Do What You Love vs Make What Is Profitable

In a perfect world, you can make what you love and people will come to you. And you make a comfortable wage doing so.

Unfortunately, the reality rarely works like that.

I just want to shift your mindset a bit: You may not make what you are 100% passionate about, but it’s ok because your Etsy shop will build you a passive income that will give you more freedom at the end.

I would rather have a shop that earns me a decent amount of income, AND gives me the free time to explore what I’m truly passionate about. Then making things that you love but not getting the income that you deserve.

In the other parts of this course, you will come up with niches and product that are profitable and have huge potential on Etsy. You will be able to choose the one that fits your skill and passion the best.

Before that, let’s look at what passive income actually is.

What Is Passive Income?

Passive income, for our case, is a shop that runs itself most of the time and earn you an income without you having to constantly create and ship products.

In other words, you are not trading your time for money.

Compared to a more ‘traditional’ Etsy shop, you don’t need to make, package and ship every time an order is placed (that’s why I love it!).

But, does it mean you don’t need to put in the work?

Quite the opposite. Contrary to what many other Etsy gurus make you believe, you need to put in hard work in the beginning to give your new passive income shop the best chance to succeed. And success is not guaranteed.

In the beginning, you should expect to work extra hard to set up your shop as quickly as possible to take advantage of the new shop bump from Etsy (from my experience, new shop gets a ranking bump on Etsy search). If you already have a full time job, it would be the best if you can work as much as you can on your shop after work and on the weekend.

That being said, this course will give you the roadmap to guide you through every step to maximise your chance of succeeding.

Once you successfully set up an Etsy shop selling digital products, the maintenance is pretty minimal. You can expect to only spend only half an hour a day to answer customer’s enquiries and perform some basic maintenance. Other than that, the shop will mostly run itself.

Of course, you can invest more time into the shop if you’d like to grow it even further. Or even start another shop to create even more passive income.

Why Not Dropshipping?

Drawbacks Of Dropshipping

• Hard to brand (therefore hard to differentiate your brand from other sellers using the same dropshipping service)
• You don't control the quality
• Highly competitive market
• Usually low profit margin. Not much room for discounts and sales.

That being said, companies like Printful and Printify are good options. They can supplement your digital product shop by selling printed version of your digital product. They also have integration to Etsy so it’s easy to link up your shop with the dropshipping system, but this is not the focus of this course.

Introducing Digital Products

If you have been on Etsy for a while, you probably have seen digital products/digital download products. Some examples include planners, wedding invitation, printable birthday card, wall art, logos, photo presets, etc.

Benefits Of Digital Downloads

• Make once and sell forever
• No need to physically ship the product when it’s sold
• Low cost in producing the digital product
• Easy refund if customers are unhappy
• Larger margin to give discounts

Printables are a type of digital product that customers can print out themselves at home or using a printing service. It gives customers the convenience of choosing their favourite design and printing it out at home on the same day, which saves them time and money.

Some printables are also editable. For example, a wedding invitation card which the couple can edit the text and colour of the design. This customisation means that customers can adjust the templates to their requirements on a budget. It saves them time and money as they don't need to hire a designer to create a custom design.

This course will focus on digital downloads with some sections focusing on editable templates. They are the best in terms of quick set up and earning money PASSIVELY.

Isn’t Etsy Saturated For Digital Templates?

It’s true that many products and niches on Etsy are highly saturated, but luckily Etsy has 96.3 million active buyers (in 2021). There are always opportunities to niche down and find particular products with good demand and low competition (which we will learn how to).

How Much Can You Earn Realistically?

You can expect to earn about $10-100 a week at the start. Usually a shop that is set up correctly (good quality products in the right niche) can make one sale per day pretty early. 

A shop with stable sales can earn about $1,000 or more. The money you can earn depends on your niche, price point, how well your products rank, etc.

My shop - Growing Your Craft - made about 5,000 sales in a year. The average price of product is about $5, which means on average I get almost $2,000 extra every single month. Pretty good for a passive income side hustle!

The best thing is, the income is pretty passive other than answering customer questions and creating new products from time to time.