want to compete with yeah that's right um but it does seem like you know if I draw my own drawing of Mickey Mouse it sounds like there might be some wiggle room there i don't know exactly what that looks like i'm certainly not like a copyright lawyer but I would feel more comfortable with something that I made than you know something that someone else creates that's cool so I mean I like to play it safe i'm going to stay away from characters in the future i'm not going to do any character work yeah i feel like they're you know these big conglomerates they're just paying firms to be like I've heard enough horror stories from them so yeah i think I think if you are just like I'm I'm going to just do my own stuff and sell my own work i think you probably don't have to worry about a whole lot and then it sounds like that worst case scenario tends to be take down notices um which is not a big deal all things we can get through you can work through a take down notice i love it so this is your first shop now you told me it took 3 months to get traction yeah it did so we're at December but you also say December is when you launched your second shop so when we started seeing traction from the first shop we were like "Okay let's try this let's try the second shop why not?" How did you actually decide to start a second shop it's the same deal so I have a remarkable writing tablet you know like one of those writing tablets right it's not the only kind there are a lot of these different kinds of things sure and they're made like you'd also use like an iPad like do that right and so I was again looking for like I want my own planner i want my own like project management template or whatever and there just wasn't anything on Etsy like what I was looking to find so again I was like I'll just make one myself and then once again my wife was like Jared why don't you sell this so you can see a pattern here right i love that and so we listed that in December once we started seeing a few sales coming in um in particular at that time for cruise ship products we were making on getaway gear and so that was enough of an encouragement where we thought all right we know what we're doing a little bit little bit let's just try it okay and so we launched Millennial Scribe and it's uh digital notebooks so these are interactive PDFs which means they have links in them like you can write on them but then like there are navigation so you can like tap like if you're in a daily for example a daily planner you can tap on like my goals button or like April or August popping you to a different page and it's taking you to a different page so it's interactive but you're still writing on it love it right so um we made a couple of these put it on the shop immediately cuz I mean December is prime time for that kind of product people are like I'm going to go into January i'm going to go into the new year and be so productive and so we just and we knew that and we were like if we're going to launch it it has to be before January 1st or probably before Christmas and exactly what you would expect our we had like you know if you were to chart it out like December was pretty good january skyrocketed on that shop and so most of our sales on that shop came in between January 1st and probably February 20th amazing is like the the window for most of those sales yeah and so we And that one is they're all digital products so you're talking you know after you do all your fees subtraction um it's like 86% profit margin oh my god right so you just like set it incredible and like you're you're good and on that one the customer service is so easy because we've made like a really we use Canva to make a guide love it so when people get their product whatever notebook they bought they're also getting this beautiful document that we've made that just walks them through how to install it and how to use it cuz they may be unfamiliar with that process they probably just bought the device they're buying this template for it seems like we did a pretty good job making that instruction because we don't get a whole lot of people reaching out to us okay that was going to be my next question i'm like listen you're talking about like these clickable PDFs like that sounds you have to provide a little frustrating or just room for error yes that's right and so what's helpful is like you know Amazon there's a uh it's called the Kindle Scribe it's the same deal so we sell for that and they have their own YouTube video of like here's how you install and you can link those resources we just link them so easy right like it's already there amazon made it uh and so we've just pulled those resources together and put them in a guide so incredible now with your two shops Yeah pricing drama is a big thing we coach people on talk to people about how has it been for you pricing any of your items do you strict like stick to just what you want profit-wise when it comes to print on demand is it I'm sure your digital is probably a little bit more flexible and different yeah how's that been the digital is so easy it's like you don't have to think about it um so what I tend to do is I tend to go onto Etsy so I'm going to talk about just digital first i go to Etsy and I will look for similar kinds of products so if I'm making um a project management notebook i'm going to search for that on Etsy and see what other shops are pricing theirs at and then I tend to price a little bit higher than average on that shop because my customer my when I'm thinking through who like my ideal customer is they tend to be someone in the professional space they they have a little bit more income uh and they're thinking through not just like what's a good product what's an adequate product but