I hope you heal well 🙏🏼

Hi! Thank you so much! That is very kind! I will keep you in my prayers and I hope that you are feeling better and that your shop is very successful! This will be an incredible year!

Wishing you a full, swift and easier recovery! All the best with your business too

Thank you so much for the loving words. I appreciate you. ❤

How Bizarre and such a bummer. I know your pain! Very hard to lose a business you had been building for years overnight. I will say that this actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me so I really hope it turns out the same for you too. Good luck! :)

Awe! Thanks so much for all the wonderful information you gave me. I could not have done it without your help! Truly :)

OHHHHH I will never go anywhere near that again. I search every design I make on USTPO. Lesson learned there!

Well Disney just lost the rights on Mickey copyright. It is expired and now is public domain ❤

@@user-gr1gb8mz7d😮😮😮

@@user-gr1gb8mz7d Not all Mickey -- just steamboat willie mickey

No, they only lost the right to Steamboat Willy. Here is the actual statement. In January of 2024, the copyright officially expires to Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse as they appear in Steamboat Willie (1928), created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. In a statement to The Associated Press, a Disney representative emphasized that artists cannot freely use more modern depictions of the famous Mouse.@@user-gr1gb8mz7d

Thank you so much! I appreciate it :)

Hi!! Thanks so much! I actually was not able to gain many sales through social media like I hoped. I did try in the beginning but I had such a new account and small following that I could not get any traction. I posted a few times but I just didn't have the results I needed. Once my sales took off after I added all my personalized items I just abandoned social media. I really didn't have the time I needed to try to grow a following. I tried to post a few when Etsy started their Share & Save but I didn't get much engagement and I was too busy to keep trying so I just quit and have still not gone back to social media. I do plan to maybe next year when everything settles down because I do think social media can be a great tool but I wasn't able to use it here. I think the key to my success was the personalized items in the niche I was selling in. :)

​@@AprilD85Thanks for clarifying this for us sellers!

@@AprilD85 Thanks

@@AprilD85I needed to read that. Thanks for sharing with us!

of course! :) @@KC-ed1dj

I am the same! I really enjoy the designing but I hate the mockup and listing part lol. I do like the money though so I keep at it lol! It does get much easier and much quicker though as you go and learn all the tricks and shortcuts. Lots of video's on listing shortcuts out there. I hope to do an update for Q4. I am excited to see how it goes. I will talk to Stephen about this :)

100% April is the perfect example that it is never to late to start and hard work pays off. April should have her first 6-figure month this Q4 :-)

she has been in the game before this, just a little different, that should be made known in the title.

Hi! If by "the game" you mean retail then yes. I have worked in retail for about 15 years so I am sure some of the knowledge I gained was helpful to me. This is probably why POD immediately peaked my interest when I learned about it 6 months ago. However, selling on ETSY and selling POD is very different from what I have ever done. I have watched countless hours of videos on ETSY & POD and I still watch them every night when I put my baby to bed because I am still learning. This was all very new to me and I worked very hard to learn everything I could very quickly :) @@manifestmyreality2025

@@AprilD85 Dear April, that is what i have to learn, how did you learn all the tricks and shortcuts on listings?

I owe 100% of my success to selling personalized products on Etsy.

@@HelloCustom I uploaded my first personalized listing yesterday because of this video! I’ll definitely be getting your software too. That makes it much less daunting!

Same..I have zero personalized items bc I don't even know how to do that. I'm exactly a year in and only done 32k in revenue, so low compared to hers 😢. This is my sign to add personalized items.

@@blissessentials524 We got this! I'm setting that as my goal now and going down a youtube tutorial rabbit hole.

yayyy!! You will not regret doing personalization! @@alibarnes1136

I had a friend of mine start just recently with personalized products and she is currently doing around 5-10 sales a day. Are you doing personalized?

OMG! This is definitely my favorite comment! I'm not sure it is true but I'll take it! Thank you so much! :)

Yes! April takes "nap time hustle" to the next level!

😂😂 Nap time is prime listing time for me over here! @@HelloCustom

100% agreed! I was very naive but that mistake cost me. I am actually glad it happened now but I learned a big lesson that day. I actually run everything through USPTO now because it is kind of crazy what all is copyrighted and trademarked!

how do you check whether a keyword is trademarked? If you're using it for a t shirt do you check it on uspto for use on t shirts?

