#95 - BEST OF 2025 - #7 Starting a new Etsy shop or Handmade business? This is your to-do list

Holiday Replay: Our 2nd Most-Popular Episode of 2025 🤶

🎅 We’re rerunning the Start-Your-Shop Checklist because it helped a ton of makers stop faffing and finally launch. No waffle. No scare tactics. Just the order of steps that actually works.

What you’ll learn:

• A simple setup that makes you want to sit down and create
• Target market + niche, done without a headache
• A USP that isn’t “I make it with love”
• Naming your shop (short, memorable, available everywhere)
• Legal bits + money basics without the panic
• Your first 10 products, priced so you actually make profit
• Test → tweak → photos (and a quick 15s video)
• Packaging that looks polished, not pricey
• Shipping you can rely on
• A one-platform “home hub” so you’re not shouting into the void
• A tidy launch plan with drafts ready to go

Pop in your earbuds, grab a cuppa, and let’s get you open without the overwhelm.

Follow for more real-talk help for handmade sellers.

- Steph 🎄 xoxo

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Transcript

The world of handmade business can be tough When trying to monetize what you love We've got truth bombs and motivation too To help you find your way through Passion to profit, let's start today Cause the world needs what you create. Tune in right now, it's your shot to learn how to be a Handmade Boss. Hello everyone and welcome back. So today I am going to be talking about a bit of a checklist for you to start your shop.

So these are all the tasks, all the tools, all the things that I would say for you to start your Etsy shop. or your handmade business website or wherever you're going to sell off on the right foot, okay? There's very little in terms of Etsy specific things here but it's basically just a real checklist of everything I think that you need, okay? So this is not going to be a fully exhaustive list, it's not going to be like the complete A to Z because obviously that would, well that podcast episode would be like, I don't know, two hours long.

But it's really like the key things that I do feel that we all need and some of them might just surprise you. But before we get into it today, I would love it and it would do me a real solid if you could leave a review of this podcast. Basically what it means is that the more reviews this podcast gets, the more likely it is to be shown in search results. Because as we know, if you listen to my How the Algorithm Works podcast episode, you'll know that that is basically how the majority of algorithms work.

The more feedback that they get that says, hey this is a good thing, people might like it, the more chances it is of being seen. So I would love it and it would be a real favour to me if you would leave me a review. Alright, so basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to really talk about preparing, okay, and this is all about preparing your shop. So the order of this is that I'm going to go through all of the steps, they are in order, then right at the end I'm going to be talking a little bit more about tools and the kind of tools that I would use that I do use and

yeah just really kind of digging into the specifics here okay and I would also love to know as well and I spend the majority of my time in Instagram DMs so if you hear something and you think I would love to have an episode just purely on on on this one thing then let me know because I would love to like chat to you more about about this but again I know this episode going to be long. Okay, so the first place or the first thing that you need is a workspace, okay. Now I know that a lot of us live in smaller homes and I do as well, like my home isn't massive and like the spare bedroom that I have was my office for the longest time until I moved into my kind of home office cabin just so I

could have some kind of work-life balance and just the space was a little bit larger, okay. So a workspace, it doesn't matter if it is a corner of your bedroom, it doesn't matter if it is a little part of your dining table, it could be a whole room, it could be like a like a nice little she shed that you've turned into your own little kind of like space, which is essentially what I've done, right? It doesn't matter what it is.

I think personally, from a productivity point of view it is a really really good idea if you have some kind of space where when you're in it you know that this is focus time and you know that this is the time for you to be creative, this is a time for you to be focused and this is a time for you to really work because that is one thing that I didn't have. For the longest time I was working from a laptop on my bed at my parents house where I still lived and I found that it was really difficult. The lines were extremely blurred in regards to switching off and actually having some kind of work-life balance and what ended up happening was that I would get creative ideas at times where I couldn't do anything about them like on the bus to work or maybe at work.

and i couldn't do anything about them and then when i actually got home to work it was just gone because my brain could not kind of differentiate the difference between this is where you work and this is where you relax right so it's all good to like work from a laptop on the couch if you're like maybe sick one day or if maybe you're feeling a little bit like slow it's fine once in a while i'm not saying like you know you can never work from your laptop from bed again but what I would say is that if you could have that definitive kind of spaces separate that is a real real good thing and also as well it's it's a good idea to kind of look at where you can store your stuff because you know to create things takes stuff it takes supplies it takes space so that would be the very first thing that I would do.

I think as well this also does help to create some kind of like mindset around this is a proper real business and I'm making space for it physically but also energetically in my life as well. I don't think enough people do this where they will consider the business as a real business, a real thing and it always is destined right from the word go to be like a bit of a sideline and not really important in your in your life. there's a lot of like energetics around this as well about being more kind of you know putting aside it's kind of self-care but like in a business sense you're putting aside time you're putting aside space to actually do this thing that you've been wanting to do right so that is number one The second thing, which might sound a little bit topsy-turvy to I think what a lot of you have done, but it is a target market and a niche, okay.

