Transcripts
1. Introduction: Posting your first listing
online can be really scary. You may be nervous
that your photography needs to be really perfect
or that your listing, description or title
have to be just so, it could stop you from
making any progress at all. We're going to work
through all of those blocks and get going. I am Holly Rutt, the founder and
creative director of a handmade soap company called The Little
Flower Soap Co, selling on Etsy, Amazon
Handmade, and Shopify. Today's class is about
launching your product, getting started, and
getting unstuck. In my first year as an
e-commerce entrepreneur, I was worried that
people were going to laugh at me if I
shared my Etsy shop. But I pushed through that fear and posted things
anyway and they sold, which gave me a lot
more confidence. I structured this class around common blocks or stuck spots, places that trip people up and stop them before
they get started. In this class, we
will cover listing your first item if you haven't already, naming your business, designing your
branding, registering your business so you're
official and fulfilling orders. We're going to tackle each of those stuck spots
and push through. If this part of your
handmade journey, posting your listings for
sale and sharing them in the world makes you
anxious, take this class. The key to success
is just to do it. Do it badly the
first time and then go back and revise
it many times over. I hope you leave this class
having launched your shop, feeling confident
and ready to share. Now, let's get started.
2. Getting Unstuck: I talked to so many
other creatives who are just a little bit stuck when it comes to
starting their business. Either they think
they have to have a perfect logo to get started or they needed
to find their branding. They're not really
sure how to take the right product photo or
to write a description. There are so many places
along the process to just get sort of insecure
and then just stop. Let's dive into four immediate
ways to get unstuck. One common stuck point is
feeling like everything has been done before and
why should you do it over? This stuck point
is where you feel like your idea isn't
original enough. Someone is already doing it. Maybe you think they're
doing it so much better and it's stopping you from enjoying the process of making and enlisting
your item online. If you feel like
that, I completely understand I sell soap. If you search soap on Etsy, there are over one
million results. But I make this my way. I use my unique blend
of essential oils. I bring my favorite letter
press paper to the packaging, and I've selected
these fonts carefully. I've taken a light airy
photo of it and I've perfected the way I want the unboxing experience
to be for the customer. Even though there
are a million people already selling a
common item like soap, I'm still selling
it in a way that's unique to me and that adds
value for my customer. If you feel like the
product that you want to make an offer
has already been done, look at the most
successful person who's already selling
it on Etsy or Amazon Handmade and
think about how you can improve on the product
that they are offering. Can you make it a better
size, a different color? Can you offer a variation
that is gender neutral? How can you make this true to who you are and your
design aesthetic? Recreating it to be more of a fit for your
target customer. Another stuck spot can be
photographing your item. Let's not get too
precious about this. We need to just get it done. You could procrastinate
for months trying to get the perfect photo.
Instead, do this. Find a sunny, naturally lit
spot in your home or studio, maybe 18 to 24 " away
from that window. Set a box or a
small table and put a piece of white poster board or a sheet, whatever you have. Then take a shot
with your phone. A flat lay from above, a direct on photo, a photo of the back
of your product. Then if you can get a shot
of the product in motion. If it can tip over
or if it can spill, just put it as though
it were moving through the space and
take one last photo. Back in 2011 when I was first posting my
product photos on Etsy. They were pretty cringeworthy, but I posted them anyway. They were a little shadowy, they were a little bit blurry. The quality of my camera
wasn't that great, but I made sales and I started to learn from the
products that were selling, which photos attracted the
customer's eye and this helped inform how I could tweak and change and
improve on my photography. Having a cringe photo out there was also
really motivating. I got up the next day thinking, let me retake that photo. I would prefer for it
to be better and I just would make small
improvements over time. Learning what time of day was best to take a
photo in my house, which corner of
