Tips & Tricks
How to Make $2,000/Day on Etsy
Published
9 months agoon
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admin
We are back with Vlad Kuksenko, the Owner and Founder of TagPup.
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He is the number onepet supply shop on Etsy and he only started with $500 and made over 250 his first year.
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And now he's making over60,000 a month in 2022. (empowering music) - This amount of packagingon the Etsy platform used to take us four, five, six hours. So now it might take us an hour.
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When you add more products to your store, in theory, you're gonna get more traffic. You can go from a hundreddollars in sales a day to a thousand dollars in sales a day.
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Etsy makes it verysimple for regular people to start selling on Etsy. - I don't know about you, but I am so excited tohear Vlad's growth secrets. Let's get to meet him.
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(uplifting music) Hey, good to see you.
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- You too, welcome backto the Etsy madness. - Yes, thank you.- Yeah.
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- So for those of you whohave not seen the interviews, we wanted to ask Vlad once again, what is TagPup how did you start? - So TagPup is a shop on Etsy.
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We sell dog collars, we makeour dog collars from scratch. So we go from printfrom design to printing, to sewing the straps, tofinalizing the collar, to shipping. I mean, everything from top to bottom.
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And we started all of that bybuying fabric from JOANN's, from the local JOANN's with a hundred dollar sewing machine, sewing straps, the best way that I could, buying buckles on Amazon and then transitioning overto China as manufacturing.
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So started off humbly and now I'm here. - Well, wonderful.
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(enthusiastic music) So what are the crucial skills that you have used to scale your shop? - There's a lot of them but I think some ofthe very important ones is being able to do graphic design, being able to create a brand, and that's using graphic design,and understanding the SEO, and what is the market demand.
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And my history with building websites, even though you don't build it on Etsy, but you understand how things work and how you want to present theproduct within milliseconds, cause you only got short amount of time to sell to your customer.
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So all of that kind of, I've been using to scaleon my Etsy shop, so- - Okay, so you're throwingout these words, SEO, - Yeah.- So what is that? - Yeah it's a lot of- - For those of you whodon't know what that is, can you just briefly describe it? - So SEO is search engine optimization. It's how you optimize your listing when you are selling on an algorithm, cause the algorithm needs to categorize, it needs to index you a certain way. So indexing you meaning, or categorize you in a certain way and you need to be able to communicate. (Vlad laughs) Listen, stay with me here, Nick. (both laughing) You need to communicateto the Etsy platform, the search engine, what you'reselling essentially, right? And there's you gotta usewords, you gotta use... The title has to be titled a certain way, your description has tobe written a certain way to specifically talkabout what you're selling so that customers looking for it, you're right there for them.
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- Okay so someone assimple just watching this and they're like, "I wannado something like this." Can they just startjust buying the products and doing themselves?- Yes.
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- And then figure outthe SEO stuff later on? - Yep, Etsy makes it very simple for regular people tostart selling on Etsy.
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You don't have to be an SEO specialist, Etsy provides a lot of resources.
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Also, you can follow meon my YouTube channel, I talk about all ofthis stuff all the time. So make sure to do that, link will probably be inthe description, I hope, so, I do talk about that. And it might be overwhelming and I try to simplify it as best as I can. - Okay, that's helpful.- Yeah.
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(uplifting music) - So when you first started,how many products did you have and where are you at right now? - Yeah, so we started off with dog bandanas and dog collars, right? Dog collars, you're starting,sewing them on my sew machine. Bandanas I could also sew'em on my sew machine, so I just kind of did that.
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I still sell them now. Bandanas, not so much, I saw a lot more profitmargins on dog collars so we've really went in that space.
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My mom, however, she loves thebandanas, she loves to sew.
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So she's doing the sametactic that I use in my shop.
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She distributes her keywordsby finding different fabrics in JOANN's that she could sell.
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If it's Easter, she'sfinding Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, Easter colors and so she'll sew bandanas withthat same strategy in mind. - So is your mom part of your business or- - No, she got her own thing.
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In the early days, I usedto work with her together on the Etsy shop until we start our own.
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But again, using the same techniques and we still sell bandanas as much. We do that during Christmas time we sell 'em plaid bandanas, Buffalo plaid. And we started selling sublimation tags.
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Those we stopped sellingfor the reasons that, the quality of sublimation onceramics or any hard surface, is not really good and dogs,they scratch themselves, and then the phone numbers, which was really essential for the ID tags cause that's what they'refor, would be scratched off.
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So we decided to just stay within engraved because engrave just stays there forever. So there's sometimes when the quality is just notgood enough, we don't sell it. And I actually, at onepoint opened up a cat store, a cat collar store.
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I closed that down prettyquick because our collars, though they were atthree quarter inch width, they were still too heavy for cats. Right now, mostly dog tags, dog bandanas a littlebit, and dog collars. (exciting music) - In your business, whatis that one single thing that a business ownercan start doing today that would help them growtheir business exponentially? - Yeah, so essentially you want customers to come back, right? Cause you have a stream of searches, people search and they find you and then there's advertisement.
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You say, "Hey, I'mpaying money, search me." They'll click on there and they'll leave, and they didn't purchase your listing.
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And so what they're gonna dois they're gonna come back, but now Etsy will now suggest that product cause they've clicked on it.
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So now Etsy's suggesting your product so that's a second way.
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The third way, is they'vebought from you before and they're coming backand that's the cheapest because you haven't spent money on it and they just came to your shop directly.
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So what you want to do is runadvertisements, if you can, if you have the budget for it.
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Two, make sure that youcreate a quality product, you ship on time, make sure you reallypursue those good reviews so that they come back, cause they were in awe of your product.
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But if your product was mediocre,they're not coming back. - Awesome.
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(energetic music) So would you say adding moreproducts to your Etsy shop will increase your revenue or what are the potentialdangers of doing so? - No, I think it's, in fact I talk about thison my channel all the time, when you add more products to your store, in theory, you're gonna get more traffic because you're rankingon different keywords.
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You're putting yourself indifferent corners of Etsy, right? If I'm selling a dog collarharness, dog tags, bandanas, those are all keywords.
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Those are all corners of Etsy that people are gonna be exploring and you're draining 'emback into your little shop. So a lot of times what people do, if they do a print on demand, if they do selling digital products, you'll have stores thathave 3,000 listings, they'll be just postingas much as they can. If it's the digital product, you don't actually need the photography or anything like that.
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So that would be astrategy of a lot of shops is really span yourself as much as you can with quality listings of course, not just quick and dirty listings that really don't conconvey to the customer.
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But with quality listing, if you can, and you have the abilityto produce the product or digital, if you can post it that often, that's a great strategy to tryto post as much as you can, if you can fulfill those ordersor those kind of products.
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(cheerful music) - What of the biggestgrowth killers for Etsy shop that any business shouldbe absolutely aware. - Yeah, that's a good question. And that's a very important one that a lot of people don't recognize when they're opening up a shop.
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You cannot do branded things, right? Copyrighted stuff, trademarks, Nike. - [Nick] Right.
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- [Vlad] Yeah, you can't doNike, you can't do Marvel. You can't-- [Nick] Aw, bummer.
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- [Vlad] Yeah and a lot of people do that.
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They'll they'll do baby sharks stickers, but you don't own the baby shark.
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And in fact, my wife, shesells onesies from home, but Onesies is a trademark.
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So you have to use bodysuit, right? So you have to be aware of what is a trademark and what's not.
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Velcro is another trademarkthat I didn't know about. But just being aware that you don't sell, you might get away with three months or four months of sales, but at some point Etsy'sgonna shut you down. The second really important one, is understanding your capabilities, right? If you can sell a lot, right, you can rank on the top of the top, but if you can't comfortablyor with satisfaction complete the orders, you'regonna run into a lot of trouble. People are gonna complain, people are gonna leave bad reviews, you're gonna start ranking down.
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So make sure your production and your sales go in parallel, right? It'll test your production if you increase in sales but change them and make sure that you'reready to welcome more orders if you are gonna keep growing. - So what things were you thinking about when you were thinkingof scaling your business? - Yeah, so I definitely hadto think about the future and I needed to think about, hey, what are the things I can do now so that later I can notstruggle with it, right? I could have stayed buyingfabric from JOANN's and just...
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Cause there's a designthat we sold really well and I actually went toevery JOANN's in Washington, I kid you not- - Yeah, I remember you sharing that.
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- Yeah, of all the JOANN'sthat I literally drove, we drove...
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We had to go to Seattleand knock out all those because that was selling really well.
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So I saw that frustration, I'm like, "Okay, something has to change." We gotta, if we are gonna be scaling, I need a better solution and so that's when I came up the idea, why can't we just print our own fabric? And so I started researchingwhat is sublimation and what fabric can we print on? And it's polyester.
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And so I started to look into that more and I bought the printer.
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The problem is I needed aheat press so then it... You can't print fabricwithout a heat press.
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So, and I had to come upwith a jerry rig system using a basic heat press.
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So I would just print maybe 10 feet by however wide the heatpress was and press.
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I had a strip of designcut on the paper cut and then the fabric with the same shape, and I just press it,hold it for 30 seconds, open it and move it, press it again.
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So I would just do that (Nicklaughs) and so it was... During that time, itwasn't very efficient, but I knew that I'm gonna geta heat press at some point and we're gonna roll this much faster.
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But I did needed a solutionfor my variety of fabrics that I'm gonna be selling.
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- Just outta curiosity, what was something like thisrun that typical person, does he need something atyour size, bigger, smaller? - Yeah so that's the most expensive thing we have in our shop so ifyou are robbing this place, I would go for that, you justneed a forklift for that.
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So, but it sent me back30,000, well $35,000. - Wow.
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- And I did buy that one with cash.
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When we made, when we made money... (both chuckling) - Good for you.