@jonathanwilliams3846 yes you can do that. Or you can even try googling 'is xxxx trademarked'.

Thank you! I actually kind of design all over the place but when I find something that is working I double down on it. Put it on other products. Make other variations of it if you can. I do keyword research but mainly for my SEO when I already know what I am making. I like to use Etsy to search. I just look around. What is best selling? What is in 20+ carts? What is on fire? Once I see something coming up a few times then I know it is a good one. So then I think...how can I make this better? What other popular niche could I combine this with and double down. Also and most importantly....can I personalize it? Ryan hogue does some good videos on current trending niches that I like also. Also...I think ads are very important so look into that as well. Cassiy and Shawna have great videos on how to run ads.

Thank you!! Starting may be the hardest part lol! Good luck!

Do it!! You will not regret it! Be consistent though and really go for it.

Do it! Blankets are a great seller if they are personalized.

Thank you so much! :)

@@AprilD85wow April! This is amazing. I’ve been slacking off with Etsy but your story completely boosted my motivation. How many listings do you have posted now?

Thank you so much!! Don't slack...I think consistency is also key and I have a theory that Etsy rewards you for consistency (may or may not be true lol). I now have over 1k listing. I started seeing consistent sales around 300 I would say. @@marikavernon7332

Hey! It can be difficult but there are some good tips and tricks on Cassiy Johnsons channel and Simply Shawnas Channel about scalable designs and creating templates for mockups so you can make them quickly. Once you get going you can really become quite fast at it. I will say though I have been working very early to very late for the last 5 months. I try to make new listings every night after my kids go to sleep so I work on them about 9pm to midnight every night. I do not plan on doing this forever but I have to in the "building" phase of my business. I am tired now lol but worth it later :)

I agree with April that listing templates will be your best friend! Once I create my templates (which I have a video for) I can consistently launch 10 listings a day.

@@AprilD85 dear April, you are a true inspiration, yes Cassiy and Stephen and Jesse giving me a lot of inspiration but what I did not ever cracked is how to list even 10 listings a day. Could you make maybe a video on this on what is the process you really do to realize this?

Printify! :)

I subscribed to April's KZfaq channel but it only had 19 subscribers and no content. So, I subscribed to this channel. :-)

Agreed! I just started building mine with @helloeverbee

Thank you so much! So right now it is more than normal lol because Q4 has ramped up and it is getting a bit crazy. I also do not have all of my designs on Hello Custom yet so I am still doing several manually and this takes time. However, On a normal day with the use of Hello Custom I should only be spending about and hour a day going through my approval cue for my personalized orders and of course the other orders fulfill themselves. Truly, once every personalized item is on Hello Custom my goal is to work about 3-4 hours a day. This includes listing, customer service and personalization. Right now though, I am so new and I did not have any listings going into Q4, I am working morning to night. Without Hello Custom I would not be able to keep up with my orders.

Hi! Awe, I am sorry you are having a rough start. Are you doing personalization? And also doing research on what is most popular and currently trending? My best advice it to find items that are 20+ in carts....find a way to make it better or combine it with another popular design or niche (DO NOT COPY) and most important.....PERSONALIZE IT. Also, watch all the videos out there. I suggest watching Stephen's million dollar challenge and set up your listings the way he says and scrape stores for best selling designs and styles. I hope your store takes off soon!

Hi!!! I was averaging about 300 a month BUT yes I did put the same design on different products. AND I duplicated designs that I felt like would do really well and changed the SEO to give the double the chance!

@@AprilD85 Thank you 🙏🏿

Yes. Allowing the buyer to choose things like babe, color, photo, etc. :)

Hey Erin! Thanks so much! It is kind of a slow start until you find a rhythm. The beginning was very hard for me as I kept getting overwhelmed. Just keep going. I would say make sure that you are designing things that are being searched for. Find things in 20+ carts and design in that niche or take that design and find a way to make it better or add more value to it so that it is different and better. I also really love scalable designs. Shawna does a lot of videos about this. I did find that creating mockup templates inside canva helped me to create my mockups faster. Truly though. Once you really get going you get better at it and faster. I would say just be consistent if nothing else. Sometimes I put my kids to bed and I am so exhausted but Im like no...I will list two items before I go to bed. It's exhausting at first but it pays off in the end and next year I will not have to work as hard. Good luck!!