the house provided the best light and
things like that. Since then, I've improved my
white balance, my cropping, my lighting, incremental change, that made a small
difference over time. Even though this photo
wasn't my favorite, I did sell this product using this photo and I used
the profits from those sales to pay cash for a nicer camera that I could
use to get a better photo. After you've worked
on your photo, let's move on to picking which platform you're going
to list your product on. If you haven't already
listed your item, Etsy makes good sense. A common stuck point
is, isn't Etsy over? I would say no. Etsy has changed. But let
me give you an example. My business did a little over
$500,000 on Etsy in 2021. In 2022, my business only
did around $250,000 on Etsy. Which would you rather
have $250,000 or $0. In the last two
years, there has been a 40% increase in the people
actively selling on Etsy. There has been a 14% increase in the number of people
actively buying. This means there
are less buyers per seller if you're already
selling elsewhere, great, stick with that for now. A common stuck spot
is I'm not ready, It needs to be perfect. I would recommend that you
ship before you're ready. Excuses, like it's
not perfect yet. These are an example
of perfectionism and this kind of perfectionism kills hundreds of thousands of businesses before
they get started. The cure is to just list it. Don't worry about sharing
the link or showing it to everyone. Just
get it out there. The fastest way to success
is to do something, get it wrong, make a mistake, learn from it, and
then do it again. You have to get through
the uncomfortable parts of hating what you've
put out there and then redoing it again and again. Listing your item publicly
really speeds up this process. I think one of the
keys to success for me has been feeling fear
and pushing through that. Really the definition
of courage is feeling afraid and
doing it anyway. Every time I felt a
little bit of fear, I got addicted to that feeling of like
I'm afraid of this, but I'm going to do it anyway. That's what I did and it worked,
and it can work for you. Go make your product,
take a photo of it and list it on Etsy or any
of the other platforms. In order to list
your item on Etsy, you are going to have to
choose a business name. But don't get stuck here. We're going to work on
that in the next lesson.
3. Naming Your Business : Naming a business is a part
where people get stuck. A lot of people are uncertain whether they should
name their business for their great grandfather or
their first dog and they can just get hung up because it feels like a huge decision. What if this becomes
the next Walmart or what if this becomes
the next Crate and Barrel? You want to pick a name that
resonates with you that feels maybe nostalgic or meaningful and it can just
stop you in your tracks. My first business was as a
wedding floral designer, and I started it with a friend. We had a long list of names
and we could not agree. Finally, we just passed the
list around the local pub and asked people to put a star next to the name that
they liked best. It came back Sweet Pea Floral
Design and we thought, let's get some
business cards made. We could not have
imagined that a lot of the moms and dads of
our bride would say, we knew you were the
florist for us because sweet pea is what we called
her when she was little. It was just kind of serendipity. We did not spend too
much time or put too much pressure
on what the name should be, and it
worked out fine. I think it can be really
tempting to name your business after an ancestor
or your first dog, or the street that
you grew up on. But you're going to want to
give your business a name for e-commerce purposes
that is relevant a little bit to what you sell
and also a little bit to what your customer might
be searching for when you want them to
discover your unique item. For example, if
you have a company that sells bourbon coasters, you might be tempted to
name your business after your two great
grandfathers who love to drink bourbon. Jim and John. Jim and John Co. But you're more likely to be
found and therefore make a sale if you
name your business something like Bourbon
Outfitter Company. Let's work together
to brainstorm some names for your business. You want to avoid being too specific with
your business name. In the example we gave before,
Bourbon Barrel Outfitters, this leaves you open
to starting to make other products in your line
besides coasters later. If you were to name your company BourbonCoasters.com
then you're kind of limited in what
you can offer, or you might be creating
confusion for your customer. So a broad, more
inclusive name is better. As you're trying to decide
what would make a good name, you want to consider search
