Etsy Printables: $10,000 a Month Selling Digital Products on Etsy (Greatest Hits)

23:54So there are ways you can do it. And I think Etsy now even allows you to create your own, like it looks like your own store, but it's still run through Etsy. But then you're not seeing all the other competitors because rather than like Etsy.com slash your store, they're just going to yourstore.com and then they just see your products. And so if you can send your marketing to your own page and it just happens to be run on the Etsy platform, then you don't have to worry about the competition because they're not seeing it. Okay. Gotcha. Have you ventured off to create the store tab on moneyhackingmama.com.

24:32Do you see yourself going down that path? Yeah, that's on my list of things to do. So I think I'll always keep the Etsy platform because just organically with keywords, they're bringing traffic to my store, which is nice. But then there are competition and I do want to test out, not Etsy ads, but Facebook ads and see how that works. But I would hate to send them to Etsy and then where all my competitors are, as opposed to if I'm paying directly for the ad, then I'd want them to send them to my own storefront and, you know, at least get, offer them a freebie and get their email address so that I can retarget them later.

25:08Right. Yeah, exactly. That would be awful. Like, oh, I'm going to pay for this traffic and then, oh, you know what? Your stuff looks nice, but I'm going to go buy the competitor's thing because it's a dollar cheaper too. Frustrating. Tell me about the listing optimization process. So after you've gone through the keyword research, you created this thing in Canva or wherever, put it up there, you're really excited about it. What kind of best practices are you seeing for giving this listing the best chance for visibility and success? So definitely looking at the just making sure that it looks pretty.

25:42I think some people and I did this when I first started. You spend so much time making the product. So let's call it a budget planner. You spend hours making that and making it perfect. And then you just want to list it. And so you go really quick, you do the keyword research quickly, you come up with a name quickly, and then you just throw up some random images that kind of describe what it is, just to get it up there. But I think you kind of need to flip it is what I've learned and really like maybe take a day off, take some time off, and then really invest the time to make really beautiful listing images because that's really what needs to shine.

26:15And yes, you want the thing that they're buying to be really good. But really, the thing that's going to sell them is the pictures of that thing that they're going to buy. And they need to feel like, oh, that is exactly what I need. And it looks so beautiful. And I want that thing. So create that emotion, which can be hard in 10 images, especially for a digital type product. But it's really good to try. Now, the cool thing, too, is they let you do videos. And so it definitely takes more time. And it can be more of a headache if you don't know how to do it. But I would highly recommend that you invest the time to figure out how to do a video that, you know, can show somebody, for example, like you can record it on your phone, shows if it's a planner, is it printed out and somebody filling it in and using it physically?

27:00Or like, even if it's a PDF, and there's multiple pages, like scrolling through the multiple pages, because I think you have 15 seconds of the video. But you can even do a preview of like a Canva template, for example, there's a link, and then you have to like click a few buttons to get to it. So you have 15 seconds, you can show somebody like how are they going to open this file? What does it look like when they actually receive it? And almost do a little demo so that once they've purchased the product, they know how that they're going to end up using it. Do you strike a balance between showing what the product is and what's inside it versus trying to keep some of it a secret?

27:37On some of these, I'm on a weekly chore chart for kids. And it's a simple one-page type of thing, instant download. It looks like I could create this in just a couple of minutes in Excel or something. And they're giving it away. I mean, they're not giving it away, but they're showing you exactly what it is and selling it for$3.97. So I don't know. Is there a best practice that you see? The store has over 5 ,000 sales and it's got the bestseller tags. People are buying it, but I would be wary of showing too much up front. Is that a thing? That's a thing. And it's a great question, but I think it's always better to just be honest.

