Kate Hayes

Kate Hayes tells her origin the same way on her official About page and across her catalog: stuck in a job, wanting to be home with her young children, she started an Etsy shop feeling, in her words, totally unequipped — then built it piece by piece to what she describes as the top 1% of all shops on Etsy. Her best-known figure, making $70K in 30 days a few years into the journey, is her own claim, stated on her About page; it is presented here as her claim, not as independently verified fact. Her About page also states an audience of 260K+ across email and social and 3,000+ students helped.

The teaching splits into two halves that feed each other. The first is Etsy craft: her signature 5 Pillar Etsy Success Formula, taught in a free masterclass, and the full Etsy Income Academy course — product selection, listing construction, Etsy SEO and ranking, traffic, and converting views into sales, including the fees and algorithm changes sellers actually face. The second half is product creation in Canva: printables, templates, planners, and wall art, designed step by step on camera, including the graphic-design principles she argues separate professional-looking products from amateur ones.

Her recent catalog adds AI to both halves — Canva’s own AI tools feature by feature as they release, and Claude paired with Canva to create ebooks, content, and digital products quickly. The constant underneath is the beginner frame: every system is taught as a step-by-step tutorial a first-time seller can follow in one sitting, and the mistakes episodes — the errors she says cost her money selling digital products — are as much a part of the curriculum as the launches.