174 – Why Etsy for Handmade Sellers with Danielle Spurge of The Merriweather Council

Gift biz unwrapped episode 174 All of a sudden you're like

in business because you had this thing you'd like to make

and people started asking you to make it for them.

Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one

now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue and thank you.

Thank you so much for taking a little bit of your

time to join me today.

I am really excited to bring you this episode because quite

honestly a lot of you have been asking me questions about

Etsy and I've never had an empty site myself.

I've talked with lots of people who have,

but I can't answer all of your questions so I want

to bring on somebody who can and surprise,

surprise. I learned something new about at sea that I didn't

know that I don't think a lot of you do either.

So super excited to share that information with you.

But before we get started and I introduce my guest,

I want to reach out to all of you who are

out there listening,

who are feeling like you want a little bit more motivation

or a little bit more engagement,

shoulder to shoulder with people who are trying to do the

same thing that you're trying to do.

Start and grow your maker business.

If that's the case,

I invite you to join me over in my private Facebook

group called gift biz breeze.

You know when you start out with your business and you

start thinking about it,

it's so fun and exciting and it's rewarding to think about

what your business could be,

but then when you get into the thick of things,

it changes.

It gets stressful and sometimes it gets really scary.

Well when you join us over in the breeze,

it's like sitting in the park with friends who bring you

all the support and the answers that you need and that

you've been looking for because a lot of them have been

in the same boat you are or they're going and experiencing

the same things right now that you are so you have

a lot in common.

You'll have access to a group of amazing creators and we

also provide tools and resources to help you really get traction

and grow your business.

To join the group,

just jump over to gift biz breeze.com

and I look forward to seeing each and every one of

you over there.

And now let's talk Etsy and let's get on with the

show today.

I am honored to introduce you to Danielle spurge of the

Merryweather council.

Danielle is a and craft business consultant who loves iced lattes

and pop music.

Through her work at the Merryweather council,

Danielle teaches creative people how to turn their crafty tendencies into

profits on her blog and podcast.

Danielle aims to inspire and support makers in business and share

insights from her eight years of experience selling handmade work online.

Danielle believes in celebrating the reality of gainful self-employment through craft

and wants to help more artists,

crafters and designers share their work with more confidence.

Danielle, I am so excited to hear your story.

Welcome to the gift biz unwrapped podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a real pleasure to be here.

So I do something a little bit different,

but I think you're going to get this.

This is going to be right in line for you and

that is we have our listeners get to know you in

a creative way and that is by having you share what

you're all about through a motivational candle.

So if you were to create your own candle with a

color and a quote,

what would your motivational candle look like?

So my candle would be a nice Aqua blue that's sort

of a Tiffany blue.

I know that's a copyright infringement,

but I would definitely prefer it to be that color.

Well, we all get that color,

so it's perfect.

We understand Just for the visual,

we won't call it that,

but just for the visual nice Tiffany blue.

And my quote would be simple is better,

which is a quote that I actually have on a piece

of jewelry that I wear every day.

And that's just something that keeps me in line,

keeps me focused when big ideas get in the way of

getting things done.

Oh, so don't be too complicated.

It's better to get things done than to procrastinate or make

it so big that it never happens.

Exactly. Got it.

Simple is better.

I like it.

I haven't heard that before,

so I like what I'm hearing.

New things.

Cool. Makes us all things so wonderful.

Well tell us a little bit of your backstory.

I'm really,

really interested in,

I know our listeners will too,

about Etsy,

so I want to talk about that.

And I know you used to have your own store and

now you've morphed into something else,

but give us a little bit of all that background.

Yeah, of course.

So I do actually still maintain my handmade business and my

Etsy store.

And what is that?

What's it called?

Everything I do in business is the Merryweather council.

It just has sort of evolved over time to be this

two part business.

So when I first started,

I was selling my hand embroidery online.

I was doing custom hand embroidery with an emphasis on texts

and letter forms and personalization.

And that's still what I do today in my handmade business.

But I have also this other part of my business where

I work with other makers in business to support what they're

doing and help them do what doing better.

That'd Be more profitable and sustainable and happy with what they're

doing. So those are the two parts of my business as

they stand today.

This I guess service side and product side of my business.

But when I first started,

like I said,

I was supposed to go to graduate school,

but I decided not to because of a very long and

complicated story.

But I decided not to go to graduate school.

And so all of my friends post college graduation had all

of their plans and their jobs and they knew what they

were going to do.

And I did.

And so I started my handmade business.

That's something I was always really interested in.

I majored in 3d fine arts with a concentration in fibers

in college.

So I had this BFA and I was always really interested

in the maker con me and going to indie craft fairs

and things like that.