So the reason why this happens so early on is because ideally you want to have a target audience and a niche that you serve first before you start to create products, before because it's a lot harder. It's not impossible and it is certainly how we do it within the HBSA because nine times out of ten people who join are, you know, they have some kind of business already, right? However, it's a lot harder to do it in reverse and it's a lot more, you know, you have to really dig into the individuals, the nuances within your target market and the people who buy from you. So, it's a lot easier to do it in reverse.

So think about the kind of people that you would like to serve. Think about the kind of people who you would love to serve. It can be people just like you and actually this does happen more often than you think. but actually being a little bit more specific as to the kind of people that you want to sell your products to, who would be the ideal fit, who can you imagine integrating your products into their lives, right?

And it doesn't also have to be where you are right now, it could also be a previous version of you, okay? And what I mean by this is it could be you a year ago when you were maybe I don't know looking for baby clothes that that you know grew with your child or looking for jewellery that fit in with your personality um and it could very much be kind of looking at all right so I got through that because I started to make my own jewellery but I am going to target people who are still in that phase of their life, who are still in that state. And what I would say as well is if you want to learn more about this, I do go into more depth in my free training, which is how to get more Etsy sales within seven days.

And that will be linked in the show notes. If not, it's literally handmadebosses.com forward slash conversion. All right. So it's really, really easy URL just to just to type in.

Completely free training, about 90 minutes. We talk about niching, target market, all that kind of stuff, okay? So, really look at, again, who you want to serve. I feel like this does trip people up a lot where they don't know who they want to serve, right?

And it's really important to know because when you're creating products, when you're creating your branding, when you're basically doing everything past this point, it is so much easier when you know who it's for. okay and don't get me wrong like you aren't gonna get this right on the first try um you know you might think it's people like you uh i don't know females who are all those who identify as um who are maybe 25 to 35 and that might be kind of the general idea that that you have but maybe six months down the road you might decide oh okay they're actually like a little bit maybe younger than that maybe slightly older maybe you know there's lots of different like changes that might happen so do your best to kind of say right this is my target market and it's not just age it's not just gender it's not any of that like that that is good to start off with but it's also looking at what they like what they dislike what their jobs are like, what

their cars are like, where they live, what their day-to-day life is like, do they have kids, are they with someone or are they not and just really looking at painting a bit of a picture as to what their everyday life is like because again that is going to make it so much easier for you to create all the things past this point for someone specific okay. also talking about a niche okay so a niche is it really goes hand in hand with the target market okay so you have probably heard me talking about niche a lot and you might have heard the word niche thrown around and you might just be a bit done with the whole niche niche niche thing all the niches is really looking at okay here is my target market here is my people but i want to target a specific like subsect of those people with specific products Contrary to like, obviously in our heads, we're always taught that

if we are aiming towards more people, we're going to get more sales. And actually it's the complete opposite of that, right? It's kind of like if you owned a classic car, like a really nice classic car, you wouldn't necessarily take it to, and I'm talking about like a real nice classic car, something like, I don't know, a classic Jag or a classic Lamborghini or Ferrari. You wouldn't necessarily take it to a general mechanic because you are like, I want someone with specialist knowledge, someone that knows this car inside and out, that's going to really cater to the needs that I have.

that's going to really kind of look at this and know specifically, A, if it has any problems, B, how to fix it, and C, not to ruin the car, right? And it's basically the same thing with niching. When you are connecting with a certain type of person, you connect with them on a much deeper level rather than if you are trying to attract everybody, you're not really connecting with anybody. And it's why, and I get this a lot, when people start to add more and more and more and more products, you know, they're like, oh, I sell jewellery, but I'm going to start selling bookmarks, I'm going to start selling this, this and this.

It's why sales quite often might start to dip and might start to drop. And it also really affects you actually building your brand, because people don't really know what you're known for. So what I would say here as well is to think about your favourite brand. So for me that would be something like Lush.

Lush don't do a lot of different things. They do a small amount of things but really, really well. We're going deep here, not wide, okay? So think about your target market, think about your niche.

A niche also as well helps you to get found within algorithms, it helps you to get found and really kind of favorited, trusted and it makes you the go-to place that people do keep coming back to over and over again. So that's number two. So you can imagine this podcast episode is probably going to be quite long. So number three is a unique selling point, okay?

