637: $1000 a Week Selling Digital Products

26:27It's like, well, it can't be that expensive because it's super simple to make. Whereas, you know, a more complex trivia game, of course, is going to command a higher price point. Did you ever go and shop these to, you know, Hasbro or anybody? Like, do you want to license this, you know, this IP that I created and turn this into like something that's on the shelves at Target? Well, that's another idea, but I haven't even gone there. I am looking for simple in my life now. So since I had that blood pressure scare, simple, I do simple everything. People do escape rooms, and that's a great example of a more complex game.

27:01And I have been meaning to do that, but I generally don't do that. What I will do is take several simple games and bundle them together. So instead of selling one game, I may be selling five games or 10 games and do it that way. And then I also will sometimes take the same games and put those in bundles of other products because they can apply to anything. Got it. Got it. Yeah. And it increases the average order value and perceived value. It makes sense. Exactly. So I often think about my business in layers. So you know how in the winter you're supposed to wear layers to stay warmer? I think about the same thing about insulating my business.

27:41So it makes it harder for that money to erode. So I have been working on a lot of things the last year or so to improve my average job size. That's what I call it from the flooring business. But whatever you want to call it, you get the idea, right? Yeah, yeah. So can I trade people up to a higher price item or get people to buy two items or get people to buy three items? That is what I'm doing. Etsy just came out with a new feature about a week or so ago where you can bundle three items together as well. Oh, cool. So that's one way I do it. Another way I do it is in the listing images, you might want to get the matching item.

28:21So if I was doing something for Halloween, let's just say, then I might have, you know, 10 different Halloween games. I could take one and be like, you might also like these. Or I could take one and say, or you get a better value by buying all 10. You know, there are different ways to do it. And you try different ways. No, I think that's really smart to try and increase that order size. Because again, it's like, well, it doesn't cost you anything extra to include one extra link in the delivery email or something. So that makes a lot of sense. And I should note here, we're not mentioning the name of the store for the sake of copycats, similar to some of the other Etsy related episodes that we've done in the past.

29:00This stuff can be relatively easy to duplicate and rip off. So we want to protect Debbie's site. Go find your own niche, people, I think is the moral of the story there. But you like games, you like spreadsheets, any other product categories that people should have on their radar? I probably do about 10 or 15 different things. And that is part of the key of diversification because you want to have sales going every month of the year, year round. Like I don't want to just do well for one holiday or whatever. So I do things like handprints, like handprint art, like for little kids, like toddlers.

29:33It's really cute. I do some spreadsheets. I do Canva templates, some for businesses, some for regular people. I do photo collages. I do fillable trackers. Like where people would upload their own pictures and you turn it into a collage? They turn it into a collage. It's DIY. I don't get involved in anything. But yes, I'll create a template of blank frames. Could be a number or a letter or whatever. And then you can upload your own pictures in there. Or so you could do something for pets. I haven't really done that, but I do that. You could do that sort of thing. Oh, but you know what I saw? So, you know, in Canva Pro, they have all these like photo effects on, I forget what even the, you know, which part of the menu or this is.

30:18But like, I turn your image into, you know, a hand-drawn animation, or I will turn this into kind of like an anime looking thing, or I will cartoonify. It's like, I guarantee there are people on Fiverr selling this as a service. You upload this file and, you know, five minutes later, they have sent you the thing. It's like no work required. You'd already paid for your Canva Pro license. And now you're just selling this thing over and over again. So another business idea for you. Yeah, no, that's great. And that's the point is like, I started very, very simple. I started with printables, you know, one or two pages and my design skills were not that good and my head would explode if I was trying to learn too much.

30:57So I didn't. So I just did easy stuff. And then after three or four months, I then do something else. And then a month later, I learned something else. And by taking these little baby steps, I just keep improving my skills and broadening the breadth of what I do. But you have to take baby steps. Yeah, absolutely. And do you have to do anything with Etsy ads or are you primarily relying on just organic Etsy search? Right. Pretty much organic search. So I did not use any Etsy ads until after 18 months, maybe 19th or 20th month, but only on like a couple of items and only a little bit. So you can do this organically.

