There are so many online side hustles out there, that it can be hard to know where to focus your time. Some are amazing and others are complete scams. Etsy is one of the good ones. It’s a great place to start selling online as they have a huge platform of 95 Million active buyers.
This makes it much easier to get started selling compared to having your own store. Etsy allows you to put your products in front of millions of active buyers who are searching for products every day.
For someone who wants to start a side hustle on a low budget, this is ideal as you don’t have to spend much money on marketing. Whereas if you started your own Shopify store, you have to figure out how to get people to the store.
In this article, I am going to show you some of the best Etsy side hustle ideas so you can start your own Etsy store, even if you don’t have much experience.
7 Best Etsy Side Hustles
Etsy is huge and it’s not just people selling handmade items anymore. There are a wide number of categories you can sell in on the platform. However, in this article, I am going to focus on ideas that pretty much anyone can start, regardless of existing experience.
Digital Product Ideas
Digital products are some of my favorite products to sell on Etsy. They don’t require you to make or purchase any physical products and you don’t have to ship any items. These products are downloaded by your customers instantly.
You create these products one time and you can sell them hundreds or thousands of times in the future. You may have some small initial costs to make the product but after that, it is 100% profit margins.
Here are a few different digital products you can sell on your Esty store.
Digital Printables
Digital printables are simple products that people can download and print out instantly. This could be wedding invitations, wall prints, coloring sheets, worksheets, and much more.
You can create these products using an app like Canva. It has hundreds of templates that you can use to get you started. You will want to customise these templates to make them unique to your store. Some people even sell the Canva files so customers can edit them, themselves.
Depending on the type of product you are selling, you can sell these from £1 to £20. Stores like the one below are selling hundreds of these products every month.
Printables are a great choice of product to get started with if you don’t have an existing skill you can use to create products. With the templates available on Canva and hundreds of Youtube tutorials out there anyone can create amazing designs to sell on Etsy.
Digital Templates
Digital templates are another great digital product you can sell on Etsy. Here at Money Sprout, we have our own Etsy store where we sell our budgeting template.
We created a budgeting template in Google Sheets to make it easy for people to budget. People could create this themselves but it would take them a few hours even if they know how to use Google Sheets. If they want to save time, they can buy ours and start using it instantly.
There are many different niches you can sell templates. Some good examples are finance, ChatGPT prompts, Notion, Productivity, Canva Templates and many more.
If you are skilled at creating these types of assets, you can make a lot of money selling them. You may even have some templates that you have created and never thought about selling. Etsy is a great place to sell them and start making some money.
For example, this store sells social media templates and has over 28,000 sales. She creates these templates once and sells them thousands of times.
You can create your own store around a niche you are passionate about and sell your products.
Digital Planners
The digital planner niche is absolutely massive on Etsy. These are digital planners people can download and use on their computer, tablet or phone.
Some are created for specific apps such as Goodnotes or Notion while others are created in a simple PDF format.
You could create very broad generic planners however you will likely find more success by niching down. Some niches that do well are fitness planners, planners for girls, planners for medical students etc. The more niche-specific you can get, the more likely you are to attract an audience who can use your specific product.
This store below sells planners for 17 different niches. They sell planners for weddings, budgets and more.
You can create these planners once and sell the digital file to customers. Once it has been created, you can passively make income from it moving forward.
Phsyical Products Ideas For Etsy
Personalised Print On Demand Goods
Personalised products sell extremely well on Etsy. I actually tested this model myself for a Youtube video and did over $1,000 in sales.
You can use a print-on-demand company such as Printify to print and ship your products to customers so you never have to touch the goods or deal with logistics.
I sold personalised nurse mugs where you could customise the name and the nurse character on the mug.
I downloaded the artwork from Creative Fabrica and the customer chose the skin color, hairstyle and clothing when purchasing. I would then create the mug from their choices, send the design to Printify and they would ship it to the customer.
Creative Fabrica has a lot of clip art assets available that you can use on your products. Search for “Niche + Clipart” to find assets you can use.
Custom Hand Made Goods
Etsy started out as a marketplace for crafts and handmade goods. If you are someone who has a skill and creates handmade goods, this could be a great option for you.
There are millions of shoppers looking for these types of unique items on Etsy, so it’s the perfect place to start your side hustle. If you already create things as a hobby, you may as well try selling them and making some money from your passion.
I recently purchased a custom wooden desk from Etsy. It’s handmade, looks amazing and has my own custom initials and goal burnt into the desk. If you create some really unique products, I would set up an Etsy store and share the building process on social media to drive traffic to the store.
Some people are having a lot of success using this strategy. It’s fascinating to watch people build something from scratch and even more to fascinating to watch the product you purchased get made.
Clothing
Clothes are one of the biggest categories on Etsy. You can do this by manufacturing and creating your own clothing items or you can use a print-on-demand company to fulfill your items while you focus on designs.
You could create a brand and sell your clothing on Etsy or you could go after keywords people are targeting. For example, you sell “Accountant T-shirts” with funny quotes about accountants. People will search for this and buy it. Quality and story aren’t really the focus here, it’s just about the quote.
However, if you go the brand route, you will likely have to drive your own sales by sharing your brand story on social. Both are viable routes to take.
Jewellery
There are 1000s of Etsy sellers creating their own jewelry products and selling them on the platform. If this is something you already do as a hobby or are interested in doing, there could be a market to sell your jewelry on Etsy.
Many people also use 3rd party fulfilment platforms such as Shine On to help fulfill their products. Shine On offers a range of jewelry products such as necklaces that can be customized with an image.
You can create these designs and then sell them on Etsy. Once you get an order you link your Etsy account to Shine On or other jewelry POD platforms and they will create and send out your order.
Some sellers will also create their own jewelry themselves and ship it out to their customers. Both are viable options for starting a side hustle on Etsy.
Running Etsy Ads
When you first start selling on Etsy, I would recommend running some ads on their platform. You can start with literally as little as £1 per day and this will help to bring those first sales in.
Doing this will shoot you to the top of the Etsy listings when someone is searching for the product you are selling.
Once you start building up sales on your store, you will start to get some reviews and have more social proof which will help drive more organic sales.
Final Thoughts
Etsy is no doubt a great place to start a side hustle if you are looking to make some extra money. You can start a small part-time business and grow it over time into something that could potentially become a full-time income. Hopefully, the ideas above have got your wheels spinning and you are coming up with great ideas for your own shop.
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