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- When we made the moneyour first full year, we like, "Hey, I need that heat press." So at the end of the year,right before a year was over, we bought the machine, put it here. - Amazing.- Got it set up, so. - That's awesome guys, if you want to hear more abouthow Vlad started his TagPup on episode number 10 on our podcast, which is ww.upflip.com/podcast. (uplifting music) All right Vlad, so when you first started, what were your totalearnings for that year and what are you ongoing for 2022? - Yeah, so we've been in for two years, so we have two years of earnings.
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So our very first one, we did about three quarterof a million, so 750. We're on track for 1.5 this year, just because we're nowlaunching onto Amazon Handmade and maybe potentiallytowards the end of the year, have our own websites so hopefully- - Wow, that's amazing.
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I am so excited to hear moreabout what you guys are doing. - Yeah.
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(uplifting music) - So what other toolsthat have helped you grow and scale your revenue? - I think the number onetool that comes to mind is- - Vlad let me stop you right there because the number one toolfor the job is Sendinblue, our value sponsor for today's video.
00:11:22
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Sendinblue is giving UpFlipviewers a one month free trial, all you have to do is headover to the link below and use the promo code that I think should be on the screen rightnow, S-I-B-X-U-P-F-L-I-P. Be sure to check back in the future videos to see how Sendinblue ishelping Vlad's business. - Wait, we're doing another video? - Yeah, maybe you'll getthe original host next time. - All right.
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(lively music) - All right, so last time we talked about how you track and how youmanage your customer's orders. Can you just briefly tellus about that one more time? - Yeah so I use a app,it's a third party app, it's called ShipStation and it allows you to processorders on a larger scale. So we'll come over here and look at this.
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So it looks like there's justa mess right here, right? There's so many orders.
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How in the world are you gonna find it? Well, it's the nicething about ShipStation is we start from that tableand we start putting orders in just in a basic order.
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And we scan in that particular order, workin' our way down,we scan the top barcode. The top barcode is moreof an action barcode. - Okay.
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- So it'll add the order into a list in that particular order.- Oh, nice.
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- So when we're printinga shipping labels, we'll print in that same order.
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And then we sort the shippinglabels into each order and then using these little clips, they hold the shipping labels.
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So ShipStation, like I said, allows us to print all of these orders, shipping labels at a much more, fast pace. We use this much, this amount of packagingon the Etsy platform used to take us four, five, six hours. So now it might take us an hour. - Wow, that's incredible.
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- So it cuts down thework by significantly.
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And that's just printingshipping labels on Etsy would be four or five hours. Printing shipping labels here actually would take usmore like 30 minutes to sorting it out, scanningit, that's awesome. - And I love your long table, it looks like you made yourself.
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- Yeah, I had a friend that built this, so I was getting too busy and I didn't have thetime to build it myself.
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I could hire somebody to do it for me so- - There you go.
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- So you probably don'thave these kind of skills so just hire a friendwho can do that for you. - That's right, that's right.
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(cheerful music) - So has your advertising budget changed ever since you started and, or what does a monthlybudget look like for you? - Yeah so on advertising Etsy does allow the maximum of a thousand dollars and I pretty much maxed it out. - Is that a day? - Well, we never spend a thousand. - Okay.
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- It just basically I'mgiving Etsy the say, "Hey, go ahead and spend upto a thousand, I don't care. "There's no limit on me." But that's the onlyspends like 200 of that. - Okay so that's 200 month or a day? - A day.- Okay.
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- So and when people are just starting running advertisement, Etsy will only allow you like $20 and you gotta grow up to that.
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- [Nick] Oh, that that's smart.
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- But even when you put $20, it doesn't mean it's gonna spend $20. They might spend 50 cents, it might spend two but it'll only spend it if people are clicking on your listing, if people are interacting and it's starting togrow on the algorithm. If that's not happening, you're not gonna spend money on ads.
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- Is there any way you can expedite that? Say, "Spend my $20 tomorrow?" - I wish, but no, that'sthe beauty of Etsy is that it gives a fairchance to a lot of people. It used to, when I just came in, you can put a lot of moneyon this listing and say, "Hey, I'm willing to spend$1,000 on one listing." And it'll shoot you to the top." But that gives an unfair advantage for those that have money who wanna sell and it really is a fair,free market on Etsy. - So it sounds like semi-recently that they just did a change.
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- Yeah, it, well, it'smore like a year and a half to two years ago.
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So just right after I started,they probably saw me like, "Wait a minute, we gottado something about this." (both laughing) (bright music) - Hey, why don't you give us a tour. - Sure, yeah.
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- Last time we were hereso just show us around.
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- Right now we have all of our orders out, cause we're kind oftowards the end of the day, they're gonna be shipped out tomorrow, we're just getting 'em ready for tomorrow.
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We have our printer down here.
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This is where we print all of our designs. We print it first on paper, the kind of ink we use is sublimation ink, which means it's temporarilysitting on there.
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And then once we bring it over here, this is a roll to roll heat press.
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Basically, we put ourdesigns on the bottom, it covered with fabric and then it goes through the heat press, being applied some pressure with heat, it transfers that ink over onto polyester. It binds to the polyester and that's how we get itthose the polyester prints.
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- Yes, and in case if you guysdid not watch the last video, please go back and take a look at it.
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It's amazing what this machine here does.
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- All right so up here,is where we do our straps. Again, it's a mess right now.
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We got really busy in the past week so we got some mess things.
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So we have our strap machines.
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This is where we sew all our straps when we cut the fabric.
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We store all the straps that we have sewn here in the shelves.
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I built this myself.
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This is my, kind of my workings.
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So it's again, a more efficientway to put the straps in, pull it out, cut however much you need.
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And you got an access for thefull library of (indistinct). - Awesome, I love it.
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Well, since last time we were here, it looks like people arevery busy around here. - Yeah.
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- So good for you koodoos on that. - Yeah, thank you.
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(energetic music) - Are there any downsides to scaling or did you have any issues or challenges when you were growing your business? - Yeah, I think everybusiness goes through this, but I think inventoryis one of the big ones just because you're growingfaster than you sold yesterday. So if you're gonna have anincreased sales next month, your past month's sales, the money that you got from last month are not gonna be enough toscale up to your inventory. I don't know if that makes sense.
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It's an uphill battle andyou're always fighting inventory cause you never have enough money.
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So if it was the opposite whereyou made a lot this month, but not enough next month,well it'd be easier, cause you can buy smaller amounts and so you have the income, but it's always an uphill battle.
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If you are scaling, if you are growing, that's a good problem to have.
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So I think inventory'sbeen really a challenge and it keeps being a challenge.
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- Okay, so somebodywatching this right now and is thinking, "Hey, Iwanna scale my business "and I'm hearing whatVlad is talking about "and I wanna make sure Idon't run out of inventory." And they get so much inventory and at that point you need to store it. And what if you don't use all that, is there a way to ship it back? - Yeah so my biggeststrategy that I try to use, is I really try to source everything here from the United States.
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The things that I do source from China are buckles and fabric. Those are the only twothings I source from China, everything else I tryto get from the States, that's why we use Uline because if you run out, youcan just order right there. You don't have to store, youdon't have a storage space. Now with buckles, they'rejust kind of small, you don't need to store a lot of it.
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With fabric, I try not tohave a pre-printed fabric, I have white fabric that I store and then I use it to print thedesigns that we're selling. And that's a big mistakea lot of people have, is they buy that minimum order from China or the minimum order from any manufacturer and it could potentiallysit there and not be sold.
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What we do is we have theability to change the fabric and that allows us to not to have to order a bunch of that design.
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We just print a little bitand we'll see if it sells. If it doesn't, well, weonly print it a little bit. - That's awesome. - And if there's a designthat is selling a lot, well, we'll just print a lot of it.
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- Wonderful and last timeyou mentioned with Uline, you click today andtomorrow it's arriving. - Yeah, it's a beautiful service.
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- How convenient.- I love it.
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(future bass music) - So what are some thingsthat the owner can do to scale their business on Etsy? - Yeah, so that's very important to know the difference between what you're doing to makesome money on the side. - Okay.
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- Cause some people to make alittle hobby side, side gig, but what do you do to make it scalable? To truly-- Yes, that's what we want. - And that's reallyimportant to understand, are you gonna go into a product selling a specific kind of product? Are you nerding out about gloves or are you nerding out about hats? But you need to think about, can I think about clothing, or do I need to thinkabout the wedding space, or am I looking at engraving? Cause you need to think about, how can you pursue other products with either the machinery that you have or the talent that you have or potentially, what's your direction? For example, I'm selling pet products, but I'm not just selling dog collars, I'm selling tags, I'm selling bandanas, we're selling leashes, harnesses, right? We're thinking about, notabout a single product, but a niche and how can we...
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What is our plan to expand with whether machinery or product types. - Okay so when you first started, is that what you had in mind or did you focus on dog tagsonly and then you scaled? - Well, when I started, we just... Anything that would sell.
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And we figured, hey, let'sgo into the pet industry and let's see what happens. And so like I said, I had a saw machine, I'm like, "Let's try some dog collars." And then I started to expand but I did have a general in mind.
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I need to make this big cause I need to...
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This needs to supplyincome for me and my family so I had no choice, so we needed to scale. - Nice.
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(energetic music) All right so how did youovercome those challenges that you just mentioned? I mean, what have you done to improve? - Well, I think one of the things is we, because we're growing, taking on some loan wasn't an issue for us instead of allocating our resources, the money that we wereearning into machinery, we thought, "Hey, let's lease the machines "and then buy the inventory." I mean, you could havedone it the other way, but- - Nice.- That's why we thought, "Hey, maybe a lease wouldn't be too bad." But a short term leasenot a long term lease.
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You don't want to becommitted for a long time. We only did it for two years. - Okay.
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- We own about 30% of theequipment that we have and about most of that equipment will be paid off by September,which I'm really excited. But you only make thatconclusion if you are growing and you are scaling and yousee the potential of your... You're not just ranking on one keyword. And that's a big mistake people have, is they start ranking on one keyword, like for us it was dog collar. And we're like, "That's, it we're set." But if I was just banking on that product, the moment I'd rankdownwards, I'd be gone.
