Are you on the brink of launching your new craft shop and are curious about how to make it into a successful etsy shop? I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share Etsy’s best kept secret, Patricia Florence, with you today! She has over 11,000 sales of her digital designs and is an amazing artist that I am so inspired by! Tune in below and check out her beautiful portraits in her very own successful etsy shop!

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Insights from a Successful Etsy Shop Owner | Episode 07 – No Mercy Business Podcast with Emily A Woodruff

Emily: Welcome to the No Mercy business coaching podcast with Emily a Woodruff. The podcast that walks you through managing your own small business through the highs and the lows, will talk with small business owners from all over the US and share insights on how to help manage your business without the extra fluff and connect with other women just like you. Let’s dive in.

Emily: 0:36
Well, hello, everybody. This is Emily with the No Mercy Business Podcast. Today I have a special guest with us. Her name is Patricia Florence. She’s from the priceless art studio, a successful etsy shop. Patricia, do you want to tell us a little bit about your business and what you do?

Patricia: 0:54
Yeah, sure. Um, the main part of my business is drawing portraits. I do detailed guestbook portraits, as well as more faceless, simplistic, minimalistic portraits. A lot of those are Memorial or to commemorate loved ones that have passed. And I also have a passive revenue stream selling digital sublimation products on Etsy.
Emily: 1:22
Awesome. How, how did you get started doing this sort of thing? And how did you get started with graphic design overall.

Patricia: 1:31
I started doing it because when COVID hit, I needed to find a way to make money and be home due to my health issues. And I thought I was going to do sublimation, but then found out that I already use procreate to draw and I found out that I can make money making designs for people. And so I decided to make that into a business. So I made an Etsy shop doing the portraits I love and also selling those digital designs.
Emily: 1:57
I love that and you have you have a pretty successful Etsy shop. How many? How many sales Do you have? Or just generally?
Patricia: 2:04
I think I just hit 11,000 sales. That’s I have almost 1000 reviews. Yeah, every time it says pat your back, you’ve made 10,000 sales. I’m really proud of that. A lot of it is that recurring revenue where I don’t have to do anything. So it’s mostly that digital content. And then a lot of it revenue is the portraits.

Emily: 2:25
That’s so great. I just got my first pet your back and it was for five sales.
Patricia: 2:32
I felt like after those first five to 10 sales, they just came flowing. And this is my second Etsy shop. My first one and this one. I feel like that’s how it both went like once I got the first five or 10 sales they just came in nonstop.
Emily: 2:45
Good. Well, that’s encouraging for sure. Good, what what’s your favorite product that you have on your shops to create? What’s your favorite one to do?
Favorite thing I guess?

Patricia: 2:55
Um, honestly, I am blessed to be able to use my talents to create those faceless portraits for loved ones I like to do with Jesus holding an infant or with a loved one. I’ve seen so much healing come from that and comfort to those families that that is my ultimate my favorite thing to do. I like drawing portraits.

Emily: 3:21
That’s so neat. And I’ve seen a couple of yours that have Jesus in them and they’re beautiful. And I’m fortunately I’m somebody who hasn’t lost somebody very close to me. But they’ve like stopped me in my tracks stopped my scroll to see them and I love them. So you’ve got something going on there for sure. Yeah, that’s great. Um, what do you think the biggest challenge as an Etsy printable shops owner is for you right now.
Patricia: 3:49
So this question I had read before this interview, I had many multiple bullet points for this one. But the biggest challenge is personal meet personal. I’m sorry, I can’t speak English. But self management, I think is the biggest challenge for me, I go from working as a receptionist for someone else, to having my own business where I need to delegate, how I talk to people how I’m professional, I need to time management, you know, have time management, set boundaries, because I always want to respond to a customer right away no matter if I’m in the middle of a movie theater, which is bad. I think that it’s just it’s all around self management. Like you have to now manage yourself and not have someone over you.

Emily: 4:40
That’s real. I think that is something that a lot of our listeners can resonate with. Being able to separate your time from work time or from your like I work a day job also. So when is it okay for me to check my email there or when is it for you know how to things overlap. And how do you balance? All of that?

