Etsy seller → online course creator: 3 mindset shifts you must make
Hello + welcome to this week’s episode of the Simplify Your Sales podcast where we’re going to get right to the point and talk about 3 mindset shifts you’ll need to make as you dive into this crazy but incredible world of online course creation.
If you’re an Etsy sellers that is:
Feeling overworked + underpaid
Stressed by having to do #allthethings #allthetime
Tired of trading time for dollars
…then this episode is for you!
Transitioning from Etsy seller to online course creator is a step that I took back in 2018, and I’ve gotta be honest-- I can’t imagine ever going back. By creating + selling online courses, I’ve been able to earn consistent revenue in my business, create ONE incredible product that sells over and over again, and build a business that is sustainable whenever I need to to take a mental health break-- without causing me to worry that my business is going to “break” because I know I’ve got the systems up + running behind the scenes 24/7/365 to continue bringing me revenue.
But first things first, let’s talk about how *I* made that switch in business models so you can see how I made it work + what that process actually looked like instead of just giving you vague examples.
So back in 2018 I was running my Etsy shop-- little highbury-- and selling baby headbands + hats. I’d been doing this for about 4 years at this point and I’ve gotta be honest-- I was burned out.
We were averaging selling between 30-40 headbands/day, which meant that was 30-40 headbands that had to be cut, sewn, packaged and shipped. And that wasn’t even addressing the nonstop marketing, customer service, or just all those other little things that come with running a physical product-based business.
To top it off, I was pregnant with my second child and REALLY sick-- like hospitalized sick. Needless to say, it was a decently challenging time in my business + personal life, and I found myself really discouraged that for every headband we sold, it meant more work for me.
Now I want to be 100% clear-- I am SO thankful for those sales. So thankful for every chance I had to sell a headband and earn money to help provide for our family. I realize how blessed I am and I don’t take that for granted.
But at that time in my life, it just got to the point where I couldn’t physically run my Etsy shop anymore.
Around that time, people started to ask me how I was doing it. I would get between 2-3 convos in my Etsy inbox per week asking this and I found that I LOVED answering these questions. As sick as I was, it lit me up to talk about the marketing + business strategy behind making 30-40 sales/day.
And as I was answering questions, I realized that the majority of the time, they were the same dang questions.
And I got to the point where I just wished I had a single resource that I could send people to so I could answer their questions, but in a really in-depth way-- because let’s face it, there’s only so much business strategy you can communicate over an Etsy conversation.
And I had a couple friends that were starting to dive into the world of online course creation, and that just seemed like the ideal answer. And so just like that, I created my first online course--Mastermind Your Marketing (which we just retired this year after almost 4(!!!) years running it ).
That single program-- a product I created ONCE and sold over and over again-- went on to earn me over $1.5 million dollars.
And the best part? I wasn’t having to create, package, and ship an order every time I made a sale-- the product was literally already created and-- through a series of really simple automations-- was delivered to every new customer on autopilot.
So that’s MY story of how I made the shift, but I want to be clear: It’s not all unicorns + rainbows.
And as incredible as the online course business is, it is definitely a DIFFERENT type of game than selling online-- and there are some really critical mindset shifts you HAVE to make in order to succeed in it and make that switch in your business successfully.
So let’s talk about them.
Mindset shift #1: Independent creator for online boutique vs. full-fledged Entrepreneur
This is the BIGGEST one that you’ve got to make, so I wanted to address it first.
When you sell on Etsy, at the end of the day, you’re not really a full-fledged entrepreneur. Now I don’t mean that to discourage or downplay all your hard work because running an Etsy shop is HARD WORK-- but I mean it in the sense that your role is more of an independent creator for an online boutique. Truly-- at the heart-- that’s what selling on Etsy is. Because Etsy has their own built-in audience and you’re setting up shop for then.
Now there are obviously entrepreneurial tasks that you are doing-- hopefully you’re doing some marketing of your own besides relying solely on Etsy SEO-- but at the end of the day, you DON’T have a website that you’re relying on 100% to drive your own traffic to, and-- generally speaking-- you don’t have an email list (now there are Etsy sellers that have both and take ownership of both, but the grand majority do NOT).
