One day, I stumbled upon an Etsy listing that caught my eye. Instead of the typical handcrafted printables and templates, this seller was peddling digital assets generated by Midjourney, an AI image creation tool. What struck me was the sheer volume of their sales – over 40,000 – despite the lack of any real effort on their part. They were simply uploading JPG files, raw clipart without even removing the backgrounds, and letting buyers handle the rest.
In that moment, a lightbulb went off. “I could do that,” I thought to myself. And just as quickly, a more ambitious notion took hold: “I can do that better.” So there I was, at the start of my journey where I watched a couple of videos online of other people doing the same and I jumped down that rabbit hole, on to the creation of my new Etsy store.
The next month was tougher than I thought.
Background
To pre-empt this, let me give you a bit of a background.
- I’m a mum of two young children, a three year old and a one year old.
- I work full-time as a web developer, so I should have some good knowledge around how things work and a bit of a head start on anything tech related.
- I recently moved house and I’m in the midst of some massive home renovations – i.e. lots of tradies, a roof in need of repair, a complete paint job and so on.
This should give you a good indication of how time-poor I am. I wake up at 6am and I’m out the door by 6:45am (lucky if my kids are awake for me to say goodbye to). I work until 4pm, home at 5pm after spending time in traffic. Play with the kids, cook the family dinner, get them ready for bed and finally, spend 1 hour working on my store if I’m lucky before hitting the sack. Then up in the middle of the night, because of you know, kids. Rinse, then repeat.
On the weekends I try and spend about 1-2hrs a day on the store and the rest with the family.
So all in all. I’m clocking in about 5-10hrs on the Etsy store per week. That is all I can afford. I would love to spend more time on it but as a mum, work with what you have.
Day 1 – 7 (Week One)
Day one. Very exciting indeed. The first point of call was setting things up. Here is the outline and some costs of what I used. Take note, I’m based in Australia, so all costs are based on AUD.
- Etsy store – There is a $22 store setup cost. Who knew?
- Midjourney – I setup an account. Just the bare minimum. $11.
- Canva – I utilised the free trial here for 14 days, so that had me covered for a few things.
Total costs – $33
The first day was mostly just playing around with Midjourney, seeing what I could create and creating my first listing. A set of 16 Magical Potion Bottles. I was impressed then. Looking back on it now, I could have done better.
Day 8 – 13 (Week Two)
The focus was simply getting up as many listings as I could. I looked at what other Etsy stores were selling. I investigated a few different mediums. I jumped around from clipart to junk journal printables and I continued to grow.
I uploaded approximately 10 listings during that time. I aimed for one day but some days didn’t quite hit the mark.
I also enabled Etsy Ads. Based on my years of knowledge in the industry, I knew it took time for SEO to really kick in and start working. In the meantime I wanted to be encouraged to continue with the store, so I felt the quick option was to enable Etsy Ads. I set them up for $1 USD per day.
I also added a sale to my store. 25% off, just to help things grow.
Day 14
Today was a special day. I made my first sale. A junk journal collection I was pretty proud of and is currently my most sold item in my store.
I felt excited that I was finally making some progress. That first sale is always the best.
Day 15-22 (Week Three)
I made a couple of changes over the coming week. First I increased my ad spend. Not by much but I increased to $2. I thought this would have an effect on my sales but it took another 5 days before I saw another sale. From here on I started receiving 1 sale a day.
By this time though my Canva trial period was up, so I purchased a subscription – $20 for the month. Then the hours on my Midjourney subscription ran out, there was another $33 to increase the plan to allow for unlimited relaxed hours.
And with now having about 15 listings on the site that was $3 in Etsy transactions. Not much but it for sure adds up.
I also tested out Etsyhunt – $3.99
Day 26-30 (Week Four)
Then, after the third week, the sales disappeared. I didn’t receive any sales in week four. The traffic was there but the purchases were not. The only changes I made were increasing the amount of listings, and increasing the budget on the ad spend to $5 for a couple of days. Maybe in hindsight this wasn’t the best idea. I have recently bumped down ad spend back to $1 a day and placed more of a focus on SEO for my listings.
So I pulled my focus elsewhere. I thought, if I was spending money on driving traffic to Etsy. I would be better spending it driving traffic to my own website. So I setup nerisdigitalcove.com
- Domain name purchase (1 year) – $16.17
- Website Hosting (1 year) – $107.88
As I web developer I already had a hosting account setup for other side projects, but it was coming up to renewal date, so I thought it best to list the price here.
And I then started setting up social media accounts. I setup an Instagram account and a Pinterest account. I was curious to trial Pinterest ads for a week but ended up switching them off. Mainly so I could really focus on setting up other areas before I delve back into social media marketing.
- Pinterest ads – $8
- Additional Etsy Listings – $2
Month 1 – Recap
Number of visits
Number of orders
Revenue / Expenses
- Midjourney Subscriptions = $44
- Canva Subscription = $20
- Etsy Fees = $27
- Etsy Ads = $63.62
- Website hosting & domain = $124.05
- Pinterest Ads = $8
Overall expenses for the month = $287.67
Total Sales Revenue = $48.68 (one of my orders was cancelled, hence the lower number here than indicated in the screenshot above)
Net profit = -$238.99
I’m currently out of pocket over $200 for the first month. If you took away the new website, it would be half, but there was a still a loss. Either way, I’ll keep trying for month 2 and hope for a better outcome.