And this is really what makes you special. So you have your target market, you have your niche, this is what's going to make you different from everybody else out there. And this is why if you are, and I mean this with love, If you are a shop that's just gone, I'm gonna sell on Etsy because I've seen someone else do it and I can do that the same and I can make the same sales of them. That's not enough for you to actually succeed because all you're doing is basically looking at the success and the USP that someone else has and trying to replicate it without any prior knowledge, without knowing who their target market is, what they do to get those people in.

And then like, as you're going to see throughout this whole list, there are a lot of individualities with it. So this is where a USP really comes into play. Unique selling point. that is basically what makes you special.

So that could be something like the way you create your products, it could be something like um how you present them, it could be maybe you do gift baskets, it could be the type of person you are, it could be the workspace that you're in, it could be so many different things right. So it's a really good idea to look at what else is out there and to just assess kind of where you lie within the kind of competitive landscape, okay? So think about what makes you special.

Number four is decide your shop name and what I would say is that your shop name has to be something short, has to be something snappy and I think has to be very specific and describe what it is that you do. So I actually give a bunch more guidance on how to choose your shop name within my book which this podcast is I guess kind of named after and it's called How To Be A Handmade Boss. Search it on Amazon, you'll find it and really that book goes perfectly alongside this whole episode, this whole list. So if you're listening to this and you're like intently like oh yes it's really really good, go and buy that book because honestly it's going to help you in much more detail with all of this.

it's probably the the the cost of like a lunch out. it's not going to be ridiculously expensive or anything like that. so deciding your shop name and again keep it short, keep it snappy. don't make it really really long because people don't remember it and then they misremember it and then they put it in the like google search.

they never get to find you. they're just like oh it's that shop that did this and i it was something ellie or misoma something and if you keep it short snappy people actually remember it. and when they go to find you on socials, on, you know, whatever, it's gonna be so much easier, okay? Also, talking about your shop name, make sure that it is available on things such as domain names, Etsy shop names, social media names, just make sure, this is something that I have done myself, that it's not gonna get confused with any other brands out there.

One thing I would also say here as well is to, if you can, is to purchase the domain name for your brand, okay? I have seen this happen a lot where people will set up an Etsy shop, socials, all that kind of thing, go to start their own website, maybe like two, three years down the line, and actually discover that someone has already purchased the domain name and people actually do do do this like legit they do do this they'll see a business that's doing well purchase the name and then expect the business owner to buy it off of them for a really inflated amount It's probably something like 15 to 20 pounds, something like that for the year. And I use GoDaddy.

So again, that's a little sneak peek, it's like a tool that I use. But I would say as soon as you've decided on your shop name, make sure to reserve your, I mean, we are going to talk about socials, but reserve your socials, reserve your Etsy shop name, and also reserve your domain name. So number five is talking all about branding, okay. Now this is quite kind of a good place to kind of stick branding in because you already know your target market, you know your niche, you know your USP, you know your brand name, so you know what your branding needs to have in order to attract the perfect

people. okay so um and branding is so much more than just pretty colors a logo some fonts it is so much more than that really to be honest with you when a company sells their business the person buying it you know such as um i don't know instagram was sold to facebook and uh depop was sold to etsy they aren't buying the ins and outs of it they aren't buying the technology they aren't necessarily even really buying the customer list they're buying the brand. they're buying the recognition that goes along with that.

they're buying the trust. they're buying the expertise or the illusion of. um and really a brand is so much more than that. okay again we do cover this in depth within the book and you won't get this right the first time either.

like i would just like to kind of say that is that you won't get it right the first time and it will be really annoying and you'll think, oh I know, and you'll probably rebrand maybe two or three times in your kind of business life. But just start off by kind of brainstorming some colours, brainstorm, and I love Canva for this, like if you just type in brand board on Canva, it'll give you a nice little template. You can get an expert to do it for you, which is how if I was doing it, that's what I would do. because an expert knows the psychology of the fonts, the colours, what the brand will essentially mean and then they'll also be able to like link up, you know, looking at what type of people you want to attract, your products and a brand that kind of encompasses that.

So I would say if you can swing it, an expert here is really really good. We do cover this in depth within the HBSA again and we actually do have an expert come in and teach you how to do this the right way. So if you know spending and you know money on an expert is not for you then in the HBSA we do have a massive module just on branding okay. So you might want to look at things like logo for sure, colours, fonts, graphics, really anything you are looking at creating that is like a visual representation of your business.

So also, based off of that as well, you also want to be looking at, alright, let's make my Etsy shop better, let's make my listing graphics, let's kind of really maybe even create some kind of social media templates here. But just give yourself a starting point when it comes to the colours that you want your brand to have, the fonts. the logo, the graphics, all that kind of thing. one thing i would also say is to make sure that you make your logo in black, in white, in all your brand colours and make sure to download it with a transparent background so that when you use it for packaging and things it's..

it's easy to use. because otherwise you have to go back into canva, re-download it again, it's a right headache. Alright, number six is research what it would take to make you all legal and all good. Now, I'm not going to give you too much advice on this because I'm based in the UK.