31:39So let me just tell you what I ended up getting. So it does take some time, but I hit$750 in month six. And then about my one year mark, slightly later, maybe like 12 and a half months or something, I was at$1 ,000 a month. And then I think around 18 months, I was at$2 ,000. And then a month or two later, it was 3 ,000 and now I'm over 4 ,000 per month. So it's kind of like I'm picturing that chart that's kind of starting to accelerate a little bit. You can see that path forward. Yes, exactly. And this is not the only thing I do or not the only way I make money. So, you know, if I was spending even more time on it, I could probably do much better, but it's just, it's fun.

32:25It's cathartic. Like I said, I had to get over the whole blood pressure thing. and I was like, I want to do stuff I enjoy. It turned out I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It taps into my creative side, even though I'm not very creative. My design skills have gotten much better over time. Well, I'm excited for you. And this is the mark of a good episode for me when I hang up being like, I should totally go do that. Like, you know, it's just, I know it's the result of a lot of consistent effort and being really intentional and targeting the right keywords and everything. But, you know, when you start to see those results, you start to see that flywheel spinning.

33:01Oh, you know, it gets exciting there. So I want to point out Debbie's got you a free start your Etsy shop challenge that we'll link up in the show notes for this episode. It'll be side hustle nation.com slash Debbie two since this is her second appearance Debbie two. Again, that's your free start your Etsy shop challenge, which will link up for you and encourage you to go check that out. We'll be right back with rounds two and three with Debbie right after this. Are you still overpaying for wireless? It's time to say yes to saying no. At our partner Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS.

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35:28Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. All right, we're back with Debbie from thefloreinggirl.com. Round two is donate a business idea. This is something that you might start yourself if you had more time. This is something that ought to exist in the world. This is something you think listeners could start if they were so inclined. What I would do, and I've been meaning to do forever, and you will laugh at this because it's very original, I would love to do a podcast, okay? So I really got started making money online while listening to you and Pat Flynn and some others.

36:07It gave me the motivation when I was at my low point. So I always had wanted to do something like that. What would your show be about? It would probably be about making money online or entrepreneurship or something like that. I actually, this is so sad. I actually started one. So I recorded, I think, four episodes and I had a plan to do it. But then life got haywire. So I was having a conversation the other day with one of my good friends who I had coached and taught SEO many, many years ago, and she's doing really, really great. But she just asked us on this phone call, this momentum group we have, do you guys think it still makes sense to blog?

36:47Can you still make good money blogging? And all of us paused and we all said, yes, but... Yes, but... Yeah, but it depends. And so my answer was, clearly you can make money online blogging because I have made a lot of it, right? I know plenty of other people that have, and I know it's more challenging. But if I think about where things are now versus where they were in 2016, which is when I kind of had this whole, you know, have to start over sort of thing, there have been so many more things that have become so much more popular, or have become very popular. You know, whether it's podcasting or YouTube would be something I would recommend to other people, but not for me, because I hate being, I'm sorry, I made an exception for you, but I almost never go on video because I just, I hate it.

37:45I hate seeing myself on the left-hand side. I'm trying to look at you and not at me, but it's too distracting. See, the secret is I'm off in my notes. I'm off in another tab. I don't see the video until and even then I don't really watch it by video person. She puts it all up on YouTube. So I'm sure there's times I forget I'm like picking my nose or something. I don't know. No, I totally know what you mean. But I started doing some live meetings where I could be behind my slides. And that worked really well because I wasn't distracted. I wasn't looking at myself and wondering about my hair or anything like that.

38:22So I think that those are great opportunities for people. If you feel comfortable doing it, do it. But then I said, it depends on what you like doing. Like now I'm getting really jazzed up by Etsy because it's visual and creative in a different way than I've done for the last, I don't know, eight or 10 or 15 years. It's just, that's what interests me right now. So I think it depends what medium do you feel comfortable in? Is it writing? Is it doing creative products or digital products? Or is it doing YouTube? Or is it doing podcasting? Like whatever energizes you is what you should do. I mean, you hear all those people like, you know, what brings you joy?

39:07Like all that sort of stuff. But I think it's true. You know, it's because you're going to keep doing it. You can't just choose something because it's going to make you money. You have to choose something because you like it and it happens to make you money. That's how I see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, you heard it here first. The upcoming Debbie Gartner show is coming to a podcast player near you. We're looking forward to checking that out. And I think it's probably similar to these Etsy products. It's trying to find that niche that resonates with the right target audience, the right listeners.