28:21And you'd be surprised. I think it's easy to think like, oh, a competitor can come in and copy me. And yes, they can. I mean, for$4 though, the competitor could buy it, right? They could buy it. And I mean, you would hope somebody wouldn't do this, but they could purchase it, tweak it slightly and then sell the same thing. Now that's illegal and they're not supposed to do it. But if they tweaked it enough, how's anyone going to say, like you just said, you can look at it and recreate it. And if somebody did create it from scratch, then it's not illegal anymore. So I would say just more is better because people are looking for these types of things and they want to know what they're buying.

28:57And so if you try to hold back, you're probably going to not get as many sales, quite frankly. And I mean, you only have 10 images. So if it's a huge product that has a lot of things, sometimes you can't show everything off, but I would, I would say give more away. Um, and yes, competitors can come in, but I think that's where you have to shine in other areas and it can be scary, but I found that, you know, you're looking at it from your point of view. We're like, well, I could make this in five minutes, but not everybody has your tech abilities. I made some, like I was talking about before, when I first started some digital art for a wedding.

29:32And I think a woman paid me a hundred dollars to make a bunch of them custom for her niece's wedding. And literally I went into Canva and typed in like phrases like drink and be merry. And I changed the font and I saved it. And it took me 10 seconds. And I did like 10 of those for her. And I was just like, this is so easy. Like lady, why aren't you just using Canva? But she was probably just not tech savvy, didn't know what Canva was or couldn't be bothered. Like some people, you know, if you're making, if you're a lawyer or somebody that makes a high income, like, yes, you could do it, but do you have the time and the energy to do it?

30:05Like you might just be willing to pay somebody five or 10 bucks to do it for you. Yeah. There's a bunch of cool ideas on here. I'm now I'm on the 75 hard challenge. Have you heard about this? This is like a workout program. Okay. I've seen people like posting their, because that's part of the challenge is posting like progress photos for doing this. It's like where you like, you know, are super strict on your diet and you do these like really intense workouts, I think two times a day. So, but this, this shop is selling the 75 hard challenge tracker printable and it's got, you know, a place to do your before and after measurements.

30:39It's got, you know, this daily kind of checkbox thing. It's like very well designed. It's just a couple bucks, but it seems like they have been selling a lot of these. So lots of different ideas to go down there. So that's kind of the image optimization side of things, like, you know, making it visually appealing. Anything on the titles, descriptions, like keyword. I mean, I see that on the 75 hard example. It's like borderline keyword stuffing, but it's like 75 hard challenge tracker printable habit tracker bundle, hashtag 75 hard, hashtag 75 hard challenge, Andy Frisella challenge, weekly meal planner, health.

31:23Like they're trying to jam a lot of keywords into the title, but is that, that's just what you do? That's what you got to do to get noticed here. They don't share what their algorithm is, but they do want highly relevant keywords. So describe exactly what that thing is. And from what I've read and heard, it's the first few words they're going to give the most weight to, which makes sense. So those first three, three or four or five words, that's really what you need to use to describe the item. And then the other stuff, I'm sure they kind of use it, but probably not. they don't give it as much weight as those first few words.

31:53I did read somewhere that don't repeat the words. So if you use challenge once, you don't need to use it multiple times. It's not going to help you any, and it is just going to take some of those characters away. Description, I don't know that I've heard that Etsy doesn't really use the description that much, but Google does. So, and Etsy items do show up in Google search, especially if you do shopping. So you definitely want to do your description. The thing with Etsy for your description is you really want describe what that is because people are going to, they'll see the picture. They'll see what it says.

32:23It is the look at the pictures and then they still might have questions. And so if you answer some of those questions and anticipate those in the description, that's really helpful. And then Google, if they're describing the product, that's helpful as well. But I do think the biggest thing is the keywords and the tags and you get 13 of those. And so I would use every single one. Again, don't repeat keywords. Like they don't care about plural or not plural. So like, don't put form and forms because at CC's those ads the same and you want to keep as many keywords as you can and use unique ones. And then again, just long tail keywords, use those as much as you can.

