Creating and Selling Logos on Etsy

1. 01intro: Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm a designer based in Toronto. I had been doing graphic design for about 15 years. I also have my own Etsy shop that mostly focuses on packaging for small businesses. And because of that, creating logos within Etsy platform makes lot of sense. I have a lot of customers who want to create a stamp for their product, but they may not have a logo or they have pieces of a logo and need my help to make it something more polished and defined. I've sold logos on empty before at 1, I sold them as premade, but I've recently reintroduce them to my shop as customer logos. So in order to make them a budget friendly logo, I need to create a system and optimize my workflow so that the hours spent on these logos equals how much I'm charging for the logos because I tend to charge on an hourly basis. However, the customer doesn't know that because they just see a flat price. But I just make sure that the work I do fits in that time constraint. So I hope that this course helps you organize your workflow a little bit better and also get all the information that you need from your customer in order to create the logo that they wanted and have a successful transaction. 2. 02pricing: Okay, so first I want to touch on pricing. I know I kind of mentioned it quickly in the intro. But logos can range in price a lot. They can start from really cheap, maybe like 510, $20. And you can get these on sites that have premade logos or templates or even fiber. And then they can go all the way up to millions dollars for brands that we all know and love. Coca-cola. All of these large brands spent a lot of money on branding. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with either side of the spectrum. I think all the way from $5 up to, you know, tens of thousands to millions dollars. There is a spot for everybody. Small businesses may just be starting out. They may not be turning a profit yet. They may not even know if this is going to be a viable business for them. So they aren't really going to be interested in spending a lot of money on their logo. They wanted just how some things so that they can get started because you can't really get started with the business. If you don't have a logo, it's kind of one of the bare necessities of a business. So I wouldn't be too worried about those sites that are offering really cheap logos. Because if the customer that's looking for a 5 $10 logo is going to a site like fiber to get that, then they're probably not your target customer because they won't want to spend a little bit more for a logo. I personally am somewhere in the hundreds of dollars mark, depending on what the customer wants. I'm just gonna go through what those include and how I make sure to optimize my time in order to get them the logo they love, but still within their budget. One thing I want to mention about the cost is the payment. So what I like about Etsy is that with the package listing, they need to buy it up front. And this would be the same if you had a Shopify store or another platform. However, if you're not doing it that way, I would add the least expect 50% upfront and then 50% before you deliver the finished files. 3. 03etsy listing: Now I'm going to show you how I do my FDA listing. This is crucial because you wanna make sure you detail out everything that you're going to offer and explain the entire process. This is beneficial for both parties, for the customers, beneficial because then they can gain trust with you. They know exactly what to expect. Even though this is considered more of a budget friendly logo for the customer, it's still a lot of money and they want to make sure that they are getting what they pay for. So I make sure in my listening to include examples of logos that I have created. Reviews are really great and just making the listing very, very clear and structured so that they know what to expect, when to expect it, and basically what I expect from them as well. And of course, on the flip side, it's beneficial for you because you're covering your butt. So if you outline what exactly you are going to offer, what exactly you expect from them. When it comes to a point in time where maybe they're asking for something that isn't included. You can refer back to the listing and show them. This is actually what is stated in the listing, so that is not part of the price. However, if you'd like to add that, we can increase the price and then I can add that on for you. And that way, if there's any and they go to FC, it's in black and white on your listing. So it's kind of like a contract. So if I go to my shop, I explain what this package offers. I say this is a great package and all you need is the logo. If you're looking for more or a more well-rounded identity checkout, the works, and that offers just more branding assets. And then I outline what you receive and this is how it works. So this is part of the process I'm going to go through in this course with you. 4. 04theprocess: So the first part of the process is the questionnaire. I explained to them that I'm going to send them a Google questionnaire that they have to fill out. Every filled is required. And the more information they provide, the better their logo is going to be. If they don't provide enough information, I will follow up with questions. And basically, I don't get started until I'm satisfied with the amount of information that they provided for me. And I explain that in the second item that once I feel comfortable with your goals and ideas, I will send three preliminary options with some variation. So in both packages, I will offer three logos for them to look at. And I'll explain this in more, my bruises, but basically, I want them to have some variation to choose from. I think three is the perfect number. It is not too much to be overwhelming and make them indecisive, but it's not too little that they feel constrained and that they don't have options. I usually try to make three different options. They all have something different. And then that way they can see what they like and don't like, and then we can go from there. So the third step