Introduction

Over the last year, I’ve helped more than 554 people make their first $1,000 on Etsy. Some of those people made tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars using the method that I’m going to share with you today.

To be honest with you, those are just the numbers that I can track through one of my affiliate links. It doesn’t even include all of the students who chose not to use my affiliate links or sell something that I can’t track, like a digital product. So this method has probably helped even more people make their first $1,000 on Etsy.

I also started a brand new shop that sells custom AI Pet Portraits just a couple of months ago. Some days, I was making over $200 to $400 in profit. And all of that’s great, but what I’ve been able to take away is that the $1,000 mark is a huge milestone.

Not only is it super rewarding and the point where you start to see what’s actually possible, but it’s also the point where you really start to believe in yourself that you can actually do it. At least that was the case for me.

The Three Key Tips for Rapid Etsy Success

Today I’m going to share with you the three tips that helped me grow my shops to over $11,000 in profit in about 2 to 3 weeks’ time. It’s also helped over 554 of my students do the exact same.

By the end of this article, you’ll know everything that you need to do, no matter what product you’re selling or what niche you’re selling in.

Tip 1: Build on What’s Already Working Instead of Starting from Scratch

The very first thing that gets your shop to $1,000 as quickly as possible is that instead of building from scratch, you build on top of what’s already working.

I like selling on Etsy because all of the shop and sales data is already public. Instead of having to test everything by trial and error, you can build on top of proven ideas. It’s like starting an online business with a head start.

Shop hacking is the process of studying what’s already working across a few successful shops and modeling your shop to do the same.

Now I’ve gone into more detail about how to shop hack in other articles, but it’s the process of finding at least three and up to five already successful shops selling the product that you want to sell. Some of those shops should be newer and have opened within the last 12 to 18 months. Some of them should be a little older and long-term best sellers.

This method also means that you’re able to model individual elements that have already been proven to get your product to sell without copying any one individual shop. It’s how you figure out what mockups to use, what fonts work well, and what colors and listing images perform well.

Honestly, I think shop hacking is one of the biggest reasons why Etsy is the best beginner marketplace. You don’t have to go out and test everything on your own. You also don’t have to take a bunch of advice from YouTubers if you don’t want to, since you can go right on Etsy and see which shops are performing best by selling the product that you want to sell.

You can find three to five of those shops, look at what they’re doing, and build upon their proven ideas. And just to be super clear, this does not mean to go out and copy a bunch of shops, but learn from what several successful shops are already doing. If you want to save 10 hours a weak explore this tool.

Choosing the Right Shops for Effective Shop Hacking

The key to successful shop hacking is first picking a variety of shops that are both new and old. They should be making a consistent amount of sales and the right amount of sales for your goal. They also have to be selling your product, since there’s not as much point in modeling a shop that isn’t selling the type of product that you want to sell.

And also by the way, if there are no shops successfully selling the product that you want to, or there are no new shops doing it either, then it’s probably not the best choice of product to be selling if you want a head start on your business.

Shop hacking is how you validate your product and validate all your ideas before you go out and waste a bunch of time trying to sell something that isn’t going to sell. And honestly, it’s the reason why you’d want to sell on Etsy in the first place, because all that sales data is public.

Now, by modeling what’s already working on Etsy, it puts you on track to focus on tip number two, which is creating magnetic listings.

Tip 2: Creating Magnetic Listings That Attract Buyers

You know how sometimes you’re on YouTube or your favorite platform, and you just see that perfect video? It’s got the perfect thumbnail and title, and you just can’t help yourself but click on it. It’s like I need to read this. It’s perfect. I can’t stop myself from clicking on it.

If your listings look that way, but in the Etsy search algorithm, you’re going to have no trouble getting your first $1,000. The only issue is that most new sellers don’t know how to make these magnetic listings.

Now, from my super humble experience having listings bring in tens of thousands of dollars a month, I found that there are really three and a half things that make your listings magnetic.

The first is the listing image because it’s the first impression that the customer is going to have of your product. It’s like the thumbnail of a YouTube video. If the thumbnail sucks, nobody’s going to click.

Using the shop hacking method we just talked about is how you figure out what images or mockups to use in your listings, because all of the top shops on Etsy got there by having great listing images.

The Power of Keywords and Product Ideas

The second is the title or the keywords that you use in your listing, because nobody’s going to be able to buy your listing or ever find it if it doesn’t show up in search. If nobody sees the product, no one can buy it.

Now, the thing about using great keywords in your listing is you’re basically guaranteed that at some point, Etsy search is going to push out your product. But the key is that if you don’t have good listing images, then your listing won’t convert, and it won’t stay high up in search.

That’s why you want your product to be targeted as specifically as possible so that it shows up for the right person who’s most likely to buy it. When you start getting those conversions, people liking your product, adding it to cart, and even buying it, that’s how you keep the position in search.