39:44Obviously, it's more crowded today than it was in 2013 when the Side Hustle Show started. But there were already lots of entrepreneurship podcasts at that time. And I think why the show worked and worked is very relative in terms of the download chart in the first few years. But it was niched down into that Side Hustle-specific type of space. I don't know, for some reason, that resonated. Obviously, there's some survivorship bias to that, but it's a very difficult platform to try and grow from scratch. But the people who tune in, they're with you for the long haul. They're often like completionists, I kind of call it.

40:22Like if you start an episode, you're likely to listen to the end, whereas you look at the drop-off on YouTube videos, like how many people? I lose half the people in 30 seconds. And like, that's considered good. You're like, dang, the attention span is crazy. But the relationships that you can build and try to climb what I call the listener pyramid from strangers at the bottom to listeners to subscribers to fans. And with every piece of content that you create, try and elevate people on that pyramid. Unfortunately, the biggest section, the base of the pyramid is strangers, people who don't know you exist.

40:55So there's a lot to play on that discovery side. YouTube is a part of that. but you have a little bit of an existing audience through the email list who I'm sure would love to tune into you and just hear, well, what am I working on? I enjoy checking out your emails and say, well, what's the latest? And what's working? What's not working? What kind of challenges are going on? Right. One of the fundamental things I learned in marketing a long, long time ago is build unbreakable bonds with your audience. So the question is, how will you do that? As an example, on Etsy, which I'm now doing and I just told you I enjoy, a lot of people will come in and buy a product and then you never hear from them again, right?

41:39But when you have an email list, which really honestly needs to be phase two, then you can keep connecting with them over and over again, right? I have an email list from my blog about making money online. And I used to publish all my income reports and people became very interested in that. And I have some of the same subscribe. Actually, some of them came from your show in 2019. And they remind me, I've been with you since that podcast with Nick. Sure, sure. I didn't know who the heck you were, but I liked what you had to say. So I'm sure that happens with other people, but you have to like build that audience and keep connecting with them.

42:20So on Etsy, that is now my next step. I'm trying to create an audience from there on some of the topics that they are already interested in. And I am too, and build an email. So I started that on July 9th. Does Etsy give you the customer information? Like you're able to remark and say, hey, we came out with a new product that is semi-related to what you already bought. You Exactly. That's the key. You need to narrow it down to one topic. So if you're a shop like I am, where you may have a multitude of things for different types of people or different types of needs, you can't just do a random email list.

42:59So I started one on games because I have, I don't even know how many games I have, but I know I have more than 250. Wow. So I might have close to 300. So I'm starting a list on that. I started that almost three months ago, I think 85 days ago. And I am at, as of yesterday, I was at 275 people on there. People joining through their transactions, they get added to that database, they get added to that list? Yeah, exactly. So you can't just automatically add them to your list. That's against Etsy's terms. but you can have them opt into something and get them on that way. So I'm experimenting with that.

43:43It does seem to be driving some more sales, but it's honestly a little bit soon to really tell. But I can see there's a share and save link, and I can see the sales going through there, and it's going up and up. But I really want to wait until the end of the year to really analyze the impact on that. And then from there, I will probably at some point create a Shopify store that's my own. And I can market in both places. What's the opt-in or how do you incentivize people to get on the list after making a purchase? You give them a free something that's related to the something that they already bought.

44:23So when I looked at my data, I don't know, a month and a half ago or something, among the people that were seeing that, because I didn't put the same, like if I was doing games, I would not put that in handprints. It just makes no sense, right? Yeah, yeah. So if I looked at the games, 8.5 % were opting in. That's pretty strong. Yeah, I was pretty happy with that, considering that they're loyal to Etsy and they don't know who that guy am, right? Right, yeah. Okay. So you can't add them automatically, but you got to give them some reason to. And I feel like it used to be more common with Amazon.

45:00I don't know if they've cracked down on it or they're just like the packaging has changed, but you used to see those like product slips, you know, register your product or, you know, get a free bonus by kind. It's like, well, I know exactly how you, I know exactly what game you're playing. Are you trying to get me onto your list? So you could hopefully wean yourself off of Amazon. And you said, maybe, well, that's phase three is, you know, phase one, Etsy, phase two, email is phase three. Maybe it's your own store. You can start to drive your own demand and traffic. Exactly. That's my plan. And that was my initial plan when I joined Etsy and I was going to get them onto my home decor email list.

