Transcripts
1. Welcome To Class! Leaving Etsy & Opening Your Own Shop: Hello there. My
name is Ben Hawes, and I am entrepreneur. I'm a creative person.
I'm an artist, I'm a business person, and I am here to talk about
the topic of Etsy. As you probably know, because you clicked into this video, Etsy has gone through
a lot of transition. They've made a lot of changes, and for whatever reason, you may be thinking
about leaving Etsy. It might be because
the fees are too high. It might be because of their policies around
listing products. It might be because
of the number products on Etsy that are
just no good anymore, and the searchability
is not as good anymore, and you're not being favored
the way you used to be. I have been an Etsy seller. I've made hundreds and maybe even thousands of
sales on different products. When I was in college, in 2012, I started Etsy store
selling handmade wallets, and I really loved doing it. I thought there was
such an amazing aspect of selling on Etsy. I thought it was such
a great experience. I really enjoyed doing it. And then throughout my
last 15 years of my life, I've started different
Etsy stores, different ideas,
different things that have wanted to sell.
During the pandemic, I sold mugs with work humor
on them and things like that. I've started
print-on-demand services, or I have done
handmade products. I have also coached other
people in Etsy SEO, which means search
engine optimization, if you don't know already. And I've also coached
a lot of artists and people who have started
Etsy stores with my help. And so, one thing that
I have noticed is that Etsy is just different these
days. It's just different. And people are making a
move onto other platforms, but there's not really
a platform that totally replaces Etsy that doesn't have similar challenges, similar problems,
and similar reasons why you might want to
leave the platform. And so in this course, what I'm going to
talk about is really the reasons why we might
want to go out on our own, what is necessary in order
to make that happen. You know, you can't just make a website and expect
people to land on it. You know what I mean? There's ways that you can
get people to your website. There's platforms
that you can use to integrate to your website
and things like that. And then we're
going to talk a lot about how to get people
to that website. So, we're not going
to dive too much into the nitty gritty of
things like Shopify. We're not going to dive too
much into the nitty gritty of things like paid ads necessarily because I think that the
world is even moving on from that and on to more
content based marketing. And so what I'm really
excited about for this class is that
I think you and me are going to be able to really make a difference
in your business today. Whether you've
started it already, whether you're already on Etsy
or whether you're planning to start a new business and you're deciding whether
Etsy is right for you, this course is going to actually take you through a lot of information that's going to allow you to make that
decision for yourself. And at the end of the day, if Etsy is the right
platform for you, then Etsy is the right
platform for you, and at the end of the day as well, you can always do both. So this course is not really meant to dissuade you
from getting on Etsy. It's not a slash on Etsy. I'm not saying anything
necessarily bad about Etsy. I just think that
as entrepreneurs, which all of us are, even
if you're an artist, you're an entrepreneur, even you are on Etsy just for
fun, you know, or whatever. This course is really
going to enable you to understand what it
means to be on Etsy. It's going to empower you
to make your own decisions, and it's going to make it a better experience for
everybody involved. So this course is going
to be perfect for you if you are somebody who is even
considering being on Etsy. I'll try to keep it as short
and simple as possible so that you can actually go
in and following this course, take the actions that we talk about and actually make a store, make an account, make a
website, whatever it is. And I'll also say that as Side Hustle coach
as someone who is passionate about helping
people find their niche, helping people understand how
to get something launched. I'm really excited
about you being here. And so thank you so
much for being here. If you have a friend who
has similar interests, I would really highly
encourage you to send this to them right now. Maybe
you can take it together. But again, my name is Ben Hawes. I'm a side hustle coach. I'm
a creative entrepreneur. I'm also a musical comedian, which is really fun
and brings a lot of marketing into my life, but I'm really excited
to get into this course. So why don't we get
to it? Thank you for being here and let's do
it. Click on to the next.
2. What Has Changed With Etsy?: When you're thinking about Etzi, I think that we have to, like, kind of decouple what we know about Etzi and
what we've learned about Etzi and kind of
culturally what we expect from Etzi versus
the reality of Etzi. So with Etzi, we expect
it to be handmade items. We expect it to be shop owner who really cares
about their business, and you're supporting
a small business. When we care about supporting
certain types of people, certain types of businesses, we go to Etz because
we can filter that way and we want to be able
to support small creators, small artists, and small
entrepreneurs. Now, the problem is,
for me, at least, that within Etzi there are so many kind of spammy products, and there's so much
print on demand, which some of it is
good, but some of it is really copycat, you know, and some of it's not original, some of it's not helpful for the marketplace
that is Etsy. And I think that, to me, is one of the main
reasons why you might choose to go on your
own and build your own ecosystem of business platforms. The other thing is that Etzi has really increased
their fees over time. I don't have the
exact fees right now, but I know that it
used to be a lot more affordable to sell on Etz and now it's a lot less
affordable to sell on Etzi. And you might have
noticed that if you've been on Etzi
for a long time. And so those two reasons,
I think, are enough. But then the third reason is
that a lot of people don't necessarily agree
with certain policies that Etzi has put out. I know there's new leadership. I know there's a lot of
pressure politically, and it just has
become a product that is not as beneficial to the actual seller
as it used to be. And that's the way things go. That's how business works. They've made decisions.