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So my strategy was tospiderweb my way into Etsy and to be kind of rankinga little bit on the lot. - Nice.
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- And that allows me to, if Irank down here, that's fine. I still keep it consistent, cause it's gonna rank somewhere else. - Nice.
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- And that allowed us to beconfident in getting a lease. And the other thing iswhen we buy the inventory, we don't pay for the full invoice upfront. We pay for 30% or half the amount, you can make a dealwith your manufacturer. - [Nick] Okay.
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- So you don't have to havea lot of money up front, you pay half of it and theystart the manufacturing and you save up for the other half. And that allows you to kind of keep moving as you're growing. - I love it.
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So when you mentioned about the spider, so you're basically just growing legs. - Exactly.
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- So you more have legsas a table stands on. - Yeah, exactly.
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It's kinda like the water strider. - [Nick] Okay.- To not to sink, you have so many differentpoints of contact and that's what we try to do with Etsy.
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(lively music) - So ShipStation, how does that work with Etsy or is that a different software,or do they communicate? - Yeah, they work through an API, you don't need to know what that is but it connects with your Etsy account and all the orders that are made on Etsy will be then communicated to ShipStation.
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And you can print a shippinglabels on ShipStation and it will say completedor pre-transit, right? When you create a shipping label, it puts it in pre-transits, right? It's packaged and it'sready to be transit. It's not in transit yet.
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And so obviously once they scan it, then it's now changing into status and that information willthen communicate to Etsy, which is great.
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And so you have validtracking information, which Etsy wants, cause it started doinga Star Seller program, which means you have to do 95% or more should be on time shipping. - Oh.
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- And so, ShipStation willcommunicate that to Etsy.
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(uplifting bright music) All right so let's justgo ahead and design an UpFlip dog collar.
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So we're gonna make adog collar from scratch.
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We're gonna start off from Illustrator.
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I already got a design going. All right, so what we're gonna do now, we just sent our designover to this computer and we're gonna upload it and we're gonna go ahead and print it.
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So usually I print itlining up all the designs. So I don't print the wholedesign all on one roll.
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I try to do it vertically soI can dis print many designs and cut the fabric whenit's already on the roll. So sometimes it does take time for the printer and thecomputer to communicate because it needs to send one file and then the printer needsto repeat that several times. So that's sometimes the renderingand the transfer process does take some time.
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All right, so we just finished printing.
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What we're gonna do iswe're gonna cut it off, should be good.
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We're gonna come overhere to the heat press.
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And I found a little stripof fabric we're gonna use. We're gonna put it right here.
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So then we're just gonna goahead and send it through. All right, so we're gonna engrave on the front of this buckle.
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Usually we use these templates.
00:23:53
I have my employees, all they need to do is put in buckles in these slots, upload the file that goesinto the template right there. But I'm just gonna go aheadand place that in here. And we're gonna rock and roll. Ready? Here we go.
00:24:06
(machine engraving) And there you go.
00:24:12
You got your very own UpFlip collar. Nick, come over here.
00:24:15
(Vlad laughing) (energetic music) - How do you keep your costs so low? And what do you do as you'rescaling your business, what are you doing tojust cut your expenses? Share some tips.
00:24:28
- Yeah, so a big thing is process. You have to have a good process.
00:24:31
If your process takes a longer time, you're gonna charge more, right? We don't cut fabric with scissors, why? Cause it's gonna take us a long time.
00:24:38
We actually cut everything,once everything is pressed, we cut it up on a roll.
00:24:42
We can cut hundreds ofyards within minutes, right? You have to find a betterprocess to create the product.
00:24:47
If you can improve your process,you will reduce your price. If you reduce your price,you'll rank to the top. So right, so it it's directly, how do you manufacture, howdo you process it at home that will then directlycorrelate to your sales. - Okay, so tell me this, when you get a newemployee coming on board, how do you measure their performance? - Well, it's definitelynot on speed at first. At first, it's not about speed.
00:25:08
It's about them reallyfollowing instructions. Can they follow instructions? Cause speed is only inevitable, right? We talk about a system calledslow hand, fast hands, right? So slow hands is, it'sduring those moments, you need to confirm thatthat's the correct order, The personalization iscorrect, the fabric is correct, those are slow hand movements.
00:25:24
Fast hands, it's takin' a callor throwing into the bucket. So, it's kind of funny thatI have to mention that, "Hey, this is a fast handmotion throw it in the bin. "Hey, this is a fast handmotion, throw it in the garbage "or scan it." Scanning is not that hard.
00:25:37
So having our employees identify fast hand and slow hand movements allows it to be more andmore efficient (indistinct). - So is that something that you do? Do you monitor that process? - Exactly well, I want to seeif they can recognize that, but then, because then they'regonna naturally do that, and that improves the process. - Love it.
00:25:51
(uplifting music) What keywords are you using that you have found to be very helpful? - Yeah so when you're selling dog collars, the thing about fabric ispeople have preferences, right? You're not just buying the dog collar. If you wanna just buy a dog collar, go to Petco and you getyourself a nylon collar. But when they're buying something on Etsy, they're like, "Well I want apink polka dotted dog collar. "Oh, Christmas is coming up, "I want a Santa Claus red dog collar." So they're choosing different. (crosstalk) Yeah, when we go to the store, we're not just buying a t-shirt cause otherwise they'll allbe black and white, right? There's some design elementsthat we're looking for, so I think the number one toolthat comes to mind is eRank. eRank is a great platform,it's a third party software that shows you whatthings are selling well. You go on there and you can look up, "Hey, how are dog collars selling?" - Oh man, stop it. - So yeah- - You're makin' this it's too easy! - It's not easy, it'ssimple it's not easy. - Okay that's right simple.
00:26:39
- You wake up early, you work hard.
00:26:41
But yeah, so you go on thewebsite, you type in dog collar, and you it'll show you howmany searches per month. And then you're like, "Oh,you know the secondary term, "what is the other keywords "they're looking with the dog collar?" You find that like, "Hey pink polka dot "is being searched with dog collar.
00:26:55
"Hey, maybe I can sell a pinkpolka dotted dog collar." So there's really good,good platform to start. And I think scaling only depends, really depends andhinges on the beginning. What product have you chosen to sell? Not necessarily, you cansell a really bad product, there's nothing that'sgonna help you scale it. You gotta begin strong.
00:27:12
And I think eRank isprobably my favorite software and I wanna provide the consumer to satisfy that keywordthat they're searching for, and so I use eRank thatI mentioned earlier - [Nick] Yeah.- To find those keywords.
00:27:25
And I'm typing dog collarand then on the bottom, I'm looking through all the keywords that are also being searchedwith the keyword dog collar. And then I startresearching it on Pinterest, on Instagram, what does that word mean? So if it's a blush floral,what does that mean? And so I go on Pinterest and I discover, "Hey, it's not a bright pink." It is more like, this isa blush floral right here. - Oh.- Right? - So-- That's beautiful.
00:27:46
- It's not a hard pink,it's more of a lighter pink and the flowers are not roses,they're more wild flowers.
00:27:53
And I discovered all of thison Pinterest on Instagram. Well beginning with eRank but, and then I need to figure out, well, what are thecustomers thinking about when they're thinkingabout a blush floral? And so I think that's a veryimportant one to understand is you create a list of all those keywords you want to design for, and I either design it myselfor I buy the designs online and I make a product, proper title, proper description,proper tags for the SEO. - Yeah.- And I sell it on there.
00:28:20
(energetic music) - What is the nextbiggest thing for TagPup? I mean, what are your goalsthat you wanna achieve? - Some of the products that we do want to tacklestill, is harnesses. We started selling some harnesses. - [Nick] Nice.
00:28:33
- We wanna do MartinGale collars, It's the collar thatdoesn't have a buckle, but our big, big goals is we wanna start to advanceinto Amazon Handmade, we wanna start building a shop.
00:28:42
Selling on marketplaces are nice but it's nice to build your own brand.
00:28:46
But that's gonna require alot of time and resources cause that water strider effect, we want to go on a macro scaleinstead of just keywords so- - I love it, so last time a while back when we had this interview, you mentioned nothing aboutAmazon, it was only Etsy. So now you're throwing outAmazon so what's happening? Tell me about that.
00:29:02
- Yeah so Amazon's tryingto compete with Etsy. I feel like it.
00:29:04
So they had a section of Amazonit's called Amazon Handmade. So you can, if you're handmade, if you make handmadestuff you sell on Amazon, their fees are a lot more than Etsy. So if I sell a 21, $22 item, their fees are gonna be $3.50 cents.
00:29:18
So it's anywhere from 10 to 15%, so much higher than Etsy, no matter how many peoplecomplain about Etsy fees. But the amount of traffic that you have access to, is, I mean, you can go from $100 in sales a day to a $1,000 in sales a day within weeks if you do everything correctly.
00:29:35
So and it's a big stepand we need to get... We need to prepare for that.
00:29:38
(exciting music) - All right so we talked about ranking, so how do you rank outside of Etsy, like on Google or other searches? - Yeah, so Etsy does, it does advertise onGoogle and other platforms but there's nothing you can do about it. You pay the advertisement, you advertise your listings and then Etsy will try toadvertise on different platforms. And there's not much youcan do to control that. - I see.
00:30:02
Is that something that youcan do outside of that? Can you just-- You can, you can grow, you can open up an Instagram account, you can do all that stuff.
00:30:08
You can just link it orwhatever but on the platform you really can't do much else about that.
00:30:12
- Now do you do Instagram, Facebook? - Yeah, I do.
00:30:15
Well, I do Instagram.
00:30:16
We're not really big right now.
00:30:18
We just paying somebody that has a dog and that they're going to bejust recording, filming them. We're providing them with product.
