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“There's never enough time to execute all the ideas I have, but it's a good problem to have. The best part has definitely been learning the ins and outs of owning a small business as I go and the freedom to create income on my own terms.”
It was a sunny spring day and Elliott Addesso, a Trader Joe's sign artist from Virginia, was in a bit of a pickle. It was his mom's birthday that weekend, and he needed a gift. But what do you buy the woman who has everything? … Probably something meaningful, handmade, or all of the above. Fortunately Elliott was creative, and worked well under pressure.
In college, he had experimented with staining paper with tea and painting over it to create images. He had always liked the aesthetic, but never really found the opportunity to bring it to life. For his mom's present, he decided to try printing an antique, royalty-free image he had found online of an 1800's illustration of some root vegetables on to some old tea-stained paper. It worked better than he had imagined—and looked fantastic framed in his mother's kitchen.
Capitalizing on his success, Elliott started to create a library of royalty-free, unlicensed imagery to use as digital collages printed on tea-stained paper. He figured that if he could make and sell a few prints a month, he could use the money to start paying off his student loan faster. Not only that, but at the time he was living in his mom's basement, but as nice as it was to be close to family… the basement of the home he'd grown up in was a little too close. Some extra money would help up save up money for a deposit on a place of his own. Someplace where no one would ask what time he'd be coming home that night.
At first, Elliott was intimidated about starting an online shop. Would anyone want to buy his art? But when he went to look at the listings on Etsy.com, he noticed that there were several successful shops that were printing public domain images and photoshopping them over antique dictionary pages. And if they could do it and make money from it… so could he, and with a tea-stained twist.
Elliott didn't wait oolong time to start setting up his own Etsy shop. After spending some time creating prints after work, he uploaded them, sat back, and waited.
One day, while checking his email, Elliott noticed something he hadn't seen before. He had received an e-mail with the subject "Etsy Transactions" and realized he had made his first sale. It was the first of 1,000 sales he would make that year.
That first sale was an image of a pug riding a whale, and the majority of sales that soon followed were dogs riding whales, narwhals, or unicorns. It wasn't what he had expected, but he decided to follow the pattern of what was selling and listened to buyer's requests. Which was basically more dogs on top of things. After he noticed he was getting lots of messages asking for new animal combinations, he added a custom option to his page. Sales for his dog-themed tea prints really started to pour in… or was he steeped in St. Bernards?
In his second year, he more than doubled his first year of sales with 2,500 orders, and he's making about $3,600/month. All of this is built on startup costs of just $300, to buy tea bags, bubble mailers, and pay for listing fees. Remember, the art that he's using to make the prints is antique and therefore free from copyright.
He's grown the business by investing in promoted listings on Etsy, Facebook ads, and being active on Instagram. Because his customers tend to buy prints as gifts, he ramps up his ad spend during peak buying times like Black Friday and pre-holiday season. He also notes that experimenting with lookalike audiences for his Facebook ads, based on his Etsy customers, has been one of the most effective tools for generating traffic and conversions in his store.
Elliott still works as a sign artist at Trader Joe's, but he's shifted to part-time to devote more attention to Tea Stained Madness. Sales of his prints are so successful they've become his main source of income—and even helped him pay off a quarter of his student debt much faster than expected. More importantly, he's been able to move out of his mom's basement into a great apartment with the perfect studio room for creating his prints.
While there's never enough time in the day, Elliott wouldn't be where he is now if he had waited for everything to be just right. Yesterday it was starting an Etsy shop, today it's adding art shows and craft fairs to the roster. Whatever he does next, side hustling seems like Elliott's cup of tea.
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