If you don't agree with the decisions,
you can move on. And you actually have a lot
of power in how you move on, especially if you've already
grown a bit of an audience. And so really what I want to talk about is kind
of that next step. If you're thinking
about leaving Etzi, you don't have to leave Etzy
to start your own platform. You can go two or
three months and have both of them going
at the same time, test to see what is actually working
better and where you're actually bringing in the
most revenue and where you are having the
biggest profit margin for your products. But if you are
thinking about leaving Eze and you want
to start your own platform. You want to start your own ecosystem of
technology and platforms, and, you know, you want to
own it a little bit more. This is going to be
so helpful for you. I can't even wait for you to get through this course
and just get started. And so I think right now, what would make the
most sense is to move on to the next section of
this course and to talk literally about the
technology that's going to be needed in order to basically
replace what Etsy is. So why don't you click on to the next course and
we'll go from there.
3. Understanding The Technology & Services: So first, what I think is really important
is thinking about, where are you going
to host your store? And so what I would recommend is finding something
like Squarespace, finding something like Shopify, where you can actually list
your products and sell them. The things you're going
to want to look at are the fees, the ease of use, and the user experience, and how easy it
is for you to add things and manage the platforms. I know that a lot
of people say that Shopify is a really
great platform. I personally find Shopify to
be a little bit expensive. I think it might be about 30 or $40 a month depending on how
much selling you're doing. And they take a platform fee, and there are credit card fees. Squarespace is a little bit similar in terms of
you need to have a pretty high up plan in order to sell things and
especially physical products. So that's one thing you're
going to want to do is, like, really evaluate what kind of platform you can use
to sell your items. Now, there are a lot of
different options out there. Shopify, I think, is the
biggest one that you know, some of the biggest stores in America and in the
world use Shopify. It's a really technologically
sound platform, and they do have an option
for, you know, smaller stores. Maybe you're selling a
couple of candles a month, things like that, and that's a little bit more affordable. But if you are selling something that you're maybe selling 20 or 50 or 100 or
1,000 items per month, hopefully the revenue will cover the membership fee for
something like Shopify. With Squarespace, which is the website builder
that I personally recommend especially people
who are just getting started or people who want to use a template
and just kind of, you know, open their
shop and get started, and then once they
make enough money, maybe they can redesign
it or they can invest in the design
of it or whatever. But I really recommend kind
of probably one of those two. There are other platforms,
though, for selling things. For example, if you're
selling digital downloads, one of the greatest platforms
that you could find online, and it doesn't have
the highest fees, and I don't even think
it has a membership. Attached to it, necessarily. It might, but I
don't think it does, but there's one called Gumroad, and Gumroad is a
platform where you can create an online shop
with digital downloads. So this is something like if you are selling iPhone backgrounds or if you are selling
anything that's like a printout game for
bachelorette parties. That's one of my favorite
things to buy on Etsy. I think it's really important to think about, like,
what are you selling? And what's the most
effective way for you to get it integrated? With the platform
that you want to use, and what's the best way for
you to manage the business? Like, for example, if
you're using Shopify, they may have platform features like being able to print out all your orders and maybe have stickers for the addresses
and things like that. Maybe that's something
that you're attracted to, and maybe you'll use Shopify. Now, if you're evaluating
it and you're deciding, maybe I don't make enough
money in revenue and profit in order to pay for
an expensive platform, then maybe you're using
something like Wix or Gumroad or Squarespace
or something like that. And I would just be
really of the cost of how much you're paying
for something to sell. And the thing to
balance it out with Etsy is that you're paying
a lot anyway with Etsy. Etsy takes a platform fee to even list your items, so
that's something to consider. That wouldn't happen
with Shopify. That wouldn't happen
with Gumroad. That wouldn't happen
with Squarespace. And then they take a
sizable percentage of what you make when you sell. And so that's
something that's also really important to think about. And if you're paying
any money in terms of promotion, money
can go elsewhere. Maybe it goes on your platform, maybe it goes toward ads, maybe it goes toward more in person marketing,
things like that, because I really don't know that I believe in
paying for ads. I've done it many times, but I don't know
that I necessarily believe that's the best way
to get more and more sales. And so I would just
say, you know, really, that's the first step is
choosing that platform. Now, if you are also going
to be accepting payments, you need to set up probably something like Stripe or PayPal. And so you probably
already have a Stripe. Maybe you already have a paypal because you're
already doing Etsy. Think about those fees as well. And the thing about
credit card fees, this is a general,
entrepreneurship lesson in credit card fees. Something I thought
about a lot is how to understand the platform
fee and the credit card fee. One thing that I've
learned is that it's very unlikely that you'll get
away from a credit card fee. And usually what
you're going to pay with a credit card
fee is going to be around 2.9 cent plus some number of cents
per transaction, so that might look
like 2.9% it's 2.9% plus a certain number
of cents per transaction. So that might look like 2.9% plus $0.05 per transaction