00:30:25
We're just trying to geta natural thing going, it's not as big right now. Right now, I'm, like I said, focusing on a lot of other things like Amazon Handmadeand my own website so... - Excellent.
00:30:34
(exciting music) All right, so when you have products and you have so many of them, there are some of themthat just drop in sales and you're like this one's not selling. - Yeah.- What do you do about that? How do you work with- - Yeah so there's differentreasons why it might drop.
00:30:47
One of the things that neverranked up towards the top and it never did well.
00:30:51
I usually don't spend my time on those, I just come up with another product.
00:30:54
There's no reason to try torevive some that didn't work. But if it sold really well, like recently we had anumber one product rank down and it dropped our sales.
00:31:04
And I'm like, "What do I do?" If I could reduce the priceto compete with the sellers, cause a lot of times you'll have people that come in with a cheaperprice and you ask yourself, can I reprice my product? Is that gonna be still profitable for me? And then the secondthing you ask yourself, can I improve my productionof speed production, right? If somebody's buying and theysee that my competitor's doing one to two weeks fulfillment, but I can do it one to twodays, let's do that, right? Let's get back on top.
00:31:27
We gotta work hard, fight for the top.
00:31:29
If the product is a seasonal product and it starts to rank down, just let it.
00:31:32
It's gonna come backthe same time next year.
00:31:34
Because throughout the yearyou'll have fluctuations and you need to be awareof that and be okay, be a full peace saying,"Look, it's gonna come back." - That makes sense.
00:31:42
So on those items that do drop in price, how often do you reduce your pricing? - I try that for a little bit.
00:31:49
You obviously, you look atyour conversion rate graph and you'll see that go up.
00:31:54
And if you start toincrease it a little bit and look at that conversion graph, if it starts to go down and your listing starts to rank down, well that's your problem.
00:32:02
You've now discoveredthat the conversion rate is the reason why yourcompetitors are beating you. So you gotta find a wayto improve conversion. Now, you can bring the price back up but you gotta add some other value.
00:32:11
You gotta add some better photos, bring it to life and letthe customer experience. If you don't have a video,put a video in there.
00:32:17
A big caution though if youare changing your photos, that might rank you downeven more so that... You gotta be careful aboutit, there's so many stories, people change the photo andthey start ranking down. So you gotta be careful about that one. - Oh, thank you.
00:32:28
(enthusiastic music) So we're seeing that Amazondoes have higher fees. - Yeah.
00:32:35
- But why should someonestart on Etsy first and then scale to Amazon? - Yeah, I think Etsyunderstands the seller better than Amazon.
00:32:41
Amazon is a company that was like a multi-trillionbillion dollar company that they're like, "Oh,let's try a Handmade up." But Etsy was like, "Hey,that's where it begins," and then it grows up. And I think-- That makes sense.
00:32:51
- It creates a much more friendlyenvironment for the seller when there's so manyunknown, you know what SEO. If you don't know what SEO, especially you should go on Etsy, right? And you just trying thingsout and like I said, the biggest one is the fees. - Got it, right.
00:33:05
- Amazon has much higher fees than Etsy. - Well, let's talk about the fees on Etsy. What's going there? - So right now people are going on strike- - What? - For the increase of fees on Etsy but the increase hasgone from five to 6.5.
00:33:17
So it's only at 1.5 increaseand people are complaining so- - Oh man.
00:33:22
- But Amazon has up to 15% so- - Oh my goodness.- eBay is about 10 to 12%, but Etsy's the smallest even at 6.5 so- - Still, still.
00:33:31
So hands down Etsy is still the place- - Still the best place.- To go to start.
00:33:34
I mean, if you're selling amillion dollars worth of stuff, the 6.5% will be a big sum and I wish it was free butit's much more expensive to open up a pop up shop in the mall than even selling on Amazon so- - Yes. - You gotta think of it that way.
00:33:49
- Okay, that makes sense.
00:33:50
(invigorating music) So someone goes to etsy.com and they wanna start to this business, are there tools available for them that they can just start today? - Yeah.
00:34:00
No, I think that's one of theamazing things about Etsy.
00:34:03
It considers that the factthat it's gonna be a basic, no experience to somebody that doesn't know a lotabout selling or scaling.
00:34:10
And so they provide a lot ofdata that they can show you. If you're starting to sell,they're gonna show you "Hey, what's your click through rate?" And then you can do a little icon, above the click throughrates to explain what it is. - Oh cool.- And we live in the days of YouTube, and you can literally YouTube anything.
00:34:25
They do have blogs abouthow to go viral on TikTok, how to promote your product on Instagram.
00:34:31
So there's a lot of greatresources directly on the website for people to use.
00:34:35
- This is so encouragingso anybody you watching, literally if you're juston spring break from school or if you're retiree and this is something they can just start today. - That's right, yeah.
00:34:44
(upbeat music) - So you're growing your business, you're scalin' it from Etsy to Amazon, you're still going big.- Yep, yep.
00:34:51
- But did you have anymistakes along the process and what'd you do to overcome them? - Oh, there's many mistakes.
00:34:56
I think one of the biggest ones is, I love to deal with things. And I'm good with dealing with machines, I'm not good with peopleand that's the big one. So you're building a team and how does that personneed to be approached, right? And when you're explaining to them, "Okay, this is what Iwant you to do today." They might be on a wholenother wave than what you are, cause you're moving ahundred miles an hour and they're just starting.
00:35:17
They just got up, they'rejust starting their day. So being aware of that or they might be havingsome personal issues that you need to be aware of.
00:35:23
You need to know their strengths, their weaknesses, position, at stations that aremore accurately represent what they are capable of,so that's been a big one. And especially when I started hiring, you deal a lot with that andnot enough with manufacturing, that kind kind of slows the process down.
00:35:38
And you're obviouslyspending money per hour cause you've you got the-- That makes sense.
00:35:42
(energetic music) Are sales or discounts a goodway to grow your business? Or is that something you do? - Yeah, oh I do that all the time. Well, one of the things that's nice, when you do go on a sale, it lets everybody that favorite your shop know that you're going for sale.
00:35:57
So you might get a flood ofpeople comin' to your shop.
00:35:59
So, it's a great way to get some sales, if people have favorite it.
00:36:04
But also, when you're running a sale, people just like the fact that they're not paying a full price.
00:36:08
And so that does give youa little bit of an edge.
00:36:10
A lot of times what I find people on Etsy, they'll do as sale as a static sale, like it's always on sale.
00:36:16
So it's just like, "Oh, youcould have paid like this, "but you're paying that." So I try not to do that too much, but yeah sales andcoupons are a great one. Also, sending coupons to people that have purchased your listing.
00:36:27
Putting it in with your packaging, just saying, "Hey, here's acoupon when you come back, "go ahead and buy a sale." - Oh that is cool.
00:36:33
(cheerful music) Last time you had mentioned that you started this in your home. - Yeah.
00:36:39
- So did you have issues with storage? - Yes, a lot.
00:36:43
So we wrote it off, ourwhole house rent on taxes because we used ourkitchen, our very kitchen for packaging.- Wait, wait, wait, you just said you wrote it off? What does that mean to someone listening? - Okay, well just sayinglike we used the whole house. That's just, we used our kitchen table as a packaging station.
00:36:58
We used our living room as a mini storage, a temporary storage.
00:37:02
Our main storage was in my daughter's room and she slept with us during that time. - [Nick] Used that blush pink.
00:37:08
- Yeah so we had a space problem.
00:37:10
That's why it kind of pushedus out to rent our shop. - And that's where you said business grew. - Yeah, much better because now we can organizeour shop and stations. The laser station, thesublimation station, the heat press station.
00:37:22
So we can organize it that way. You got your scissors and all the things that youneed for that station so- - So basically what you're saying is you had to change up the station names from the kitchen to the laundry. - Exactly.
00:37:32
- The living room sideand my wife loves it. - Excellent, okay.
00:37:34
(upbeat music) So Vlad, to wrap things up, what is your number one keytip for success on Etsy? - It's a big question but I think that thebest advice I can give, is be a person that is never satisfied with the current state, right? Always go for forward.
00:37:55
Go, always try new things.
00:37:56
Don't be afraid to exploreother options, right? Just because you're doingreally well on this product and you're gonna say, "Okay, that's it.
00:38:02
"I made it and I'm gonna stay here." No, keep going forward.
00:38:05
Explore other things,explore other keywords. Have you started Instagram? Have you started TikTok? Have you tried, if you're doing t-shirts, have you tried bridesmaids? Have you tried hoodies? Have you tried hats? Just keep going forward because a posture that is explorative will allow you to survive whenthe markets are fluctuating, cause it's gonna fluctuate.
00:38:23
And if you're just happyin your little corner, you're gonna die down. If you're not growing, if you're not pedaling yourbike, you're gonna fall over. Right? So you gotta keep moving.
00:38:31
- All right you guys, well, that is it. Thank you so much for watching and I sure hope you enjoyed it.
00:38:36
Be sure to hit thatSubscribe button and Like, and before you go hit thatlink in the description below to receive your 20% off ofSimpliSafe Home Security System. Till next time.
00:00:03
He is the number onepet supply shop on Etsy and he only started with $500 and made over 250 his first year.
00:00:12
And now he's making over60,000 a month in 2022. (empowering music) - This amount of packagingon the Etsy platform used to take us four, five, six hours. So now it might take us an hour.
00:00:26
When you add more products to your store, in theory, you're gonna get more traffic. You can go from a hundreddollars in sales a day to a thousand dollars in sales a day.
00:00:34
Etsy makes it verysimple for regular people to start selling on Etsy. - I don't know about you, but I am so excited tohear Vlad's growth secrets. Let's get to meet him.
00:00:43
(uplifting music) Hey, good to see you.
00:00:51
- You too, welcome backto the Etsy madness. - Yes, thank you.- Yeah.
00:00:53
- So for those of you whohave not seen the interviews, we wanted to ask Vlad once again, what is TagPup how did you start? - So TagPup is a shop on Etsy.