Third is the actual idea for the product itself. Now, if you’re selling print-on-demand or digital products, then this is going to be the design or the niche that the product targets.

If you make a bunch of boring products or copycat designs, then you’re not going to do very well because the customer already has a bunch of great options to choose from. You need a good product idea, which ultimately comes down to doing market research to see what’s trending right now.

I said there are three and a half things that you need to make your listings truly magnetic. That’s because you also need to bring something slightly new to the table. You just need to add a little bit of sauce to whatever product you’re selling so that customers on Etsy have a reason to buy your product instead of someone else’s.

Take what’s working and just add a little bit of a unique spin to it.

Thinking Like a Customer to Create Winning Listings

When you’re on YouTube or you’re shopping on Amazon, you’re in customer mode. You’re trying to find the best product and the best video to read. You’re trying to find the best, most magnetic results.

You can pretend that you’re an Etsy customer. What exactly are they looking for? What’s going to catch their eye? What’s going to get them to click? Study what these magnetic listings are doing and try to do the same in your shop.

When I build any listings now, instead of trying to do what I think is going to work, I study what’s already working. The best way that I found to do that is simply by browsing Etsy as a normal customer would.

Overcoming Doubts: The Real Challenge in Early Stages

The actual work itself for making your first $1,000 isn’t even that hard. Sure, it’s going to be a little bit harder since you’ve never done it before. But I think what’s actually harder is getting over your own doubts and fears that it’s not going to work for you.

It’s easier for me now to build a shop from the ground up because I’ve already seen the other side. I’ve seen that it can work, and I know that I can do it.

Just think about it for a second. If you were already making six figures from your shop, it would be no big deal if you posted 50 listings and they didn’t sell. You wouldn’t just give up.

But what’s hard is when you’re in the early stages at the very beginning of your shop, and you post 50 listings. If they don’t sell, it’s much more difficult to keep going.

In the super early days, you almost have to have a fake it till you make it mentality. You almost have to pretend like you’re already successful.

Think about if you were already a six-figure shop owner. How would you approach your business? How would you approach making new listings? What would you think about?

If you can get into that mindset and start thinking the same thoughts that a six-figure shop owner is thinking, then reaching your first $1,000 is honestly not going to be a problem, and you’ll probably blow right past it.

And honestly, even outside of the whole Etsy shop world, embodying the mentality of the person you want to become is one of the quickest ways that I have found to change your outcome.

I truly believe that making your first $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, or $100,000 is all just a reflection of your mindset.

Tip 3: Focus on Making Listings, Not Just Chasing Sales

But that brings us to tip number three, which is that you’re actually not in the business of making sales and making money, but you’re in the business of making listings.

Now, of course, you’re doing this to make a bunch of money, but it’s a lot easier to make your first $1,000 when you’re not focused on making the $1,000.

If I can give you a little piece of that six-figure mindset, the most important thing I would tell you is that your success comes down to building out listings that are capable of making you money.

Each sale is made up of three parts. First, you have to have a product available for someone to buy. You have to get that product seen by the right customer, and then you have to fulfill your part of the sale.

And controlling that first step, how many high-quality products you have available for sale, that’s what drives success for most shops.

You can always improve your marketing efforts, and fulfilling the order is the easy part, but making great listings is the foundation for everything else.

I was using listing view the other day because we just added a new feature, which shows you how many new listings a shop has posted within the last 60 days. What you can see is that even the biggest shops that have already made their millions and millions of dollars, they’re constantly posting new listings for sale all the time.

I always think it’s a little funny when someone comes to me and asks me to review their shop when they only have maybe 50 listings. I can tell almost right away how serious someone is, not only by the quality but also the quantity of their listings.

And by the way, it’s not just quantity, and it’s not just quality. You need both. But if you want a big shop, you have to do the things that big shops do, and that includes posting a lot of listings, no matter what.

Shifting Your Mindset for Long-Term Growth

Now, a little pro tip for you is that it’s much easier to make your first 10,000 sales than it is to make your first thousand or 10 sales, because the way that you think about growing your business will be different.

I think it all comes down to guarantees. It feels a lot more guaranteed that you’d be able to make your first 10 sales than your first 10,000 sales, so your approach is a little bit lazier.

You don’t actually commit to doing as much research as you could. You don’t spend as long making each listing, and you don’t think as long-term.

But the person who knows that 10,000 sales are guaranteed as long as they put in the work, they’re going to do whatever work is required because they know it’s worth it in the end.

It’s much easier for these big shops that have already made millions of dollars and make thousands of dollars per day to keep doing the basics that got them there because they already know that it works.

But as funny as it is, that’s the exact same work that they did day one that got them there in the first place.

When you approach growing your Etsy shop this way, I think it’s a lot easier to make your $1,000 and far beyond.

I hope that this article was helpful, sort of, you know, maybe reframing some of the ways that you think about growing your shop.