33:02Again, if you put wall art in there, yes, you might be selling wall art, but there's so much competition and there's people like people are going to look at that. And the odds of you selling something through that keyword are so low that it's kind of a wasted keyword. I would get much more specific, as specific as possible to really find your ideal customer who wants the thing that you're selling. Yeah. Wall art for baby shower, second child or something like, I don't know. Very, very detailed. Okay. That's helpful, especially on the don't bother repeating keywords. You're just wasting space, come up with something else, a different variation that somebody might be looking for.

33:39What else works for you on the marketing strategy? So there's this element of Etsy organic discovery, which is, I imagine, like winning the lottery, like selling a digital product that somebody found you for free and now it was completely hands-off to deliver it. It's like, ah, living the passive income dream. But I imagine it takes a little bit of effort to get there. And I'm curious, what other marketing strategies are working well these days? So I really like Etsy ads. They make it pretty simple. And so I have a freebie on my website that goes into depth, but I can highlight some of the best practices here.

34:14You have to make sure that it's optimized for keywords because you don't want to start, you know, turn ads on, but you have all these really vague keywords because you'll get, you know, shown at the top of wall art. But when you're selling, you know, the second child, baby wall art, and somebody just is looking for wall art for their new mansion, right? Like it's, it's not going to be helpful for you. And they might click on your thing just because they're curious and you just wasted your 25 cents or 15 cents or something like that. Okay. So they charge you per click. It's on the listing level as where you turn the ad on.

34:49You can turn it on the listing level or within Etsy, there's another section that just like under marketing under ads and you can manage it both way versus like at the whole shop level. I mean, right. So you, you can't just, you don't just turn your whole shop on. Correct. You could like that. There's a way to do that, But it's pretty much every single listing you go and turn it on or off. Okay. And so making sure that that listing is really targeted to and descriptive to what it is. So you don't end up on these irrelevant search terms. Or maybe like in AdWords, it used to be called broad match, where you could rack up your budget in a hurry on some of these broad match terms if you were careful.

35:29My understanding was you couldn't, like it was all automated. Like you couldn't target specific keywords or something. It was all like, just hands off. Well, don't just, just trust us. Trust us with your budget. We'll, we'll get you to the relevant audience. And it's the same way with Etsy, but you get to manage the keywords first. And so that's why you need to be very careful with your keywords. And I think like going back to some of my other advice of the price point. So I would never advertise a listing that I am only charging a dollar for. I think$5 or more again is that sweet spot because you know, you're paying for ads.

36:02So that is going to eat away at some of your profit. It is very contingent on you as an individual, you as a shop, your click-through rate, your order rate, because you can spend a bunch of money and you can have a$30 item. And if nobody ever buys it, you know, even if you're like, okay, that one person that buys it, it's okay if I spend$20 on ads and that one person that buy, I'll have a little bit of profit. But what if you spent 35 on ads? Well, it's not profitable anymore. So you just have to be careful with that. Is there a target return on ad spend that you like to see? I mean, anything that's profitable, but for, I think market, like I did research on just like what do marketing people want on their, just, you know, what does Apple computers want on their marketing spend?

36:45It's usually just industry average is four to five X what you spend. So if you put$20 in, you want to get a hundred dollars of revenue in. Okay. Well, that's, that's probably higher than maybe I expected, but I guess there's, I mean, I mean, in their case, they're selling a physical product with admittedly good margins, but not as good as a digital immediate download type of product. Yeah. And that being said, so that's the kind of industry average. So I shoot for that, but I've had some go to three, three X and I'm okay with that because I'll debate, should I turn this off? Should I not? And then I'm like, well, if I could give somebody a dollar and they'd give me three, I'll still do that all day long.

37:21So as long as I see it's profitable, I'll leave it on. Yeah. I mean, if you can get that money machine flowing, I can see why you're interested in Facebook ads and other marketing channels too at this point, because that's where things really start to scale and get interesting. Exactly. You mentioned Pinterest, you've got the blog, you've got potentially this Facebook thing going down the road. Anything else on the marketing front outside of these Etsy ads? I've seen people do Instagram and even build following. So there's a woman that I follow and she does digital planners. And so depending on the product that you're using, if it's something that you can show off you using it and like get people excited, my products don't really do that.

