Shocker! Etsy is NOT a 'Get Rich Quick' Scheme

Hey all,

I know the title may seem a bit obvious and might even be untrue for the lucky 1% but I wanted to help others starting out on their POD journey with Etsy; show them some real world stats and help them with some things I have learned over the past month.

Some basic info:

I started my Etsy POD shop (Posters) on April 11th 2025.

My first sale was on April 20th

I now have around 340 listings

I now sell 1-3 posters per day on average

I have a review submission rate of 7.5% (all 5/5 stars)

Financials:

I started Etsy advertising as soon as I could, and spend $6.50 per day on CPC

To date, I have had 23.3k views with 315 clicks and 10 sales from Etsy ads - with a positive ROAS

Organic (non-Ad) traffic has brought me in 30 sales with a conversion rate of 0.8% for April and 2.3% for May (1.6% ave.)

Total visits since launch: 2,490 Total Sales: 40

I have been running a 20% discount for most of the time the shop has been live

Now the Interesting Part:

- Even with 40 sales (taking into account the 20% discount) and the incredibly low prices and free shipping with the excellent PrintShrimp service - with Etsy fees, Ad spend etc.. I have only made around £80 PROFIT.

I wanted to make this post so that I could highlight my personal learnings from this first month with my Etsy POD shop:

Be careful with any discounted offers - they will hurt your margins and may not even be needed if you're getting organic traffic and sales

Set pricing differently for UK/US and Other markets - I did this form the start but may have not been aggressive enough with the US pricing

Realise that you will be charged a transaction fee and a re-listing fee + VAT (if you're in the UK) EVERY time you sell an item. I have mine set at 100+ in stock and auto-renew

Become VERY familiar with the Monthly Statements section in the Etsy backend - download the CSV and import it into a Google Sheet so that you can understand where your margins lie

So...what is the upshot of all this?

I said that I would review after 2 months, not thinking that I would make 1 sale, let alone 40, so I moved the review forward a month and now have some actionable data to work with.

Actions:

I have changed my Etsy Ad goal so that I now see less views but the shoppers are more focused

I may consider reducing my daily ad spend due to this (under review)
I will continue to list at a rate of around 30-40 new posters per week
I am exploring the benefit and practicality of bundles and multi-buy offers, to increase the customer spend
I am now running a 'Buy 3+ - get 20% off' offer globally

I hope a part of this helps if you're near the start of your Etsy POD journey - feel free to ask me any questions 😊

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