And I went to the college in Boston where there is

a pretty robust scene for that sort of thing.

So I was always seeing that and I was really intrigued

by people who are just making things and selling them.

And so I thought,

what better time to try something like that than right now

when I don't have anything else going on.

I wasn't married,

had no kids,

no pets,

nobody was depending on me.

I just had myself.

So that's what I decided to do.

And I know that that's sort of a unique situation to

be in a place where no one is relying on you

and you don't have anybody to support besides yourself and you

don't have any other responsibilities At your stage in life.

Then just getting out of school,

it's the perfect time.

You don't have a spouse,

you don't have children,

you haven't built up a mortgage necessarily yet.

None of that.

So how did it go share with us a little bit

of the first years of your business,

maybe let's say like your getting started.

How did the growth go?

So I was getting started and one thing that I think

I kind of got in on embroidery at like the right

time. It was sort of becoming like cool.

I feel like a lot of crafts have to kind of

shed their old lady's anise and become cool again.

And I sort of was entering into embroidery at a time

when that was happening and possibly was even like part of

that happening.

So it was kind of like lucky timing in that sense.

But I spent tons of time like researching,

asking questions,

reading articles,

trying to educate myself about the business side of things and

the online selling side of things because that was where I

learned nothing in college about any of that.

I had only learned like skills and fine art things,

conceptual art things.

Well, I think a lot of makers,

that's what happens because all your specialties in your art,

Absolutely. You know how to use the equipment.

You've learned techniques.

Maybe it's materials,

your blend,

like whatever.

Right? And you never really think of business at all.

Yeah, and so many of the people that I work with,

I'm sure you see this all the time too,

it's sort of like become business people accidentally or like all

of a sudden you're like in business because you had this

thing you'd like to make and people started asking you to

make it for them and you started charging people or it's

not like you woke up one day and you were like,

I have this great big business plan.

It was like,

I have a thing I like to make and I'm going

to try to figure out how to sell it.

Exactly. So that's kind of where I was.

And so I did spend a lot of time making things

but also spent a lot of time figuring out how to

sell them.

So that was like the first year of business for me

was just like figuring it out,

like trying stuff,

experimenting with things,

trying different products because I had a lot of time to

try things I did,

but also like in reality I had a lot of time

because I didn't have like another job I had to go

to or whatever,

but in my head it was like now or never.

So I had to get it done immediately.

Right. In some ways there was a lot of time and

in other ways there wasn't.

And so I just tried everything I got on Etsy and

that was very quickly realized that was like the best tool

I could be using.

And so I really dove into that and a lot of

research and a lot of craft shows and a lot of

trying things was like pretty much how I would describe the

first year of my business.

So someone who is now just starting business,

do you have any advice for them that could jumpstart them

based on something that you learned during your first year of

business? There's so much to know and like there's so much

that you could know but that you don't need to know

and it's hard to figure out what is actually relevant and

not relevant.

What should you care about?

What's not even worth your time thinking about?

And so for me,

because I had time,

I spent a lot of time reading everything,

observing everything.

But if I were to tell somebody who is brand new,

I'd be like,

find somebody who knows and go to them or like find

a resource or two that you really trust and stick with

that and don't get sucked into Pinterest black holes like endless

loop of one video after the next,

like find a really solid source and stick with that.

Because otherwise it's so overwhelming to dig through all of this

information on your own.

I feel like that is a huge time saver and a

sanity saver because there's just so much out there.

It can be so overwhelming to dig through all of it.

Yeah, I like that you're talking about this because I think

people also get into the mode of they're doing actions because

they're watching something or they're doing something and so they feel

like they're working,

but they're never actually getting to work that will build a

business or make money.

It's all research.

It's all learning and I don't know,

I kind of think people like that's the easier part,

but then when you actually put your own stuff out there

and the proof is in the pudding,

if people are going to like it,

that's the harder part.

Yeah, And I think people stay in the easier part for

a long time before they'll really try.

Yeah, and I think that by limiting what you'll give yourself

access to,

you kind of force yourself into like,

okay, well I did all of that.

I looked at all of this.

I read all of that.

Now I have to actually like do something with this information

and try one of these things.

It's obviously going to feel overwhelming like no matter what.

And that's another thing I always tell people too is there

is no way to reduce overwhelm in the sense that if

you're just starting something and everything is new,

it is going to feel overwhelming.

Like there's no way to save yourself from that.

But you can alleviate some of that just by doing things,

read something,

try it,

watch something,

try it,

and then you can decide is this worth spending more time

on or not?

You have to just kind of accept that there's going to

be times where it is really overwhelming and that's the end

of the story.