they're looking for the best product right and so I I think even I'm going to get more sales by pricing it a little bit higher because they're going to assume the value proposition is higher on that product too so I am not trying to make an average or even low ball on that store um so I'm gonna go like 75 fifth percentile on that one right so that's how I price that one is totally value based for what I think the customer would value it because my profit is 86% i don't have to even think about it sure it's totally different on on get on demand print on demand is challenging so uh we subscribe to we because we're with Printull we have their uh they call it Printull growth yes you pay $25 a month and they basically give you like periphereral rates on it and just for everyone watching at home if you're on Printly Printify they all have a similar They all have a similar one pick whichever one you want we use the opposite we use the other one not you use Printly i use Printiful or Printful printful yeah I use Printully whatever all they have like creative it's crazy but they all have a similar something another um subscribe to that i find that it like once your volume gets high enough it's so worth it it's it's way like per shirt now we make $2 more you know per sale so $25 13 shirts you're by itself right so um anyway that has helped us to get that down what we're really looking at there is exactly what you said what is our ideal profit margin that we can hit like what is in terms of dollars what would this be worth to me to sell it makes it a lot harder because there are sellers who you know they have inventory they're able to get their costs lower and if you try to compete on price we have just found you're you're not going to be able to pay your like it's just not worth it right so we tend to our or my original strategy was let's try to sell it double the materials cost okay um just because that seemed like an average rule of thumb for a a wholesale retailer um what we have found is that that doesn't cover enough of our overhead so we actually can't do double we have to sell at like you know we're we're looking even higher even higher yes so if our t-shirt costs $7 on the print on demand we're gonna try to sell that at 20 um so a little bit more than double sure i mean I love print on demand and just for so many people at home that like I've coached and helped sell their crafts in general you know when you get a order without having print on demand you're getting the order then you're having to go to Walmart i know pick up the shirt slice yeah for $7 to $12 provider is going to do it all for you i know it's like giving yourself like a true promotion like what I love about this is that you truly get to be the creative director you are it's all the only way you can scale too because you're you're if you're selling on Etsy and you're making everything on your own more than likely your profits are slim enough that you're never going to be able to you know build a huge system sure uh but if you do print on demand if you're outsourcing those pieces it's your scalability is infinite.credcredible and here's what I've noticed we order quite a bit of our own stuff for testing purpose and friends and gifts and all the things as most of us do um the quality is still really good yeah and we even for us we test our print verbats like before we use them and it's so fruitful to you know you get to stay in your zone of genius they get to stay in their zone of genius the customer probably gets a better product they really do which is incredible i mean you think about like um any of these print on demand companies can do full color screen prints which I mean 5 years ago was basically impossible correct you could not find a supplier to do this and you certainly couldn't do it at home and so now the fact I don't even have to think about how many color inks are in this design it just $7 this is incredible like how do you do this and the embroidery stuff is so trendy and they're getting like their embroidery with it i'm like they have the ability to make one embroidered shirt for me mhm like just one like I think that's the the magic that I think is so such an opportunity and I don't know how much you've researched this element but a lot of people on Etsy that have been on for years they're really against this new era of Etsy yeah so on all the subreddits that I'm in for Etsy sellers I see a lot of the hate against print on demand but honestly I I think it's evolution it is it's just the next It's a different kind of product right there's I think every kinds of product has its own value yes handmade stuff it's very important on Etsy so important but the fact that you that this is possible that someone can design a design Yes and sell a shirt that they didn't have to you know do all those and I really think there's something to Etsy that the quality of buyer Yeah is not a Walmart buyer is not a Target buyer is not Amazon like when you're on Etsy you are ready for something to be so unique that is only going to be probably the only one in your area yep and that's what they're going after and that's why you can get paid $45 for a sweatshirt or you know sometimes people charge our customers charge $50 like we've been able to sell anything like that and it's just a no-brainer you know and people will buy multiple our first buyer was from Italy and they bought two they bought two cow sweatshirts okay so let's talk about you you mentioned Italy yes so that like the first time I had a ship to Europe I was freaked out i was like how do I do this do I need to write like on the package like how do I pay the tariffs and so um but you know you just figure it out you just figure it out and it's really not as scary as it