or something like that. And some of these platforms have more of a membership
where you might pay ten, 20, $30 a month, but then the percentage of
their platform fee goes down. And the platform fee is
something that something like Squarespace or Shopify
or Gumroad might charge. So you're going to end
up for a transaction probably paying two companies, the credit card company and the platform
that you're using. The thing is that Etsy
just has higher fees, this is where it gets really
interesting in this course, is that Etsy is also
a search platform, and so they are giving you
value that you're probably not necessarily going
to get the same way on Shopify Squarespace
or Gum Road. And so they believe that because they brought
you the customer, they should be able to
take more of the cut. You could stay on Etsy and take advantage of the fact that
they are a search platform, and you might get customers you never would have got swhere. The thing to remember is that it's not the only
search platform, especially in this world of AI, chat GPT, perplexity,
Google Gemini. These are platforms that
people are actually going to be using more
and more over time. In the next even six months. In the next 12 months, you might be able to
optimize your website and the content that you make
around your business, your products, you
as an entrepreneur, you as an artist,
you as a creator. You might be able to
leverage that more than you would actually be able
to get from Etsy. And there's a lot around Etsy SEO, search
engine optimization, optimizing, you know,
having pictures and have tags and long tail
tags and things like that. Those are all very important when you're using
something like Etsy. They're also important
when you have a Shopify. They're also important when
you have a square space. They're also important when you have something like Gumroad. But the oppor if you're
down to use AI somehow, or if you're down
to optimize for other people to find
you who are using AI, this is where it becomes very important that
you're able to take advantage to really optimize and to do the work it takes
to show up in AI search. And that's going to
be the next section. So to review this section, really what it is about
choosing the platforms. So that's going to
be where are you hosting your products? And that's going to
be really important. Like, think about the fees. Think about the
platforms usability. Think about what your customers want to see when they
go to your website. So if website is, you know, Joe's
Coffee Banana Hut. Then, you know, if they go
to Joe's Coffebnana hut.com, then they're going
to want to have an experience on that website. And we'll talk about
that as well in the next section where we talk about the content
and all of that. So you're going to
need the platform, and you're going to need
the payment platform. So that's going to
be Stripe, PayPal, something else that comes and that's going to be the first
step. So think about that. Maybe take a second
to write that down in your planner or
your calendar or whatever, when you're going to
take about an hour to decide and to research these platforms because
it's really important, and it's one of the
most important pieces of leaving a platform like Etsy. The next two sections are going to be really fun, I think. The two of us, you're sitting in your chair, I'm
sitting in my chair. We're going to be able to make a really good plan for your content that you
put on your website, the SEO, the pictures, you know, the things you need
to know to make a really great product
at store and website. And then in the next section,
we'll talk about more of those external content
that you're going to make. That's Instagram, Tik Tok, you know, social media, but also like blogging and listing your products on
things like maybe Pinterest or using other platforms like that to get more reach
outside of your own website. And this is where, again, it becomes really
interesting to think about, how are you going to compete with the searchability
on Etsy because really the crux of the leaving Etsy
conversation is that Etsy taking more money than something like Shopify or something
like Squarespace, but they're delivering
to you customers. And so it's really interesting because that's the trade off. You might not want to leave Etsy because you might not want
to make a single piece of content or ever post about your business or your
products on Instagram. And I think that's an
interesting dichotomy. You know, that's an
interesting thing pulling you from one direction
to the other. You know, do you want to be a content creator or do you want to just paint bowls
and sell them on Etsy? You know, if you
want the second one, then you should maybe just
stay on Etsy and just think about the fact that
they're bringing you customers and that
they're saving you time, and then they're going to
take a little bit more of a maybe that means you raise
your price a little bit, or maybe that means you
just become okay and accept the fact that
they take more of a cut. Because the truth is, and I'll
be very truthful with you, it is a lot of work to put
in to get customers to a website and then to convert those people to
buy your products, especially if you don't
already have a following or if you don't already
an existing, you know, platform,
like a Squarespace website or a Shopify. So let's dive in to what
a website might need to be in order to really deliver
you sales and revenue. The disclaimer I
would give here is, I would recommend keeping
Etsy for a while and having your products listed on both
Etsy and your own website. And when I say website, I mean, like a Squarespace website
or a Shopify website, or a Gumroad page if
it's digital downloads. And I would really recommend
that for really two reasons. The first reason is for
search engine optimization. Anything you do
to make sure that your website is optimized
so that you come up first or second or third
or even on the first page when somebody Googles
or searches in AI, you know, I'm going
to imagine you make colorful confetti balloons. If somebody in your
area is looking for colorful confetti
balloons, these days, it's about even more than a 50 50 split of people that are going to go on Chat GPT or Google Gemini or
Perplexity or any of those platforms in order
to find that answer. It's really funny.