Yeah, I totally agree.

Accept it and try it.

And it doesn't mean that if it doesn't work,

you're a failure,

try it and either tweak or try something different if you

didn't get the results that you wanted and then keep going.

And the thing is like you have to,

at first it is going to be overwhelming and there's no

denying it.

As time goes on,

you have the option to be overwhelmed or not.

Like you were saying,

people just get stuck in this watch things,

read things.

You don't have to keep doing that.

You can limit yourself and give yourself the space to actually

use the information.

Absolutely. So at what point did you start transitioning and what

was the trigger for you to say,

Oh, you know what,

I want to help people do exactly what I'm doing now.

How did that occur?

I was doing my handmade business like full time for about

four and a half or five years.

And then my husband joined the Navy.

I met my husband in art school,

which, so it was a little bit Left out.

The part about getting married,

Danielle? I did,

I'm sorry.

Somewhere in between there I got married.

Okay. And then somewhere after I got married,

within the first year of us getting married,

my husband joined the Navy and he went off to officer

training school and we were going to be moving,

but we didn't aware and I just felt like I need

something that I can do regardless of if I have all

of my stuff with me.

And because over time I had gotten so many questions and

people are always reaching out to me and at the Etsy

teams were a really big thing,

not so much anymore,

but they were a huge thing when I first started on

Etsy and just like a lot more Etsy based community amongst

sellers. And so I was in constant communication with a lot

of people who wanted to know what I knew and social

had people reach out to me.

I love to talk to other people about what they're doing

and help them if I can.

But I felt like it was really disjointed,

so I was like,

let me just do something,

consolidate all of this that I'm doing with people one on

one into blog posts or something that is more deliberate and

intentional. And that was a good transitional project for me to

work on while we were sort of in this life transition

as well with the Navy.

Sure. Well it sounds like a perfect coming together because people

were approaching you wanting more information and then you also had

this life switch that you were doing.

So you saw two opportunities,

you put them together and that's what you did.

Perfect. Yeah,

so it was really nice to be able to,

so like I love crafting and embroidery and sewing and cutting

things up and putting them back together.

But I'm also like a super tech nerd and I love

to play with gadgets and so it was really nice for

me to be creative in those ways as well.

Like doing more laptop work and video stuff and recording things.

Like, I love to do stuff like that too.

So for me it's really the best case scenario is I

still have my craft business and I have this other part

of my business where I get to do all my like

nerdy gadget things and help people and talk shop,

which is like my favorite thing to do.

I see all of our listeners,

when you say the nerdy tech stuff cringing on the other

or no,

not me.

I know,

I know.

So many people hate it,

but I'm like,

Oh, I love gadgets.

Yeah, listen,

you know Danielle,

one of the reasons I was so interested in having you

come and share with our audience is all about Etsy because

we haven't had a lot of people on talking about at

D we've had a few but not a lot,

but also you take it to a different level because you

talk about having your store on Etsy,

which is where I want to go first,

but then what you can do to enhance your web presence

for even greater exposure for your business.

So to dive into that whole realm now.

So first,

let's talk at T a little bit and let's start as

if some of our listeners,

I mean everyone pretty much knows Etsy,

but Etsy today not have when you started because yes,

it's changed quite a bit.

Would that still be your platform of choice for someone who's

a maker who's just getting started now?

Yes, it absolutely would be.

Even though at sea has changed in some significant,

it's not changed in the way that matters to me in

terms of making that my answer still like,

yes, that's the place I would suggest you start.

And it's actually gotten even better for the reason that it

is attracting a lot of traffic on its own,

regardless of whether I as an individual seller or anyone else

as an individual seller lifts a finger to try to drive

any traffic there.

So the SEO you'd say of at T overall,

just as a platform is strong.

Yes. At C's attracting this very large audience of warm and

interested and also influential people.

And that's the most valuable thing about it for us as

sellers. So yes,

if you can tap into that SEO thing on Etsy,

that's great,

and just being present there and thinking about Etsy as a

tool is huge.

Yeah, So that's why I think it's the best tool available

to handmade sellers right now and the best platform that handmade

sellers could start on.

I kind of feel like when someone goes to Etsy,

they have their wallet already right next to them.

It's not in the other room,

but they're intentionally going to that platform to look for something

that they're liking.

Either they need it for a present or they're just kind

of scoping around because they're in the mood to get something

new, but they're in a buying mode.

That's the thing is that people sort of,

I think,

forget, even though we all know,

we just kind of forget at sea is an eCommerce platform.

My people and people in this creative realm,

of course love Instagram.

