This Etsy store made $60k with no physical products

GM. This is Work "After" Work, the newsletter that never fails to deliver fresh business ideas straight to your inbox.

It’s Friday, let’s boogie:

• 🤓 Printable flashcards

• 😂 Meme of the day

PRINTABLE FLASHCARDS

As many parents understand, the early stages of a child's development are the best time to get the ball rolling on anything.

Want your kid to develop healthy habits and be able to learn quickly? Then training their minds early is crucial - flashcards are a great way to do this!

Why?

• Flashcards enrich children’s vocabulary and their ability to learn new words

• Help develop long-term memory skills

• And aside from the cognitive side, flashcards increase self-confidence, develop good and effective communication, and enhance creativity

I remember my mom teaching me shapes using something like this - time flies 😩

Now as parents know, learning through play is the key to learning. Shoving information at little ones doesn’t work. That’s why fun flashcards covering various topics like animals, shapes, or numbers are in hot demand on Etsy.

Just look at all the buyers for printable flashcards vs options. When I search ‘printable flashcards’ there are only 19k results. This might sound like a lot but when I search for something big like ‘jewelry’, there are over 25M results.

And by the looks of it, people love this product.

The Little Smarty Ants Etsy store only does printable educational tools that help kids learn things like foods, countries, and vegetables.

They have over 15k sales with an average rating of 4.8 stars or higher. If I were to guess, I’d say the average price per item is ~$3 - $4 so they’ve made in the ballpark of $45k - $60k. All without selling anything physical. Now that’s pretty cool.

The advantage of printables is it’s like software. It takes time to create it but once it’s built you can sell it multiple times over with very little effort. That’s why this business rocks!

So here’s how I’d do it:

1. Brainstorm ideas

There are two ways to go about this:

• Use Etsy 

Go on Etsy and check out your competitors’ listings. See how many cards they include, the style used, the images, product descriptions, titles, etc.

Then go through the reviews and read what people like and don’t like about the product. Include anything they like and improve anything they don’t like to stand out.

• Use AI

You ever heard of ChatGPT or Bard lol? You can use these AI chatbots to automate the entire brainstorming process, and I’ll show you how.

Ask the bot to:

And here is the response I got:

As you can see, it gave me many cool ideas in the shape niche with a description explaining each one.

PS: If you’re having a hard time finding a niche, you can use ChatGPT for that as well.

Here’s an example:

Okay, back to brainstorming with AI.

Now that we have some cool, albeit general, ideas, you can narrow it down a bit further.

Here’s how:

• Copy the idea you like most — I like the “ Everyday Objects” idea, so I’ll be using that.

• Paste it into the chat

• The chatbot gave me five ideas that I could create.

Now that we have some cool product ideas, I’ll show you how to turn it into a finished product.

2. Creating the finished product

The first step is creating the main component of the flashcards — the illustration.

Use AI image generators for this. Midjourney is by far the best one out there in terms of image quality and customization options.

It is also affordable, with plans starting at $10 a month.

To use Midjourney:

• Open the Discord channel

• Go to one of the newbie bot channels

• Type /imagine, and then whatever you want - for circle you could do “A delicious donut with frosting and sprinkles, 3D render”

The bot will send you four images in 60 seconds, which you can then download and use.

The pictures this AI can build are next-level. Just scroll in the discord channel and you’ll see what I mean 👀

The next step is designing the actual flashcards - hop on Canva it’s free.

Head to Google and type in “Canva flashcard maker”

Open the first link and click on “Create a flashcard”

Here are some template examples I found 👀

• Next, upload the illustrations you made from Midjourney. Then choose a template you think suits your niche.

• Edit the template and replace the pictures and labels.

• Save the template as a pdf file and Viola, you’ve just created your printable flashcards!

Next, a marketing tip that will make you stand out from your competitors and make you more money.

🔑 Offer something for free

When I checked out the flashcards listings on Etsy, I noticed how similar most were. They all provide a bundle of flashcards, and that’s it.

You need to provide extra value to stand out on Etsy and make your offer more appealing.

Offer something free like a printable coloring page in the same niche as the flashcards.

And if you haven’t guessed by now, you can quickly generate these coloring pages using Midjourney.

When people see your listings plus the added free coloring pages, they won’t think twice about buying from you. I mean, who doesn’t like free stuff? 😉

And there you have it, folks! A cool little side hustle that can make you some serious cash.

If you’re a newbie and need some tips, check out my guide on going from $0 to $100k/ year on Etsy!

MEME OF THE DAY

😂😂

That's a wrap! Enjoy the weekend :)

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.