Mother Of Five Sells Pretty Old Books

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Can you sell on Etsy without being a maker? Well, if you're not super crafty, can you still do something on Etsy? The site is known as the world's largest handcrafted marketplace, but it turns out you don't necessarily have to be crafty to succeed there. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, so excited to bring you a new story today. Mother of five sells pretty old books.

What do I mean by pretty old books? Well, it's like this. When a stay-at-home mom hopes to avoid returning to full-time work outside the home, she starts selling vintage books packaged by color, and her dream becomes more than a pigment of her imagination. Yes, I enjoyed that one. Her dream becomes more than a pigment of her imagination. It is pretty cool,

though, the story of what if you are not crafty? How can you sell on Etsy? I mean, normally we would say, "Oh, if you don't have that skill, then maybe you should look somewhere else." But this person really did find a pretty interesting niche that nobody else was paying attention to. So I love this. It's pretty cool. I'll tell you about her website,

exactly how it works, all that kind of stuff in this story. Mother of five sells pretty old books. It's coming up after this message from our sponsor. Jessica Dollar is a mother of five. She's often short on time, and as her name would suggest, sometimes she's short on money. In 2018, the latter point became a larger issue for her family. She

liked being a stay-at-home mom, so to avoid getting a job outside the home, she looked for ways to generate income while juggling the demands of motherhood. A side hustle was the obvious choice. But Jessica, like a lot of people, had no idea where to begin. She researched ideas and tried out a few things, but nothing really clicked. She'd heard the advice to follow your passion or find something you're interested in, but those concepts didn't present anything obvious for her. After some more exploring, she read about people having success selling books online,

specifically vintage books. Through that avenue, Jessica came across Etsy, the platform for creators to sell various handcrafted goods. The weird and wonderful array of products really spoke to her. Jessica didn't consider herself a maker. She wasn't even that great at her kids' arts and crafts. Yet

still, Etsy intrigued her enough that she hoped to find some way to make use of it. It didn't take long for her to turn the page and begin weaving a story of her own. It all stemmed from this idea. What if she combined basic vintage book selling with colorful decoration? Jessica's thinking was that for many people, books act as much as decoration as they do reading material. Paging

through the site's listings, she didn't notice anyone else doing it. And for some, that might have turned them off. Perhaps no one is interested in color matched vintage books. For Jessica, though, the lack of competition was exciting. As a contrarian, she loves going against the grain.

And she figured, well, if it didn't work, she'd only have her shelf to blame. Big thank you to Mike, our writer. I know you had fun with that. Her shelf to blame. All right. She took a $100

voucher for Goodwill gifted to her by her in-laws and went shopping. She scoured the local stores, looking for suitable books to create her first batches. She would search for old books in different shades of one color, bundle them together, and sell them as one product. She found a few suitable sets and listed them on her new Etsy store called Cleverly Pretty Old Books. And that choice is all Jessica. I love how our listeners are getting into the wordplay as well.

Three days later, her first sale came through. Jessica was having breakfast with a friend and heard the cha-ching sound from the Etsy app. It was an exciting moment for two reasons. First, she had taken a chance on an idea and followed through with it. Second, it proved her hunch was right. There really were people out there interested in buying pretty old color matched books. She had

completed the first chapter, and it was time for the next. With one sale under her belt, she set out to find more books of different colors. She expanded her search from Goodwill to other thrift stores, estate sales, and old libraries. She thought the more different color variations, the better. And she was right. Sales continued through her Etsy store,

but she also had a few new ideas in mind, the first of which was to market on Instagram. Jessica created an account to compliment her Etsy store. Before every listing, she'd make an Instagram story showcasing the books in her quest to find the perfect color compliments. Lo and behold, many of the books never made it to Etsy because she started receiving messages from people who wanted to buy the books directly. Jessica used PayPal's invoicing feature to request payment from those would-be buyers. Soon, she was selling as many books through

Instagram as she was through Etsy. But on top of that, the posts were driving traffic directly to her store. And eventually, 35% of her Etsy traffic was coming from Instagram. As a pretty smart side hustler, Jessica also started building up her own email list. She used those contacts to run limited offers and flash sales every week. The books would often fly out the doors almost as

soon as she purchased them, which was good news because in 2019, Jessica's husband lost his job and has been out of work ever since. Pretty old books has provided an income to keep them afloat through what's been a difficult time. And although the struggle is real, Jessica has had a lot of fun along the way, learning about running a business. She handles everything from inventory, packing, shipping, newsletters, and social content. It's been frantic, fun, and, best of all, profitable.

In 2019, Jessica earned over $15,000 and is on track for around $20,000 in 2020. This should be increased further by her new Shopify store and special membership club she's offering to existing customers. She plans to provide exclusive offers and special discounts. Her success shows that with plenty of shelf awareness, good things are bound to happen. Jessica's website is, you guessed it, prettyoldbooks.com. I took a quick peek and she's still building that out, but has

some really great images of the different books in the collections and such. Nice about page that says, you know, Pretty Old Books was founded in 2018 by me. Just Dollar continues to be run as a home-based virtual bookshop from my base of Nashville, Tennessee. I'm an avid reader of nonfiction. I love thinking about new ways to make Pretty Old Books the most unique and engaging bookshop on the planet. How about that? I love that ambition. I love the whole project. And as

I said, you don't necessarily have to be crafty to be successful on a website that's all about selling crafty things. Often there's more than one way to do something. And this is a great example of looking for an alternative approach. So good for her. Congratulations, Jess, and listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes,

including links to Pretty Old Books and anything else I mentioned in the episode will be at sidehustleschool.com/13681368. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you'll continue to be sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.