How My Husband and I Made $1M on Etsy | Behind the Scenes of a $1M Etsy Shop | Etsy for Beginners

About this video

Dylan and her husband Wes recount building their Etsy shop together since summer 2016. It began with a wedding item Dylan saw on Pinterest: they prototyped it from dollar-store foam and toothpicks, listed it with one photo, and got a first sale before their honeymoon, then rebuilt it in wood with a $30 jigsaw. Cutting costs fell, by their account, from about $12-15 to about $5 per item, but jigsawing outdoors was not scalable, so they bought a $14,000 laser (chosen over a CNC for noise in an HOA neighborhood) and spent about a week learning to assemble it and design cut files. Dylan reports revenue of about $134,000 in year one, $143,000 in year two, and $245,000 in year three; she claims the shop has done over $1.4 million in revenue and over $1 million in profit over about seven years, and currently around $30,000-50,000 per month (creator claims). Wes, an active-duty Navy submarine officer often away for months, prepared for deployments by pre-cutting inventory, pre-making shipping boxes (over $50,000 of inventory before one deployment), and filming how-to videos so Dylan could run the laser solo; they never put the shop on vacation mode. During the 2020 deployment and pandemic, with their only packaging employee gone, Dylan ran the shop alone at night and revenue rose to $360,000 that year, per their account. Their advice for couples: get aligned on shared goals and on the sacrifices (nights, weekends, TV) a multi-six-figure shop requires, anticipate each other’s needs without being asked, and treat household work as part of contributing to the business.

Key takeaways

• The shop started in 2016 from a single wedding-item listing prototyped in foam, then rebuilt in wood with a $30 jigsaw
• Scaling required a $14,000 laser to replace unscalable hand-cutting and cut per-item costs, per their account
• Deployment-proofing meant pre-cut inventory and boxes plus filmed instructions so one partner could run the shop solo
• Dylan reports $134k, $143k, then $245k in the first three years and $360k in 2020 (creator claims)
• Couples should align on shared goals and sacrifices, and treat household support as a real business contribution

Episode details: published February 13, 2023 · 17:28 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dylan Jahraus’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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