Patricia: 5:03
Is that’s a difficult task,
or even like, what do I pay myself? That was a challenge from the beginning? Because I’m like, No, I want to invest everything back into it. But then at what point do I pay myself? Right and fair, you know, and all that. So that was definitely difficult.
Emily: 5:18
Yeah, I think I think we’re all right there with you. So what is you said, you said that you’re a secretary also. So what does a typical day look like for you, when you’re working on your Etsy printables, or your, your Etsy shop or your work, you know,

Patricia: 5:35
so I’m not a secretary any longer. And when COVID hit, I lost that job. But it was because of COVID. And I started this business. Right now, this also ties in with the self management part, right? I can wake up when I want, I can go to sleep when I want. I can take a break when I want. I’m sneaking schedule and sticking to it and being productive and being efficient, is very important. So when I wake up, I usually wake up late 10am An hour later, start some orders respond to customers that have messaged me while I was sleeping, do some portraits, maybe do a YouTube video for my channel, maybe? Do you know other things in projects, but I have to det definitely I have to follow a schedule to stick to those things and get things done. I like to do a split shift day, usually like four hours in the afternoon, and then four hours at night. Or sometimes I just stay up all night and go to sleep when the sun comes up. And I’m a night owl.I love that.

Emily: 6:35
Yeah, I think that’s a creative trait too.
Patricia: 6:52
When I want to be creative, like when the creative juices are flowing, I can be creative. And if I’m having like a block, I can choose to be like, Okay, I’m not feeling it right now, I’m not going to give the best work. So I’m going to come back to this in an hour or two.

Emily: 6:52
Or you can focus your tasks on your administrative things, or you’re responding to emails and things like that when you’re Yeah,
Patricia: 7:00
yeah, the mundane stuff. Yeah, I can do that when not really wanting to be creative.
Emily: 7:05
That’s great. What do you so what’s something new that you’re working on right now? Is there anything fun planned for 2022.
Patricia: 7:13
So for the rest of this year, I’m working on building up digital content, I see the value in that stuff that I can make something that takes me 30 minutes to make, and I can sell it hundreds 1000s of times for even if it’s $1 $2. Yeah, that 30 minutes made me $1,000. And I’ve had a listing that has sold, you know, 900 800 times, and it’s being sold for $3. So that took me 20 minutes to make, I really see a value in that. So that’s where I’m going to be putting my effort into I want to be able to go to Hawaii, and sit on the beach, and my tone Qing in and having deposits daily, like I can make 50 to $100 on digital downloads. Now, with what I have, I have a few 100 items. If I had 1000 items, that’s five times the amount of chances to get five times the amount of income. So that’s my phone.
Emily: 8:05
That’s great. And if you’re not an Etsy seller, the the Ching that she’s talking about when you make a sale and you have the Etsy app on your phone, it makes like a little cash register noise. And it’s really exciting. Wonderful.
Patricia: 8:21
Yeah, I I’m kind of silly, because even now after I’ve made so many sales and reviews, I always check every review. And every time my phone rings, you know, I’ll be in the kitchen. I’ll be like, we just got in order. Yeah. I’m singing Blue’s Clues. But I really get excited. So I mean, that’s amazing. You know, every dollar adds up. It’s awesome.
Emily: 8:43
That’s great. That’s so great. What so what do you think is the biggest mistake that you see people making with their, with their shops or their printables?
Patricia: Um, I mean, biggest mistake in general, as a business is getting inspired. I mean, I’m a social entrepreneur, I have had multiple businesses, but I see people get inspired and then not have consistency. Okay, or not have like the effort, you know, and they lose that are also trying to undercut the competition as an artist. Oh, he’s doing it for $5 Let me do it for three then the next person’s let me do it for two, you know, that diminishes the value in art as a as a general whole, and we need to get keep the value in our artwork.