sounds it's like oh I can handle this yeah it's so crazy and so many of those things are actually automated these suppliers they have figured it out they want it to be figured out because they don't have time to wait around for us yes that's right yeah so when it comes to your Etsy shops like what do you want to do now yeah what's next for your Etsy shops uh I mean you know it's kind of still a hobby for us it's something that we're doing on the side um it's gotten to the point now where we're seeing enough traction we're hoping that it can be something that my wife manages and that it sort of serves in like a job for her a source of income for her um but it's still being able to just make something that is handcrafted so you know the designs at least are something that we've made ourselves uh and we'd love to be able to to do more of them and figure out what are the you know our getaway gear is uh shop is all about celebrating experiences yes I am really big into experiences you know I think we live in this materialistic world and there's something to be said of doing something with the people you love going to new places you know seeing new things and so being able to make gear that is unique to you and unique to that fun you know your family saved up to go you know together and and it was worth that let's create something to memorialize that and that you can just hold on to as a souvenir that you didn't pick up at some random shop in the park or on the island or whatever way overpriced it's way overpriced and so generic and a million other people have it what's something that's just you something that was special to you with this shop are you noticing that people are buying multiples yeah that's pretty popular yeah that's we had a guy on the way over here i got an order and um so we have this series of shirts that each one of them it's for Epic Universe and each one of them is one of the five portals so just one of them and it has a quote that the portal has on it it's like on the shirt um it's a brand new one we just made this weekend and so we had one guy order all five of these and it's the same size and color and so Joe called me on the way over and she was like I think he bought them for himself i was like 100% he did right wait and you listed it just this weekend this weekend yeah guys like stop sleeping on your listings and I believe here's another this is one of my philosophies about Etsy is that as you grow your Etsy shop every single one of your listings that are successful and in the search algorithm because for this to really scale you have to be in the algorithm you have to be in search and that's how this starts to make sense so I really think of every successful listing as like another successful leg to build a really stable business like I think that's the secret like for you to list a new listing this weekend for it to either get in search or the guy was already obsessed with your shop or whatever like that's the secret sauce you know well and what we have found too with the listing stuff is so many listings just look the same so like if you we do a lot of research i'm sure you do too right so like I'm in the Etsy shirt search bar like multiple times a week yeah and so um I'll go in there and let's just type let's just say you typed in matching cruise family shirt yes um they all look even if the designs are different the thumbnails look the same and it like your eyeballs just sort of like cross you're like I can't I don't even know what I'm looking at anymore and so for us um again when we started seeing traction is we were like how can we stand out like as a thumbnail like if I'm looking at a grid of I don't know how many they show you but let's say it's 30 at once if I'm looking at a grid of 30 what would make ours like draw your attention and we found that and so and once you have something working and it's converting duplicate you just keep doing it and then uh on our digital notebook shop Millennial Scribe there's this guy who's made a notebook called Daybook and it's like a planner and once he created that and the thumbnail for that everyone copied it because it's phenomenal it looks so good and I I like want to copy it but I'm not going to because I respect him too much um but it's like you see how someone identified a trend or a potential trend yes and it just is like this makes it stand out this makes a difference so for us I think that's really mattered not just in the algorithm but even thinking from like a human perspective if I'm looking at a grid of little squares what would make mine pop yeah out of the crowd love it now have you taken advantage of Etsy sales feature have you ran any promotions yeah we actually are running one right now and so this is in the last two days we've started it and so now we're seeing like you know more views a lot more views um and and some more sales for sure love it love it love it do you think this will be something you add in consistently or playing around with yeah yeah um so actually when we started seeing the first big wave of sales again those first couple months we saw none for our vacation shop and then Etsy has the the group sale what do they call it like it's like sitewide sales and Black Friday was one of them and Cyber Monday and so involved you're like okay why not we're not selling any might as well let's just try it and that's when we started seeing the traction that's when it began it really does help I think to do that kind of stuff Jill has watched a lot of YouTube videos on like how to structure your titles so that um you're really getting the broadest reach of on the search algorithm and it was counter she actually this weekend like reprimmended me it's kind of what I think because like the