engine optimization. One way to see what a lot of customers might be searching
for related to your item, is to open a private browsing
window and go to Etsy.com. Then using the search bar, start typing in what
you make, in this case, bourbon and then right away you're going to
start to see a dropdown. This is Etsy's search, guessing what you
might be searching for based on the frequency with which other
people have searched. A lot of people are
looking for bourbon gifts, bourbon barrel, bourbon glasses. You might consider
using these words in your business name
to help be found. You might say bourbon barrel
gifts as your business name. For example, here you
can check to see if it's already taken and it's not. Some naming no nos, I, for example, used the
Little flour soap company. And there are times
that I regret that half of what
I sell is geared towards men like beard oil
or a more masculine soap, like a Woodsman type soap. Seeing the little flower soap co on a beard oil does not exactly inspire visions of
lumberjacks, for example. I'm doing okay, but I sometimes wish I had picked a more
gender neutral business name. Another example of
a business naming no no is including a locale. Say Nashville Soap
Company, for example. When I see that name
and I'm from Nashville, I think, what is this? This might be for me, but
if I see Nashville Soap Co, and I'm from Detroit, I think, this might not be for
me and I move on. Beyond your brand name, you can optimize your listing titles, tags, and descriptions using
voice of customer data. Your product title should
be clear and descriptive, but also search
engine optimize for a few key search terms you think a customer might type
into the search bar. When searching for a
product like yours, remember that a lot of customers don't really know
what they want to buy. They may be searching for a gift for a friend and they may type something in as broad as gift
for woman or gift for man. Voice of customer data
is literally that, the voice of your customer. Maybe they've purchased
your item and left a review or five
different people have purchased the
item and they all said a similar thing
in their review. Maybe you're noticing a trend
that a lot of reviews say, this smells amazing or
this shipped really fast, or this left my skin soft, that's the customer's voice. And you can start building that into your
product descriptions. Now your description can say, smells amazing and leaves
your skin so soft. In order to get that
precious BOC data, you need to list your
product for sale so it can start selling
and getting reviews. Aren't you glad you
already did that? Okay, now it's time to
name that business. Make a list of possible
business names and start sharing it around. Even share it in the
project gallery. Now that we have
our business name, let's move on to branding.
4. Branding: When you have a
handmade business, you need to focus
on your branding, the colors you will use on
your marketing materials, the fonts you will use
on your packaging, any textures or how your photos will look so that when you're photographing multiple items, everything in your shop
looks completely cohesive, like it belongs together
in a collection. Having consistency in
your branding will help your brand come across
as more professional. Also, your target
customer may find one item from you that they
really love and then see, oh, wow, they have all these other things that are similar. I want
to try those too. Consistency really builds trust: you appear very established. If you think of your
favorite brands, some website that you
visit all the time, for me, Magnolia, for example. When you go to their website, everything looks like it belongs in the same
home together. When you think about shopping the website of your
favorite brand, do you usually have one item
in your card or you may be buying five things because they're selling you a lifestyle. I want your branding to
be consistent so that people will want to buy not
just one thing that you make, but lots of different
things from you. Once you've defined some fonts, some colors, some textures, what your photo shoot
style might be, this makes it really
easy to move forward. The next time you need a
new marketing material or you have to do a new
product photo shoot, it should be easy-peasy, you know exactly what
you're doing already. You don't have to search
around and pick new things. They're there and
ready for you to use. As you grow your product line
adding more and more items, you want to make sure
that they look similar enough that they belong on
a shelf next to each other. It should be obvious to
a customer when they walk into a gift shop
that stocks your line, that these products are
all from the same maker. To get inspired about what