What would make my business legal is very different to what might make yours legal. But if you are within the UK, I would say .gov is a really good place to kind of start with this. I would also say as well, have an accountant on side, whether that's someone that you can ask questions, someone that actually does your books for you. I literally, that was my very first hire within my business was to hire an accountant, someone who could do my books, someone who could do my accounts for me.

um and that was the first hire because i knew straight off the bat that all of that stuff would scare me it would confuse me and it would literally put me off of starting the business in the first place so research not only what it takes to make you legal but also make sure that you have your bookkeeping software if you're going to use that, accounts, taxes all ready and set up in your mind okay. And a good place for kind of like legal advice and again I will like explain this in the tools list but it is Rocket Lawyer and there's loads of like basically freelance legal help for hire on that's Rocket Lawyer. um and it's i've i've used it so many times for things like t's and c's and uh if someone's copied copied me it's like kind of okay where do i stand with this um and they're really good at like you know lots of different little things but also

really good advice as well. um so definitely look at what you need to make you legal here and again like it's really different advice depending on where you are in the world i would check with experts local bodies rather than posting in groups and things because obviously you know, if you take advice from someone in like a Facebook group or something like that and it ends up being wrong later on down the line, it's basically your fault. It doesn't matter if they've said this or they've said that, it is still your fault as the business owner.

So you want to make sure that you are starting things off on the right foot. The seventh thing, seventh thing is products, okay? So this is where you start to draft out, to plan out products, okay? So you're not going to be actually making them quite yet, it's more drafting them out.

You know, we're going to be ordering supplies and things later on down the line, but for now we want to make sure that we are drafting out, making a list, drawing them, whatever that looks like for you, products. Okay, so I would say 10 is a really good starting point. And look at different products that sold well on Etsy, if that's the platform that you're starting off with. Look at keywords that are working really well.

And again, I use eRank for this, they actually have like a trend rapport. I mean, it's not fantastic because it literally just says the word gift, gift, gift every single month, but it's a really good place for you to kind of go and look at like researching, yeah, just like lots of different keyword phrases, things that are being searched for a lot, low competition, high traffic, all those kinds of things, and just really take some time to create 10 quality products that people actually want. And a quick note on trends here, I did talk about trends in another podcast episode, I can't remember which one it was, but trends are something that I don't recommend everyone follows because for normal businesses, trends are great.

You know, if you create clothing, if you create makeup or something like that, trends are good because trends means an uptick in traffic, which means that you are going to get sales. But what happens when that traffic dips off, which it will do, the sales start to drop, things start to drop and it all ends up looking a little bit sad, you know. So what I would say is for handmade business owners it's not as important to follow trends because, you know, sustainability and being very eco-conscious in and of itself is a massive trend and will probably continue to be that. So looking at trends and keeping an eye on them is good, but I wouldn't necessarily create products in line with them.

Okay, again, it's completely up to you how you do this, but I would much rather focus on evergreen products that are always gonna sell rather than, like, trending things and things that are, you know, going great guns now, but they won't really be in, like, a year's time, maybe even six months time, right? The eighth thing is a business bank account. Now I personally use Starling and Starling have bank accounts for sole traders, limited companies, I think that's like incorporated in the States or you know if you're selling on your own kind of thing.

they are just so good. Everything's just simple, easy. I would never move away from Starlink and it's free as well. Like I have never paid for a business bank account and I'm not sponsored by them or anything like that but I just really like them.

They're so easy and everything is simple, everything is all on the app and you can create like virtual card saving spaces literally so easy. So if you want to like pay your tax bill from one card, pay your don't know something else from another card you can so easily do that and it's just easy like there's no other way to really describe it okay the very next thing is a place to track inventory okay so this is something that um will differ depending on the tech that you know how to use and all of this stuff all of the tools all of the things it's definitely worth using what you know like there's no reason to make it more complicated than a google doc a spreadsheet if you don't know how to use anything else because what tends to happen is that um what you'll end up doing is you'll end up spending more time trying to figure out the tool that you think you need to use rather than

actually just doing the thing. I'm a big fan of keeping things simple, keeping things easy and keeping things streamlined and effective. Like that is my whole business mantra. So you'll never see me like doing complicated systems or anything like that.

Unless it's like an automated thing in which case fine. But I don't do anything difficult, right? Because I'm lazy and I can't be bothered. um so it doesn't like use a spreadsheet if you know how to use a spreadsheet google sheets are basically the same thing uh google sheets is free google sheets and google drive and google docs are my favorite because you can share it it's free it's nice it's easy

and i'm all for it like you can have it on your phone you can have it on your laptop you can have it on your pc and honestly it's just chef's kiss right But if you don't know how to use a spreadsheet, use like a journal, use a Google doc, use whatever makes it easy for you to track what you've got, what the pricing is. And what I would do as well is I would implement some kind of pricing spreadsheet. Now again, we do actually do this for you within the HBSA.