00:01:02
We sell dog collars, we makeour dog collars from scratch. So we go from printfrom design to printing, to sewing the straps, tofinalizing the collar, to shipping. I mean, everything from top to bottom.
00:01:12
And we started all of that bybuying fabric from JOANN's, from the local JOANN's with a hundred dollar sewing machine, sewing straps, the best way that I could, buying buckles on Amazon and then transitioning overto China as manufacturing.
00:01:24
So started off humbly and now I'm here. - Well, wonderful.
00:01:28
(enthusiastic music) So what are the crucial skills that you have used to scale your shop? - There's a lot of them but I think some ofthe very important ones is being able to do graphic design, being able to create a brand, and that's using graphic design,and understanding the SEO, and what is the market demand.
00:01:46
And my history with building websites, even though you don't build it on Etsy, but you understand how things work and how you want to present theproduct within milliseconds, cause you only got short amount of time to sell to your customer.
00:01:58
So all of that kind of, I've been using to scaleon my Etsy shop, so- - Okay, so you're throwingout these words, SEO, - Yeah.- So what is that? - Yeah it's a lot of- - For those of you whodon't know what that is, can you just briefly describe it? - So SEO is search engine optimization. It's how you optimize your listing when you are selling on an algorithm, cause the algorithm needs to categorize, it needs to index you a certain way. So indexing you meaning, or categorize you in a certain way and you need to be able to communicate. (Vlad laughs) Listen, stay with me here, Nick. (both laughing) You need to communicateto the Etsy platform, the search engine, what you'reselling essentially, right? And there's you gotta usewords, you gotta use... The title has to be titled a certain way, your description has tobe written a certain way to specifically talkabout what you're selling so that customers looking for it, you're right there for them.
00:02:44
- Okay so someone assimple just watching this and they're like, "I wannado something like this." Can they just startjust buying the products and doing themselves?- Yes.
00:02:51
- And then figure outthe SEO stuff later on? - Yep, Etsy makes it very simple for regular people tostart selling on Etsy.
00:02:56
You don't have to be an SEO specialist, Etsy provides a lot of resources.
00:03:00
Also, you can follow meon my YouTube channel, I talk about all ofthis stuff all the time. So make sure to do that, link will probably be inthe description, I hope, so, I do talk about that. And it might be overwhelming and I try to simplify it as best as I can. - Okay, that's helpful.- Yeah.
00:03:14
(uplifting music) - So when you first started,how many products did you have and where are you at right now? - Yeah, so we started off with dog bandanas and dog collars, right? Dog collars, you're starting,sewing them on my sew machine. Bandanas I could also sew'em on my sew machine, so I just kind of did that.
00:03:31
I still sell them now. Bandanas, not so much, I saw a lot more profitmargins on dog collars so we've really went in that space.
00:03:39
My mom, however, she loves thebandanas, she loves to sew.
00:03:42
So she's doing the sametactic that I use in my shop.
00:03:45
She distributes her keywordsby finding different fabrics in JOANN's that she could sell.
00:03:50
If it's Easter, she'sfinding Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, Easter colors and so she'll sew bandanas withthat same strategy in mind. - So is your mom part of your business or- - No, she got her own thing.
00:04:00
In the early days, I usedto work with her together on the Etsy shop until we start our own.
00:04:05
But again, using the same techniques and we still sell bandanas as much. We do that during Christmas time we sell 'em plaid bandanas, Buffalo plaid. And we started selling sublimation tags.
00:04:17
Those we stopped sellingfor the reasons that, the quality of sublimation onceramics or any hard surface, is not really good and dogs,they scratch themselves, and then the phone numbers, which was really essential for the ID tags cause that's what they'refor, would be scratched off.
00:04:32
So we decided to just stay within engraved because engrave just stays there forever. So there's sometimes when the quality is just notgood enough, we don't sell it. And I actually, at onepoint opened up a cat store, a cat collar store.
00:04:44
I closed that down prettyquick because our collars, though they were atthree quarter inch width, they were still too heavy for cats. Right now, mostly dog tags, dog bandanas a littlebit, and dog collars. (exciting music) - In your business, whatis that one single thing that a business ownercan start doing today that would help them growtheir business exponentially? - Yeah, so essentially you want customers to come back, right? Cause you have a stream of searches, people search and they find you and then there's advertisement.
00:05:13
You say, "Hey, I'mpaying money, search me." They'll click on there and they'll leave, and they didn't purchase your listing.
00:05:19
And so what they're gonna dois they're gonna come back, but now Etsy will now suggest that product cause they've clicked on it.
00:05:25
So now Etsy's suggesting your product so that's a second way.
00:05:28
The third way, is they'vebought from you before and they're coming backand that's the cheapest because you haven't spent money on it and they just came to your shop directly.
00:05:36
So what you want to do is runadvertisements, if you can, if you have the budget for it.
00:05:41
Two, make sure that youcreate a quality product, you ship on time, make sure you reallypursue those good reviews so that they come back, cause they were in awe of your product.
00:05:50
But if your product was mediocre,they're not coming back. - Awesome.
00:05:54
(energetic music) So would you say adding moreproducts to your Etsy shop will increase your revenue or what are the potentialdangers of doing so? - No, I think it's, in fact I talk about thison my channel all the time, when you add more products to your store, in theory, you're gonna get more traffic because you're rankingon different keywords.
00:06:15
You're putting yourself indifferent corners of Etsy, right? If I'm selling a dog collarharness, dog tags, bandanas, those are all keywords.
00:06:23
Those are all corners of Etsy that people are gonna be exploring and you're draining 'emback into your little shop. So a lot of times what people do, if they do a print on demand, if they do selling digital products, you'll have stores thathave 3,000 listings, they'll be just postingas much as they can. If it's the digital product, you don't actually need the photography or anything like that.
00:06:42
So that would be astrategy of a lot of shops is really span yourself as much as you can with quality listings of course, not just quick and dirty listings that really don't conconvey to the customer.
00:06:52
But with quality listing, if you can, and you have the abilityto produce the product or digital, if you can post it that often, that's a great strategy to tryto post as much as you can, if you can fulfill those ordersor those kind of products.
00:07:04
(cheerful music) - What of the biggestgrowth killers for Etsy shop that any business shouldbe absolutely aware. - Yeah, that's a good question. And that's a very important one that a lot of people don't recognize when they're opening up a shop.
00:07:18
You cannot do branded things, right? Copyrighted stuff, trademarks, Nike. - [Nick] Right.
00:07:23
- [Vlad] Yeah, you can't doNike, you can't do Marvel. You can't-- [Nick] Aw, bummer.
00:07:26
- [Vlad] Yeah and a lot of people do that.
00:07:28
They'll they'll do baby sharks stickers, but you don't own the baby shark.
00:07:31
And in fact, my wife, shesells onesies from home, but Onesies is a trademark.
00:07:37
So you have to use bodysuit, right? So you have to be aware of what is a trademark and what's not.
00:07:42
Velcro is another trademarkthat I didn't know about. But just being aware that you don't sell, you might get away with three months or four months of sales, but at some point Etsy'sgonna shut you down. The second really important one, is understanding your capabilities, right? If you can sell a lot, right, you can rank on the top of the top, but if you can't comfortablyor with satisfaction complete the orders, you'regonna run into a lot of trouble. People are gonna complain, people are gonna leave bad reviews, you're gonna start ranking down.
00:08:09
So make sure your production and your sales go in parallel, right? It'll test your production if you increase in sales but change them and make sure that you'reready to welcome more orders if you are gonna keep growing. - So what things were you thinking about when you were thinkingof scaling your business? - Yeah, so I definitely hadto think about the future and I needed to think about, hey, what are the things I can do now so that later I can notstruggle with it, right? I could have stayed buyingfabric from JOANN's and just...
00:08:37
Cause there's a designthat we sold really well and I actually went toevery JOANN's in Washington, I kid you not- - Yeah, I remember you sharing that.
00:08:46
- Yeah, of all the JOANN'sthat I literally drove, we drove...
00:08:50
We had to go to Seattleand knock out all those because that was selling really well.
00:08:55
So I saw that frustration, I'm like, "Okay, something has to change." We gotta, if we are gonna be scaling, I need a better solution and so that's when I came up the idea, why can't we just print our own fabric? And so I started researchingwhat is sublimation and what fabric can we print on? And it's polyester.
00:09:10
And so I started to look into that more and I bought the printer.
00:09:13
The problem is I needed aheat press so then it... You can't print fabricwithout a heat press.
00:09:18
So, and I had to come upwith a jerry rig system using a basic heat press.
00:09:22
So I would just print maybe 10 feet by however wide the heatpress was and press.
00:09:28
I had a strip of designcut on the paper cut and then the fabric with the same shape, and I just press it,hold it for 30 seconds, open it and move it, press it again.
00:09:38
So I would just do that (Nicklaughs) and so it was... During that time, itwasn't very efficient, but I knew that I'm gonna geta heat press at some point and we're gonna roll this much faster.
00:09:47
But I did needed a solutionfor my variety of fabrics that I'm gonna be selling.
00:09:52
- Just outta curiosity, what was something like thisrun that typical person, does he need something atyour size, bigger, smaller? - Yeah so that's the most expensive thing we have in our shop so ifyou are robbing this place, I would go for that, you justneed a forklift for that.
00:10:04
So, but it sent me back30,000, well $35,000. - Wow.
00:10:09
- And I did buy that one with cash.
00:10:11
When we made, when we made money... (both chuckling) - Good for you.
00:10:14
- When we made the moneyour first full year, we like, "Hey, I need that heat press." So at the end of the year,right before a year was over, we bought the machine, put it here. - Amazing.- Got it set up, so. - That's awesome guys, if you want to hear more abouthow Vlad started his TagPup on episode number 10 on our podcast, which is ww.upflip.com/podcast. (uplifting music) All right Vlad, so when you first started, what were your totalearnings for that year and what are you ongoing for 2022? - Yeah, so we've been in for two years, so we have two years of earnings.