38:00And because I'm working full time, I haven't had the time to do that, but maybe when I have more time, I might dabble in that because it's interesting. And then like TikTok, right? I think one, it might be like digital planners is the name of her shop or something like that, but she does, she has a TikTok and an Instagram and has quite a few much followers. And I think just digital planners is a whole and planner, physical planners, there's a whole community around that. And people like their little stickers and it's like, there's YouTube channels of like, plan with me and do this, we'll do this together.

38:32So I think if there's a community and you can tap into that community and get people excited about your product that way, like more power to you. It just, again, it goes back to time. Right. Yeah. Where is your time best spent? And for you, it sounds like it's, either building new products or turning on ads to the ones that are already proven sellers. Exactly. What kind of time are you investing into the Etsy shop these days with all the other commitments that you've got going on? Yeah, it varies. I asked my husband that last night. I was like, how much time do you think I'm putting into this?

39:06I think some days it's like literally no time, maybe 15 minutes of, you know, I'll get a couple of questions from a customer. They'll say they had trouble downloading it. So I need to send them an email and I'll pop on my computer and send it to them. But other days I'll like, I've been blessed because I have two small children with maternity leave. And so I've used a lot of that to build my products. And I do like building your shop, creating products. It can be time consuming. The payoff is it's time consuming once and then it pays for itself forever. Right. So you just have to like get that little bit of time away.

39:39And so I've have good vacation and paid time off and things like that. So I would take days off and spend just a couple hours or eight hours and just try to get as many products done as possible. But I think to answer your question, I am planning on quitting my job soon. And I think full time for me will probably be 20 to 30 hours a week, but that will be like hardcore into product creation. And again, like learning more about Facebook ads and like going deep down that path to really grow my shop and see if I can, I mean, my goal, I'll put it out there is I want to make a thousand dollars a day, which I know is like, that seems kind of crazy when I say it, but I think it's possible.

40:14And so that if I'm putting full-time time into it, I think I can make that happen. But I think what I've been doing with all my other stuff is maybe 10 hours a week, like an hour to a day. And a lot of it is in 15 minute increments, waiting in line to pick up the kids or like at line in the grocery store or something like that. Yeah. I'm with you. It's like, it could be very fleeting, trying to get an actual block of time to concentrate and get something done. It's like, okay, if I've got these little pebbles and sand type of tasks that I can do with these little 15 minute cracks, then that's okay.

40:48But it's hard to chip away at some of these bigger projects. I was gonna ask, do you have a sense of the size of the portfolio in terms of the number of listings or number of products that you have now? Since it sounds like growing that is a priority. Yeah, right now I have, I think 114 last time I checked, but I really want to get that up. And it hasn't been growing a lot. I actually hired a graphic designer to help me with some product development. And so that's been helpful. But now the funny thing is I can give him the products that I want to make, but I still am the one that researches them and lists them.

41:22And even just that takes time. And so I have a ton of products that I need to list that I just haven't had time to put up yet. Yeah, it sounds like a very cool empire in the making. I'm excited for you. what a cool creative outlet. Like if you're into this sort of thing and maybe you already have created these like for your own family, your own households, like, well, could I create a prettier version of this and throw this up on the shop? I don't know. It's a very interesting one, very exciting side hustle. Rachel, really appreciate you taking the time to share with that. So that sounds like kind of what's on the horizon for you, maybe taking this thing full time.

42:01Anything else you're excited about for the rest of 2021? Yeah, vacation, the world opening up. Yeah, we're going to Seattle in a couple of weeks. So I'm excited for that and being able to travel and have my side hustle making money for me while I'm traveling. Living the dream. Well, very good. You can find her at moneyhackingmama.com, M-A-M-A.com. Grab your free guide to Etsy ads over there. Again, moneyhackingmama.com. Rachel, thanks so much for joining me. And let's wrap this thing up with a number one tip for side hustle nation. This doesn't have to be Etsy related, just whatever entrepreneurial wisdom that you'd like to impart.