April, Thank you for the great information! It will help a lot.

@@AprilD85 Thanks so much for your reply, I really appreciate it. Great advice, I'm not super across the ways to do good product research for in demand items yet - I have Everbee so am working out how to use that and have used the method to create a master list that was shown in the POD Million Dollar challenge, but I did it before Halloween so I need to redo it so its more relevant to Xmas I think. Thanks again!

Hi April! Thank you for such a great story and motivation! Would you mind to share how did you learn to make designs with Canva. I feel almost overwhelmed from watching different videos on KZfaq about the process of making the design with Canva. Thank you so much for your help!! Best regards, Olia

@@AprilD85Hi did you continue with children’s products since you had experience there? I often find the kids POD products to be overpriced and low in stock.

Yes, Cassiy's channel and content is amazing!

@@HelloCustom I'm thinking of starting a YT channel to document my progress in 2024 using her course. Will see how it goes!

Yes! Cassiy is where I started. I actually have not done her course yet but I bet it is worth it! Watch Stephens Million Dollar Challenge also. I know he couldn't finish with it but you get everything you need in the first 6 videos! :)

I'm going through it again@@AprilD85 but I did watch the videos the past few days. Interesting! So you basically didn't just do shirts but perhaps a few different products too?

@@AprilD85 how are you handling orders if they are multiple? For example, have you had a HC order along with a non-HC order? My understanding is the orders are canceled to go to HC to get sent back to Printify. That's the one aspect I don't understand if I run into this issue. Thanks!

Hi! Thank you! So for the easiest part of the question lol No, I do not offer free shipping. I hide some of my profit in shipping and charge $6.99. I learned this from Stephen's Million Dollar Challenge. As far as ads, Yes! I think ads have contributed largely to my success. However, I think you only want to use ads to add fuel to the fire and I think the fire was started with personalization. Once I started consistent sales around 10-15 a day I set my ad spend at $100 a day and noticed an immediate increase in sales the next day. I left them at $100 a day for the first few months but as my sales started to increase and ad spend was being maxed out early I increased them to $200 and then eventually to $300.. Ads were a challenge for me to understand initially but Stephen has a some great videos talking about running ads. Cassiy has some great videos explaining when you should start running ads. Shawna has one of my favorites that teaches you how to turn off irrelevant keywords that are wasting your ad spend! This made a big difference for me. I also really like Hannah Gardners videos on ads talking about how Etsy is a business and they like ad spend basically. She also has a good one talking about ROAS. Good news is, since it is pay per click, if no one likes your designs...you have nothing to worry about lol. If people do like the designs though then you are putting them where they can see them easier when they may not have ever seen them at all. I am no expert though so I do suggest watching their videos. :) Hope that helps.

Thank you for the great information!

Hey Jeff! I ran a break even strategy most of my first big month because I saw it in one of Stephen's videos but I am around 28-30% profit on my items. I do run Etsy ads too though. Net profit is very good though ;)

​@@AprilD85you mean you had the prices low enough to just break even to gain traction and up the algorithm, and then you increased the price after that?

That is very sweet and kind but I did not have an existing customer base that I used for my Etsy store. I just started from scratch and still do not use social media or access my old customer base. I am in a completely different niche so it would be weird for me to even try to use my old customer base. Also, they did not opt into emails from my Etsy store (completely different business) so I was afraid to even try to use my old customer base because I did not know if I could.

@@AprilD85 sorry about that. I hope I did not offend. It’s amazing what you’ve done!

@@kurtg9684 oh no! Your comment was very kind actually! One of my favorites ☺️

Hi!!! Thanks! You should start personalizing! I highly recommend. I wish I could share my shop to help motivate but if you read down in the comments I have explained why this is very, very bad for my business and I cannot do that. You can do it though! I recommend watching Stephen's Million Dollar Challenge for motivation!

Thanks for your reply, I will deep dive in the video@@AprilD85

I encouraged April to keep her shop secret to protect her products, niches, and designs. If you go to our channel and watch episodes 1-6, you will see the same product research, market research, seo, product launch, etc strategies that April used to find this success. You can do it too!