EVERY ONLINE BUSINESS OWNER NEEDS TO HAVE THEIR OWN WEBSITE + EMAIL LIST.
And so if you’re considering diving into the world of online course creation, I want to be super upfront + transparent with you-- you absolutely MUST be okay to take ownership of both of these things. Your online course isn’t something you sell as another listing in your Etsy shop-- it is an actual standalone product that you sell on YOUR website through YOUR email list-- just like you would virtually any other online business model. Now, we show you step-by-step EXACTLY how to do this in Simplify to Scale, but just wanted to be upfront + transparent and help you wrap your head around the fact that becoming an online course creator means taking ownership of your business and using real-deal entrepreneurial strategies to make it happen-- not just listing a product in your Etsy shop and waiting for Etsy search to send you traffic.
Mindset shift #2: More work upfront in order to simplify things later
One of the next mindset shifts you need to make is to understand that as magical as it is to create ONE product and sell it over and over again without having to recreate it, it takes work to set up this type of business model.
Upfront work.
In the past, I’ve used the term “passive income,” but I think the more appropriate phrase would be “leveraged income.”
As an online course creator, you’ll be frontloading a lot of your work to simplify things for yourself later.
Which means that when you’re JUST getting started moving over from burned-out Etsy seller to online course creator, it’s not going to feel easy-breezy. And you actually have a decent bit of work ahead of you before it starts to feel “leveraged.”
If you haven’t already, you’re going to have to set up the foundations-- your website + email service provider. And you’re going to have to, of course, create the dang product in the first-- and then create all the marketing elements to sell it-. These are all things we’ll walk you through in Simplify to Scale, but let’s just get it out in the open: It’s going to take work to initially get things set up.
But the beauty of it all? Once you create these things-- your website, your online course, your marketing materials-- you can reuse them again and again and again as you set up a system-- something we call an “evergreen sales system” that will continually sell your product for you-- so the sales process is VERY hands off, and you don’t have to do any additional work no matter how many sales you make. 1 or 100-- your workload stays the same. Which means it is SO much easier to scale things and grow your revenue.
But you’ve GOT to be willing to put in that work upfront in order to scale everything later and truly create that leveraged income.
Mindset shift #3: Traffic is still an important part of your business
I’m just going to be honest with you: EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS TRAFFIC. Ecommerce, brick + mortar, online course creators-- EVERYONE NEEDS TRAFFIC.
You don’t have to love it, but you DO need to commit to making it happen.
As an Etsy seller, you probably rely or relied on Etsy search results to send you some percentage of daily traffic.
In the online course business, you are 100% responsible for the traffic you drive. Etsy isn’t going to do it for you.
And while this is empowering-- you are 100% in charge of your business’s success-- it can also be intimidating as heck-- because if you’re not comfortable driving traffic to your site + evergreen sales funnel, you’re going to be in for a VERY discouraging experience.
You can love it or hate it, but at the end of the day, EVERY business owner MUST get good at driving traffic to their business and take ownership of that.
And the same is true for online course creators.
Content marketing-- or creating informational content that your ideal customer resonates with-- is KEY to setting up a consistent growth strategy for your online course business that consistently fills your sales funnels with customers who are a perfect fit for your program-- and it’s a strategy that in and of itself is leveraged-- the more content you take the time to create initially, the faster your traffic will grow and the more exponential it will become over time.
Just like an online course, content marketing takes time to set up initially as you’re starting with nothing, but it eases up your workload more and more with each new piece of content you create.
If you’ve been thinking about switching from Etsy → online course creation and these mindset shifts haven’t scared you off, then make sure you grab the “Unlock your Profitable Course Idea” which is going to walk you through coming up with YOUR unique course idea that leverages the creative skills you already have and turns them into online course digital profits. I’ll link to this insanely valuable PDF in the shownotes for this episode over at MorganNield.com
Thanks for listening + I’ll catch you next week, same time, same place here on the Simplify Your Sales podcast.