in that process is then the revisions. I send them, those three, they tell me what they like and then I revise it to a final logo. And then that goes to the last step, which is the very last revisions, which I only offer two small ones. And after that, I am then export the files and deliver them to them. I also in each part of the process, outline how many days they should expect it to take for me and I make sure to tell them that it only takes like three to five days for this part of the process, but that is dependent on you getting back to me with your feedback. So some terms you may want to consider adding to your listing, our returns and refunds. I don't offer refunds for this type of listing. And another one is a timeframe because some customers just may not respond to you for about a month. So it's up to you if you want to put some terms with that on like how long they have before you close out the transaction and send them what you have. Or if you don't care and you just link and we'll leave it open, that's totally up to you, but just some things to consider because some people just don't get back to you for a long time and it's, it's a little annoying. And lastly, you want to make sure that you put in your listening what you're going to be delivering. So I put the exact file types, I let them know that it is going to include a vector file, PDFs, PNGs, JPEGs high. Whereas all of the versions, the black and white version, color version, and transparent version, just make sure to include all that that way when you deliver the product is exactly what you mentioned it would be and what they expected it to me. 5. 05questionnaire: The next step in the process is the questionnaire. And the questionnaire is so important, the questionnaire is going to cut down your time significantly because this is where you're gonna get all the information you need to make sure you provide the logo that they basically are dreaming of in their heads but can't get across to you. So you want to make sure to ask all of the questions. And the more you do this, the memorial kinda see what questions you should be asking. I have a Google form that I will share with you so you can see what questions I ask. You can use Google forms or type form. Both have free accounts so they'd won't cost you anything. If you see here in my Google form, ask for their name just to make sure I can match it with the ETC listing and their email address. So you want to first make sure to ask what their business name is and be clear, this is what you want in the logo. I've had a customer where they put in the business name, a name for the business, and then later on decided that they wanted a different wording. But then I can say, well in this form you put this business names. So at this point I cannot change that. If we want to change that, there will be additional fees. So again, to cover your but you want to put the same I have an x question as writing a few words about the history of the business, it's good to have some context about their business to understand where it came from if there's history to it, because this will help you when designing a logo. I also ask what the purpose of the logo is. You will want to know where it's being used. If someone's using it on their packaging because they have physical products that are being put in a store. Or if somebody has a blog. So basically their branding is just going to be shown virtually on a blog. Or if they have a YouTube channel or a handmade business where they need the branding, like stamped on a soap. These are all things that you want to consider because the medium of which the logo is being presented can definitely affect how the design is going to look. I always ask if they're going to incorporate imagery. Some people just want text, logos, and then some people want some imagery or iconography. This is really important to know because if they want something very specific and imagery and illustration may be, you can flight that here because that would be something that would cost more. And I would just mentioned that to them. That you can get stock images or you can get stock icons. But these things are not going to be a 100% unique because they are stock, that means other people can purchase them. However, if they wanted a illustration that is unique and hand done, then definitely offer that service. There's a lots of really great artists on fiber that you can hire and create the illustration for you. So just make sure to check that out and then include that in the price. If you need to add specific illustration. Then you can reach out and say, I'm just going to add this as a separate listing. Is that okay with you? If not, we can go with stock images. You'll want to know about their target market. Even though you think that we may be stereotyping, it is important when it comes to branding. Because say for example, if you have i Kids brand, you want to make sure to incorporate bright colors, simple shapes. It needs to be fun because that's what's kind to relate to a child. Or if you have maybe like a skincare brand that is more focused on aging skin and the demographic is mostly women, then you'll probably want a more elegant branding that looks luxurious. So all of these things really tie in. So you wanna make sure you know who their demographic is and who their target market is. You don't have to use these words when using the Google form because somebody may not know what that means. But just saying Tell me what you can about the people who are going to use your product and business. That is asking what their target market is. I ask who the competitors are because then you can go and see what they're doing and make sure that you're not doing exactly what they're doing, but kind of see like what patterns there are. I always ask if there's requirements or restrictions because you want to know if there's any definite nos or I need to have this. Those are really important and people will forget to mention that if they have a current logo, asked what they like and don't like about that. If they don't, then there's no answer for this. This question is really important. Asking what they like and