Hi Sarah! Thanks so much! I am glad that your store is doing well! It is very difficult doing it from home so I do understand. I actually have my littlest in school from 9-1 each day and then she naps from about 2-3pm each day so I am able to get quite a few hours work in before I get all of my kids at 3 each day. However, in order to do as much as I have done in such a short period of time I really had to buckle down and work every hour I had. It can be hard working from home as no one really holds you accountable and it can be so easy to stop and do other things. I had to set goals each day and make sure that I did my best to get them done. I will say that some days I was setting unattainable goals and that became very frustrating for me. I would be like ok...today I will make 50 listings. That was silly. I learned if I set smaller goals of like 5 listings I was able to stay focused better and then often I would surpass these smaller goals. Also, make sure that you are using the time that you do have to make listings that will sell. Do the research. Our time is precious so we need to make sure we are using it the best we can. As Stephen says...it takes just as much time to make a design that won't sell as it does to make a design that will sell. I like to find designs that have 20+ in the cart and figure out how I can make that design better or combine it with another best selling design or niche and then of course personalize it. The personalization was key for me. That, Combined with the research and the knowledge I gained from other POD sellers and of course some really hard work. I am currently up still until about 1am every night building my new business. I do not plan to work THIS hard forever but this is my first Q4 so I am very busy in the building phase. I went into Q4 with no holiday listings and a goal of 300 listings. I did hit that goal and it is going well for me as a result. It was not without a little sweat and tears though lol. In the beginning I actually remember crying to my husband while working so hard to build my store so quickly. I was working probably 15 hour days and praying it would work. I enjoy staying home with my kids so this was kind of my last chance to figure something new out. I knew that I had to give it everything. I gained all the information I could from every seller willing to give me any information. Stephen, Cassiy, Shawna, Heather, Hannah, Ryan, CU Online....if they are on here spilling secrets I was listening. My littlest was one at the time and it would take me at least an hour to rock her to sleep at night and I would watch videos the entire time. I gained so much knowledge and value from these videos that I was able to create a store with proven tactics that were working for other POD sellers. I still believe personalization was the strongest factor but it was not the only factor. It was the combination of doing personalization with proven research and conversion tactics from other successful sellers that really catapulted me quickly into success. I hope this helps some and I hope that your store is very successful in the future! Best of luck and Happy Holidays :)

Hi @@AprilD85 , thank you so much for your thoughtful response! Especially during the midst of busy Q4! I really appreciate hearing the practical side of things because that's what I'm always trying to manage/structure better to work most efficiently. Love your determination and grit - thank you for your encouragement!!

Do both!!! Do it all!! :)

I owe 100% of my success to selling personalized products on Etsy. With tools like HelloCustom that can automate it now, it has never been easier.

@@HelloCustom wait do you own hello customs??😱 I just learned about it few days ago from ryan hogue.

@@HelloCustom i might like to try personalized items, but do you need to post a lot of listing for personalized products?

I learned how as a complete beginner from Stephen's Million Dollar Challenge and watching Cassiy Johnsons videos.

Myshopofy store ?

exactly :)

I am actually selling in several niches and categories. I will say that I started in some pretty saturated niches as well. The beauty of personalization is that with a good personalized design, even in a saturated niche, you can still stand out.

@@AprilD85 Thank you!

@@AprilD85 are you selling for various items? I watched this in the middle of the night, but I can't recall if you mentioned selling only shirts, or other items. Either way, this is super interesting as I've been scared to do personalization thinking it would take up too much of my time. But I am curious about starting this for my new shop. Especially since it appears one can scale quickly. Thanks!

Prinitify

@@AprilD85 ..thanks. that is all?

@@sweetbeep Currently just Printify, but they have a huge library of products you can sell.

@@HelloCustom ..their quality is hit or miss unfortunately.

DO IT!!!! Cassiy has a really good video I watched on personalization and then Stephen has some videos showing how to set them up with Hello Custom so you aren't having to do any extra work!

@@AprilD85What is "Hello Custom"?

I do make my own designs. I am not sure on wether or not you have to though.