your branding could be, pick out your favorite
brands that you shop with, go to their websites, and look at the fonts they've used, the colors they've used. You're not going to replicate these exact fonts and colors. I just want you to see how they've made intentional choices and used cohesiveness throughout their website and all
of their branding. You may feel it is
too limiting to pick the only fonts are the only
colors you will ever use, but don't let this be
a stuck spot for you. You can rebrand in a year or two, if that's
what feels right. Say you're on a
shoestring budget or you're trying to
bootstrap your business. I don't want you to get stuck feeling like
you need to hire a fancy designer to create a logo for you or
have a custom font. Go into Canva and design a
logo for yourself right now. Get it out there and
keep moving forward. Then in a year or two, if you've made
some money and you aren't happy with the logo
that you designed yourself, it's okay to rebrand and maybe bring in some
professional design help. When defining your branding, it helps to have a very
specific customer in mind. If you're not sure who your
target customer is yet, imagine that this is
probably yourself, maybe a little older
and with more money. I like to think of my
target customer as a version of me that
is so glamorous that she's cooking dinner
while drinking a bottle of wine and
she lights one of my candles with one of the
decorative match boxes that I designed that could sit out
on her elegant counter, or she takes a
bath once or twice a week and she's always using my bath salts or
my bath bombs in her luxurious,
relaxed lifestyle. Really, money is not
a concern for her, so she can afford to
have all of the things I make to create a
home spa for herself. I call her style Earthy Audrey. It's elegant and sophisticated, meets woodsy and earthy. Now let's talk about defining
your branding elements. Fonts are a really important
element of your branding. A Western font can
communicate that a product is a little
more masculine, while a scripty font
might communicate that it is more feminine
or more upscale. A bubbly font might
communicate that it is playful or youthful. Choose one font that you love that communicates
what you want it to about your product and then pick another one that is easy
to read and really clean. This is the font you're
going to use to communicate important details like
the size or weight, or how to use your item. Picking a few colors that are at the core of your branding
is really important. What you don't want is
to be all over the place maybe with a yellow photo
backdrop for this product, and a bright pink one for that, and then a brown one for this, or maybe there's twigs
in the back of that. You just want to pick
one or two colors that will appear in all of your photos so that when
someone is scrolling through your Etsy shop
or your Amazon Handmade, everything is consistent
and easy to look at. You don't want to make the
customer work too hard to understand how these
things go together. Initially, when I was
choosing my branding colors, I just picked the
earthy craft color of my gift box and then the navy color of the ribbon I was
putting on each gift, but over time, I realized that photos of my products that
had more color in them, like a rainbow colored
set of bath bombs, or a beautiful spa set with multiple colored items in it got more attention
from the customer. I went back and redefined my branding colors using
the Eyedropper tool in Canva to select colors that were in the product photos that were getting
the most attention. This gave me a
collection of colors I could use for my
email newsletters and any of my marketing
materials that were a little more colorful but still
felt true to my brand. Next, let's define
your brand voice. Your brand voice will be
the tone that you take when speaking to your customer in the copy that you write. For example, when I'm writing
my product descriptions, I can choose to be
lighthearted or serious, I can choose to be really
friendly and folksy or proper. These days, if I ask AI to
help me write a blog post, I always specifically
request that it use the tone of a Midwestern woman talking lightheartedly
with her friends. Of course, if you do choose to ask AI to help you with
a product description, be prepared to edit heavily. This is my brand
kit within Canva. If you can afford to
do a paid Canva plan, you can create a brand kit like this one with logos, colors, and fonts that are
quickly available for you when you are
designing your packaging, marketing materials,
your e-newsletter. If you don't have
Canva, that's okay. I will be sure to
include some tools for finding your fonts and colors
in the class resources. Now that we've talked
about branding, let's move on to going official.