42:42Sure. And this took me forever to learn, but I think I finally learned it with Etsy and I think it applies to all businesses, but go where the demand is, go where the money is. The demand is, you can try to match it. And I think it's definitely good if you match it with your passion and your knowledge and what you're interested in. but I think I spent so much of my life just being like, I like this thing. So I'm going to try to make money at it and never looking at whether or not there was a market for that or demand. And so once I finally flipped it and said like, what's their demand for? And what do I also have somewhat of an interest and skills in?

43:16That's where the magic really started happening for me. So please don't learn the hard way like I did. Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing that. Go where the demand is. Very true. Rachel, thanks so much for joining me and we'll catch up soon. Thanks so much.

43:33Go where the demand is. Go where the cash is already flowing. Definitely a common theme here on the Side Hustle Show. In fact, I wrote a whole book on the topic called Buy Buttons, which you can find at buybuttonsbook.com. But this is definitely a side hustle that appeals to me. Creating helpful products that you can sell over and over again in at least a semi-automated fashion. And I know it's a bit of a volume game, especially given the low price points. but Etsy's growing like crazy and there seems to be a big upside potential here. I mean, Rachel started about two years ago, very part-time and has turned it into this full-time income stream.

44:09One thing we didn't mention was the course that helped her get started. And that's the ePrintables Side Hustle course by Julie Berninger and Cody Berman. I do have an affiliate link for the course if you're interested, but actually what you should do is instead go to Rachel's site, read her review of the course and join through her link instead. I'll link up that post of hers in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at SideHustleNation.com slash Rachel J, or through the link in the episode description of your podcast player app. There you'll also find the full text summary of this episode, along with links to all the other resources mentioned.

44:43Give me a couple minutes to get the time machine fired up, and we'll be right back with Rachel to see how her business is doing five years later. The thing that wears me out as a business owner is rarely the work itself. It's the decision fatigue that surrounds the work. How to reply to this message. Is this person going to make a good guest? What's the right tool for the job? If you want to sell products online, let me take some of the decision fatigue off your plate. There's a reason why millions of businesses, including dozens of side hustle show guests, all choose our partner Shopify. This is the one decision that makes all future decisions easier, right?

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47:09all right we're fresh out of the time machine back with rachel here in 2026 catch us up it's been almost five years since the original etsy printables episode at that time i believe you around 200 products uploaded making a great income and still doing it all as a side project so 20 21 the summer is when i quit my job and then i have over 400 products now and i've probably built more than those, but some of them I've turned off because they weren't selling or they're just not working anymore. Because the Etsy charges you still the 20 cent listing fee. And if it's just not getting any views, not getting any interest, it's like, well, and they renew it.

47:45And I think every three months or something, I see the pings on my own store and it's like, okay, that didn't sell, but it's another 20 cents gone down the drain. Is that why you would just remove the listings? Yeah, exactly. And sometimes like if something is a Christmas printable. Sometimes I take that down and just put it back up in like late fall or something like that. And then there's like the COVID form. I mentioned that when you're listening to the old episode, but that doesn't, nobody really needs that anymore. Nobody needs that anymore. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What do you see as some of the shifts in Etsy over that time?

48:18Obviously, I believe it's probably gotten more competitive, more sellers, but also the marketplace as a whole, the number of buyers has also grown in that time. It has changed a lot. It's interesting. I'll go on like the Etsy forums on Reddit or Facebook and there's people that are complaining that are like, Etsy is dead. This doesn't work anymore. And I do not think that's the case. I think those people haven't changed or pivoted. I think you do have to evolve with your ideas and, you know, sometimes more competitors come into a certain space. And so you need to either make your products better or you have to pivot and go find a different space.