It's a huge trend. It's a huge shift in the way
that people are searching. You might even be
somebody who uses GPT more often than
Google anyway. And so there's a big shift. I mean, I'm making
this course in 2025, and it will be true
in 2026 and 2027, and it will only increase, in my opinion, how many people are leveraging the
power of AI in order to actually go and find a solution to a
problem that they have. And so, you know,
four years ago, I remember my best friend wanted a bird house
for her birthday. I went to Etsy, I
typed in Bird house, and I found a birdhouse
and I bought it. And even then it was shifting. To, you know, I was thinking, Okay, some of these
are really generic. Some of these are just
not what I'm looking for. It doesn't seem like
they're very creative. And I have only
noticed that increase. So I think that not only are sellers going
away from Etsy, I think that the trend is that buyers are also
going away from Etsy. And so now maybe they're
going to go on Amazon, maybe they're going
to go on Google or Perplexity or Chat
GPT currently. And they're going to type
in for a bird house. They're going to type in
bird houses that I can get in one week for under $24. That's what somebody's
going to type in versus when they
used to go on Google or they used to go on Etsy and they would type in Bird house. That would just
be so interesting because then you would
tag it Bird house. And maybe they would
type in Red Bird House, or maybe they would
type in Big Bird House. Now they're going to
type in I'm looking. They're actually having
a conversation with Chat GPT, and they're
going to say, I'm looking for a
small purple birdhouse for my best friend
who lives in Oregon, and I want to less than $30, and I hope that it comes
from the United States. That would be something
that somebody would actually type into Chat GPT. And so when you're
making your website, it's really important
that you include that specific
information because Chat GPT is actually going to pull from your website
those answers. And so what the big
trend is right now, and it's pretty elementary, but you have to do
basically what they call Q&A style content
on your website. Meaning, maybe you have a
glossary on your website that talks about Q&A questions
that are frequently asked. Or maybe within your homepage, you have a section
called pricing. Have a section called About the owner or
something like that. But you have to make
those titles questions. So instead of saying,
like, pricing, you know, our bird
houses are $10-20. That's one thing.
But if you say, how much does a birdhouse
cost in Portland Oregon? That's an entirely more
searchable thing on AI. And so if you make your titles, how much does a birdhouse
cost in Portland, Oregon? Then you get very specific and talk about your very
specific answers. That's going to help
you come up in AI. And just in general, in
regular Google as well, because, you know, Google is
doing the Google summaries. AI and Chat GPT are having conversations and
going back and forth, and you can ask questions like, Oh, but do they have a red one? That's where your
website comes in. And the search is
now transferred from Etsy to something
that's in AI or Google. That's a really important
thing for you to understand as a business owner,
and maybe you already do. And I appreciate that. But I just like
to say it because it's really good reminder that as you're making content on your website, making
it searchable. And of course, there's tons of courses on making
things searchable. There's tons of
courses on AI search, and so I highly recommend going
and taking those as well. But as you make your website, I would say, keep it simple, but add enough information on your website so
that your website comes up when people search. That's the big lesson here
in creating the website. Looks wise, you know, I think it does matter that the
website is designed well. You know, of course, e
commerce is a whole thing. But, you could even copy what
your Etsy page looks like. You know, you could
copy the button color. You could copy the images
that you have on there. You could copy the
descriptions as you design or another suggestion is to go to other websites
that you have purchased from and received an
item from Like for me, one of the websites that
I think is really good at E Commerce is JVN Hair, and JVN is the person from
queereye who has a hairline. And when I first bought
from that website, I thought, This is
the gold standard. This is who I am going to follow when
I'm trying to create E Commerce checkout flows or ecommerce website designs or
ecommerce product photos. Those kinds of things are
very important when it comes to having a website that's actually going
to convert people. And that is the next part of this section here talking
about conversion. Every word, every
picture, every design, every color, I want you to really challenge yourself
to think about conversion. Conversion, meaning that they click something on your page, and then they look at
something and then they put it in their cart and they
check out and they buy it. Now, of course, you might
not be an expert on what's called CRO conversion
rate optimization. But what I recommend in this case is build
something that you're proud of or build something that
you think is 80% of the way there and send it to five friends and literally
ask them the question. What would make this
more likely What would make you more likely to
check out on this page? Everybody will be able to
share with you an idea, even just one idea that
will make it work better. I did this once for a
business that I was running, and I asked someone for
feedback just on the website, like, how do you think
this could convert better? And she said, Well, number
one, your buttons don't work. I thought that was a really
funny way to illustrate that, as a one person
Etsy shop owner and as a one person
builder of a store, it's really hard to know everything and it's really