Okay. Instagram is super fun,

but Instagram is not an eCommerce platform.

There are certainly tie ins to e-commerce and people have set

it up so that they can make sales through it and

they have those shoppable posts and stuff like that now,

but it's not like the normal process is not,

I need to buy something.

Let me go on Instagram.

Right. Well,

and some people feel it's an intrusion to still,

I know more and more people are buying on Instagram,

but it's not that mental state.

Like we were saying,

go and be ready with the intent to buy.

Yeah. I mean certainly I have seen things on Instagram that

I'm like,

I want to buy that,

like just happens to show up and I'm like,

Oh, I want that and then maybe I go and buy

it or I bookmark it for later,

but that's a byproduct of Instagram.

To me.

It's not like the purpose of Instagram,

whereas the purpose of Etsy is to buy and sell things.

Right. There's also significantly less people vying for anyone's attention on

Etsy than there are on Instagram,

which is huge too.

Instagram is like an ocean of 1 billion users and Etsy

has 20 million shops that may or may not be active

at any one time,

so your numbers are a little better.

How do you feel about Etsy as the platform in addition

to your own website or can Etsy be its own website

onto itself,

like that's all you need or do you also think you

should have your own website?

I always recommend having both.

Thank you.

I was crossing my fingers that you were here to answer

that way.

Yes. It would be wildly irresponsible for anyone to say you

should only be on Etsy.

Certainly some people that is all they want and they understand,

but if you want to have a business that's sustainable and

viable into the future,

that is power comes from you.

It's really important to have that autonomy also because I think

we can all understand there are risks of some people like

to say it's like building your house on someone else's land.

Exactly. If something happens or if some ill will be falls,

Etsy or if your account gets closed,

there's so many different things that could happen either accidentally or

because of whatever reason,

something goes astray on Etsy really want to have your own

site as well.

And I think people should really only be promoting like sending

their hard earned traffic to their own website rather than to

Etsy because there's no real way to say like,

Oh, this traffic is only coming to me on Etsy.

It's so simple for someone to come into one of your

listings and then one click and they're somewhere else and they're

never coming back.

So if you're going to send either especially paid advertising traffic

somewhere or your harder and social media traffic,

your email newsletter traffic,

I would strongly suggest sending all of that traffic to your

own domain where it's all about you and you're not having

to combat hundreds of links on any given page of your

Etsy that go elsewhere.

So your own website is your home base,

let's say.

And then Etsy is kind of a prospecting funnel and a

sales platform at the same time.

Just like you were talking to any eCommerce platform that then

when you attract people in and people purchase from you,

then they become a customer of yours and you can drive

them over to your website.

Correct? Yes.

That's like the ideal situation,

right? Like let Etsy bring you traffic and then you can

sort of retain that traffic for the future hopefully on your

own site or people become fans of you,

your brand,

your product.

I mean there's definitely like,

don't get me wrong,

there are massive amount of pros to having Etsy in addition

to the fact that like you're separating yourself with your own

website, but when Etsy is glitching out,

there's someone on it,

someone's figuring it out,

they want to make it work.

But when your website is glitching out,

like you're sort of more on your own about it,

something goes wrong.

You're the only one who has to figure it out.

So there's definitely like benefits to that power in numbers thing

of Etsy.

So I really do strongly suggest that people have both,

because at sea could be a backup to your own website

too, like something goes wrong over here.

Okay. Everybody come over here today and in that case,

obviously it would be fine to send people to Etsy,

but you really want to be having Etsy,

like you said,

obtaining these prospects and then you when you are out there

hustling to get traffic somewhere,

get that traffic to your site.

Great. Okay,

wonderful. So I want to dive now into this upper level

of what online presence can do,

and particularly I think you're talking through Etsy.

When I'm looking at some of the information that you provided

me, I know there's names here that our audience would salivate

over in terms of exposure such as the today's show,

better homes and gardens,

HGTV, people magazine,

et cetera,

et cetera.

How does that integrate in,

or let's talk a little bit about why you bring those

up and how all of that can be achieved through an

online platform like Etsy.

Okay. Gift biz listeners.

Did you just catch that?

There's an opportunity on Etsy to get in front of some

big brands.

How do you do it?

Stay tuned and Danielle is going to tell us right after

a word from our sponsor,

This podcast is made possible thanks to the support of the

ribbon print company.

Create custom ribbons right in your store or craft studio in

seconds. Visit the ribbon,

print company.com

for more information.

Yeah, so like we were saying at C's,

attracting all of this traffic to itself and that traffic is

not only people who want to buy like today or who

are looking specifically for something to purchase today or in the

near future.