Emily: 9:29
I totally agree. That’s great. So on the flip side of that, what kind of advice would you give somebody who’s just starting out with an Etsy shop? This one is not directed towards me at all, by
the way. I mean, the education is free. There’s no excuse. There’s no excuse to not know how to use SEO websites that are available free such as E rank or marmalade. There’s no reason to not know. You know how to build a good list. thing. You can photograph items with things from Dollar Tree such as white. Those white back boards, wood textures, you know, there’s different things you can photograph your stuff well. But so my advice is in general research, all the different things that need to do with Etsy, the algorithm, the SEO, and making sure your listing looks pleasing to the eye, because as humans, we use our eyes mainly to buy things. So if it doesn’t look too good, like that chocolate cake doesn’t look that great, you’re not going to eat it. You want your listing to look great and well lit and clean.
Emily: 10:37
I love it. That’s great. Do you have any? This is when I didn’t prep you with but do you have any special tools that you use? Like a certain type of camera? Or do you just use your phone, use a lightbox anything like that.
Patricia: 10:49
Um, so for Etsy, I mostly use mock ups. Okay, I love mockups, I make mock ups, and I can sell those and I can use them. So it benefits me. And it also makes me money. mock ups are great for T shirts for tumblers for physical items like that. But for digital products, I just put a clean background on it and put a watermark over which is very important. And you know, make some mock ups. And then also another thing is I use my phone, you know, to make any pictures I do need to stake and also to record videos on YouTube. I have a GoPro I don’t know how to use it. Rather just use my phone.

Emily: 11:34
Awesome. Awesome. That’s what I love about Etsy is that it’s so accessible for everyone. You don’t have to have a big DSLR camera, you don’t have to have professional lighting, you can and it certainly will make things a little bit better. But you you can do it with what you have at home. And I think that’s great.

Patricia:11:53
And technology has really stepped up recently. phones can record it for K video and very high quality photos. There’s no excuse, like, I don’t have a camera. You know, you can get it done and sure to use what you have and make money. I mean, definitely the definition of bootstrapping, you know, beg, borrow barter, and you use what you got to make money. I started an Etsy shop with nothing, no money down, no nothing and I was selling birthday, like table skirts and stuff and my first Etsy shop, you can start with nothing they pay you they’ll deposit the money the next day, you can go get those supplies you can make what they ordered, as long as you know how to do it, you know, so I’m sorry, I’m going on. But you know, it’s it’s really it’s if you learn the system, it’s easy to grasp
it.

Emily: 12:51
No, that’s great. That’s really great. Is there anything additional about your shop or about you that you would want our listeners to know from today?
Patricia: 13:30
No, thank you so much for inviting me. I think that this is very important. It’s vital that once we learn something, you learn how to do something that makes you money, teach others pull others up with you. I think that’s extremely important. And that’s definitely what this podcast is. There’s no secrets, you know what I mean? You got to just share it all like, Hey, I’m making money. This is how you can make money. And that’s why I started my YouTube channel. Let’s make designs. I teach others how to make sublimation designs, and sell that content on Etsy and how to make money with Etsy. So I think that that’s really important to me, and I really appreciate you. Emily: 13:30
Yeah, thank you so much. I’m so excited to have finally gotten to talk to you. So
where can our listeners find you online?

Patricia: 13:42
So my website is priceless art studio.com. That links to my Etsy shop, but it gives me a separate storefront and then on YouTube is let’s make designs.
Awesome.

Emily:13:53
Well, thank you so much. This was great. I’m super excited to get to share it and get to check out more your work. So yeah, if you’re interested in minimalist designs, custom artwork, you should definitely check out Patricia’s shop. I’m sure she would love to work with you. And that is my cue. There’s my son coming up with a lawnmower so I don’t know if you can hear it or not. But that’s our cue to cut this one. Thanks for listening to the No Mercy business coaching and consulting podcast with Emily a Woodruff. We specialize in branding and design for women, by women

Find Patricia’s art at: pricelessartstudio.com or on Youtube here: shorturl.at/jnrsu

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Transcribed by Otter.ai