Designs Archives - INSPIRING MAX

As some of you know I opened an Etsy shop in January. It certainly is a different journey than I thought it would be, but I love it. When I started I had done a lot of research and made a plan however over time it has taken on a life of its own. My shop is called Maxxinspired. A sister to my blog Inspiring Max and both are based on my life. Because of this close connection I have decided to commence a weekly blogpost about my journey with my Etsy shop. I hope that you will find my insights and my designs interesting. My plan is to share the weekly highs, lows and frustrations of being a fledgling Etsy business owner.

For this weeks initial designs I am sharing the 12 designs that have sold. It is a very exciting moment when you hear the Cha-ching and I rush with anticipation to see which design has sold. Its my little dopamine hit. I am pleased to say my sales have been very varied as my shop is divided into many niches that have played a role in my life. These include mental health, nursing, bookish, travel, outdoors, gymnastics, toddlers, retirement, adulting moment, family, coffee, everyday issues, sassy women and my grumpy old men ( my biggest seller and leader in getting people to click). I based my winning grumpy designs on my husband so he thinks it is hilarious that he is the most popular. Over the last few weeks I have also added blankets and mugs. My tagline is Designs Inspired by Real Life, Made for Everyday Wear.

In my shop I currently have 675 designs. My initial goal was to get to 600 designs by the beginning of July as I was adding about 100 designs a month. Now however my growth has slowed substantially because I have now entered the stage of curating my shop. This effectively means that as my designs come up for renewal I am deciding if my early designs are good enough to stay in, can be changed to stay in or need to be be deleted forever. This takes time and means even though I am still designing at the same rate my number are slower to go up as I am losing designs each day. Sales and progress is slow because it takes time for the Etsy algorithm to find you and know who to send to your shop. While I have had only 12 sales I have 140+ favorited designs which is a good sign people are liking what they see. Hopefully in the next few months people will return to my shop and purchase a percentage of my favorited designs. I do have to remind myself that while progress is slow I need to trust the system like I did when I first started blogging. I didn’t have one view for over 3 months. But I kept going and now I have been read in over 150 countries. PATIENCE and TIME are the secrets.