48:52That being said, I think there's always new trends. I noticed the other day, somebody like six, seven, all the teenagers, not even teenagers, like my kids are talking about that. There were six, seven Valentines that were going viral on Etsy and becoming bestsellers. And so Valentine's Day cards around Valentine's Day are always popular. That's a digital product people can sell. But then every year, you can have cat or dog ones and they'll probably sell. But if you think of the trends that happen. There's always things, you know, new movies, new things in entertainment that are coming out, new memes.

49:24And so you can jump on those trends. And there's, yes, the old things become old and people might not want those anymore, but there's always new opportunities. Culture is constantly evolving. Are you actively adding new products to the store in a concerted way? I've been bad about it lately. I think we'll get to kind of where I am now, but I monitor things and I have ideas. I honestly have a backlog of a ton of products that I honestly, I have them created and I just haven't created listing images, but I'm busy doing other things. We're kind of at a coast fire point right now. And so my kids are busy in sports and things like that.

50:02And so I have a backlog. I try to get time to do it, but in some ways I'm just not as motivated because we've gotten to a certain point where, you know, we don't need it before I, And that was going to replace my full-time income. And I had to do it. And now it replaced my full-time income. We're at a coast fire point. And it's kind of like, yeah, if I get to it, I'll get to it. And if not, what it's making right now, that's fine with me too. Yeah, I think this is really important because at the time of the original courting, I think the store was about two years old. And it was kind of front-loading this effort, which is true for so many side hustles.

50:36Like where, look, I'm not getting, nobody's paying me to create these products. I'm throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall. Some of it's going to stick, some of it's not. But over time, like it really can compound and it starts to generate cash flow on a monthly basis to the point where you quit your job, to the point where you kind of achieve this financial independence number. And you kind of take the foot off the gas a little bit and start to enjoy life a little bit. Absolutely. And one thing, so I was working for myself at home and I thought that was the dream and I loved it. And my husband was working at home.

51:08He had a fully remote job for a while and I would call myself an amnivert. So I like being alone, but I also like people. So I'm in between. My husband, I think, is a full extrovert. So I think he got really bored being at home and just seeing me all day. So he went back to a full time in person job that has some remote options, but is more in person. And then I was really lonely at home. And so there was like a two year period where one and a half years or so that we would work together and we're like co-workers at home. And then he left and he would come home. I remember specifically around Christmas time, the holidays, he had all these holiday work parties and I didn't have any.

51:41And I have co-workers. I was just like, I'm so sad. Like that was a really enjoyable part of working. And yes, there's a lot of meetings that I didn't like go to, but there were some things that I realized I missed. And so now I'm teaching part-time adjunct at some of the local colleges near me. And it's very low time commitment, but I really get that human interaction that I need. And I really enjoy helping other people. So it's like I've achieved a certain level of success, but I don't know if it's guilt or what, but I feel I want to give back to other people. And so I'm doing that through teaching now.

52:15Hey, that's really cool. And it gets me out of the house. Yeah, it's fun too. Going back to Etsy, what do you recommend for people to, as the marketplace maybe is a little more crowded? And when we talked to Cody last year from Gold City Ventures, he was like, look, if you are an average designer, but you know how to do keyword research, you're going to find these little... He's like, I don't care if it gets 50 searches a month. If I can get five people to buy my thing and start stacking up product after product, I build these little mini digital assets, which I thought was a really cool example.

52:47And it's kind of really powerful. Create something once, sell it over and over again. But you've done some stuff to make your listings kind of stand out, like some value add type of stuff. Absolutely. So I 100 % agree with Cody. I think that's some of the things I teach just market research in my college classes. Market research is gold, and I think it saves so much time. So you have to validate the idea using the tools like eRank and things like that. And if there's some search and no competition, there's potential, not a goldmine, but that's a huge opportunity and you should jump on it. And yeah, like he said, if you get a bunch of those.