It's people who are influential like bloggers,

people who want to write articles,

people in the media,

people who buy for celebrities,

people who dress celebrities or actors and actresses on TV Because

they're always looking for content.

Right, Exactly.

One of the,

like literally just last night,

one of my core students sent me a message and she

was like,

is this legit?

This looks legit,

but I don't know.

And it was a message from someone at HGTV magazine wanted

a sample of one of her things for photo shoot or

something and I was like,

that's absolutely legit.

You can tell like from the email address that the person

gave her whatever@hurst.com

all this stuff.

I was like,

this is amazing.

This was amazing.

Those people are out there because they know of Etsy as

a place to go for things that you can't find at

target or Amazon or Walmart or whatever,

and it's cool for them to find cool stuff,

right? And they want stuff that's different and interesting for their

audience. And so Etsy is attracting those people just as much

as attracting people who want to make just a one time

purchase. So it's awesome to make one to one sales,

but it's more awesome in some ways to have these,

to cultivate media or features,

whether you even realize they're happening or not.

We have a lot of people who've gotten picked up for

Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed publishes like 40 articles an hour or something.

There's so many opportunities for gift guides and lists and blog

posts and things like that that are not one-to-one sales and

they're not going to increase your Etsy sales number directly immediately,

but like they could potentially boost your sales significantly over time.

Being on the today show,

being in a magazine,

being on any sort of show,

having any sort of media attention like that is so massively

important and meaningful to a small business and because of what

Etsy is and how it's he has established itself over time,

it attracts all of these media people and influencers.

So the opportunity for sales exists,

but the opportunity for like bigger things like licensing deals even

exists as well just as much on Etsy.

And if people can appeal to that,

then they're really set themselves up for some good prospects.

In terms of going beyond that one time sale,

is there a way to not just sit back passively and

hope that you get found?

Is there something proactively that people can do that puts them

in the line of visibility with some of these people?

I mean,

I definitely think that if you can appeal to Etsy,

like what is Etsy saying right now is currently trendy or

like what are they promoting actively on their newsletter or Instagram

or Pinterest and tapping into that.

Etsy is really good about giving a lot of clues to

sellers. Here are the colors that we're promoting this season,

here are the motifs or whatever,

popular animal,

whatever things are currently really trendy and they sort of set

trends, but they also obviously tap into whatever is globally trendy

or nationally trendy.

And if you as a seller can sort of align your

products to that,

you put yourself in the running to be featured by Etsy,

right? And then obviously being featured by Etsy is awesome because

then you got all this free promo to that warm audience

of buyers and influencers.

So that's one thing is just paying attention to what Etsy

is currently interested in and then doing what you can to

align to it.

Obviously it's not always possible,

but that's definitely an active thing to do is to pay

attention and do what you can to put your products in

a light that aligns with those trends or whatever is currently

being featured or promoted.

My guess is that you shouldn't redesign your entire product just

because it is now the current thing,

like you still want to stay true to what you are

doing and some trends will fit with you and some trends

might not.

Exactly, and that's exactly what I mean is like you want

to sort of pay attention to what they're doing so that

you can see,

Oh, they're promoting this thing and some of my stuff relates

to that thing or could relate to that thing and I

never even thought of it before,

but it absolutely could.

Sometimes they get on these trips with like very specific color

ways and they call them very specific things,

like it'll be dandelion instead of yellow.

So if you have something in your shop that's that shade

of yellow and you've just been calling it yellow or you've

been calling it some other thing,

you can simply adjust that to be,

okay, now it's dandelion yellow.

That's what FC likes this week or this season.

Little things like that.

Just paying attention can be real game changers if you hit

it right.

And then of course just staying on top of what are

the steps to take to be seen and relevant and obviously

having beautiful photos never hurts anybody.

You can only help and things like that that people hear

over and over,

but that becomes so ubiquitous that we kind of forget them.

Or how many times have you heard,

Oh, good photos,

good photos,

but like what does that really mean for this platform?

Right. Making your photos so that they can do the most

work for you.

That's really what I want people to do is make Etsy

and all of the things you put into Etsy work for

you for this purpose of attracting this audience.

That is buyers and influencers.

Sure. Because I'm thinking if you get a product that they're

highlighting, let's go with your dandelion still.

But until you've renamed,

let's call it a candle,

cause I love my candles.

I mean you call it a candle,

dandelion, whatever,

and then someone is interested in that and then they go

over to your Etsy listing and they see a crappy picture.

Then you're probably knocked out of the running of being able

to be further promoted,

being invited on a show or anything.

People probably wouldn't even click through to begin with if the

photo is bad.