hard to cover everything. So asking for feedback is
a really important way to optimize your
store for conversion. That's what I'll say
about stores and on page SEO right now and AI
search and all of that. I think it's a really important
thing to think about, and I think that again, the big trade off with Etsy versus having your
own site on Shopify or Squarespace is that you are now responsible for
bringing in the search. So, in a way, like,
you're paying yourself for this work
of showing up in search. I highly recommend
even spending an hour even just asking Chat GPT
or asking perplexity. Like, how can I
optimize my website? You can literally
put your website URL or copy the text from your
website and just say, like, how could I make this
10% better, 20% better? What are you know, give me
five critical ideas about my website that would make
it better. And it knows. You know, it will be able
to tell you, Oh, well, this button should be a
different color or this button should be a little shorter
in text or whatever. There's another platform that if you are using Squarespace, I highly recommend, and
it's called SEO space, and you can look that up
and they have a free trial, and they will actually
grade your website, your on page website
for the SEO score, and it'll tell you
zero to 100 how effective you have optimized
your page for search. And so that's a really good tool as well that I'll put
into the worksheet. Moving on to the next topic,
4. Tech Stacks, SEO, Content: Okay, so the next thing
that you're going to do when you're building
your own platforms, when you're building
your own Tech Stacks, when you're building
your own awareness of your website is
social media content, as well as things like blogging, things like back linking
to your website, and really building
a Spider Web. I call it a Spider
Web, like getting your website to be involved
more in the Internet. That's a really important thing, and you can't just do it
with your own website. Unfortunately, you can't just be on one person website and, you know, have it just go crazy and viral and
everybody's finding it. There's really three things
that you have to do in order to really show up more
on search overall. Those three things are
really my recommendations, and you can take
them or leave them or take parts of them
and leave other parts. But I would recommend
building profiles on other websites, meaning you should have a
business profile on Google. That would be a really
good way to improve your search when it
comes to Google and AI. Having a Google profile is a really good place where
you can A, collect reviews. B, you can post updates that are really
helpful for search. Having a Google
profile on Google is such a good way to
leave updates that you can use a little
bit as social media and write little updates about deals that you're having or products that
you've released. You can also collect reviews, which is really important when
you're running a business. Even Etsy does that,
and it's really helpful because people
want to see that other people have purchased
your products and they have been able to enjoy
what they bought. Okay, so in this section, one thing we're going
to talk about is really social media which is really important if you're
going to be leaving at sea. And then the other
thing that's really important is getting
things like back links, which means having other
websites linked to your page and then also
maybe writing blog posts, things like that that
essentially allow your website to show up outside of your own website,
if that makes sense. So I think of it really as,
like, a big spider web. You can be the Spider, and that Spider is like your website, and the spider is great, and it's the life
of your business, and it's where people check out, and it's where people
find your business, and it's where people
learn about your business, learn about you, and
all of that stuff. But you have to have the Spider
spin webs and shoot webs, you know, like Spider Man
and, like, say, Oh, actually, the websites a little
bit over here, and the websites a
little bit over here. And like I think of it
as just a way to spread the awareness about
your online website, your online presence,
things like that. And essentially, there's really a few
suggestions that I have here. They're pretty simple, and I love talking about social media. I have other classes
about social media. I find social media to be such an important piece of being able to
run your business, being able to have a business, and being able to convert people from outside
your website to coming into your
website and then to have them checking out
and buying your products. The first thing that I would
recommend as just a start to this would be to create a
Google business profile. If you don't already have this, having a Google business profile increases your
likelihood to show up in Google so much because if somebody searches like you're making necklaces or, you know, maybe you're
making I'm just going to use macaroni necklaces as an example here because I'm
kind of craving macaroni. And I would say, essentially, that if somebody types like macaroni necklaces in New
Jersey and you come up, you're going to come up most likely because you have a
Google Business profile. And so this is
something where you can literally just Google the word Google Business profile and
set up your own business. And that is something
that takes an hour, 2 hours, and it will help
your business grow so much. I'm not saying it'll
make you a millionaire, but it will definitely
create more awareness, create more searchability and create more possibility that you will show up when somebody searches macaroni
necklaces in New Jersey. The other thing that's
really interesting about this transition
to going from Etsy to going to
your own website is that you might become a little bit more of a local business. And that's not to say
you'll get less business, but the searching of it all