00:10:48
So our very first one, we did about three quarterof a million, so 750. We're on track for 1.5 this year, just because we're nowlaunching onto Amazon Handmade and maybe potentiallytowards the end of the year, have our own websites so hopefully- - Wow, that's amazing.
00:11:02
I am so excited to hear moreabout what you guys are doing. - Yeah.
00:11:05
(uplifting music) - So what other toolsthat have helped you grow and scale your revenue? - I think the number onetool that comes to mind is- - Vlad let me stop you right there because the number one toolfor the job is Sendinblue, our value sponsor for today's video.
00:11:22
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00:11:54
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00:11:59
Sendinblue is giving UpFlipviewers a one month free trial, all you have to do is headover to the link below and use the promo code that I think should be on the screen rightnow, S-I-B-X-U-P-F-L-I-P. Be sure to check back in the future videos to see how Sendinblue ishelping Vlad's business. - Wait, we're doing another video? - Yeah, maybe you'll getthe original host next time. - All right.
00:12:24
(lively music) - All right, so last time we talked about how you track and how youmanage your customer's orders. Can you just briefly tellus about that one more time? - Yeah so I use a app,it's a third party app, it's called ShipStation and it allows you to processorders on a larger scale. So we'll come over here and look at this.
00:12:41
So it looks like there's justa mess right here, right? There's so many orders.
00:12:44
How in the world are you gonna find it? Well, it's the nicething about ShipStation is we start from that tableand we start putting orders in just in a basic order.
00:12:52
And we scan in that particular order, workin' our way down,we scan the top barcode. The top barcode is moreof an action barcode. - Okay.
00:13:00
- So it'll add the order into a list in that particular order.- Oh, nice.
00:13:03
- So when we're printinga shipping labels, we'll print in that same order.
00:13:06
And then we sort the shippinglabels into each order and then using these little clips, they hold the shipping labels.
00:13:13
So ShipStation, like I said, allows us to print all of these orders, shipping labels at a much more, fast pace. We use this much, this amount of packagingon the Etsy platform used to take us four, five, six hours. So now it might take us an hour. - Wow, that's incredible.
00:13:29
- So it cuts down thework by significantly.
00:13:31
And that's just printingshipping labels on Etsy would be four or five hours. Printing shipping labels here actually would take usmore like 30 minutes to sorting it out, scanningit, that's awesome. - And I love your long table, it looks like you made yourself.
00:13:44
- Yeah, I had a friend that built this, so I was getting too busy and I didn't have thetime to build it myself.
00:13:49
I could hire somebody to do it for me so- - There you go.
00:13:51
- So you probably don'thave these kind of skills so just hire a friendwho can do that for you. - That's right, that's right.
00:13:56
(cheerful music) - So has your advertising budget changed ever since you started and, or what does a monthlybudget look like for you? - Yeah so on advertising Etsy does allow the maximum of a thousand dollars and I pretty much maxed it out. - Is that a day? - Well, we never spend a thousand. - Okay.
00:14:14
- It just basically I'mgiving Etsy the say, "Hey, go ahead and spend upto a thousand, I don't care. "There's no limit on me." But that's the onlyspends like 200 of that. - Okay so that's 200 month or a day? - A day.- Okay.
00:14:24
- So and when people are just starting running advertisement, Etsy will only allow you like $20 and you gotta grow up to that.
00:14:30
- [Nick] Oh, that that's smart.
00:14:32
- But even when you put $20, it doesn't mean it's gonna spend $20. They might spend 50 cents, it might spend two but it'll only spend it if people are clicking on your listing, if people are interacting and it's starting togrow on the algorithm. If that's not happening, you're not gonna spend money on ads.
00:14:45
- Is there any way you can expedite that? Say, "Spend my $20 tomorrow?" - I wish, but no, that'sthe beauty of Etsy is that it gives a fairchance to a lot of people. It used to, when I just came in, you can put a lot of moneyon this listing and say, "Hey, I'm willing to spend$1,000 on one listing." And it'll shoot you to the top." But that gives an unfair advantage for those that have money who wanna sell and it really is a fair,free market on Etsy. - So it sounds like semi-recently that they just did a change.
00:15:09
- Yeah, it, well, it'smore like a year and a half to two years ago.
00:15:12
So just right after I started,they probably saw me like, "Wait a minute, we gottado something about this." (both laughing) (bright music) - Hey, why don't you give us a tour. - Sure, yeah.
00:15:23
- Last time we were hereso just show us around.
00:15:25
- Right now we have all of our orders out, cause we're kind oftowards the end of the day, they're gonna be shipped out tomorrow, we're just getting 'em ready for tomorrow.
00:15:32
We have our printer down here.
00:15:33
This is where we print all of our designs. We print it first on paper, the kind of ink we use is sublimation ink, which means it's temporarilysitting on there.
00:15:41
And then once we bring it over here, this is a roll to roll heat press.
00:15:46
Basically, we put ourdesigns on the bottom, it covered with fabric and then it goes through the heat press, being applied some pressure with heat, it transfers that ink over onto polyester. It binds to the polyester and that's how we get itthose the polyester prints.
00:16:00
- Yes, and in case if you guysdid not watch the last video, please go back and take a look at it.
00:16:06
It's amazing what this machine here does.
00:16:08
- All right so up here,is where we do our straps. Again, it's a mess right now.
00:16:12
We got really busy in the past week so we got some mess things.
00:16:15
So we have our strap machines.
00:16:17
This is where we sew all our straps when we cut the fabric.
00:16:20
We store all the straps that we have sewn here in the shelves.
00:16:24
I built this myself.
00:16:25
This is my, kind of my workings.
00:16:27
So it's again, a more efficientway to put the straps in, pull it out, cut however much you need.
00:16:33
And you got an access for thefull library of (indistinct). - Awesome, I love it.
00:16:36
Well, since last time we were here, it looks like people arevery busy around here. - Yeah.
00:16:40
- So good for you koodoos on that. - Yeah, thank you.
00:16:42
(energetic music) - Are there any downsides to scaling or did you have any issues or challenges when you were growing your business? - Yeah, I think everybusiness goes through this, but I think inventoryis one of the big ones just because you're growingfaster than you sold yesterday. So if you're gonna have anincreased sales next month, your past month's sales, the money that you got from last month are not gonna be enough toscale up to your inventory. I don't know if that makes sense.
00:17:11
It's an uphill battle andyou're always fighting inventory cause you never have enough money.
00:17:16
So if it was the opposite whereyou made a lot this month, but not enough next month,well it'd be easier, cause you can buy smaller amounts and so you have the income, but it's always an uphill battle.
00:17:24
If you are scaling, if you are growing, that's a good problem to have.
00:17:27
So I think inventory'sbeen really a challenge and it keeps being a challenge.
00:17:31
- Okay, so somebodywatching this right now and is thinking, "Hey, Iwanna scale my business "and I'm hearing whatVlad is talking about "and I wanna make sure Idon't run out of inventory." And they get so much inventory and at that point you need to store it. And what if you don't use all that, is there a way to ship it back? - Yeah so my biggeststrategy that I try to use, is I really try to source everything here from the United States.
00:17:50
The things that I do source from China are buckles and fabric. Those are the only twothings I source from China, everything else I tryto get from the States, that's why we use Uline because if you run out, youcan just order right there. You don't have to store, youdon't have a storage space. Now with buckles, they'rejust kind of small, you don't need to store a lot of it.
00:18:08
With fabric, I try not tohave a pre-printed fabric, I have white fabric that I store and then I use it to print thedesigns that we're selling. And that's a big mistakea lot of people have, is they buy that minimum order from China or the minimum order from any manufacturer and it could potentiallysit there and not be sold.
00:18:25
What we do is we have theability to change the fabric and that allows us to not to have to order a bunch of that design.
00:18:33
We just print a little bitand we'll see if it sells. If it doesn't, well, weonly print it a little bit. - That's awesome. - And if there's a designthat is selling a lot, well, we'll just print a lot of it.
00:18:40
- Wonderful and last timeyou mentioned with Uline, you click today andtomorrow it's arriving. - Yeah, it's a beautiful service.
00:18:46
- How convenient.- I love it.
00:18:48
(future bass music) - So what are some thingsthat the owner can do to scale their business on Etsy? - Yeah, so that's very important to know the difference between what you're doing to makesome money on the side. - Okay.
00:19:03
- Cause some people to make alittle hobby side, side gig, but what do you do to make it scalable? To truly-- Yes, that's what we want. - And that's reallyimportant to understand, are you gonna go into a product selling a specific kind of product? Are you nerding out about gloves or are you nerding out about hats? But you need to think about, can I think about clothing, or do I need to thinkabout the wedding space, or am I looking at engraving? Cause you need to think about, how can you pursue other products with either the machinery that you have or the talent that you have or potentially, what's your direction? For example, I'm selling pet products, but I'm not just selling dog collars, I'm selling tags, I'm selling bandanas, we're selling leashes, harnesses, right? We're thinking about, notabout a single product, but a niche and how can we...
00:19:44
What is our plan to expand with whether machinery or product types. - Okay so when you first started, is that what you had in mind or did you focus on dog tagsonly and then you scaled? - Well, when I started, we just... Anything that would sell.
00:19:58
And we figured, hey, let'sgo into the pet industry and let's see what happens. And so like I said, I had a saw machine, I'm like, "Let's try some dog collars." And then I started to expand but I did have a general in mind.
00:20:09
I need to make this big cause I need to...
00:20:11
This needs to supplyincome for me and my family so I had no choice, so we needed to scale. - Nice.
00:20:17
(energetic music) All right so how did youovercome those challenges that you just mentioned? I mean, what have you done to improve? - Well, I think one of the things is we, because we're growing, taking on some loan wasn't an issue for us instead of allocating our resources, the money that we wereearning into machinery, we thought, "Hey, let's lease the machines "and then buy the inventory." I mean, you could havedone it the other way, but- - Nice.- That's why we thought, "Hey, maybe a lease wouldn't be too bad." But a short term leasenot a long term lease.