to attach references of examples. What they like is very important. When you open up all of their examples, you'll start to see patterns and similarities. And then you'll see like, oh, this logo has sans serif font. This one does do, that, one does too. So for sure they want a sans serif font. Or you'll see like this one has an icon that looks like this. If you see that in all logos there's something that is similar between all of them. Make sure to include that if you see something that they kind of liked him one but didn't link and other have a variation of that. This question gets you all of the information you need that they aren't able to relate to you in words. And with of that question is the opposite of what do you hate? If you can attach some references of things that you absolutely hate that will help you because you'll know what to avoid and not include. There are so many options when creating a logo, you want to make sure that you're really narrowing in on what's gonna make them happy because you don't want to waste your time with back and forths and my taking stabs at what they like. So with this, you're able to really narrow in on what they love and what they hate. If they say they hate these things, then you know, to completely avoid them in your logo options. And then I have an option at the end to add any information. And this is great because if they have something to say, they'll definitely say it here. And it may not have been something that you had asked about. 6. 06research: Now that we have the questionnaire has filled out, we need to move on to the research stage. I'm going to show you how I did my research on two different logos though. First thing I do is pull out key words. So I have all of your information. You'll notice she said that she's using a she's selling home items and it's for all genders, all ages. But they like quality. She is Mexican and we'd like to incorporate that and Zhuangzi, earth tones, Modern Art, rustic plans to wants it to be modern, fun, friendly and use earth tones. And then she added images here of what she likes. So I'm going to show you those because like I said, you'll start to see patterns. So this one is a drawing of a woman space using line drawing, just a very black and white. I think the background might be off way. So you'll see in this example she has the earth tones shown here and a son. And then here she has another woman drawn and it's very tropical with the palm tree, the sun again, and the parrot. And then here she has Mexican influence in the word, then the font. And then in the last one she has another line drawing of a woman's face. And it's very simple. So you can see based on these examples, she likes something that's simple. She mentioned she didn't want a lot of color in her form and not as shown here. But she does like earth tones and she wants a little bit of that Mexican feel. So there's a lot to go on here and I felt that it was good enough to move forward. So in the other logo I'm going to show you, it's quite different. Here is for a person who is doing visual learning modules, basically learning online. They target entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, small businesses. And they have a lot of videos in there. In there. They have a lot of videos in their product. They listed competitor. So if you check out their competitor and you can see that it's very corporate, its learning. So it needs to be very straight forward, very easy to read in its very professional. So she says she feels like her current logo feels incomplete. She didn't upload it. It she did send it to me. And she wants it modern and friendly. She says friendly, but from what I gathered from our information, it should definitely be more corporate. And that's why I don't just depend on what they say. I that's why I I you depend on the references more I think visuals that someone provides to explain what they're looking for can speak a lot louder than what they actually say. So she gave me some colors. This one that's hex color and then she said she likes yellow because it goes with gray and it looks clean and uplifting. And she said what she hates is busy logos with more than one graphic that's not harmonized and then a logo, she only if provided one logo that she likes. And it's up to you if you find that it's not enough information for you to get started, just ask for more resources, more references. Before you start, you have to make sure that you are a 100% confident in their response in order to move forward. So you can see in this example, it's again, very, very corporate. The logo is just text in a circle and not so she likes. So I felt like I had enough to go on because I think she wanted something simple and corporate. So to actually move on to the research, I opened my notes app on my Mac. You can use whatever you want to Google Docs or Microsoft Word, whatever works. And so I start with just my heading here. Logo number two, Mexican inspired, hand-drawn, minimal, reselling home and clothing. And then my keywords, all ages, all genders, quality, earth tones, rustic plants, artistic, fun. And then I do the same for the other logo, which is totally different. So using these keywords, I searched pinterest. For example. Here. Maybe like earth tones are rustic. So if I go to Pinterest and I search earth tones, palette or aesthetic, select those and you'll see a lot of inspiration here, similar to what she was sending me. And then for the other one, she wants like eLearning. So just type in there. This was more kind of blog posts are not really helpful. But you could go e-learning logo and see what else is out there. And then you get more ideas of what you're looking for. So it's just searching those keywords and then keywords that relate to those keywords, so broadening your search. And you can see here after I've searched those words, have some inspiration to add. I not only sort of Pinterest, but I also search creative markets. There's a lot of great graphics there that you can use. So some of this was pulled from there as well. So I pulled in her pictures as well as my own. And I feel like all of these really match what she was going for. Another source that I use for images is free picked.com. They have a lot of vectors and an icon, so you can kind of search there to get some ideas. And if you want to use them, you can pay to use them as well. For the other logo, this is what I gathered, is more of these tax levels with simple shapes like the circle. And I went to noun icon to kind of search for some icon. So I'll make sure to link all of those sources in the resources, which are the Pinterest Creative Market, free peg, and the Noun Project. The Noun Project is shown right here. So I grabbed this icon, I find with the Noun Project you can go there, type in a word and then just see like what kinda icons relate to that word. I usually spread this out over a few days. I do the research on one day and I spend about an hour doing that. And then the next day I'll move on to the next stage of the process, which is the brainstorming and refining. 