I've made a very similar post to yours recently (complaining in fact about too many "loss leaders"). That's an impressive amount of sales IMHO in 3 months! I've been around a similar amount of time. I would definitely turn off Etsy Ads currently, I wasted about £23 there for zero return. What I did was run Meta Ads for about 1 month and then switched them off. Amazingly, action started to heat up WEEKS after I switched them off, so this is an interesting discovery. Currently, I'm advertising through Pinterest and that pays off a bunch. First, it's free and second, the reach is massive if you make the SEO relevant. Added to that, if you start each link to your item "https://yourstorename.etsy.com/" rather than "https://www.etsy.com/", you ought to get a 4% hike courtesy Etsy's new marketing scheme. One expert recommended making 3 product pins per day for 90 days, and saving 4 related pins to your relevant boards, per day. So far, so promising! It sounds like you certainly ought to make your posters more expensive according to some advice here. I have thank you and basket discounts but, after getting stung with losses, I reduced them to £1 discount each, and I've fared much better. I've removed favourited altogether. I ran a 25% discount in month 2, now it's 21% and plan on charging even more in month 4. Also, the other advice here looks great!

@Becky M very welcome indeed and, one last small thing, it's definitely worth testing your Etsy links in Pinterest if you opt to change them, rather than leaving it to chance. :)

With all the costs that are involved in this enterprise already, if you don't have an existing subscription to MJ, I'd say not to bother. Added to that, I hear that MJ is very restricted in terms of aspect ratio it can output. I use Gemini Nano Banana 98% of the time and ChatGPT 2. The quality of both is great, but I have a flow with Nano Banana and it's free - as long as you have a design that makes it easy to remove the watermark and you don't mind being restricted to A2 (a standard Gemini design at 70:99 aspect will scale up reasonably to about A2). The great thing about NightCafe is that it has Nano Banana built into it, plus lots of others, so I think that's a great option! (Plus, no watermarks!)

Amazingly cute cheeky animals UwU! I love them! I think you're on a great path. With POD, it's definitely worth going for volume as it's a crowded market. I've been there 3 months and have 17 sales, from 480 items. Sometimes you need an artificial "boost". Perhaps, create 3 or 4 download-only designs, about £1 each, costing ~52p in listings fees. Get a family member or friend to buy one and give you a 5 star rating - it helped me! And those few download-only items will be there if not making sales directly, then gaining some attention!

Congrats! That's impressively quick!

This is amazing!