45:36But it didn't work. But that doesn't mean the idea doesn't work because the idea does work. It's just that idea did not work for me. Fair. All right. So we got a little bit sidetracked in a good way. So round two was the donate a business idea. That was to start a podcast. somewhat of a difficult thing to turn into a business, but can be a really powerful relationship builder. It can be maybe a content marketing channel for some underlying business because it was years to be totally truthful, like before the direct revenue from the sponsorships, in my case, turned into what would be close to a full time income from the show.

46:12But I'm still very bullish on podcasting. I think there's a lot of upside. It's really a powerful and fun place to play. Obviously, you know, it's been 600 episodes, still love doing it and have no plans to go anywhere. So that's round two. Round three is our triple threat. The first part of this is a marketing tactic that's working now. It doesn't have to be Etsy related, but what have you got for us here? Okay. I'm trying to do things that are simple and easy for me. So I try to find things that enhance and improve the productivity of what I'm doing. And so for that, I've been using a lot of AI and trying to really think about the prompts that work to help me generate the games that I create.

46:53So I use ChatGPT, I use Cloud AI, and I use Gemini as well. I'm hoping soon to get into MidJourney as well. So I don't do tools for tool's sake. I do tools that enable me to do what I'm already doing better or faster. So those are the things I'm using. Okay. So we can put those down on the tools front. And then what kind of prompts are you asking for product ideas, asking them, you know, we talked earlier about like asking them to help you come up with the trivia questions in that example. Anything else? Right. So AI is not good for telling you how important or relevant stuff is, but they're good for once you've determined that to then feed into the input of what you want to create.

47:42So I may say, you know, give me 20 questions and answers about XYZ, whatever XYZ is. I may also be more specific and be, you know, more targeted like for kids or for teachers or for senior adults, whatever the different thing is. So I do that. And then I just try to refine those more and more to get more specific. And I'll just rinse and repeat and do that. All right. I will add those as our recommended tools to check out if you're not already using those. And there's been playing around more and more myself, like with different prompts to try and prime it in the right way. And what's really interesting is, I mean, it probably knows who you are.

48:27It probably knows some interesting things about you because I can prime it like, hey, you are Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation and you need to accomplish this goal. And it's just, and it kind of starts to do it in your tone. It's really interesting. Anything on the marketing tactic, either driving traffic, driving sales, anything there that we should know about? So instead of just finding new customers, it's how do you get the customers to be more and more loyal and buy more things from you? So instead of trying to drive as many people as I can to my email list, I want to get the highest quality people on my email list, regardless of what the email list is.

49:09So on Etsy, there are some people, as an example, that say, oh, opt in here to get 20 % off your next sale. And you can do that. But those people are not loyal. They're just shoppers, right? They're not loyal customers to you. So I'm going after people that have already bought something, and then I'm trying to keep in touch with my people so they want to buy more and more. And I try to also do loyalty discounts. So if someone buys a product from me, then they may get a discount off of the next product from me. So, for example, I do a lot of challenges. And I've teamed up with my good friend Sasha.

49:54And we do a bunch of, we're now doing Etsy challenges. But I've done challenges of various sorts, whether it's SEO or blogging. It doesn't really matter. Oh, that's great. But you do like 30 things in 30 days or something like that, right? It just keeps you going and it motivates you as a group. So we will take something like that. And then the first time it may cost$49, but the second time you get a$20 discount. So it's only$29. I want to reward the people that have rewarded me. I like that. I think that's really important to remember. It's so much easier and less expensive to sell something extra to somebody who already knows, likes, and trusts you than to kind of convert a new subscriber, customer, listener, viewer totally from scratch.

50:40And that's probably an important reminder for me. It's like, oh, how do we get more page views? How do we get more? It's like, well, there's already this existing audience. How do we better serve them? I think that's an important reminder for sure. Yeah, yeah. What do they need? What do they want? What resonates well with them? how can you use their ideas to create new podcast episodes for you? And how can I use that to generate new product ideas? Yeah. I like this loyalty discount. I'm sure there's a way to filter the email. It's everybody who's stuck around for more than a year. Like, could you send them some, hey, thanks so much for being part of this community for over a year.