53:17Maybe not a full mine, but maybe a nugget here or there. A nugget. And then if you have a bunch of nuggets, that can create a goldmine. So I think that's really good. That being said, if there is some competition, I think you can, you need, he said if you're not the best designer, I think the product doesn't necessarily have to be the best designed. you still need really good listing images because I think that that is the first impression. It's almost like you're dating all these customers. And so if there's a lot of competition and yours doesn't look great and everybody else's looks great, they're judging a book by a cover or a digital product by the cover.

53:48So I think you want to make that look good. You can outsource that. You can use AI. There are AI image generators. The other day I wanted a like showing my product being printed with somebody's hands. And I was like, I'm not going to do the product photography. So I went to AI and created a little prompt and just said, here's my product. Here's the image of it. Put it like a beautiful woman's hands in a beautiful office, grabbing this. And it created the listing image for me. And it was beautiful. And it gave her the right number of fingers and everything. It did. It looked amazing. It's come a long way.

54:20It has come a long way. It took a, I think there might've added some text to my image and made it look a little funny, but a few prompts later I got it right. So that was really cool to be able to see. So I think you can use AI definitely. And then you can also like I added a course and you can call something, of course, but it could literally be an e-book that you, by the way, can create with AI. So you could say, OK, here's this product that you want to buy. And then it also I think in our recording from the time machine, you were talking about a chore chart template. So you could say, like, here's a chore chart template.

54:51And then, by the way, get a free e-book or get a free course on the top 10 parenting hacks to get your kids to help around the house. Right. Because what are they buying the chore chart for? They obviously have a deeper problem of like mom life is hard and they're trying to get some tools to make it easier. Well, what if you help them with the psychology or the learning part of it to actually make that tool work better for them? So I think educational resources like that value add. And that came, I was just thinking about consumer products. Like if you go down the soap aisle and there's two things of soap and one comes with a free product and they're the same price, which one are you going to get?

55:26Or maybe one's a little bit more expensive, but it has that free product. you might lean towards that one. And so that was the mindset when I was coming up with that idea. Yeah, a high perceived value, low-ish effort to create just makes yours stand out above the competition. Absolutely. I was going to ask more about the impact of AI on your business. I suppose it makes it easier to create these little bonuses or even create products themselves. But at a certain point, does it impact sales when customers start to be like, I could just create the thing myself using AI? I've wondered that, but sales are still there for products that I have used AI to create or could easily be created.

56:10I still think AI is still so new. And one of the classes I teach is with, it's an older adult program at a community college. And I just see, like, there's people, literally, they don't know how to turn their phone on or off. And so I think, you know, people that are inside hustles or watch YouTube videos or paid attention to technology, they think like, oh, my gosh, the world is moving so fast. Everybody knows these things. Everybody doesn't know these things. Like, there's still average people that have no idea what this is. And even if they learn, like, I'm teaching these senior citizens how to use AI, but it's still a basic prompt.

56:44And I don't think they could necessarily turn it into a product. And if they get stuck, they get so frustrated that they just kind of give up and they have to have somebody help them. Whereas and this is not all people. This is just in some of my experience what I've noticed. So I think the frustration level is high. And if you can just make it easy for people and it's five bucks or ten dollars, you know, time is valuable, too. And so just like I'll just get someone else that's already done it for me. Yeah, I think that's probably an important distinction. Like, okay, yes, there is a spectrum ranging from the people who are like, why would I ever pay for any software tool again when I could just vibe code it myself all the way?

57:21Like, I just want it done for me. I'm like, I'm here for the easy button solution. So, no, that's interesting. Even as AI has become more prevalent, like, look, people are still buying this stuff. So don't let that be a discouragement. Ten years from now, we'll see. But we can do it in five to ten years. We can do another recap. Another time travel update. No, everybody just creates their own. They just think about it and a chip in their head makes it pop out, right? Yeah, maybe that's where things are going. Are there any shifts in the categories that you like as a potential new seller coming in?