7. 07brainstorming: For the brainstorming and refining, I like to start by checking out different font styles. I feel like this gives me a good starting point. I'm opening my two files for these two logos. You can see here that these are the font styles I found for Jessica's logo, which is the one that was more Mexican inspired rustic earth tones. And then I also found some fonts for Lara, which was more corporate. The e-learning modules website. You can see there's a huge difference between the two. And I usually try and find just ten fonts, so I'll type out their logo and I use Illustrator, but you can use whatever you have. And then with the logo typed out, I just grab my character palette and I just go through the drop-down and try all these different fonts. Once I have my fonts figured out, I then go in and tried to put together some rough ideas of the logo. So you can see here, I played around with adding some color into otherwise more boring font. I incorporated some icons like this monitor or this grow, this growing flower from a monitor to symbolize learning. And I have some of my rough work over here on the right side. So I try a bunch of different things. I usually have it. You can see here I tried a different flower here. I may have like five or six different concepts that I came out with by only one ascend her three. So I narrow it down to the three I think are the strongest for Jessica's I had for so I also had this one here which you can see. And that's basically the same as that one, just with a different icon. So I chose to go with this one to send her. And these are the three that I sent her to take a look at and decide what she liked. 8. 08revisions: Okay, now we are in the revision stage and this is where it can really go off the rails. So you wanna make sure you stick with your listing and the process that you have outlined for your customer in ETC. I send this version. I have them all numbered so it's easy for them to communicate which one they like. So you can see I have my logo at the top and then I just say initial logo concepts for Laura. And then it has her three logos. So she then will, she then responds and says, Hi Sarah, thank you for your patients. Only a few small tweaks. Number two, and we are there. I love number two with the font from number one written. Now, I love the light fonts. I'm hesitant with writing my name out in full or just L. Why is it possible to do two mockups? Only difference being the name in full or just the initial. So I went ahead and did that revision. I replaced the font used in number one and then I did the full name. And then just the initial. This wasn't in the form. She did want the full name and the form, but it was not a huge deal for me to just condense this into two letters. If it takes you five minutes, don't complain about it, just do it. The customer will be really happy if it's something that's gonna take you half an hour, an hour, then I would say, okay, can we revisit what we suggested in our price? So I showed her both of the versions and then she said maybe add the dot-com and name and lowercase. So this is where I stated that that wasn't part of the initial concept. So I just said, Okay, I want to clarify some things before making more changes as this will be the last revision included in the price. So as I said, once you send out the three concepts, they choose one or maybe a combination of a few. And then you send them your last concept, concepts, which is this one that I showed her. So this is the, this is the final logo and from this they are able to do tumor revisions. And that stayed in the listing. So I just wanted to make that clear because she has only another revision left. So first of all, which font you want from your original page I send. Second, what do you mean maybe out of the.com when I asked you in the Google form what you want your logo to say, you said lawyers walk and there was no.com. So that changes a lot. Third, Do you want Laura Hughes was felt as Laurie is what instead? Because I just wanted to make sure if you want to uppercase or lowercase. Lastly, what I can and then I tried to explain what I can do for her because there they may want a bunch of things, but it wasn't in the budget. So you just want to say what you can do and if they want anything else, then we can look at that, relook at the price. So what I can do is change the uppercase to lowercase and make it all dark gray. This is finest philosophy revision. I got comments and part of what we discussed and to be honest, isn't normally part of the logo that would be considered a tagline to your logo which is not included in this package price. Let me know what you think and move forward with explaining yourself and explaining, you know, best practices and how you have the best interests for them is good as well. So she agreed she clarified what she wanted and she agreed that adding the dot-com was not needed to just got carried away and that's what happens. People do get carried away. Okay, so then I made the changes. As you can see with the old one, we basically changed. She wanted the color changed and she wanted the lighter font, so one that wasn't as thick. So that's what I did. I took the lighter font and then I made the green more of like an orange