And we actually like literally give you a spreadsheet that does all of this, all done, dusted, explain how to use it, all that kind of stuff. But it is something that I would say to put all together. I mean you can do it separate if you want to, there's no like rules around that, it just makes it easier if you can track what you have and track what you're charging all in one place. So number 10 is now, once you know what products Once you have a place to track them, now it's time to order some sample supplies.

Now, one thing I would say is that you don't necessarily want to go to, if you're in the UK, Hobbycraft or if you're in the US, Hobby Lobby or Michaels or anything like that. You don't want to go to anywhere like that because you are getting like two or three additional markups on the wholesale cost. So instead what I would do is I would go on to places like, you know, Etsy also does have shops and brands who sell craft supplies, so actually that's a really good place to start. Also there's like eBay, Amazon and just see about ordering a low quantity of them and just order some small amounts to have a little go, have a little fiddle around.

I would say here is out of the 10 products, make two of each. One that you can play around with and one that I will like explain what to do with later. But it's always good to have two because you don't want to have like one, loan it out to someone and you can't get it back and you want to take pictures of it and all that kind of stuff. So order some sample stuff and then get making okay just make up the products that you that you have and don't forget that's just 10 so you don't need to go crazy it's just 10 here all right uh number 11 is to price up your products and again

you can reference the uh stock tracking sheet price up your products and make sure there's enough profit because this is something that is, like, I always say, um, that a business is like a two-layer thing. When you first start, okay, the first layer is you start the business and you make your first sales. You're like, yay, awesome. And the second layer is when you actually start making profit.

because those are two very different things. You can make sales, yay, brilliant, but not make any profit. So what's the point? All you have then is an expensive hobby.

So make sure that you are pricing this thing up and there is enough profit for you to actually make a living, alright? right and I have loads of like I mean I will do a podcast episode all on pricing but really the general rule of thumb is there is no formula okay there is none none of them really work for handmade business owners it never really works like you can double it if you like you can triple it but what happens if you want to do wholesale later on down the line what happens if you want to run a sale what happens if you need to put VAT on it you know what happens about all these things So instead what I would say is a general rule of thumb, this is really general, is to look at what other people were charging and price at the higher end.

This is something that I like to like really like integrate into perceived value pricing and perceived value pricing is essentially where you will look at the need and again this is why we did niching target market really early on is to look at the need that your target market has and price accordingly. For example, if you make hair bows, you might be really tempted to look on Etsy and be like, oh well, Joe Bloggs down the road is charging £5 for a hair bow, therefore I should charge £5, or therefore I should charge £7 or £8. And that is essentially what a lot of coaches will say, yeah, yeah, fine, sure, do it.

But the problem with that is that what you're not you're only pricing from what you can see and from what you can experience you're not actually pricing for the customer okay the customer is looking for a hair bow because they have a need to solve they have a reason to want to buy it okay so looking at that reason looking at that need and saying how important is that reason is that need for the customer okay it's the reason why kias are priced so much different than like lamborghinis they're both cars they both do the same thing they get they get you from a to z but it's perceived value pricing it's why lacoste perfumes are priced so much cheaper than chanel perfumes or joe malone perfumes they're for a different market yes but they're also the value of a lacoste perfume is very different from a joe malone chanel whatever and that is where this really comes into play, okay?

So you want to be making sure that you are pricing for the need, for the want. So again, going back to the hair bow thing, if you are creating hair bows for flower girls for weddings, right, and you're thinking, oh I can't charge that that much for it, why not? Because at the end of the day, the bride and the groom know, or the bride and the bride or the groom and the groom, they they know that um you know the flannel girl is going to get their hair messy. they're going to be in in and out of like i don't know the the tent, the venue.

they're going to be tucked on their head by every auntie and uncle known known to man. oh you look so cute. they're going to be doing cartwheels. they're going to be like playing around and their hair's going to get messed messed up.

but they still want it to look nice for pictures so the big value there is i want my flower girls to have fun but also to look good at a moment's notice so that is a perceived value so don't go charging like five pounds eight pounds for that like that is a lot more so i'm hoping by now you can kind of see how this how this really works The next thing is number 12, your shop policies, okay? And this is such as returns, exchanges, complaints. It's a really good idea to sort all of this stuff out now before you actually get a problem because I see this a lot within our Facebook group where someone will say, oh my god, someone wants to exchange something, what do I do?

just do this ahead of time so that you have it, it's done, it's dusted, you know the expectations that you have. Now, policies can be quite tricky because what you need to do is you need to essentially be saying, if someone wants to do XYZ, this is the standards that I have, and this is the expectations that I have. You're doing that ahead of time. So what are you going to do if someone wants to return something after 30 days, 60 days, 90 days?