I think the personalization is how I generate so much traction. Personalized products stand out from the rest. Stephen has lots of videos on how to personalize products.

Hi!!! I did answer these in detail in some previous comments :)

So before Hello Custom I was personalizing about 3-4 hours in the morning and 2-3 more hours in the evening. Sometimes more. With Hello Custom now I may spend 2-3 hours total and that’s only because not all my items can be made with Hello Custom yet. I’ve got about 50% going through Hello Custom right now. My goal is to have them all on there and spend maybe an hour a day approving them and then I’m done. The personalization is time consuming. Hello Custom saved me 😅

You can use a tool like HelloCustom to automate the personalization.

Scams R Us.

Hey Jonathan! Pretty much none and thank goodness because I hated trying to chase followers and engagement on social media! I did answered this in detail in one of the comments already also :)

I have not experienced this. Are you designing in Canva? I do all my designs at 4500 x 5400 px and then download them as pdf and upload them. I have never had it say the file is too big.

Yes same. Two were Ai generated plus added on to. The other was watercolor style trees with a quote. They all then downloaded as pdfs that were 37mb. HC file size max 25mb.

If the file is over 25MB but within 5000X5000 pixels, then the clipart in the design is too large in file size. If you compress the clipart, upload back to your design, the file size will be smaller, but the print quality will be the same. 37MB is very large :)

Thank you!

Hi! Unfortunately I cannot do this for two reasons. You will notice that none of the youtubers give away their stores. This is mainly because this is a very good way to ruin our business. I cannot have people flood my store just to look around and see what is going on and what I am selling and then leave without purchasing anything. What this does is tell Etsy that people do not like my items enough to buy them. Etsy works off of the responses by customers basically. The more people are liking and buying items from my store....the more Etsy shows that store to people. If people start roaming around my store and not purchasing, this tells Etsy that people do not like my items. This messes up my conversion rate and lowers my rank on Etsy. Etsy will stop showing my items and my store to people. It is a very easy way to kill my business. I use to wonder this same thing when I was watching all the videos until it was explained to me. Also, reason number two....there are literally people who will try to copy your entire store or at the very least all your best sellers. I don't feel like fighting that battle either lol. Sorry, I wish I could but it is dangerous and my store supports my family so I cannot risk it. Feel free to ask me any questions and I can try to be helpful :)

They can't share her site because the bad actors will quickly copy everything she is doing down to copying her designs EXACTLY and she will potentially lose her hard earned sales and have to compete with a ton of folks who a basically thieves. .

unfortunately this is true :( @@KC-ed1dj

Why would you want to see her shop? She gives all the advice you need. Imagine you had a successful shop and hundreds of people who also want to have success with etsy would visit your store. You should know that especially for digital and pod products copycats are a huuuge problem. By referencing your store you are basically killing it.

@@Laura-je2uw juna is very open about his shop. i went thru this with elke clarke--many of the alleged successes she featured sounded too good to be true and there was no documentation.

I listed 300 products.

Oh no, thats a great question. I just make designs where I allow their name on the design. So if I were making a coffee mug I would make a design that I could also put their name on. Like "World's Best Teacher - Mrs. Johnson". They can add their teachers name to the design so this is the personalization part.

Hi!!! I try not to give away too much information as far as niche's and products as there are people who will try to find my store and copy all of my things and ruin my business. I commented on the comments on why we cannot give out shops and other information. However, if you go watch Stephen's Million Dollar Challenge or some of this other videos, he tells you what products to design :)

@@AprilD85 I'm just seeing this after asking my question. I was already going to check that out, so I will now. :)

@@AprilD85 I think you are marketing for this Channel🤣🤣🤣.

lol 100% I am but not because I was asked to but because it worked for me! I just want people to know :) I'm also marketing for Cassi and Shawna and some other youtubers that I have never spoke to but their channels are why I am here. @@aivexuviet11

​@@AprilD85thank you for your honesty and straight forward answer. God bless 🙌

Same. What kind of printers do you have? I do sublimation and recently decided to stop selling my mugs because I hate making them and packing / shipping is annoying but POD mugs have really bad quality a lot of the time and the good POD ones are so expensive it’s hard to compete. Even the guy who owns this KZfaq channel prints his own products with employees, not POD!