might end up kind of causing more people to find more likely if they are around
you or if they're near you. And that's actually
exciting opportunity because then you
can kind of be a little bit more of a
part of the community. You can kind of,
like, reduce some of your shipping costs if
you're shipping things out, and you can become a little
bit more of a figure almost around your town or
your city or your state. You will still get searches
from other places, but so much search is so
localized that it's actually really interesting
because if you're a macaroni necklace person
and you were on Etsy, you would have been able to show up all around the world and you can still do that
on your own website and on social media
and all of that. But I personally find
that once you move to your own localized website and your own localized Google
profile and things like that, you might just show up more. It's not that you're going
to show up less globally, but you might show
up more locally. And that's actually, I think, a really good, fun,
exciting thing. The next thing we're going to
talk about is social media. I'm not talking about
building a following. I'm not talking about
posting seven times a day. That's not really
what I'm talking about in this specific section. I do believe in those things, but that's not what I'm
talking about in this. I think what's really
important is that you take that FAQ content
that you put on your website and you write really helpful descriptions
of different products. You write helpful descriptions of what it's like
to buy from you. You write really
helpful descriptions about customer journeys, customer success, reviews
that you've gotten, and how it makes you
feel Things like that are really helpful in order to be able to get people from outside of your website
to inside your website. That's probably the
best way to put it. We want to get people from
the outside on the Internet, where they're kind
of on the sidewalk, passing by, window shopping
on different websites. We want to get them to
come in to your website. And the way they do
that, I would say the Instagram page
is kind of like your window display
because they might search macaroni
necklaces on Instagram, just kind of thinking they
might be interested or they want to buy something
for their friend or their sister or their
niece or whatever. And ultimately, if you can make an Instagram page that's a great window display,
they will walk in. Think about it.
Actually, think about your Instagram page as a store. And not the cash register, you know, not the price
tags, none of that. But, what do you want people to feel when they come
into your store? Because you are a store, and it's really important
that people feel and connect to what your brand is and what you're
trying to offer them. To me, I would want people to feel like they are comfortable. Meaning, if it's hot outside, it's cool inside, or
if it's cool outside, it's nice and warm inside. I would want them
to feel like they can be themselves,
things like that, I would really
recommend thinking of that as you build
your Instagram page. And maybe you already
have an Instagram page, and I'm including
Tik Tok here, too. I'm also including, you know, maybe YouTube shorts
and things like that. It's important to post
content often to really boost the awareness of what
your brand is going to be. But I'm just saying before you
even start making content, think about the vibe. Think about what
is going to entice people to have fun and to feel excited about
being in your store, that's the window shopping. That's like if you're at
Macy's in New York City, when you walk past the window, it is the window that
makes you go in. You know, it's the
signs on the outside of the store that make you, like, open the
doors and walk in. Then your website is, like, the inside of the store,
if that makes sense. And so I really encourage you to think about
those details, think about the vibe, and think about your store feels like? What does the window feel like? How does it feel
to open the door? That's what your Instagram
page should feel like. Now, the reason I even bring up Instagram in the first
place is because a lot of AI search comes
from places like Instagram. I also want to say Facebook. You might be underestimating it because people are on Facebook. I know that everybody
says they're not. I know that everybody says
they don't go on Facebook, but depending on your market, and it could be young
people, could be old people, could be, you know, people
all over the world, it could be people
in your hometown. But I think people are actually
on Facebook more often, and I don't think people
post on Facebook a ton. And so if you can
really create some fun, engaging, really cool
content about your products, Facebook is actually a pretty good place for you
to be posting, not because you're going
to get a bunch of likes, not because you're
going to interact with people a bunch on Facebook. Really think of
as a portfolio of your products and
your experiences and your customers
and all of that, easier to think about social
media content because you're not really
aiming for, like, virality, necessarily. You're not really aiming
for over indexing on the views and the engagement
and stuff like that. The point here in this exact moment is to create
social media content that allows AI to scrub your page and find answers to questions that people might be
asking on Chachi PT. That's the real
reason, in this case, in this moment for this point that you would do
social media content. I would say if
you're going to go out on a limb and kind
of get out of Etsy, it's a non negotiable. I think you have to make
social media content. It doesn't have to
be commercials. It doesn't have to
be really clever. But I do think if you
can take a picture of you or a picture of somebody wearing your outfits or your necklaces or somebody using your products or whatever, just have a little photo shoot. Do a little video.