And sometimes you don't even have to be the person being

featured in an email or something because they'll pick some picture

that's beautiful for their email,

but then you click it and it goes to a page

where it's just a lot of things that fit that category

or that search term or something.

And so if your thing aligns and is positioned to show

up, then it can.

And like you just got all this major traffic off someone

else's back about or just by being aligned to right thing.

And so that's where the pictures really do come in because

no one's going to click through if it's a bad picture.

So there's really no point in ranking really well if no

one is clicking through your images.

What other top information would you give to someone who's looking

at going on at T?

So it's good photos aligning with current trends,

where applicable.

Do you have a couple of other things that you would

say to someone who's just looking at this platform and really

thinking they'll do it so that they can be aware?

Yeah, well I always encourage people to really go for it.

Don't list like three things and call it a day.

Have a decent amount of inventory.

Just like if you were opening a real store,

you would never open a real store with four t-shirts and

call it a day.

The rest of the store is completely empty except for your

Fort t-shirts.

Like you need to give people a reason to look around,

give them a couple different things to look at.

A few different ways to sort of interact with your shop

and your products.

So what would be a minimum For me,

I mean straight out of the gate 30 is usually a

good number to aim for because it really is a numbers

game. The more listings you have,

the more opportunity you have to be discovered and be visible.

So that's pretty major.

I mean 30 listings is not even a huge number,

but it's a good number and then over time you can

work up to a number that feels comfortable or that makes

sense for your business.

Okay, So stock your shop basically.

It would be a good way to say that.

Don't just stop at five things and then be really,

really intentional about what you put in the shop because you

don't want to just be like,

Oh, I can make this,

this, this and this and so I should sell all of

those things.

You want to have like a clear product line.

I mean that would really go for any platform hopefully,

but something that makes sense.

You really want to think of your shop the same way

that you would think about if you were building out a

brick and mortar store.

You would want it to look like it goes together,

you would want it to be really cohesive and this item

looks like it goes with this item.

It looks like it goes with the next item and really

consider like merchandising and how items go together.

So you're a specialist,

you know we talk about niching down now at the time.

So you're a specialist,

you're known for X,

so your Etsy shop should look like that.

I'm assuming now I do know of a couple people and

actually someone we interviewed a while back has multiple at shops.

What do you think of that?

Is it a good idea if your products are different?

I think that it would be cool if Etsy made it

a little easier for people to manage multiple shops.

I've never had more than one shop,

but I have heard from several people that it's hard.

You have to have different email addresses and you have to

have different logins and all this stuff,

so it's not easy,

which I think makes it difficult for people to maintain to

to the level that you'd want.

I know some people can pull it off for sure.

For me,

it really comes down to if the products are completely different

and have completely different audiences,

then yes,

it makes sense,

but if the audience for the products is similar or the

same, I think you can pull it off in one shop

and that's probably to your benefit because obviously then it's easier.

You don't have to maintain two different things and you can

synchronize your marketing efforts better too.

In that case,

you're appealing to one sort of audience instead of two,

so I think if the audience is similar,

you can make your products look like they go together in

one shop.

It really depends on what's being sold.

It probably depends.

Yeah, and it's just kind of occurring to me strategically.

We were talking earlier about having a website and an Etsy

shop. No,

if Etsy was your,

I'm not going to say lowest cost,

but it appeals to more people.

Let's say it's candles.

Again, that could be what you put in your Etsy shop,

but then when people jump over to your website,

maybe it's candles and it pottery.

That's made to hold the candles or you know,

whatever. Extended items,

maybe all that sits on your website versus having three Etsy

shops. Right.

Maybe, I don't know.

Just an idea.

Yeah, I think it really depends on the setup and the

person and the products.

For me,

I'm like,

if I have three Etsy shops,

I'd want to have like three very specific brands and I

don't know,

I feel like it would just be hard for me,

but some very like Intrepid people can make it happen.

All right,

so Danielle,

you're dealing with your Etsy shop now.

You also are a coach to other business people,

right? And you're teaching them how to do what you do.

How do you work through your days and how do you

get everything in during a day?

Well, every day looks a little different.

I'm really not a creature of habit.

I get very bored very easily.

I have to keep things exciting for myself.

Some days I'm doing more of one thing than another,

but generally I spend most of my time doing like computer

work, which for some people probably sounds horrible,

but because I'm a gadget nerd.

You love that techie stuff.

Yep. So I do spend most of the day on the

computer because right now in my business,

my focus is on the people instead of the products.

I am spending more of my time doing that,

but as we get closer to the holidays,

I'll be doing more product stuff.

Oh, so it changes based on the time of year for

you? Yeah,

for me it does.

