August 2024 Etsy income
August has passed, the last of the summer months.
Did it also bring sunshine to my Etsy shop and boost my revenue? Or was it like July, just an ordinary and boring month?
At least nothing bad happened to my shop, like last year when I got banned. But as mentioned before, August was just an ordinary month. But I have been thinking about the future of this shop and what I will do to make this a money-making shop.
So, here we go... the numbers for August (and my plans).
Numbers
In August, I published five new items, making it a total of 134.
My plan (see a bit further in this article) is to sell at least 500 items. Creating the items isn't the problem; it is coming up with good ideas. With one year of experience, I started noticing what people want to buy and what items aren't selling. But you can't keep squeezing a lemon endlessly; you need to come up with new lines of items, and (for me, at least) that is the most challenging part, as I am not the most creative person on this planet. But I am sure I can do it (and I will do it).
Enough talking about future plans for now, lets go back to the numbers.
To my big surprise, I saw an increase in the number of visitors: 114 more than in July (on average, that's around three more visitors per day).
But does this increase in visitors also mean more purchases and more revenue?
Where the number of visitors increased compared to July, the number of purchases dropped significantly, and so did the conversion rate.
Last month, only 44 items were sold, which is very disappointing.
Luckily enough, two bundles were sold, making the total revenue a little more bearable.
Costs for having my Etsy shop in August:
Listing fees: 10.84€
Transaction fees: 8.23€
Processing fees: 17.73€
VAT on seller fees: 7.82€
Offsite ads: 0.3€
Which totals up to 44.92€ in fees.
When I add my eRank and Midjourney subscriptions, the total August costs were 79.92€.
The total profit for the month of August is 47.39€.
Global overview ...
Again, there is nothing spectacular to mention here.
In August, I had a full 8-star review strike. 8 People honored my shop with a five-star rating. And this makes me happy.
And again, there was one customer complaining that she expected something else and asked for a refund. I replied that everything she complained about was clearly explained in the description. I didn't receive a reply from her, and I also didn't get a zero-star review. Good!
Scaling plans
Now to the most important part, my brainstorming session on how to make more money from my Etsy shop (I want to have an monthly average of $200 profit).
1. Open my own shop
I have been studying the costs that Etsy charges for every purchase. And one number was horrifying to me: the transaction fee!
Etsy charges a 4% fee plus $0.3 per purchase, and a listing fee of $0.2. These fees are okay when you sell products in a higher price range. But if your items (like in my niche) are around $2 per item, this $0.5 fee is already 25% of your price. Which is a lot.
So, I was thinking of creating my own selling platform for this niche, also allowing others to sell there. I'm sure I can offer lower fees. The only fee I would ask is a 4% or 5% fee per transaction (not including the fees for the payment transaction by Stripe).
I have the knowledge of how to build such a platform; I only need some time to work this out. I keep you updated on this.
When I extrapolate the current numbers, I need around 4500 monthly visitors to reach this (with a 4% conversion rate).
According to my brainstorming session, I can reach this in 2 possible ways:
a. Increase listings:
To get to such a number (around 4500 visitors), I should have around 550 to 600 listings. Which is a large number, I only have 135 listings now. But I can make it if I put more time and effort into creating new items.
b. Higher conversion rate:
If I can increase my conversion by 50% (this sounds a lot, but it only goes from 4 to 6), I will need only 3000 monthly visitors.
I have been talking to some other Etsy shop owners in my niche, and they have a conversion rate of 7-8%, but they have a different sub-niche. So, I plan to design more items in this sub-niche.
c. Higher price:
I have been thinking about this too, but it's not a good idea. There is so much competition, and most vendors sell their items at around the same price as I do.
The only I can do is offer more bundles (and I am also working on this one).
Btw, if you have better ideas to increase my sales and revenue, please leave a comment below.
