Something that has been on my to do list for a while is to open an Etsy shop selling digital products. Number one on the product list is a pregnancy planner. I’ve wanted to design one since I first started my blogging enterprise, but several things had been standing in my way, namely, me! I get stuck on a step, have no time, or other things take precedence. At first I wanted it to be a physical planner, but I am starting with digital downloads for people to print themselves, and then if that works out I will do a small print run and see how sales go.
I thought I would document the journey on here so if it’s something you have thought about, you can see what I go through and no doubt learn from my mistakes… First up was actually designing the products. There’s no point having a fancy shop with a logo and a nice design without having anything to sell. I am using Canva pro for my designs as I already know how to use it and hopefully get the best out of it. I have made the same pages in the planner and then provided different designs to suit women of different aesthetics. Designing is one of my favourite parts.
The next step was to actually open the Etsy shop. The process is quite straight forward, although I had problems initially as I tried to do it from my mobile which didn’t work for some reason, it kept saying there was a problem and to try again, so I did it from my laptop which worked fine. There is a seller app which is different to the normal Etsy app which I downloaded. This gives you analytics of how many people viewed the shop, your orders and messages. You can enable or disable notifications. I enabled 2 factor identification, which I advise for everything and especially for something like this which will (hopefully) involve financial transactions.
Etsy handle all the financial transactions and money side of things, the disadvantages of using their platform is they take a listing fee of £0.16p for each listing. When you make a sale, Etsy takes a transaction fee of 6.5% of the price plus the amount you charge for postage and packing, so bear that in mind when you are working out your prices.
I decided to price my planner at £6.99, which is similar to other products like mine. I will review this as time goes on. Etsy add VAT onto that. The next step is to make my shop look pretty and fill it with more products. I try and do a bit every day to build it up. I named my shop Maia Rose Designs, I always wanted to name a child Maia Rose, but neither of my daughters looked like a Maia so I never ended up using it, so this will be my baby. I have many other commitments that take up my time so I’m not putting pressure on myself to suddenly have a huge enterprise. If you have more time you will be able to build it up quicker. My list of to dos are:
- Make a nice cover image for the shop
- Create an icon/logo for the shop
- Get all the designs listed
- Create mock up pictures to show off the designs
- Get the sizing right of the listing pictures as they are not aligned correctly at the moment
- Promote the products on social media
I think that is enough for now, so far I am enjoying the process and I will update you next month on my progress. If you have an Etsy shop, let’s network! Here’s the link to my shop, let me know in the comments about yours, or get in touch on social media @lifeandthelords.
