I made N100k on Etsy without shipping a physical product. Here’s how I did it.
Just like many people who love craft and beautiful things, I’ve known Etsy for a while now, but I hardly make purchases. Let’s just say, I do a lot of cyber-window shopping.
Sometime in 2018, I started making wall posters and frames for Muslim homes. Something borne out of daily devotionals I share within a Muslim network. It quickly got popular and I was making fairly good sales locally. At some point, there was a request from people overseas and the only way I thought I could break into that market was to create an Etsy store. The idea was to partner with a friend in the US who will take care of production and fulfillment whenever we got an order. I set up the shop, but no order came in. Over time, I was a bit frustrated and I abandoned the store.
Around August this year, I was watching a Youtube video on interior design where the person mentioned buying digital prints from Etsy. That line fired some neurons in my head. I thought to myself that it’s possible to sell digital versions but I didn’t know how to go about it.
So, I dropped a tweet
And then this response came
I immediately set up a meeting with Amina where she broke down the nitty-gritty of how Etsy works with me. She ran an audit on my store and pointed out a lot of areas that needed work. I proceeded to hire her as my store consultant.
The first thing we did was to re-write all the product titles and descriptions to comply with Etsy’s SEO standards.
Next, we needed to add more products to the store. Think of it like you enter a physical store and you see scanty shelves, you’ll probably be discouraged. However, this time my goal was to sell digital products. I didn’t want to worry about the trouble of production and fulfillment. (Though I now had the option of connecting the store to print partners)
I carried out market research on the best selling products in my preferred category. Simple Muslim baby name posters with prayers were popular. I also made some purchases to understand the digital download process.
I gave myself a target to design at least one new poster per week in addition to the previous ones. My hired consultant would take care of file uploads, product descriptions, and SEO. It turned out well.
On the other hand, I started marketing aggressively to my Muslim contacts abroad. I showed examples of how easy it was to buy digital downloads and print locally. The first order came from Austria.
I doubled down on marketing, revived the Instagram and Twitter pages, and continued making a lot of noise.
At the end of November when I looked at my balance, I had a total revenue of about $300 for the month, without shipping a physical product. That’s over N100,000 considering the exchange rate at that time.
The goal is to continue adding more products and also test other ways of marketing like influencers and Google Ads.
We live in an age of infinite leverage where you can create something once and sell it multiple times to anyone across the globe with the power of the internet.
If you have a Muslim friend that will dig these posters in their space, tell them to look no further. Just share DhikrPosters Store with them. I’m sure they’ll thank you for it.