5. Going Official: If you mean business and making profit is
part of your plan, you need to register
your business with the state that
you are in and the federal government
so that you can pay taxes on those profits. It's also really great though, because once you have
registered your business and received your resale
tax ID number, you will be able
to use this number to make wholesale purchases for your supplies and
ingredients and write those things off
of your taxable income. You can even write off things
like your printer paper, purchase of a new
camera or a computer. Sometimes you can write
off a percentage of your electric bill if you're
working from your home. It's great to have a
resale tax ID number so that you are official. Almost everyone can get stuck when they hear the
words government form. But don't stress, this
is actually really easy. We can walk you through
these steps 1, 2, 3. First, you are going
to need to decide on a legal structure
for your business. We are linking a quiz
in the resources for this class that you can take to help determine
the best structure. I chose LLC for my
business because a limited liability corporation protects me if I
were to be sued. If I were to be
sued and they won, they could take from me
my business resources like maybe my delivery van
or some of my products, but they cannot take
my personal assets like my home or my retirement. Next, you're going to
file with your state for your articles
of incorporation. In different states,
this may be known by different names such as
articles of organization, certificate of organization,
or certificate of formation. A quick Google search
for articles of incorporation and your
state name should pull up a page where you can download
and complete a form that you either mail in or
hopefully submit online. Once you receive your
articles of incorporation, you're ready to apply for your EIN number or Employer Identification
Number with the IRS. Having your EIN number is
actually awesome because you can use this to open wholesale accounts
with your suppliers, often saving 50% off of the supplies that you were going to have
to purchase anyway. Your EIN number also
makes it possible to hire and pay an
employee and it makes it possible
for you to open a business bank account and
a business credit card. It is so important to have your personal and business
finances separate. This is going to make it
possible for you to write-off purchases you used to make after you had
already paid taxes, and it's also going to make
it possible for you to file your taxes very simply
at the end of the year. Having a business bank account through which all
of your supplies, and ingredients, and
expenses purchase flow, and all of your income and
sales flow makes it quick and easy to figure out how much profit you've made and how much taxes
you need to pay. Let's talk about what
is a tax write-off. Does a tax write-off mean that you get
something for free? No. A tax write-off is something that you need
to run your business. Consequently, the cost of that
item offsets your profits. For example, if you sold $100,000 in products
this year and you did not save your receipts and enter those when
filing your taxes, you would need to pay taxes
on $100,000 in profits. But if instead you kept track by using a
business bank account, you can now write-off $10,000
that you spent on paper, and ink, and printers. You can write off $10,000 you
spent on camera equipment, $10,000 on yarn and supplies. Another $10,000 on
paying employees. Before you know it, you
only profited $50,000. Now you're in a whole
different tax bracket because your profits are lower, your tax bracket is lower. You're paying 12% on
your $50,000 or six grand instead of the $20,000 you were going to have
to pay in taxes before. Keeping track of all of your
income and sales through a business bank
account will help reduce the amount of
taxable income you have. From now on, anything
that you purchase for your business should be on your business credit card or
your business debit card. This is the account
you should connect to your Etsy and other platforms so that all sales and profits go directly into the
business bank account. Opening a business bank account is a powerful mental step. You can now see really clearly whether you've made
money and how much. Going official is
the right thing to do when you're serious
about having a business. But once you register, you are going to be
expected to file, even if you did
not turn a profit. If you're making
a lot of profit, it is possible that
you will need to pay estimated quarterly
income tax payments. Start where you are at. If you have not
filed your articles of organization,
file them today. If you have your articles
of incorporation, but you haven't gotten
your EIN, do that. If you have your EIN but no business bank account or business credit
card, start there. Let's go. Now that
we've gone official, let's move on to how
to fulfill orders.