00:20:45
You don't want to becommitted for a long time. We only did it for two years. - Okay.
00:20:49
- We own about 30% of theequipment that we have and about most of that equipment will be paid off by September,which I'm really excited. But you only make thatconclusion if you are growing and you are scaling and yousee the potential of your... You're not just ranking on one keyword. And that's a big mistake people have, is they start ranking on one keyword, like for us it was dog collar. And we're like, "That's, it we're set." But if I was just banking on that product, the moment I'd rankdownwards, I'd be gone.
00:21:14
So my strategy was tospiderweb my way into Etsy and to be kind of rankinga little bit on the lot. - Nice.
00:21:24
- And that allows me to, if Irank down here, that's fine. I still keep it consistent, cause it's gonna rank somewhere else. - Nice.
00:21:29
- And that allowed us to beconfident in getting a lease. And the other thing iswhen we buy the inventory, we don't pay for the full invoice upfront. We pay for 30% or half the amount, you can make a dealwith your manufacturer. - [Nick] Okay.
00:21:40
- So you don't have to havea lot of money up front, you pay half of it and theystart the manufacturing and you save up for the other half. And that allows you to kind of keep moving as you're growing. - I love it.
00:21:50
So when you mentioned about the spider, so you're basically just growing legs. - Exactly.
00:21:53
- So you more have legsas a table stands on. - Yeah, exactly.
00:21:56
It's kinda like the water strider. - [Nick] Okay.- To not to sink, you have so many differentpoints of contact and that's what we try to do with Etsy.
00:22:02
(lively music) - So ShipStation, how does that work with Etsy or is that a different software,or do they communicate? - Yeah, they work through an API, you don't need to know what that is but it connects with your Etsy account and all the orders that are made on Etsy will be then communicated to ShipStation.
00:22:19
And you can print a shippinglabels on ShipStation and it will say completedor pre-transit, right? When you create a shipping label, it puts it in pre-transits, right? It's packaged and it'sready to be transit. It's not in transit yet.
00:22:32
And so obviously once they scan it, then it's now changing into status and that information willthen communicate to Etsy, which is great.
00:22:38
And so you have validtracking information, which Etsy wants, cause it started doinga Star Seller program, which means you have to do 95% or more should be on time shipping. - Oh.
00:22:47
- And so, ShipStation willcommunicate that to Etsy.
00:22:50
(uplifting bright music) All right so let's justgo ahead and design an UpFlip dog collar.
00:22:57
So we're gonna make adog collar from scratch.
00:22:58
We're gonna start off from Illustrator.
00:23:00
I already got a design going. All right, so what we're gonna do now, we just sent our designover to this computer and we're gonna upload it and we're gonna go ahead and print it.
00:23:09
So usually I print itlining up all the designs. So I don't print the wholedesign all on one roll.
00:23:16
I try to do it vertically soI can dis print many designs and cut the fabric whenit's already on the roll. So sometimes it does take time for the printer and thecomputer to communicate because it needs to send one file and then the printer needsto repeat that several times. So that's sometimes the renderingand the transfer process does take some time.
00:23:34
All right, so we just finished printing.
00:23:36
What we're gonna do iswe're gonna cut it off, should be good.
00:23:39
We're gonna come overhere to the heat press.
00:23:41
And I found a little stripof fabric we're gonna use. We're gonna put it right here.
00:23:47
So then we're just gonna goahead and send it through. All right, so we're gonna engrave on the front of this buckle.
00:23:51
Usually we use these templates.
00:23:53
I have my employees, all they need to do is put in buckles in these slots, upload the file that goesinto the template right there. But I'm just gonna go aheadand place that in here. And we're gonna rock and roll. Ready? Here we go.
00:24:06
(machine engraving) And there you go.
00:24:12
You got your very own UpFlip collar. Nick, come over here.
00:24:15
(Vlad laughing) (energetic music) - How do you keep your costs so low? And what do you do as you'rescaling your business, what are you doing tojust cut your expenses? Share some tips.
00:24:28
- Yeah, so a big thing is process. You have to have a good process.
00:24:31
If your process takes a longer time, you're gonna charge more, right? We don't cut fabric with scissors, why? Cause it's gonna take us a long time.
00:24:38
We actually cut everything,once everything is pressed, we cut it up on a roll.
00:24:42
We can cut hundreds ofyards within minutes, right? You have to find a betterprocess to create the product.
00:24:47
If you can improve your process,you will reduce your price. If you reduce your price,you'll rank to the top. So right, so it it's directly, how do you manufacture, howdo you process it at home that will then directlycorrelate to your sales. - Okay, so tell me this, when you get a newemployee coming on board, how do you measure their performance? - Well, it's definitelynot on speed at first. At first, it's not about speed.
00:25:08
It's about them reallyfollowing instructions. Can they follow instructions? Cause speed is only inevitable, right? We talk about a system calledslow hand, fast hands, right? So slow hands is, it'sduring those moments, you need to confirm thatthat's the correct order, The personalization iscorrect, the fabric is correct, those are slow hand movements.
00:25:24
Fast hands, it's takin' a callor throwing into the bucket. So, it's kind of funny thatI have to mention that, "Hey, this is a fast handmotion throw it in the bin. "Hey, this is a fast handmotion, throw it in the garbage "or scan it." Scanning is not that hard.
00:25:37
So having our employees identify fast hand and slow hand movements allows it to be more andmore efficient (indistinct). - So is that something that you do? Do you monitor that process? - Exactly well, I want to seeif they can recognize that, but then, because then they'regonna naturally do that, and that improves the process. - Love it.
00:25:51
(uplifting music) What keywords are you using that you have found to be very helpful? - Yeah so when you're selling dog collars, the thing about fabric ispeople have preferences, right? You're not just buying the dog collar. If you wanna just buy a dog collar, go to Petco and you getyourself a nylon collar. But when they're buying something on Etsy, they're like, "Well I want apink polka dotted dog collar. "Oh, Christmas is coming up, "I want a Santa Claus red dog collar." So they're choosing different. (crosstalk) Yeah, when we go to the store, we're not just buying a t-shirt cause otherwise they'll allbe black and white, right? There's some design elementsthat we're looking for, so I think the number one toolthat comes to mind is eRank. eRank is a great platform,it's a third party software that shows you whatthings are selling well. You go on there and you can look up, "Hey, how are dog collars selling?" - Oh man, stop it. - So yeah- - You're makin' this it's too easy! - It's not easy, it'ssimple it's not easy. - Okay that's right simple.
00:26:39
- You wake up early, you work hard.
00:26:41
But yeah, so you go on thewebsite, you type in dog collar, and you it'll show you howmany searches per month. And then you're like, "Oh,you know the secondary term, "what is the other keywords "they're looking with the dog collar?" You find that like, "Hey pink polka dot "is being searched with dog collar.
00:26:55
"Hey, maybe I can sell a pinkpolka dotted dog collar." So there's really good,good platform to start. And I think scaling only depends, really depends andhinges on the beginning. What product have you chosen to sell? Not necessarily, you cansell a really bad product, there's nothing that'sgonna help you scale it. You gotta begin strong.
00:27:12
And I think eRank isprobably my favorite software and I wanna provide the consumer to satisfy that keywordthat they're searching for, and so I use eRank thatI mentioned earlier - [Nick] Yeah.- To find those keywords.
00:27:25
And I'm typing dog collarand then on the bottom, I'm looking through all the keywords that are also being searchedwith the keyword dog collar. And then I startresearching it on Pinterest, on Instagram, what does that word mean? So if it's a blush floral,what does that mean? And so I go on Pinterest and I discover, "Hey, it's not a bright pink." It is more like, this isa blush floral right here. - Oh.- Right? - So-- That's beautiful.
00:27:46
- It's not a hard pink,it's more of a lighter pink and the flowers are not roses,they're more wild flowers.
00:27:53
And I discovered all of thison Pinterest on Instagram. Well beginning with eRank but, and then I need to figure out, well, what are thecustomers thinking about when they're thinkingabout a blush floral? And so I think that's a veryimportant one to understand is you create a list of all those keywords you want to design for, and I either design it myselfor I buy the designs online and I make a product, proper title, proper description,proper tags for the SEO. - Yeah.- And I sell it on there.
00:28:20
(energetic music) - What is the nextbiggest thing for TagPup? I mean, what are your goalsthat you wanna achieve? - Some of the products that we do want to tacklestill, is harnesses. We started selling some harnesses. - [Nick] Nice.
00:28:33
- We wanna do MartinGale collars, It's the collar thatdoesn't have a buckle, but our big, big goals is we wanna start to advanceinto Amazon Handmade, we wanna start building a shop.
00:28:42
Selling on marketplaces are nice but it's nice to build your own brand.
00:28:46
But that's gonna require alot of time and resources cause that water strider effect, we want to go on a macro scaleinstead of just keywords so- - I love it, so last time a while back when we had this interview, you mentioned nothing aboutAmazon, it was only Etsy. So now you're throwing outAmazon so what's happening? Tell me about that.
00:29:02
- Yeah so Amazon's tryingto compete with Etsy. I feel like it.
00:29:04
So they had a section of Amazonit's called Amazon Handmade. So you can, if you're handmade, if you make handmadestuff you sell on Amazon, their fees are a lot more than Etsy. So if I sell a 21, $22 item, their fees are gonna be $3.50 cents.
00:29:18
So it's anywhere from 10 to 15%, so much higher than Etsy, no matter how many peoplecomplain about Etsy fees. But the amount of traffic that you have access to, is, I mean, you can go from $100 in sales a day to a $1,000 in sales a day within weeks if you do everything correctly.
00:29:35
So and it's a big stepand we need to get... We need to prepare for that.