yellow. Asked her if she knew what she wanted. She sent that to me. So then her response is love it. And then she ordered a stamp and just go quickly over Jessica's. I sent her this page with these three concepts. And she said I really like number one, like how the plant is bold Chi, perhaps see a picture with the arch being bold as well, and one with the name being in bold and the arch just how it is. So she wanted me to play around with the weight of the font and the weight of the frame. And then, so that's what I did. And I created a bunch of options because again, these were small revisions and they were quite different from each other. So I felt like it was okay to do this. So I created one leg, she said with the bold frame, but I personally didn't like it, so I was offering other ones that I think we'd better that she didn't specifically ask for number one and number three or what she asked for a boulder title and a boulder frame. But I didn't think those looked gray, but I knew she was just not happy with the way that the weight was with the to the frame and the text. So instead I played around with that and offers more options. I think number for looked really good. And I suggested that in my message. So I gave all of those options to choose from. And I said number four is my top choice. And she said, I see now with the other options. So you're talking about you have an eye for this and I'll go number for us so they do trust you and your eye as long as you provide that quality to to go with number four and that was it. I center the files and then she bought a stamp. So you can see there was some back and forth, but it was in a controlled way and I was able to refer to my listening in order to keep it in a controlled way. 9. 09deliverables: When the logos done, we now have to send out our deliverables. I do this with Google Drive or Dropbox. I create a folder on Google Drive. So you can see in here, this is my most recent logo with keep moving Stevie, I have a mood board, a primary logo, icons, secondary logo, and a JPEG just as local variations. So this is my second package, and I didn't fully walk through the second package because it is a lot more. So you'll see here, I do create a mood board. And the second package, so includes a color palette, includes a secondary logo and icon. And then it also has some inspiration pictures and fonts that they can use for their website. So in her folder, I have that. And then I also have primary logo in this folder. I do the full logo in JPEG, PNG, EPS, PDF. You want to include a PDF and EPS because those are going to be scaleable. A PDF created from Illustrator is going to be a vector based image. You're gonna get the high-res image, the vector image. So if they ever want to print like on a large banner, they're gonna need this PDF. So you can see here this is the JPEG, I have the PNG, and then you have EPS and the PDF. And then also have all white version and the all-black version. And you can see that here in the variations I have your main logo, the white logo on dark background, the black logo on light background. And then I have the secondary logo and the icon. And again, this is for the more expensive package. And then I have all of those files in folders so they're easy to find. And I let the customer know that they need to download these within a week because I don't keep them on my drive indefinitely. So if you do remove them from your drive, always keep a backup because there's a good chance that they will forget about this. And it's nice if you have the files to send them, but you don't need to keep them on your drive because I only use the free storage and the space fills up fast. So then you're able to send them a link and they can download all these and they have all the files they need for any way that they're going to use this logo, whether it's print or virtual digital whenever. 10. 10outro: Creating logos isn't easy. It takes a lot of experience and years to, to really hone the craft of actually creating the logo. But not only that, it takes a lot of listening because the logo isn't what you think they should have. Logo is a collaboration between what they think they should have and your suggestions on how to bring that to life and make it better. So you really want to make sure that you listen because a good logo designer is someone who understands what they're coin is asking and then delivers something that normally they were asking for. But beyond that, which they weren't asking for, but is even better than what they're asking for. A key part of that is the Google forms because you have to ask all those questions in order to get into your customer's head and create something that's really amazing and that they're really going to love. And by doing that, you shrink down the amount of time you spend significantly. If you don't do any of this, you're going to add so many hours on there because you're just kind of picking and choosing what you think would be best, sending it to them. And then they're giving your feet their feedback on why it's not working. And then you try again. But if you start with a really, really good understanding of what they want, you're just going to be able to provide that for them so much quicker. So, if anything you learn from this course is to make sure that you ask all the questions you need to upfront so that you know exactly how to move forward. If you don't get that information, don't do a logo because it's going to be always your time. You're not gonna get paid enough. You're going to hate it, you're gonna get frustrated, and it's not going to be really worth it in the end, I really enjoy creating logos for small businesses on Etsy. It's a, it's a good way for me to be creative and then also help somebody with their small business. And I think the way that I have this set up, both parties are happy with the outcome. When I'm done creating a logo, I don't feel exhausted and frustrated and hate my client. I feel excited that they love it and feel like I was paid fairly. And they also feel like they got what they paid for and they love it and they can't wait to start their business or make their business even better.