way I would title stuff is like if I'm design a shirt and it's really specific let's say to a particular cruise ship I'm going to put the name of the cruise ship at the beginning like you know star of the sea brand new whatever um and and she's like "No no no no." Like no one's searching for that like you need to start as broad as possible and then as it goes on you can get more specific and she's been right like as we've updated those titles it seems like we're getting a lot more sales a lot more views yeah it's hard to I love to always articulate this back to one of my first craft blogs was a teen craft blog okay so if Courtney and I were writing an article we would call it uh teen crafts okay well as we were building this blog we realized that a teenagers are not looking for teen crafts but do you want to know who is people that are not teens trying to get teens to craft so craft for teens was such a higher search term we like parents who are like I need something constructive for my child to do so it's like as soon as you make that switch educators and all the people that care about these teenagers start searching and finding it and that was a huge pivot for us and ever since then it like always puts me back into like okay I'm sitting down on Pinterest on you know Etsy what would how would I want to find this listing yes what are the words I'm using you know and it's like such a you know such a pivot in in our coaching program we've been talking a lot about like do you include the brand shirt in the title do you not you know where does that lie like like oh people aren't searching for Gilden or you know sometimes if you have a favorite one it can be but generically and broadly that's true the comfort colors are having a moment they are having a moment everyone wants a comfort shirt we love a color a comfort color and people who I'm like "How do you even know what this is?" are asking like "Yeah it's crazy it's crazy." Um so between each shop which one do you have a favorite shop uh my favorite is the getaway gear one just because it's so fun right it's like vacation stuff it's like luxur just like luxury things right so it's it's the more fun one whereas Millennial Scribe is more practical it's more of just like your everyday like which you know for me design is very important and so that was part of the reason why I struggled to find digital notebooks that I enjoyed is because either it was like a maximalist like threw up on this notebook it was just too much um you know or it just couldn't do the things I wanted it to do and so for me like what is practical is also beautiful because it makes you want to use it like you can have the greatest productivity system but if you don't enjoy using it you're not motivated logging on to it yeah then you're not going to use it and so you know the aesthetics for me was a really big part of it but from a design perspective it takes a lot of work on my part to create those um and so I like it's a heavy lift it's a heavy lift i like using them i don't really like making them whereas I love making the vacation stuff it's just fun but really with that your digital shop do people buy multiples on there too actually helped me a lot with that was doing the Etsy marketing feature where you can not like bundle like in one listing but where you can do the discounted bundling where if someone buys more than one they get a certain percentage discount oh fun um and I we turned that on like two months ago and it's been really successful i mean and it's a no-brainer for us like I don't care great like I'm glad again the profit margin on digital goods is already so high yes taking a 25% cut off of that is to sell more volume totally fine no problem at all yeah i love it well it's neat oh my gosh and I would say like for me like one thing I have learned through it is like just try stuff yeah just just like you know if you think of an idea just try it uh we have this uh Hawaiian shirt and so Jill was like "Jared you should make a Hawaiian shirt." Like "No one wants a Hawaiian shirt." That's what I Nobody wants a Hawaiian shirt no one wants a Hawaiian shirt and so it's our most It's not like our Well it's not our most It's our second most successful product is this $50 Hawaiian shirt that I'm like I I mean I don't know that I would pay $50 for a Hawaiian shirt is it like a button-up it's a button-up okay i mean it's very similar to what I'm wearing now but instead like it has the whole thing is an Epic Universe print that I've designed and people love it and I love it too i mean you know we have one it's awesome um but I didn't think people would be into it isn't it funny like what what we think is going to happen i don't know your experience sometimes I'll post something on the internet and just in general I'm like oh this is the easiest piece of content for me to make and I'm like why did it do so well or I'll spend all this time working on this other one i'm like this is going to do so great and it's just like like it's so funny like you just can't expect I think curiosity like when it comes to doing anything online and building a business is like the best emotion to bring to the table and you said earlier that your Etsy customer is different than your you know your Amazon customer and I think this is where that is because people are going on Etsy and they're expecting custom made or custom design some something that they have can't find anywhere else and they're willing to pay a higher price for it because it is something unique and something they're going to be at the park and no one else can go have it that's right and they expect that if I have a question or a problem that I can talk to a human like a real the person who actually made this thing and