Social media content doesn't have to be that
profound these days. You can also just content. Like, take a video
for 10 seconds, even of somebody using your
products or even just like a video of your products or a video of you selling
your products or whatever, and just put text over it that answers some
of those questions. So you might literally take a video of somebody
wearing your necklace. It could be like two or three little clips and
put them together. Put text that says, People are always asking me
how much my necklaces cost. Funny enough, they're
actually $12-16. Literally, that's
a good piece of content because if somebody finds it, they can
be like, Oh, okay, I can afford 12 to $16
versus if they were on Etsy, they would have just seen the price or they could
filter by the price. But people are
searching on Chat GPT. They're searching on Google. They're not necessarily going to Etsy in the same way that they used to and typing in
just, you know, doll necklace. You know what I mean? And so it's really
important to have, I would say, a Facebook
page, an Instagram page. Tik Tok, definitely, but in
my personal humble opinion, it's a little harder to
connect and actually sell on TikTok unless you're doing TikTok shop. I'm just
going to be honest. I don't know a ton about
TikTok shop in this moment. I believe it's a little
bit of a pyramid scheme. I don't know if people are
making a ton of money. I would say go to more legit
route and host it yourself. I would totally imagine
that TikTok is taking a big portion of the money as well when they are
selling on TikTok. I do know that there's
a lot of experts out there talking
about live selling. If you're going to have
an Instagram page, if you're going to
have a Facebook page, I really do recommend trying going live and doing
a little bit of a QVC style commercial
for what selling. One way that you could
allow yourself to do that and then have content later that came
from it is go live, but film yourself
externally with a different camera and
then cut that into clips. Cut the best parts into
ten, 15, 22nd clips. Put that on your social media, put it on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, even LinkedIn sometimes depending on
what you're selling. That's a good way to just
kind of create content. Would recommend posting at least once every day and keeping
yourself top of mine. The other thing
about social media, and I'll say this from
personal experience is that you have to
get past any fear of, like, what are
people go to think? I know a lot of people in coaching in different scenarios and in different
parts of my life, where they want to
start an Etsy shop, essentially, like in secret. With Etsy, that kind
of works because you don't ever really have to tell people that you
have an Etsy shop. You don't have to because
of the search factor. But if you're going to be
trying to get people to come to your website and trying to get people to
buy from your website, you really do need to make
social media content, and you also need to have the Google business
profile and kind of you're going to be
online as this business. So you can do it undercover
and kind of have a name. Pen name and whatever. But I
do recommend finding a way, and this is a whole
different course, but finding a way to get
past a fear of judgment, a fear that somebody might think you're taking
yourself seriously, running your own website. There's a little
bit more ownership in running your own website, and I think it requires you
to really stand behind it. And I would really
encourage you. If you're somebody who's
worried, Oh, my gosh, my mom might see
it, somebody from high school might see it,
my brother might see it. So distant relative
might see it. I would really encourage you to think about why is
it that one person has so much power over how you find success
in your business. I would just think
about that and allow yourself to get past it, and it takes work, and there are plenty of other
courses around it. But that's a big piece. I think you have to
stand behind it. And with social media,
that's a big thing. You can't just kind of start a secret social
media necessarily. You can. Maybe that's
part of your brand. But I really recommend finding a way to be
proud of what you're selling and proud of what you're posting and just kind
of going for it. And the thing about it, I know that we all don't
want to be cringe. Nobody wants to be cringe. But the thing that's more cringy than cringe is not
taking action. And so you have to start
posting on social media. And really, the reason is because people might see
it and they might be like, Oh, yeah, doesn't he
have that business? Like, doesn't she have a
macaroni necklace business? And maybe next time I come up with an idea or
I have a party, maybe I'll have her come over and make macaroni necklaces. You know, like, having the networking is
really important. And then also the AI search. That's really the
big piece is, like, making sure you have that
Q&A style content on the caption and the video
of what you are posting. The other thing that I'll
say in terms of, like, the marketing of it all and kind of the awareness of it all, is that you have
to be the kind of person who talks
about your business. You have to be the kind of
person when you're at a party, when you're at lunch
with a friend, when you're in a new
course or a new class or a new workshop
or a new anything, you have to be willing to
bring up the fact that you are a business
owner and that you are somebody who just
gets it when it comes to being able to be online
and advertise your business, have business cards, you know, have a link to your website, ready to go on your
phone, things like that. Follow other people who are business owners so that they
follow you back, you know, go to fairs, go to events that have to do with business owners and
things like that. That's like a small
caveat, a small addition. To this whole point of being more outside
of your own website. The benefit the reason that Etsy is kind of expensive