6. Fulfilling Orders: This lesson is all about
how to package and ship your orders economically
and efficiently. I listed my first bars
of soap on Etsy in 2011, and right away within
the first few weeks, I made a couple sales,
which was so exciting. Then I realized how do
I ship this beautiful, delicate bar of soap. I had no idea what I was doing. I started saving my
packaging materials from my random Amazon orders
and super random boxes, and I would walk them over to the post office and have
to buy tape when I got there and purchase
my shipping label at retail costs right at the counter with
the postal carrier grimacing at me as I took
up too much of her time. Since then, I have learned much better way to do it and I want to share
that with you now. Just like you can use your
EIN number to register for a wholesale account and buy your supplies and ingredients
at a wholesale price, you can also buy boxes and tape, and bubble mailers and bubble
wrap at a wholesale price. I eventually found mine at
a website called uline.com, but there are a lot
of sources out there. As business started
to grow, before long, we were receiving 30, 40, even 50 orders a day. I was taking now my
beautifully packaged, already ready-to-go boxes into the post office and getting more dirty looks from
the carrier behind the counter when they told me
you can't bring those here, you need to have
those picked up. Soon, I learned that you can
schedule a pick-up and have the post office come to you and then provide them
with a scan sheet, one barcode that they can scan, that checks in all 50
packages at one time. This made them much happier and we've had a good
relationship ever since. Figuring out what to charge for shipping can be a
real sticking spot. In fact, I have gotten it
wrong from time to time. But selling on Etsy is really great because
they will let you enter the weight and size of each of your items and
then they will calculate, based on your origin zip code, exactly how much the
shipping label is going to cost and charge your
customer accordingly. Then they will sell you
a shipping label for that same price so you
break perfectly even, your customer does not overpay, and you do not accidentally
lose money on the sale. That's ideal. If you are selling somewhere
where that's not possible, you're going to have to do
some of the math yourself. You might have to go
onto the USPS website and look at their rate chart for all of the
different zones in the country like Zones 1, 2, and 3 which are more
on the East Coast, or 9 and 10 which are
more on the West Coast, and see what's the highest price you should expect to pay, what's the lowest, and
what's in the middle, and where do people
buy from me more? You might need to
choose a number somewhere in the middle
so that it's palatable. Or if you can afford to build
that cost into the price of your product for the highest price shipping
that you'll ever pay. If you're selling something
more on the expensive side, it might be easy to build this cost into the
price of your product. If you're selling
something small, like a lip balm
like I'm selling, you might be surprised. I have to charge $4.50
to ship a lip balm. I would myself never
pay $10 for a lip balm, including the shipping, but
customers do it all the time. In fact, last year, we had a
lip balm go totally viral, selling over 30,000 units, and every single one
of those people paid $10 including the shipping. There is some pressure in the marketplace to
offer free shipping or free shipping on orders over a certain dollar
amount like $35. I don't think that
this is necessary. If you look at some
of the sellers that are doing the
most business on Etsy, for example, many of them
are still charging shipping. Think about the
last time you found an amazing handmade item that you knew you
wanted to purchase. Maybe you got to your car and saw that they were
charging shipping. In that moment, did you think, never mind, I'm not buying it? Or were you like, you know
what, it's still worth it, I understand they have
to pay for shipping, I'm still going
to buy it anyway. I think that handmade
artisan products, like what we're offering, are absolutely worth
a little bit more, and the customer
will understand. Depending on what you sell, you may have to put a
lot of thought into how you are packaging so
that it arrives safe. You may even need to do
some trial and error, packaging the item
and sending it to yourself to see if
it arrives damaged. Your customers will
let you know if something arrives
leaking or broken, and that's an opportunity
for a five-star review. Just immediately ship them
another one if you can, or do whatever it takes to make it right for that customer. It might be a good idea to set up a shipping central
in your home. This is a place
that you will stock things like cardboard boxes, bubble mailers, bubble wrap,
actual shipping labels. If you're using a printer, you will need paper and toner, things of that nature,
all in this one spot. You might include
marketing materials like enclosure cards
that encourage the customer to make
their next purchase on your website or offer them a discount code on
their next purchase. If you sell on
multiple channels, using a shipping software
like ShipStation can be a great way to streamline your process each morning. Shipping softwares
like ShipStation are a centralized
location where you can buy the postage for all of your orders from multiple
e-commerce channels. For example, I sell on Etsy, Amazon Handmade Shopify, and each morning when I wake up, I can see a synopsis of
everything I've sold the previous day that needs
to ship out all in one place. I can create batches of
shipping labels there and one scan sheet for my
postal carrier to scan. You're ready for shipping
software when you need to increase efficiency
for your business, but you're not
ready to hire yet, or you're selling on
multiple channels, and you need to get a snapshot of everything
in one place.
7. Final Thoughts: Wow, you did so
much in this class. You named your business, worked on your branding, went official, and prepared
your packing station. Wherever you are
in this process, please share a photo of it in the project gallery, I
would love to see it. I'm so excited to see your businesses get
out there. Goodbye.
Holly Rutt, Founder The Little Flower Soap Co