Right now my husband and I,

we just moved a couple months ago and so we're still

kind of settling into our new place.

And so that kind of like life stuff seems to come

up a lot.

Yeah. How dare that life stuff come up.

I know.

And you know what's that about?

Military stuff?

It's just,

you never know.

So seasonally things change,

but I try to stay as productive as possible by making

a lot of lists both on paper and digitally and I've

gotten better about allowing other people to assist with things.

That's good.

Yeah, that can be hard.

But I try to not like overwhelm myself with two dues

for the day,

like the night before.

I usually like make a list of like these are the

things I have to get done tomorrow and then these are

the things that would be cool if they got done tomorrow,

that kind of thing.

Gotcha. So not to overwhelm myself.

Are there any apps or anything that you would share that

you see yourself going back to that really helped with your

productivity? Oh yes.

I'm a big fan of Trello.

I know a lot of people do use Trello and a

lot of people are still discovering it,

which is cool to me.

So it's still like sort of new share with the audience

what Trello is.

Okay. So Trello is,

it's actually a very simple web based app or platform,

I guess you could call it an app,

but it is web based.

You can have an app on your phone,

which is very convenient.

It's basically like a list maker,

but you create these boards,

very simple.

They're called boards and then within a board you can have

these different lists and you can title your lists and you

can add little markers to them,

drag and drop things,

which is amazing and amazing feature.

I love to drag and drop things from one list to

another where you can upload documents,

files of any kind images.

It's especially great if you're working with another person or a

couple of people on something.

You can all sort of bypass email and just put things

in your Trello,

which is amazing if you are the kind of person who

gets a lot of emails about little things or you know

when you're working on a project with someone and it's like,

okay, I'll do this.

Okay, I'll do that.

Like a thousand emails.

That's just like,

okay, okay.

Okay. So you can sort of bypass your inbox through Trello.

And that is where I organize all of my stuff.

I don't even know how I functioned in my life before

Trello, but I put everything in there.

I feel the same way about Assana.

Yes. Yeah.

If I didn't have that,

I don't know where I'd be.

It is very similar in some ways to a sauna though.

I think a sauna is a little bit more robust in

some of its functions,

but just some people are like,

Oh, I hate a sauna but I love Trello or I

hate Trello,

but I love a sauna.

Either one.

I've used both and I like both.

I just tend to use Trello more cause I don't eat

all the bells and whistles of a sauna.

But yeah,

just that kind of thing.

Having one centralized location for all of the organization.

I love that.

Wonderful. Is there anything else since you're such a gadget girl

that you do not want to get off this call without

sharing with all the listeners?

Oh my goodness.

Well, I do have quite a few gadgets,

but I'm,

I'm pretty much like a purist in how I use them.

I think that I'm,

well I've just gotten an iPad with the pencil and I've

been really getting into,

um, the procreate thing,

which I understand is a very,

it's like a very expensive gadget just to mess around with.

But if you're an illustrator or you have any sort of

like design spin to your work,

like this is major,

this is a great gadget,

but iPad,

I know they make it smaller now.

The one I have is the pro because that was at

the time that I bought it,

the only one that worked with the pencil,

but now they have a smaller version that works with the

pencil and it's just so cool for just random creative stuff

for me.

I'm not really an illustrator or designer,

but I still love to mess with it and play around

with it.

And that's kind of like my fun,

creative stuff.

So I'm just only really getting scratching the surface really right

now on that,

so, but I would still recommend it.

Okay. Wonderful.

Well, what would you say to a listener out there who

is thinking about starting an Etsy shop is a little anxious

about it,

just isn't sure yet.

Just has the heebie jeebies about getting started and is nervous.

What would you say to that person?

I would say to that person that that is normal and

you kind of just have to live with that little bit

of nervousness.

Like we were saying earlier,

sometimes like it just is overwhelming.

Like when you're first starting something and you don't know anything

about it.

Like of course that's super overwhelming.

Just take your time,

don't like rush into opening your store.

Like really be intentional.

Like we were saying about how you're using it and what

you're putting there.

And I think a lot of people rush into it and

then when it's not working they get upset and so they

rush out of it.

That bothers me cause I'm like,

no, you just have to give it a little bit more

time. So be patient with yourself and setting it up and

getting it there and also be patient with it and letting

it work.

Oh good.

That's good.

Yeah. You're not going to like hit it perfectly,

right the first day.

There's still things I am constantly tweaking.

I know my students have my Etsy chorus constantly going back

in and like relooking at things to make them better or

to work better for communication between the seller and the buyer,

things like that.

You just have to kind of learn as you go.

Some of it,

how to make it work for you.