is because they handle the search for
you and they are doing the advertising to get people
onto the Etsy website, and then you have a chance at competing for that attention, for that searchability and
those sales, essentially. You're going to
have to do more on the front end to be able to
get people to your website, but the benefit is that once they're on your website,
if they were on Etsy, they might 0.00 00000 1%
likely to buy from you. Once they're on your website, they might be one or 2%
likely to buy from you. It's actually worth it to get people to your website because then not only are they going
to be more likely to buy, but you're going to
pay less in fees, and you're going to have more
ownership over the process. I'll leave this section here because I think we've exhausted the topic of getting
outside of the website. The other thing I'll say
before I hop off and move to the conclusion is really collaborating with
people online. So that might be actually doing a collaboration between you and another creator
on social media. But it also might mean going and doing an event
with somebody. Like, Hey, I sell gloves
and she sells hats, and we're going to do
an event together to celebrate glove and hat day
or something like that. Like, really thinking
about how you can collaborate with people is going to really
raise your profile. And that is really, like, the big thing about
getting your own website and getting your own ownership
for your store, your shop, your business, is
that you're going to be constantly
focused on building your profile and raising your profile online
and in the world. And so if that's something
that excites you, if that's something
that makes you excited, you have to do this. I think this is a really
good opportunity for you. But if it's something
that you don't want to do, you're
never going to do it. So stay on Etsy, and
that's totally fine. They'll take a little bit
of a bigger percentage and you don't have to do all of that self
promotional work. Let's move on to the
next section and talk briefly about a
couple of other things, and then we'll go ahead
to the conclusion and we'll be done with
the course. Let's do it.
5. A Pep Talk For You: Last thing I want to
do in this course is really just give
you a pep talk. You know, the world
has changed so much in the last five years and when it comes to
things like inflation, when it comes to things like businesses and small businesses, nine to five, you know, having ideas, there's so
much that's saturated. There's so much
that's challenging. But I just want you
to know that there are ways that you can make
it happen and you can. You really can do
it. And the thing that I'm going to
leave you with before the conclusion of this course is that execution matters
more than the idea. You might have a
really great idea. You might be able to create a really great
product, and you should. And the product matters a lot. And that's part
of the execution. But what matters
more is consistency. What matters more is
showing up every day, maybe 1 hour, maybe 5 hours, maybe 12 hours, working
on your business, and allowing yourself
to go all in. I think that's really
important when you're going to be making this transition
from something like Etsy, which can feel a little bit
more like a side hustle. I can feel a little
bit more passive. And you are going to be
jumping into something like owning your own
website and owning your own business
and the processes and the procedures and
the policies and all that go into scaling your business and building it and growing it and owning it. And so I just want you to know that the tools exist,
the resources exist, and if you have the
drive and if you have the ability to spend
time and effort on it, you can absolutely do it.
I just want you to know. And I have done in
different ways, I have built
different businesses. I have gone after different
ideas, different projects, and I just really want
you to sit in the fact, know that you are able
to go out on your own, that you are able
to go out and do.
6. Next Steps & Wrapping Up : Alright, so we got to
the end of the course. How do you feel?
Do you feel good? Do you feel like you
have learned something? Do you feel like
this has just been a fun little conversation? That's kind of how I feel
when I do these courses, is that it just feels like here, you and me are talking, and we can discuss ideas and kind
of brainstorm things. Even though we're
not doing it live, we are able to kind of sit and write and
all of that stuff. So I want to encourage
you to follow my Skillshare page
because I have other side hustle success and small business
success courses. I talk a lot about social
media. I talk a lot about Etsy, but I'm kind of transitioning out of
Etsy a little bit. But I talk a lot
about e commerce. I talk about online, and
I would love to help you. And so if taking more of
my courses will help you, I would love to encourage
you to do that. The way you can do
that is follow, and you can also find my
social medias on the profile. So I'm currently on
Instagram at Ben Hawes HQ. I would really love if you DM me and tell me what you
thought about this course. Of course, you can
leave a review. You can leave a comment and tell me what you thought
about the course. But if you reach out personally, I would love to hear more about your business and just follow you and help you
out and whatever. I do also offer one on one advising sessions
around building, starting, growing, launching, different ideas, projects,
and things like that. So if that's something
that's interesting to you, pretty affordable when it's in my Lincoln Bio
over on Instagram. So anyway, I hope you got
something out of this course, and I hope you have the most
success for your business. I hope that you find ways to own your story,
own your journey. And I hope you have a great
day and even better week, and don't forget to live your
life in bold. Thank you.
Ben Hawes, Creative Project Consultant & Podcaster