57:56So like before I did business to business and I still do that and I think there's opportunities there. I don't know if I'm right on this, but my hypothesis because unemployment is so low. I think 2020, my business to business things did great. and the few years after that. But I think people were working from home, so maybe they weren't working as much on the regular job. They could kind of slide by and they had more money because of stimulus and things like that. And so I just think there was a ton of people starting businesses and now I feel like unemployment, the data shows is super low. And so I think business to business is still good, but it's not as good as it was in the past.

58:33That being said, I think there's still amazing niches in like weddings. I just a friend of mine, they do print on demand products, but they have blown up in the wedding space. And so I still that's just something that people are always going to do. I think weddings, entertainment, fun stuff and seasonal stuff is still just amazing. There is one seller that was doing at home. What is it like escape room type digital products? And I saw that and I haven't done that, but I saw that that was really popular. there's like a loneliness epidemic now. And I think people want community. And as we get with AI and how fast the world is moving, people are craving kind of the opposite of that.

59:12And so if there's games or things that can bring people together from a community perspective, there's opportunities in that space. Yeah, I remember talking with Debbie Gartner, the flooring girl, and she was talking about her Etsy business, which was up to like a thousand bucks a week. and she was selling these kind of holiday themed trivia games in a lot of cases. And she gave me this line that stuck with me. It was like, you know, in elementary school, they're like, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And her answer was, I want to be a game maker. And this idea kind of took pause for 40, 50 years.

59:49But it kind of came back to say, what did I love doing as a kid? I love making these games. And now she's making a living, making some income online doing just that. So maybe that's a prompt for inspiration. Well, what did you love doing as kids? Maybe it was baseball cards. Maybe it was video games. Maybe it was something else that can be turned into a product idea. And then plug that into the keyword research tools and look at what the existing products are to maybe serve that need. Absolutely. And I think one thing I would recommend to people is keep it simple. So many people are trying to come up with the next Facebook from a business idea perspective or like something really complex.

1:00:27And even I did that, like when I first started, I was going to create a budget template. But I was like, I'm going to make mine better and super complicated. And I think people just want simple, easy solutions. And sometimes we forget about that. Like we think, oh, there's this huge, big, scary problem that I have to figure out. And then it's like, oh, but my kid's birthday party is coming up tomorrow and I need decorations for that. it's like there's or I need an invitation for that I know I have a friend that does invitations for like digital print invitations for kids parties and there's opportunities there and I think the there's trends that are changing like I just did for my son a nerf gun party that was super fun and I bought a bunch of nerf guns on Facebook marketplace but I don't know if people did that a few years ago and so is there an opportunity to put you know an invitation together with a bunch of nerf guns or something on there okay yeah trying to find these up-and-coming trends.

1:01:17And that seems to be kind of the name of the game. It's like, yeah, I can create this once and hopefully, you know, best case scenario turns into the little passive income stream. But sooner or later, there may be diminishing returns or that may invite more competition. And so it's passive, but I got to be spending my time coming up with the next passive thing. Because it's like every, you know, every product has a life cycle. Absolutely. So you've got the adjunct gig, You've still got the store going strong. What's next? Tell me about these Coast Fire plans or what's got you excited these days?

1:01:49Oh, man. I'm going to Hawaii in like three weeks. I'm really excited for that. Nice. We bought a house in 2024, the end of 2024. And it was a fixer-upper, still is a fixer-upper slightly. So we've been working on that. So, yeah, just living the life, living the dream, teaching, consulting. I still have my blog and write about passive income and things like that on there. So trying to help my kids, my husband, keep everything mom life going and then trying to enjoy life while I'm at it and help other people as much as I can. That's the name of the game. Money Hacking Mama is where you can find Rachel.

1:02:25Hit up the show notes for this episode, SideHustleNation.com slash Rachel J for all the links to the resources mentioned there. Big thanks to Rachel for jumping on and sharing her insight once again. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. sidehustlenation.com slash deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place that is it for me thank you so much for tuning in 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