Etsy Seller Interview with Kim of KimberleycooperGB

How KimberleycooperGB 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?

Hi, I offer my hand-drawn artwork for sale at Kimberley Cooper GB. I concentrate on animals, mainly dogs (my chocolate Lab called Harley is my logo), with some cats, horses, and wild animals and birds thrown into the mix. Basically, anything I’ve felt inspired to do at the time Although not every painting makes it into my Etsy shop, There are always half-finished pieces littering up my house and iPad where it just doesn't come together enough for me to be happy with it. But I hate throwing anything away because you may, in the future, learn enough to go back and perfect it. My mantra is "Every day is a school day", because I think you should always be open to fresh experiences and learning something new all the time. I’ve always been keen on art, and Etsy means I can indulge this, share my work with other people, and make some money too. And I love the freedom of being my own boss.

I started selling on Etsy in 2017. It coincided with caring for my dad in his final illness with my two sisters. I think creating art gave me the chance to de-stress, and the challenge involved in opening and running an Etsy store (although the process was straightforward) gave me something to concentrate on that didn’t involve my emotions.

I have a huge cupboard full of pastels, watercolors, pens, and different sorts of paper that I’ve acquired over the years. I still use these, but increasingly I find myself using my iPad and Apple Pencil, which in some ways is more forgiving than traditional, physical art. I like to save my progress as I go along, in layers, and then if the piece takes a turn I’m not keen on, I can delete that layer and go back to a previous stage. That’s not so easy with paper and paint. I don’t go for true realism, and I describe my work as "mixed media," as I mostly use good photos and digital tools to make my paintings, although I do also work with physical paper and paint. I like to incorporate my favorite colors of teal and orange into a lot of my art, which makes it a bit quirky.

Animals have always been very close to my heart, so they form a major part of my designs. I like to start with a good photo of the animal, draw a rough sketch, and then get right on in with the eyes. I think if the eyes feel right, the rest of the painting flows. And if the eyes aren’t coming together, well, there’s always that "delete layer" option!

Once I’m happy with the actual painting, it’s time to transfer it to my laptop, tweak any levels in colors, brightness, sharpness, etc., and bring it into software to actually produce a card. That’s the beauty of working digitally; so much can be altered to my personal taste, and then being able to translate that into a physical product I can hold in my hand just gives me the best of both worlds.

I source the blank cards, envelopes, cello bags, and glossy paper for printing from suppliers here in the UK. and print everything at home. My cards are either square (6x6 inches) or 5x7 or 7x5. It depends on the original photo that I’ve used as a reference. I like the background but not too much of it; I want the animal to be the star of the card. And that’s another thing: I create what I feel like, so there’s an eclectic mix of animals in my Etsy store, from Cocker Spaniels to Norwegian Forest Cats to Kangaroos!

Favorite items

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

There are a couple of cards that are special to me. One, a Springer Spaniel is from a photo of a friend’s dog, now sadly no longer with us. I originally created the painting as a memory piece for them, and my friend kindly allowed me to offer it as a card for sale in my Etsy shop afterward.

And another favorite of mine is a lion card. The lion looks thoughtful and majestic in equal measure. That card, particularly, sells well; I think a lot of people feel an affinity for wildlife.

Whereas my cat and dog cards are normally bought by people looking for a specific breed. Some of my designs have been a direct result of someone asking a question like, "Have you got a Sphynx cat?" Give me a couple of days, and I can generally say, "I have now!"

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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?

My cards are fairly low-priced items, and people are always looking for those. And the designs are unique; as I create them all from scratch, they can’t be found anywhere else. It didn’t take long for the first card to sell, and I’ll never forget just how thrilled I was that someone liked my work enough to buy it! People often tell me that they intend to frame the card after it has been used as a card, so in a way, it becomes a present too. I think to start with, I opened my Etsy shop with about 10 designs, and that has gradually expanded to over 200. And now, my Etsy store sees over 10 times as many visits as it did when I first started, so something is going right.

Managing KimberleycooperGB 

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?

It’s just me! Etsy’s app and website are pretty user-friendly, and I love hearing the ker-ching when an order comes through. Maybe not so much during the night, though, when my US orders tend to come in!

The tools I use include my iPad with the Procreate app as my main go-to for designing the cards, Paintshop Pro for getting the designs as good as they possibly can be, and Microsoft Publisher to create the card and personalize it if desired. I use Royal Mail’s Click and Drop for postage, both domestic and overseas, and my regular walk to the postbox in the morning helps me get in some active steps before the day fully starts! And our local post office is only 20 minutes walk away if I need to send anything tracked, which I do on larger orders.

One thing I regularly do is look at stock levels for the various designs. If something isn't selling well, there must be a reason for it. So I’ll try to keep a dispassionate eye and think about whether it’s the actual work itself, maybe whether I could do better in terms of tags and attributes, or whether I need to try and drive traffic through Pinterest, Instagram, etc. I haven't tried Etsy ads yet. Using the search facility on Etsy is great too. I can see what auto-populates, so I use relevant tags and descriptions. And I also use eRank, which gives me some insight into what people are searching for and where my designs are placed. I could spend hours there, but I need to be careful not to alter something that sells well!

The future of KimberleycooperGB

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

In line with my Every Day is a school day motto, I’m always looking to improve. That might be looking for quality cards at a reasonable price so that I can offer an even better product for the same price, or researching what animals people Google for and then seeing what the competition is like for those. So I suppose my goal is to do better for each order than the one before. And I want people who order from me multiple times to be pleased the first time they order from me, but to be even happier the next time!

Advice for new sellers

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

Create something you enjoy, and then think about how to make money from it. If you don't enjoy what you’re creating, your long-held dream of making a living from your passion will become just another job. But because it’s YOUR business and everything is down to you, it won’t just be 9-5 Monday through Friday. Oh no, it’ll be 8 a.m.–11 p.m., 7 days a week. And that’s a long time if you don’t enjoy it. So do what you enjoy. And learn something new every day. It will keep you interested!

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

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: 4.3% over all time (2017 - now)