Top Etsy Seller REVEALS Secrets for $200,000/Year on Etsy

About this video

A podcast interview with Candace Schlottman (shop FreshL Studio), a graphic designer who left corporate/agency work, opened her Etsy shop in March 2021 after having a baby in December 2019 and deciding during Covid not to return to the office. She reports, as guest claims, revenue of about $21,000-$22,000 in 2021, about $112,000 in 2022, and just under $200,000 on her 2023 statement (sales over $200,000), with a best month of almost $30,000 and almost 11,000 sales after recently passing 10,000. Her model is print-on-demand personalised products — the vendor makes and ships, saving her production time, though personalisation and customer messages still take work — run solo, though she says she now needs to hire admin/customer-service help to reach her $1 million revenue goal and explore stationery/planners and retail. Strikingly, she has only 28 listings: she stresses listing quality and research over quantity, then building variations off proven listings. She recounts a $3,500 order from a large corporation buying an item for franchise awards, crediting Etsy’s exposure and buyer trust, and argues Etsy fees are like paying a marketing team versus driving traffic to your own website. Growth drivers she names: persistence through slow starts, bad reviews and unhappy customers; working on branding; and joining Dylan’s course, where peer input, coaches and a shop audit surfaced easy fixes. She says Etsy is not oversaturated — find a customer to serve rather than just a niche, and make existing products better.

Key takeaways

• Candace reports growing from ~$21-22k (2021) to ~$112k (2022) to just under $200k (2023 statement) as a solo print-on-demand seller
• Only 28 listings: quality, research and variations of proven listings beat sheer listing count
• Treat Etsy fees as paying for exposure, traffic and buyer trust you would otherwise have to generate yourself
• Persistence through slow starts, bad reviews and unhappy customers is presented as the core growth driver
• Target a customer to serve, not just a niche; branding work and a shop audit produced easy, game-changing fixes

Episode details: published April 11, 2024 · 20:58 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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