What are you going to do if someone wants to exchange something that is personalised or that you can't change without losing a bunch? What are you going to do if someone has a complaint? These are all things to kind of really take note of and set out straight away. Then you want to create actual legally binding policies here.

Now Etsy is great with this because they actually give you like templates and stuff, but again somewhere like Rocket Lawyer has lots of other templates and lots of other things that are really low cost that you could actually implement yourself. So really get to like grips with what you would like to, how you would like to handle all these things ahead of time because it's just going to save you a lot of headaches, heartaches, tears, everything else. Number 13 is after you have created your sample products, remember we had 10 products, we want to make two of each, you want to give one of those to someone who can test it out for you. preferably really, really leaning into someone who is in your target market.

That can be a family member, that can be your friend, that can be your neighbour, that can be someone you know from gym or a yoga class or someone like that. Or you could even go into the Facebook group and be like, hey, I'm looking for someone to test this particular product, can someone help me? And what you want is people to give you feedback about your products because it is so much better for product testers to tell you if something's wrong rather than a real customer that's going to then leave you a four star review, three star, two star, whatever. Also as well, this really does feed into your USP because they might bring up things that perhaps you haven't even thought of.

Maybe it's a specific way you blend essential oils for candles. Maybe it is, I don't know, something different. But just simply looking at and getting feedback from people within your target market is a really amazing thing to do. Not only because it helps you to like pick up words and phrases that they are using that you can use them in your marketing so that you kind of understand how people describe your products which by the way is great for like seo keywords all that kind of

thing um but also looking at um anything that you need to change alter maybe you thought your candles come across one way when in fact they come across another you can pivot you can change that it's just a really good idea to get some kind of feedback. Also what I would say here as well is to test the product yourself. So you've got your own like testing of said product and someone else is testing it for you as well. So if your product is something like a candle, you know, you might want to make three copies of your ten of each of your ten products rather than just two.

But I would say test, test, test. It's a step that everyone skips. It's really important not to and it's going to make the whole setup so much easier. Number 14 is images of your products.

And again, we cover this in depth. I mean, we cover all of this in depth within the HBSA, like regardless of what point it is. But in the HBSA, we literally have a photography expert come in and teach you how to do pictures with literally a phone camera, a tripod and a big bit of white paper. And that's all you need.

You do not need a DSLR camera. you do not need some fancy fancy like i don't know moving tripod it's really easy what what you need and it's literally just your smartphone if it's like a decent one you know i'm not talking about like if you've got like the iphone 4 maybe that might be a little bit too far back but or maybe just borrow someone's phone or your ipad or something like that You can use a DSLR camera, but I do find that if you don't know how to use it properly, it kind of negates the whole thing, right? So, images of your products.

And what I would also say here as well is get feedback from your product testers about the pictures. Does this look right? Is it attracting you? Is it clear what the item is?

Is it clear the colour, the size, what the use is? Really dig into and make use of the people who are testing your products for your pictures as well. Side note here, also make sure to shoot a 15 second video because Etsy listing videos are a thing and if you do it whilst you're shooting your pictures, it just makes it so much easier. Number 15 is to order bulk supplies.

So, you've got your products, you've tested them, you have perfected them, hopefully by this point. Now it's time to bulk order supplies so that you know exactly how much your products are going to be priced up as and what your supply costs are and what everything else is, right? So now is time to actually look at, okay, can I save some money by ordering in bulk rather than ordering in a small quantity or anything like that? Number 16 is a home hub to nurture your audience, okay?

I've talked about this a lot and if you've been with me for a while you know that I always talk about a home hub. And a home hub is when it comes to social media, marketing in general really, it's just the one place that you nurture your audience. I don't need anyone listening to have Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, email, LinkedIn, Pinterest. Right?

It never works because you're spreading yourself far too thin and to be honest with you, you don't need all of those platforms. You only need one. And honestly, you will probably only need one until you master it or until you reach the 100k a year mark. Honestly, trust me when I say this, you just need one.

So find out what that one is. Choose one that you like to use, your target market uses, you are able to post, you're happy with how all of the post formats are, you know, like don't do video if you don't like video, don't write blog posts if you don't like blog posts. so for me that's always been instagram. um because i like doing videos, i like doing lives, i like speaking, i don't like writing, i'm not a blog post writer, i am not a caption writer, i hate it.

in fact when i wrote my book i was like this is the last time i'm doing this because i need to talk to someone, i need to be on video, i need to like get my point across. um but understand that about about yourself and choose your home hub in accordance with that okay. and set it up again way back when when we chose our shop name we really like looked at okay how can we reserve your name on socials so start to set up the account let's say if it's instagram like set it up put your logo on there put your branding on there get your bio sorted all that kind of stuff um and just put launching soon like you don't have to be putting things on there yet, although I will say it will be very, very shortly.

