Etsy once told me that over a quarter of the sales on their platform were customized items. It might be even higher than that, judging by the success I've been having with customization!
A customized item is typically a template with part of a phrase that allows customers to insert their own text into it, or add an image or graphical element, or even all three.
The simplest type of customized item will just be someone's name added to the bottom or top, but even these are highly desirable items, and I have sold PLENTY of them!
I first noticed that customized items were doing very well back in 2018, on Amazon. I listed one customized item, which took some time, and it ended up making 85 sales over time. That's just ONE listing! I added several more, and they also made sales, and in 2020 I added some customizable items to Etsy for Mother and Father's Day. These items were very very popular, and I ended up spending a lot of time sending these orders out, which was a little bit more annoying, but I've now discovered a method of shipping these orders that takes MUCH less time!
A very successful seller once told me that you could basically have a full time income with "90 highly targeted personalized listings" on Etsy. Even if you needed twice that number of listings, it is still a very small number! I have been seeing a dramatic increase in sales from about 20-25 listings that I've added just in the last two weeks, and I've set a goal of adding around 5 per day, along with any other non-customized listings I can manage. In all likelihood, this could end up being almost overwhelming for me once November hits, but I have a couple of options to save myself time.
First, I will be using a program called "Orderdesk" that will handle the customer address and tracking numbers. All I will need to do is create the design, and drop it into a folder!
Second, I can actually hire someone to perform the artwork creation, and that will leave me free to focus on other things while the order pour in (which they have already begun to do!) This could easily continue all year long, leaving me with a permanent income stream where most of the work is done by other people.
In today's episode, I talk about 5 specific things you need to know about customization to get started! Have a listen, and don't forget that I do teach all of these things in tremendous detail in my training program, which is still available right here.
In today's episode, I give away a discount code that will get you $200 off the full price of this training.
You can also get that discount code right here.