This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome to a new episode. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. So glad you're out there tuning in from wherever you are in the world, whatever you happen to be doing today, maybe you're on the go, maybe you're bench listening, whatever's going on in your world. I hope that these brief episodes can help you in your quest to create an income generating project or to improve the one you already have or just bring you some inspiration, like inspiration that you can hopefully turn into action.
That's always my goal here. And today we're going to tackle a question from a listener in St. Paul, Minnesota. This listener has been running a side hustle selling handmade pottery on Etsy and maybe some other platforms I'm not sure for about a year. So good start.
He's experienced some sales, but he's also finding it challenging to expand his customer base. There has definitely been a plateau, which is very common. Almost every side hustle hits this plateau point where at first it's really exciting. You're like, oh my gosh, all I have to do is make a little bit more money tomorrow or a couple more sales next week. And then the same thing the week after and the next month.
And pretty soon I can just retire and not do anything except, you know, taking all the money. And unfortunately it doesn't always work that way. It doesn't usually work that way. So pay attention because we're going to discuss strategies to improve marketing efforts, specifically targeting people who appreciate artisanal goods and increase overall online visibility. So let's dive into these practical tips.
Our listeners name is Luke. Hopefully it'll be helpful to him and some other folks out there. Once again, thanks for tuning in. Detailed question and my answer coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hey, Chris and team.
My name is Luke from St. Paul, Minnesota and I've been running a side hustle selling handmade pottery on Etsy for about a year now. While I've had some sales, I'm struggling to grow my customer base and I feel like I've plateaued. How can I improve my marketing efforts? Specifically targeting people who appreciate artisanal goods and increase my overall online visibility.
I'd be grateful for any suggestions. [Music]
Luke, thanks for reaching out with the question. Great to hear that you're running the side hustle selling handmade pottery. And of course, I understand the challenge of growing the customer base. So let's give you a couple of practical tips here.
Probably the first one's gonna be the most important. You wanna spend some time optimizing your Etsy store. When you're selling on Etsy, and this could be the case for another platform as well, there's a number of things you can do to really optimize the storefront with high quality photos, detailed product descriptions, relevant keywords, you wanna do some testing. Etsy actually has a number of keyword tools and analytics that you can use that will help you find the best possible keywords to include in your product titles and tags. This is worth a significant investment in time just because it can make a huge difference.
You know, 20% difference, 30% difference, sometimes more. If your store is ranking higher in search results, you're definitely going to reach more people. So if you've got a product that sells to the right audience, at least you want to be able to reach more of the audience and optimizing your store can help a great deal. Second, you might wanna try some form of collaboration. You know, you've got an audience, at least a bit of an audience at this point.
Other people have an audience, other sellers, other influencers, anyone creating content for people who like pottery. So some form of partnership where maybe you're giving away something, you're doing a giveaway to introduce your pottery to their followers. You always wanna try to come up with some kind of win-win scenario to where it's not just benefiting you, but hopefully it's also benefiting the other person as well. And of course their audience as well, because then, you know, everybody loves that. Then there's no debt that's being created to the other person.
It's something that truly benefits everyone. And then maybe lastly, I'm sure you've thought about this, Luke, but just in case not, attend local events and markets. You know, just check out some local craft fairs, farmers markets, art shows, might help you connect with some potential customers in person and building more of an offline community. So those events can also be good opportunities to network and perhaps learn from someone else's experience. Now you probably know that, so I wanna focus mostly on number one, optimizing your Etsy shop.
I think that's gonna help you improve your marketing, increasing your online visibility and ultimately grow your customer base, which is what Luke wants to do. Just remember, Luke and everyone else, growth takes time. Be patient, stay consistent and best of luck. All right, that's it for now. If you've got a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
I'm excited to work on a new episode tomorrow, new one after that. It's all completely free wherever you get your podcasts. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