The actual fundamentals of how it works can be learned of

course, but you have to give it time to work for

you and to settle into how you want it to work

for you.

Right. And what works for somebody else may not work for

you. So don't just feel like because someone else has told

you they're doing it one way and then you try it

and it doesn't work because you may have a different audience,

you have a different product,

et cetera.

Yeah, there's definitely a learning curve for your specific product and

like even over the course of the first like six months,

you might change what you want to sell.

Like you might not want to make this thing anymore.

You might get a few sales for it and be like,

Oh, it's not even worth my time to make this thing

anymore. Or you have to adjust your prices or whatever.

Like you just have to give it time.

You have to see how it plays out for you and

then make those adjustments.

Yup. Good advice.

All right,

well let's get a little bit of a peek into your

future. Danielle,

I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

So this is like law of attraction type thing.

So this is your dream of your goal of almost unreachable

Heights that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

So inside my box of unattainable dreams and wishes,

I was thinking about this and I'm like,

what do I,

I guess I was trying to frame it like what do

I see myself ultimately having?

And I'm like,

I see myself,

my husband,

we're able to travel.

We have maybe a few dogs who are awesome and able

to travel with us.

Like in my most wildest dreams,

the dogs are on the plane,

the dogs travel with us,

The dogs,

They're the cutest dogs in the whole world.

But we are able to,

like I said,

travel, but we're both still working because we like to and

not because we have to and we're doing things that we

really enjoy doing.

Working with people we really enjoy working with,

working together,

think that would be really amazing.

And that's something we've spoken about before and just like really

enjoying time with the people in our lives that we love

and that we want to have the opportunity to spend time

with and the freedom to do that.

So for me it's really about freedom of moving about with

the people that I love and to the people that I

love and doing the things that I've always wanted to do

and seeing the places I've always wanted to see.

So for me that would be the greatest thing is to

just have that freedom of time and opportunity to take the

dogs somewhere.

Amazing. It always comes back to those puppy dogs.

Yeah. We just recently lost our dogs so we're not in

the position to get a new dog anytime soon,

but in the future that would be amazing to have more

dogs give you just a couple months.

You're a dog lover.

I know You're not replacing them.

You're just bringing someone else new into the family to love.

Yes, helping another dog live their best life.

Absolutely. Share with us how our listeners can learn more about

you and the Merriweather council.

Yes, of course.

So everything can be found@merriweathercouncil.com

which is w WW,

obviously that M E R,

R I and then whether like the stuff that comes out

of the sky council.com

and I would love to invite your people to hop on

my party bus,

which is my mailing list at the party bus.

Yes, yes.

And that is a place where I connect with people and

send them extra sort of things.

The type of content that would appear on my blog or

my podcast.

If people want to listen to the podcast,

they can find that on my website too.

Pretty much everything is there.

Okay, and what's the name of your show?

The Merryweather council podcast.

Okay, perfect.

And give biz listeners,

you know there's a show notes page so you can go

back and they'll just be quick and easy links to all

of this sitting right there for you.

For your listeners,

I have a link to my free Etsy lessons series that

you can maybe just add to your show notes.

Oh, absolutely.

Yes. Just a week long.

Basically a new Etsy lesson delivered to your inbox.

It includes an SEO training that's about 20 minutes video form,

so if they want to check that out,

I can get you the link to that.

Okay, so you're going to send that to me and then

I'll put it on the show notes page.

Yes. Thank you,

Danielle. Is that good for somebody who is looking at starting

a shop?

What about someone who already has an Etsy shop?

Yeah, for sure.

This could be for people who have had shops for a

little while and want to maybe just refresh and rethink or

for people who are at see curious,

maybe we can call them who are thinking about it and

want to see maybe what could come up down the line

for them in terms of building out their shop or optimizing

it, what the options could be,

that kind of thing.

I definitely think it could be for new sellers or existing

sellers. Perfect.

So give biz listeners.

We'll have the link over there for you on Danielle's show

notes page.

Oh my gosh,

thank you so much.

You've given us such clear insight and knowledge about Etsy and

I love this extension that you've talked about in terms of

identifying trends and how you get your listings to be more

visible and what that can do for your future.

So I really,

really appreciate your sharing your expertise here with me and my

listeners today.

Danielle, Thank you so much for having me.

Are you discouraged because your business is not performing as you

had envisioned?

Are you stuck and confused about how to turn things around?

Sue's new best selling book is structured to help you identify

where the holes are in your business and show you exactly

how to fix them.

You'll learn from Sue and owners just like you who are

seeing real growth and are living their dream maker to master

find and fix what's not working in your small business.

Get it on Amazon or through www.

Doug gift biz,