However, just get it set up so that if you do want to post stuff, you don't have to go through the whole notions of doing it first. Number 17 is to decide your delivery methods. And I would say it's a good idea to choose at least two, just in case one's on strike, just in case one's affected by, I don't know, snow or floods, illness, whatever. So for me, being in the UK, I have three.

I have Royal Mail, I have Parcel Force and at a push i will use every if i have to. but every is very up and down. i feel like everyone listening.. if you're in the uk you have some..

you feel some kind of way about every. whether that's good, bad. i don't.. i feel like they're like marmite right?

you either love them, you hate them. i'm a bit like.. i'm not really sure. um but i have those three.

and it's like i have those three so i don't have to stress if royal mail is out of action or something for whatever reason. So the easiest way to do this is to go on your like, you know, it could be Royal Mail, it could be USA Post, it could be FedEx, go on their websites, like weigh, measure, do your package, some kind of estimation, let's say. And I would say, I mean, this is point number 18, but I would almost say do this before, which is order your postage supplies. So make sure you understand how your package is going to look, what it's going to weigh roughly, um and do like you know because all packages of yours might be different to do like a minimum a maximum and kind of get the price brackets for everything in between

get the dates get how long it takes because when you list your items x is going to ask you this So it's just a good idea to kind of know all of that sort of stuff and also as well tie it in with ordering your postage supply, product packaging and just make sure that everything is packaged well but also very simply branded. You do not need to order custom boxes, you do not need to order fancy fancy like boxes, packaging. It could be something as simple as getting a logo stamp, an ink pad and stamping your logo on a jiffy bag.

or on something like that, right? It doesn't have to be an expensive, like lots of different weird and wonderful pack of packaging ideas. It could just be a box, a ribbon, a stamp, a little gift tag, like it doesn't have to be insane. And if you go on to Pinterest as well, in fact on the Handmade Bosses Pinterest account, I do have a low-cost packaging ideas board that you can go and have a little look at, but i would say that pinterest is great for this just type in cheap uh

jewelry packaging ideas cheap candle pack packaging ideas and you'll get to like know how to package it um and i would also say here as well it's not a must do but it's a nice to have i would have a standard packaging and a more upgraded like a gift one that you will charge for because Etsy actually does allow you to add like gift packaging in there and for you to charge more which is great around Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, birthdays, all that kind of thing. Just like an extra way for you to make some profit. So then we move on to number 19, which is to document the process of you doing everything all of the above to share on socials.

I cannot tell you how people love to see the journey of a small business getting started. Okay, so Definitely, definitely look at documenting, videoing yourself, designing products, making products, getting them tested, writing things down like video, photograph, do everything you can to document the process because all of this is golden nuggets of social media content that you can later use. So then we go on to the launch side of things. So we have prepared the live in daylights out of our shop.

We've done everything we possibly can. Now it's time to actually go on to like the launch phase, which is okay, let's get this thing live. So then we are looking at what is your launch date? So when are you going to launch?

Do don't do it for next week because we want to build some hype here. We want to really, you know, get people excited for the launch of this new shop, okay? You then, number two here, you want to make sure that you have some kind of opening offer to entice people in. That can be get a free something, that can be get 10% off, 20% off, that could be, you know, get free gifts.

bag, packaging, whatever. As long as it's some kind of offer that will get people in on your opening week, opening month, whatever, to actually buy from you, okay? Now number three here is I want you to schedule all of your social media for your home hub in advance okay so this is all of the pictures of the things that you've been documenting this is all of the reels all of the videos um i want you to go on to canva i i love canva for social media content you can even schedule direct from canva um and just pre-make all of your social media stuff okay because this is gonna mean that when you're busy be like launching your new shop you're not having to

really worry about it so i would do at least a month if you can And again, within the HBSA, we would help you with that and look at, okay, what do we want to be posting, when, all that sort of stuff. But for those of you who kind of know your social media kind of stuff, just create some basic posts, videos, reels, and schedule them in advance. The next thing, number four on the launch side of things, is to list your 10 product listings and keep them in your drafts until launch day. Because what we don't want is we want to launch the products, and if you've listened again to the episode where I explain how the algorithm works on Etsy, you will know that you want your listings to be dropped with an absolute boom.

with not only Etsy traffic coming in, but also you driving your own traffic from your home hub as well. So that is when I would say to list them. List your 10, okay? Make sure your pictures are all good, descriptions are all good, your pricing is all good, but we've done all of the like pre-work for that regardless.

