Etsy Seller Interview with Beth of BethGoodwinDesigns

How BethGoodwinDesigns got started

Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?

Hello! I’m Beth Goodwin of Beth Goodwin Designs on Etsy. I illustrate and make cards, art prints, and other stationery. I began selling on Etsy in 2017 after my passion for drawing reignited.

I’ve always been smitten with animals and started drawing people’s pets in my spare time while working 9-5, but after a little while I became so disenchanted with office life that I decided to quit and open my Etsy shop. I started out mainly designing greeting cards to sell, and luckily one of my designs (a little hedgehog) totally took off and is still one of my bestsellers today. From then on, I had a good idea of what customers wanted from my brand, and that was cute animal-themed products mixed with humour.

I illustrate all of my designs by hand and create greeting cards, prints, notebooks, and wrapping paper with them. For my greeting cards, I buy card blanks and print and package them here in my home studio. All of the cards and envelopes I use come from the UK, and I package them in paper bags rather than plastic cello bags. Being as eco-friendly as I can is super important to me, so all of my packaging is plastic-free. My art prints are printed and packaged in my studio, so I can oversee the whole process to make sure I’m 100% happy with them before they get sent out to customers. The only thing I have to outsource is my gift wrap and notebooks, but these are still printed and made in the UK. My notebooks are actually made in Somerset by my husband’s company.

Favorite items

What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?

Currently, my favourite products are my Party Pigeon card, OMG IT’s Your Birthday card,  and T-Rex Birthday card. Luckily, these are all selling well! It’s disappointing when you create something you love and it ends up not selling well. It does sometimes happen, but these are good sellers, luckily.

I also like my Dinosaurs & Biscuits wrapping paper. This too is a good seller for me. I think the clothes dinosaurs together with the biscuits make it unique. The biscuits featured in this design are all well-known British party foods, which I think my fellow Brits find amusing.

Getting sales on Etsy

How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?

It took a couple of days to get my first sale, and I was thrilled! Nowadays, I attract customers by consistently uploading new products, always keeping in mind what has been popular in the past when creating something new. I have some lovely regular customers who will always buy my new designs to share with their friends and family. But if sales are a little slow, I find running a sale really helps. Updating photos, titles, and descriptions can help too. I won’t change anything about my bestsellers, as I don’t want to ruin where they might appear in search results.

Managing BethGoodwinDesigns

How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?

So until this year, it was just me (and my two dogs) running my shop from my home studio. But this summer my husband came aboard one day a week to help run the wholesale and trade side of things, which was getting a little neglected as I didn’t have the time to put into it. So it’s been a massive help to have an extra pair of hands.

I still handle all of the shipping and fulfilment sides of the business, which takes a couple of hours each day. I will then spend my afternoons illustrating, and it’s really my favourite part of the day.

As far as programmes and apps go, I use Adobe Creative Suite to add finishing touches to designs and create patterns for my wrapping paper.

To help with running the shop itself, I use an app called Vela. I find Etsy’s listing management tools a little bit lacking, so I use Vela to quickly update listings in bulk. I honestly couldn’t cope without it. If there is an image I need to add to all 99 listings, I can do that with Vela really quickly.

For shipping, I use Etsy labels. It’s so quick to create all of the shipping labels each day. I then do a post office run each day to post the day’s orders.

The future of BethGoodwinDesigns 

What goals do you have for your shop in the future?

Currently, my goal is to hit 30,000 sales by the end of the year.

Advice for new sellers

What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?

My main piece of advice for a new Etsy seller is to make your business unique. There are so many products on Etsy, so you need to find your little area of it and create things that are unique to you while keeping in mind what customers would like to buy. Don’t be surprised or disheartened if you don’t instantly get hundreds of sales; it can take a few years to really build your shop up to a point where it’s getting a good amount of consistent sales.

And don’t neglect photography; the images you use to showcase your products are hugely important; that’s all a customer will see when they first glance at your product, so make sure these are perfect!

Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.

Question: How much is your monthly revenue?
Answer: £3000

Question: What is your average profit margin?
Answer: 65%

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer:8%