so for us even the customer service part is honestly a blast really we love it yeah you know getting messages from people who are like hey you know I saw your listing but it's not quite what I was looking for could you tweak it in this way and I think 100% of the time do you tweak it yes 100% of the time we had said yes so awesome i mean because again like when you do have these print on demand services you have so much flexibility so like I don't I can't speak to the others but like Printull like if someone orders a design on Etsy uh as soon as that order comes in on Printull I can intercept it and modify the design i'm sure all these can do this um and so we you know we'll do that from time to time or or like mock something up and send them a screenshot and it's just fun this is kind of like when you really think about the collaboration and stuff like that it kind of reminds me of like Fiverr which is like service based but then like merging with like Airbnb cuz it's like you know that's why people I think go to Airbnb versus like just like stagnant hotels like like an Amazon but they go on Etsy and they you know may be someone that has like a vision but not sure how to execute it it's like sure you can get some a shirt on Timu for like $5 but it won't fit right and it's the wrong size and it's the awful material so I saw my shirt on Sheen no and so I went to it i was like why is my shirt on Sheen i mean it's my thumbnail it's everything it's like mine and I went on to it and then you click through the thumbnails and it is a plain navy shirt but the first thumbnail and the title is mine and so they're like selling mine but like if you were to order it you're going to get a plain navy shirt and I really think at this point in the industry buyers are smart they they've figured it out like we could you know we could harp on the people stealing our ideas and we could harp on all the people that are the way I look at it i was talking to someone last week about this is like if you're the true creative Yeah and there's people that copy you Yeah they're never going to get ahead of you because they're relying on you that's right to create the next thing that's right so it's like for anyone on the sidelines that's worried about what if someone steals from me what if someone copies from me it's not if they're going to especially if you're successful it's just going to happen yes you know we I I have a membership site and there's you could join today you get 15 20,000 designs we see people join all the time download however much and then just peace and we bless them out like you're like amazing thank you like it just happens and you know as long as you stay I think it's so much easier to stay in the creative flow moving on versus like harping and you know trying to take down and just think that none of this is happening i think it's so much easier to be like "No I want to be so successful." Yeah that Sheen does want to take my stuff that's exactly right like such a compliment yeah that's great but then knowing that the customer is going to see the difference like you have to have the belief that the customer knows that you're not losing customers and if someone reached out to Sheen what's going to happen nothing they're not going to respond to you at all so it's a totally different market on Etsy and that's one of the reasons why we're we're doing Etsy and not any other platform so cool okay what would you say to someone that's like on the fence they're like "Okay this is really interesting i really think I could do something out there." What would you say would you say just like schedule their their sprint their Etsy launch what would you say yeah I mean I would say just try it like you know maybe maybe you won't sell anything but the cost to entry is so low you know I think what does it cost to start an Etsy shop like they change $30 it does change it does change it can go anywhere from free to $30 okay free free to 30 so anywhere in that range I think it's worth it just to try right so cool um and I would say more than likely you know at least in my experience and I've seen some other people it takes a minute to figure it out so there is a messy middle there's a messy middle there's a messy beginning where you're just like I don't really know how to do this and no one is buying my shop i got two views this whole month how many listings did you start with i think we started um with Getaway Gear with 12 listings and as it turns out they were all the wrong kinds of listings out of the out of the original 12 we've only kept one or two of them to this day we've let the rest of Do you guys hear that do you all hear that so many people worry about like you know what to do and like a lot of my clients like to post like five and then just stare at them like they didn't work see Tanner I'm like "No just let's keep moving let's just keep trying." You got to keep trying and as you There are some designs that I honestly believe in and I'm like I don't know why people aren't buying this i'm going to keep renewing this cuz someone at some point will see what I see in this but for the most part we haven't one of the just in life one of my principles is just don't be precious about things if you're doing something and it's not working stop doing it and so we kind I took that same approach with the Etsy stuff where it's like yeah these were cool things that I thought were neat but you know no one else did no one else did and I don't care on to the next right like it's it doesn't hurt my feelings i liked them and you know maybe something else will be better for uh you know someone else and the shop is small at first so it's very likely that the you know the algorithm is not per perfect and so someone might