And then number five, which is the last step in this whole list, is for each of your 10 products, I want you to create three additional listings per product, basically to make the total listings up to 30. You want to keep these copies, which is basically what you're going to do, you're going to copy listing one twice, copy listing two, twice or three times, copy listing three, twice, three times, whatever. And I want you to keep these copies in your draft because what we're going to do is we are essentially going to be making copies depending on different uses for the product. So let's say you have a candle, right?

you have a candle and you've listed this as like a father's day gift right fine but what about someone who is looking for a dark honey and tobacco candle that maybe might not be typing in father's day gift in the search box but that's what they want so you want to be looking at different uses different occasions for each of your 10 products and making two to three copies of that listing and keyword them specifically for that use or occasion. And again, this is called the listing hack tech technique, by the way, and it's something that I do go into depth in within the HBSA. Okay, so let's just talk about tools here.

This is the last section of this. I know it's a long episode. I do know that. But the tools you'll need for this are time.

And this whole process should take you at least kind of 30 hours. So yes, it sounds like a lot. And I, you know, I want to be upfront and transparent with you that it is a lot of time. So you want to set aside probably 30 hours to go through all of this stuff.

Do not rush through it, because if you rush through it initially, it's going to cost you more time on the back end. So, 30 hours. Number two, you want a place to create graphics and imagery. I use Canva, I love it.

I have the pro account, it's like £10 a month, worth every single penny, but you can use a free account as well. Number three, an SEO research tool. That is ERang. Now I haven't really touched upon SEO that much in this whole podcast episode, mainly because I have a whole other like, I don't know, 30 minute episode talking about the algorithm and all that kind of stuff.

So you probably want to go and watch that rather than me hammering through it again in this one. But I use eRank. Again, they have a free account. They have like a really low cost paid account as well.

I love eRank. It's great. You also, number four, want a place to work out your product pricing. I use Google Sheets for this.

You can use Spreadsheet, you can use a journal, whatever. But personally, I use Google Sheets. Number five, you want something to take pictures with. And that will be smartphone, tripod, window, a big bit of white paper.

and maybe some props as well okay so you don't need a lot i would say probably the only thing you want to order is a tripod a3 piece of white paper depending on the size of your product and or some props that are in your brand colors okay and that makes sense Number six is somewhere to upload images, videos from your phone to a shared folder on multiple devices and I use Google Drive for this. So what I mean by this is say you are out filming some bits and bobs, maybe you are filming yourself doodling some new product ideas, and you're like i don't want to post this right now i want to kind of save it and i also want to reuse it as well like i don't want to have one video as a reel going out once i want to use this video like two or three times to maximize my time if you upload it to a google drive folder that you can access on your phone on your

laptop on your pc it's just so much easier to then like reuse it, download it and have a central hub where everything is, okay? You also want a social media scheduler of sorts. Now, Meta Business Suite is fine for this. I also use Later and it's basically a place where you can schedule out all of your socials all in one go.

I am a big fan of batching and I'm a big fan of batching because my energy is not the same throughout the month. one day it can be very high, the next day it can be very low. So for example, right now I'm batch recording podcasts. Literally over the course of two days I'm doing 12.

So that is because my energy right now is very very high, I'm feeling good and I'm feeling creative. So I will batch them at that point because I know that maybe in a week's time two weeks time I'm gonna feel a bit like tired maybe a bit lethargic maybe I just need a day off right so this is where batching and the use of later scheduling tools meta business suite is awesome Again, number eight, a business bank account. I personally use Starling.

I think I've already talked a lot about Starling. Number nine is your wholesale supplier. And again, don't use places such as Hobbycraft or Hobby Lobby because you are probably getting ripped off. Number 10, your policies.

Etsy does help help you with this or use a legal expert. Again, someone like Rocket Lawyer. And the last one, like I said, is two to three postage providers. I use Royal Mail and Parcel Force and maybe occasionally Every.

that was a monster episode but i hope that you found it helpful i really also hope that you will share it with anyone who is looking to start their own shop because this paints a very real picture as to the expectations it is not just i'm gonna go into etsy create an account open up a shop done there is so much more work behind behind the scenes with it And yeah, again, I would love it if you would leave a wee little review. It would help me out so so much. And contact me on Instagram DMs.

Did you find it helpful? What were your aha moments? I would love to hear your feedback. And thank you so much for listening.

Thank you so much for tuning in to How To Be A Handmade Boss. And if you're eager to boost your Etsy sales within just seven days, then be sure to join my most popular free training at handmadebosses.com forward slash conversion. You can also find the link in the show notes as well. Keep an eye out for our next episode where we'll be continuing our journey towards handmade business success together.

And until then, keep crafting and stay inspired because the world really does need those special creations that only you can make.