51:14Oh, yeah. You know, here's some special deal on something I have. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. You can do, that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is, I mean, I use ActiveCampaign. I'm not sure if you're still using that or not, but everything that people bought from me is tagged. So I know what everyone bought. So I will sometimes do emails that only go to people that bought this product or that product. That's one thing I don't like about Etsy is you can't control that. Etsy owns the customer. Amazon owns the customer. You don't. So you want to create those unbreakable bonds with your customer.

51:50That's why I ultimately want to get them off of Etsy. I will still use Etsy as my prime way to get things out there because they have such a huge audience and bigger than I will ever be able to build. But they can bring in a steady pipeline of email subscribers to me to keep building. Totally. So then I don't have to worry about things like Google algorithm changing or Pinterest algorithm changing or Instagram, like whatever it is. It doesn't really matter. They are loyal to me. And that is what I want. Totally. That's the ultimate way to kind of protect yourself against algorithm changes, whatever update that may happen.

52:34And you run into trouble there. But if you have some level of loyalty and a database of customers that you can communicate with directly, you're in a much safer place. That's right. It was interesting. My yoga studio just sent me this because I had just turned a year of being a member there. It was like, hey, happy birthday. You've been a member for a year now. Your membership is now 10 % off. And it was unexpected. It was really kind of surprising. And I don't know if they filtered that by who was actually going to classes. Because I imagine if you trigger that to somebody who hadn't been going, they might be like, oh, shoot, I should probably cancel that.

53:06But in my case, like, oh, I've been using it. I was like, oh, wow, I didn't, you know, just now I'm talking about it. You know, it was like kind of an unexpected thing. And sure enough, it hit the statement. It was 10 % off. So in those loyalty discounts, I think that's a really interesting one. Let's wrap it up here. Your favorite book from the last 12 months. Okay, so I don't read books anymore, but I'll choose one that I would like to read. And I think will help a lot of people, which is I heard, you know, Mo Rocca? Yeah, I know that name. He's like a TV celebrity or something. I don't really know.

53:35But he has, I heard him talking on the radio about, what is it, roctogenarians. So it's basically people that got started or got restarted or pivoted in their life when they were older. Older in his mind was like 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. They might have started new businesses. they might have started new hobbies that had an impact. And I think it's so inspiring. And I meet so many people that need to restart their life. I myself did. I had to do it once in my 30s and once in my 40s. And it's hard. The older you get, the harder it is you get set in your ways. But I love the idea that you can really start anything at any time as long as you have the passion and the drive to do it.

54:27All right. Rockto-Generians, late in life, debuts, comebacks, and triumphs. We'll link that up in the show notes. I mean, you probably see the thing like, oh, Ray Kroc started when he was however old. Colonel Sanders started when he was however old. These people who get in our mind like, well, you got to be in your 20s to start anything meaningful. It's like, well, you're never too late to do this stuff. Yes, there it is. Not only that, I think that when you do it when you're a little bit older, you have your own experiences that can actually make you more successful. So a lot of people that I know that have been successful, even online, have been older.

55:03They have been in their 40s, 50s, 60s, that sort of thing, because they have experience that they bring from somewhere else. It all translates there. Very, very good. Well, Debbie, it's been awesome. We should do it more frequently than every five years. It's been awesome to have you back. Theflooringgirl.com is where you can find her. Check out the Start Your Etsy Shop Challenge, which we'll link up in the show notes, sidehustlenation.com slash Debbie2, or just follow the link in the episode description. It'll get you over there. If you like this printables model, we've got another episode on the printables business that is$449 in your archives.

55:38And if you want more Debbie in your life, you can check out our original episode from 2019. That's number 362. You're going to scroll down a little bit to find that one. We're talking SEO. We're talking Pinterest. We're talking affiliate income. All for the Flooring Girl site in that one. And if you haven't got yours yet, I want to invite you to grab your own personalized side hustle show playlist at hustle.show. All you got to do is answer a few short multiple choice questions. You can do it on your phone. It's going to ask you about your side hustle interests and goals. And then it's going to recommend eight to 10 episodes to add to your device and what to listen to next.

56:09So hustle.show for that. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend, to fire off that text message. Hey, let's crank up that Etsy shop. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.