have loved your design but your shop was small enough that it just wasn't getting shown the visibility wasn't high enough that's okay you can always come back to it and so that's kind of how I view it too is one day we might even bring some of those back when we get a bigger following now did you promote this within your family or like friends or social media i don't honestly I when you asked me to do this interview I was like people might be like Jared and Jill have an Etsy shop i don't tell anybody about this isn't it funny i love Listen I think there's something about like doing stuff just in secret yeah i mean we haven't been secret not secret but like Yeah like not trying to cuz it wasn't for It's not for the people that I know really like someone would like it but I think so important what I think about this opportunity different than any other like selling your crafts locally or anything like that is that you can be successful and don't have to work with any of the local people which uh it's my personal favorite yeah that's right now I did like when I launched the uh actually both shops um there were a few people in my life that I was like they might like this stuff and so I had reached out to a couple of people mostly just family and I'm talking less than five people and just said "Hey here's here's a promo code that I made just for you guys if you're interested in doing it this will get it to where it's it's at cost like it's 50% off if you use this code or whatever." Yeah and just to see if anyone did and you know my parents bought like a thing let's go right and so then I was like could could you review it like if you liked it I actually need the review um but I don't think any you know I don't think anyone else I sent that to bought anything and um my expectation was this is for strangers on the internet this is for other people who have similar interests um you know we're all unique and so like me and my friends we're different people this stuff is probably not for most of them so fun i love it what would you any anything else you feel like you want to share about your Etsy shops uh I mean no we've loved doing it though i mean honestly it's been a lot more fun than we expected or than I expected jill's probably like see Jared no that's exactly how she is yeah she was like no the thing that she tells me all the time is two years ago I told you i'm like I know and you're like listen but look today look how great it is today that's right so and it's been fun to get to do something together so fun i love it and who knew i mean you're the second husband wife duo that I've talked to recently yeah one does the uh the the wife does the designing and the husband does the fulfillment and it's funny that you kind of do the designing and she kind of runs the restaurant she does the customer service stuff yeah and marketing yeah super neat yeah i love it my dad is actually um maybe we should just like speak directly to my dad so my dad is uh he's been toying around the idea of an Etsy shop for years and he's like the most talented guy I know and so I have been like every time I make like some kind of milestone I'm like dad I'm telling you get on 100 sales and get on maybe one day I don't know what his shop will be called but you can maybe have him on the podcast one day i can't wait so far he hasn't taken the plunge i'm trying to get him there i mean you are the walking testimonial right now like this is so incredible that's right i love it okay before we go you have to tell us about your YouTube channel and both shops so everybody can check it out okay so yeah so just a bonus Jared has a YouTube channel and the bonus YouTube channel people are like "What who is this person and why is he like doing so many things?" Too many things all right so we have our Etsy shops are Getaway Gear Co is that uh URL whatever um and then we have Millennial Scribe linked down below link down below yep and then uh we I have a YouTube channel called Digital Astronaut it is a space YouTube channel so cool so and we have an Etsy shop but we've not like what there's a there's a third Etsy shop but we haven't we haven't tried that's why I wasn't I didn't want to talk about it today we just made it and forgot about it okay next time Jared's back he'll have a third i don't have time for all these things and so I was like this is the one that I'm going to have to like let go right so not let go just delay it's on the back burner right now yeah so gosh anyway so I have Digital Astronaut is a YouTube channel where uh we talk about space and space exploration so yeah oh my gosh I love it it's so neat well check out his YouTube channel subscribe is this Would you say it's like good content for like their kids or Oh it's great content for kids i basically make it for my kids at this point so like they'll be like "Dad can we watch Digital Astronaut?" Which is like the greatest thing ever i'm like "Yes 100% there's no screen time cap when it's you're watching your dad that's okay it doesn't count." If my kids see me on YouTube they're they're like "Dad that's you." I'm like "Yeah it is like such a funny thing." It's gotten to the point now where my kids have like they know the terms of the space videos and so they'll be like "Dad I want to watch a video about Io or Steeple Mountain or like you know STS88." I'm like "No other three-year-old has no idea what you're talking about." That's right like no one else knows this oh my gosh well thank you so much for coming on sharing your whole story and being so open we always appreciate it and we love getting to showcase everything check out the links down below for all that we spoke about today so fun and again thank you so much for being here we appreciate it thanks