00:29:38
(exciting music) - All right so we talked about ranking, so how do you rank outside of Etsy, like on Google or other searches? - Yeah, so Etsy does, it does advertise onGoogle and other platforms but there's nothing you can do about it. You pay the advertisement, you advertise your listings and then Etsy will try toadvertise on different platforms. And there's not much youcan do to control that. - I see.
00:30:02
Is that something that youcan do outside of that? Can you just-- You can, you can grow, you can open up an Instagram account, you can do all that stuff.
00:30:08
You can just link it orwhatever but on the platform you really can't do much else about that.
00:30:12
- Now do you do Instagram, Facebook? - Yeah, I do.
00:30:15
Well, I do Instagram.
00:30:16
We're not really big right now.
00:30:18
We just paying somebody that has a dog and that they're going to bejust recording, filming them. We're providing them with product.
00:30:25
We're just trying to geta natural thing going, it's not as big right now. Right now, I'm, like I said, focusing on a lot of other things like Amazon Handmadeand my own website so... - Excellent.
00:30:34
(exciting music) All right, so when you have products and you have so many of them, there are some of themthat just drop in sales and you're like this one's not selling. - Yeah.- What do you do about that? How do you work with- - Yeah so there's differentreasons why it might drop.
00:30:47
One of the things that neverranked up towards the top and it never did well.
00:30:51
I usually don't spend my time on those, I just come up with another product.
00:30:54
There's no reason to try torevive some that didn't work. But if it sold really well, like recently we had anumber one product rank down and it dropped our sales.
00:31:04
And I'm like, "What do I do?" If I could reduce the priceto compete with the sellers, cause a lot of times you'll have people that come in with a cheaperprice and you ask yourself, can I reprice my product? Is that gonna be still profitable for me? And then the secondthing you ask yourself, can I improve my productionof speed production, right? If somebody's buying and theysee that my competitor's doing one to two weeks fulfillment, but I can do it one to twodays, let's do that, right? Let's get back on top.
00:31:27
We gotta work hard, fight for the top.
00:31:29
If the product is a seasonal product and it starts to rank down, just let it.
00:31:32
It's gonna come backthe same time next year.
00:31:34
Because throughout the yearyou'll have fluctuations and you need to be awareof that and be okay, be a full peace saying,"Look, it's gonna come back." - That makes sense.
00:31:42
So on those items that do drop in price, how often do you reduce your pricing? - I try that for a little bit.
00:31:49
You obviously, you look atyour conversion rate graph and you'll see that go up.
00:31:54
And if you start toincrease it a little bit and look at that conversion graph, if it starts to go down and your listing starts to rank down, well that's your problem.
00:32:02
You've now discoveredthat the conversion rate is the reason why yourcompetitors are beating you. So you gotta find a wayto improve conversion. Now, you can bring the price back up but you gotta add some other value.
00:32:11
You gotta add some better photos, bring it to life and letthe customer experience. If you don't have a video,put a video in there.
00:32:17
A big caution though if youare changing your photos, that might rank you downeven more so that... You gotta be careful aboutit, there's so many stories, people change the photo andthey start ranking down. So you gotta be careful about that one. - Oh, thank you.
00:32:28
(enthusiastic music) So we're seeing that Amazondoes have higher fees. - Yeah.
00:32:35
- But why should someonestart on Etsy first and then scale to Amazon? - Yeah, I think Etsyunderstands the seller better than Amazon.
00:32:41
Amazon is a company that was like a multi-trillionbillion dollar company that they're like, "Oh,let's try a Handmade up." But Etsy was like, "Hey,that's where it begins," and then it grows up. And I think-- That makes sense.
00:32:51
- It creates a much more friendlyenvironment for the seller when there's so manyunknown, you know what SEO. If you don't know what SEO, especially you should go on Etsy, right? And you just trying thingsout and like I said, the biggest one is the fees. - Got it, right.
00:33:05
- Amazon has much higher fees than Etsy. - Well, let's talk about the fees on Etsy. What's going there? - So right now people are going on strike- - What? - For the increase of fees on Etsy but the increase hasgone from five to 6.5.
00:33:17
So it's only at 1.5 increaseand people are complaining so- - Oh man.
00:33:22
- But Amazon has up to 15% so- - Oh my goodness.- eBay is about 10 to 12%, but Etsy's the smallest even at 6.5 so- - Still, still.
00:33:31
So hands down Etsy is still the place- - Still the best place.- To go to start.
00:33:34
I mean, if you're selling amillion dollars worth of stuff, the 6.5% will be a big sum and I wish it was free butit's much more expensive to open up a pop up shop in the mall than even selling on Amazon so- - Yes. - You gotta think of it that way.
00:33:49
- Okay, that makes sense.
00:33:50
(invigorating music) So someone goes to etsy.com and they wanna start to this business, are there tools available for them that they can just start today? - Yeah.
00:34:00
No, I think that's one of theamazing things about Etsy.
00:34:03
It considers that the factthat it's gonna be a basic, no experience to somebody that doesn't know a lotabout selling or scaling.
00:34:10
And so they provide a lot ofdata that they can show you. If you're starting to sell,they're gonna show you "Hey, what's your click through rate?" And then you can do a little icon, above the click throughrates to explain what it is. - Oh cool.- And we live in the days of YouTube, and you can literally YouTube anything.
00:34:25
They do have blogs abouthow to go viral on TikTok, how to promote your product on Instagram.
00:34:31
So there's a lot of greatresources directly on the website for people to use.
00:34:35
- This is so encouragingso anybody you watching, literally if you're juston spring break from school or if you're retiree and this is something they can just start today. - That's right, yeah.
00:34:44
(upbeat music) - So you're growing your business, you're scalin' it from Etsy to Amazon, you're still going big.- Yep, yep.
00:34:51
- But did you have anymistakes along the process and what'd you do to overcome them? - Oh, there's many mistakes.
00:34:56
I think one of the biggest ones is, I love to deal with things. And I'm good with dealing with machines, I'm not good with peopleand that's the big one. So you're building a team and how does that personneed to be approached, right? And when you're explaining to them, "Okay, this is what Iwant you to do today." They might be on a wholenother wave than what you are, cause you're moving ahundred miles an hour and they're just starting.
00:35:17
They just got up, they'rejust starting their day. So being aware of that or they might be havingsome personal issues that you need to be aware of.
00:35:23
You need to know their strengths, their weaknesses, position, at stations that aremore accurately represent what they are capable of,so that's been a big one. And especially when I started hiring, you deal a lot with that andnot enough with manufacturing, that kind kind of slows the process down.
00:35:38
And you're obviouslyspending money per hour cause you've you got the-- That makes sense.
00:35:42
(energetic music) Are sales or discounts a goodway to grow your business? Or is that something you do? - Yeah, oh I do that all the time. Well, one of the things that's nice, when you do go on a sale, it lets everybody that favorite your shop know that you're going for sale.
00:35:57
So you might get a flood ofpeople comin' to your shop.
00:35:59
So, it's a great way to get some sales, if people have favorite it.
00:36:04
But also, when you're running a sale, people just like the fact that they're not paying a full price.
00:36:08
And so that does give youa little bit of an edge.
00:36:10
A lot of times what I find people on Etsy, they'll do as sale as a static sale, like it's always on sale.
00:36:16
So it's just like, "Oh, youcould have paid like this, "but you're paying that." So I try not to do that too much, but yeah sales andcoupons are a great one. Also, sending coupons to people that have purchased your listing.
00:36:27
Putting it in with your packaging, just saying, "Hey, here's acoupon when you come back, "go ahead and buy a sale." - Oh that is cool.
00:36:33
(cheerful music) Last time you had mentioned that you started this in your home. - Yeah.
00:36:39
- So did you have issues with storage? - Yes, a lot.
00:36:43
So we wrote it off, ourwhole house rent on taxes because we used ourkitchen, our very kitchen for packaging.- Wait, wait, wait, you just said you wrote it off? What does that mean to someone listening? - Okay, well just sayinglike we used the whole house. That's just, we used our kitchen table as a packaging station.
00:36:58
We used our living room as a mini storage, a temporary storage.
00:37:02
Our main storage was in my daughter's room and she slept with us during that time. - [Nick] Used that blush pink.
00:37:08
- Yeah so we had a space problem.
00:37:10
That's why it kind of pushedus out to rent our shop. - And that's where you said business grew. - Yeah, much better because now we can organizeour shop and stations. The laser station, thesublimation station, the heat press station.
00:37:22
So we can organize it that way. You got your scissors and all the things that youneed for that station so- - So basically what you're saying is you had to change up the station names from the kitchen to the laundry. - Exactly.
00:37:32
- The living room sideand my wife loves it. - Excellent, okay.
00:37:34
(upbeat music) So Vlad, to wrap things up, what is your number one keytip for success on Etsy? - It's a big question but I think that thebest advice I can give, is be a person that is never satisfied with the current state, right? Always go for forward.
00:37:55
Go, always try new things.
00:37:56
Don't be afraid to exploreother options, right? Just because you're doingreally well on this product and you're gonna say, "Okay, that's it.
00:38:02
"I made it and I'm gonna stay here." No, keep going forward.
00:38:05
Explore other things,explore other keywords. Have you started Instagram? Have you started TikTok? Have you tried, if you're doing t-shirts, have you tried bridesmaids? Have you tried hoodies? Have you tried hats? Just keep going forward because a posture that is explorative will allow you to survive whenthe markets are fluctuating, cause it's gonna fluctuate.
00:38:23
And if you're just happyin your little corner, you're gonna die down. If you're not growing, if you're not pedaling yourbike, you're gonna fall over. Right? So you gotta keep moving.
00:38:31
- All right you guys, well, that is it. Thank you so much for watching and I sure hope you enjoyed it.
00:38:36
Be sure to hit thatSubscribe button and Like, and before you go hit thatlink in the description below to receive your 20% off ofSimpliSafe Home Security System. Till next time.
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