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“I still get excited every time I get a sale. I think I was so shocked that people actually wanted to buy my headbands, despite starting because I thought that would happen. There is something so special about making something with your hands for someone else and it still hasn't gotten old.”
Mental Health Counselor By Day, Headband Artist by Night
How does an Etsy seller go from $500/month to more than $3,000/month?
As the show has evolved, we have gotten a bit pickier about some of the things we feature. Etsy sellers with handmade items are one of those categories where I want to make sure we're really bringing you, our listener, real value.
So what I'm more interested in these days is not just how someone can make a few hundred dollars a month selling on Etsy, but how they can ramp up or stand out or otherwise go above and beyond.
In today's story, a mental health counselor moonlights as a headband artist, going head and shoulders above the rest and earning an extra $3,000/month from her headband sales.
Brittany Lipowski was busy. The overwhelmed grad student was trying to balance her school course load, a part-time job, some semblance of a social life, going to the gym or yoga, and all the errands associated with adult life. And, like most adults, she had to wash her hair in between all these activities.
But that didn't always mean she looked as put together as she would've liked. All she ever really wanted to do was be able to go through her daily activities while looking effortlessly adorable. Not an unreasonable ask, especially once she started her side hustle to help her accomplish that feat.
Bizzybcrafts became Brittany's answer to a question she had only half-asked herself: "How do people wash their hair every day?" With a surge in dry shampoo sales, she's clearly not the only one who struggled with looking put together when she felt anything but.
It wasn't until she was in Virginia to visit a friend that she seized the moment to create her side hustle. Brittany noticed a cute headband in a small shop… and then noticed the $20 price tag. Her first thought? "I can make this." She immediately went home to start researching supplies so she could make her own headbands. She invested $300 of her savings into materials, taught herself how to sew, and got to work.
She knew from personal experience that good headbands (you know, the kind that stay on your head) were hard to find, so she tested her headbands until she created the perfect design. Then, she made an Etsy account and… waited.
Sales trickled in, but not as a steady stream of secondary income. Still, Brittany stuck with her labor of love. Slowly, she started to bring in an average of $500 a month from Etsy sales. Some months were better than others, but it makes Brittany get a little "overexcited," as she put it, and buy too many supplies for her side hustle needs. Since she wasn't selling a huge amount, she didn't need the world's supply of fabric. But she says she had to learn supply and demand the hard way after she found herself with "a little credit card debt and a big pile of fabric that didn't sell."
Brittany started to notice that she got a lot of customers through word-of-mouth and that a lot of people turned into return customers. Since she didn't want to invest money into advertising, she got creative with where she posted about her business, like Facebook groups.
Surprisingly, her most successful lead generation came from a sub-fan group for the podcast My Favorite Murder. It's related to crafts, and her favorite podcast, so it's natural that Brittany would find herself there. But, as a bonus, she happened to gain a lot of her customers (and, in turn, anyone they talk to about Bizzybcrafts) through it, too.
Once Brittany started to connect with her customers, and listened to what they were looking for, she saw her income skyrocket to $3,000 a month. She asks lots of questions in Instagram stories, does polls on new fabrics, and asks for opinions on what her customers would like to see added to her lineup. As Brittany told us, "I think that customers appreciate that you want to know these things and it has definitely worked. I used to struggle with things that weren't selling, but once I started involving the customers more, it has helped."
The biggest change to Brittany's side hustle model was creating seasonal collections with limited availability. At the end of each season, she offers a sale price before retiring the collection.
She says that because it gives the customer a sense of urgency, and they know that the products really are limited because she's a one-woman show, they're more likely to act on the headbands and products they want.
Even though she's now averaging an extra $3,000 a month in side hustle income, it hasn't always been easy. She's made mistakes and had to overcome obstacles, from spending too much money on supplies that she didn't need to balancing her side hustle with her full-time job as a service coordinator for people with mental illness, or even keeping up with orders and postage. It's definitely been a journey, not an overnight success.
But, over time, Brittany learned to order a limited amount, seek her customers' opinions, and set up a separate business bank account to keep track of the finances. Balancing everything is a constant give-and-take, but at least she knows she looks pulled together in a great headband while she does it.
Since her humble grad school beginnings, Brittany has added different headband styles, hair ties, scrunchies, kids sizes, and seasonal launches to her product offerings. And, while the extra monthly income is great (especially since she now has a wedding to plan!), she says that nothing beats hearing positive customer feedback and connecting with new communities of people on Instagram.
She now knows firsthand that you don't need a business degree to make a side hustle work. She's definitely getting ahead in life.
Nothing wrong with $500/month, but the key to growth is understanding what people want. How do you figure that out? Through experimenting and through engagement.
Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better.
