36-year-old’s Etsy business brings in up to $54,000 a month, takes 10 hours a week – it helped her pay off her student loan debt – NBC 7 San Diego

Emily Odio-Sutton started her Etsy activities on the couch while watching the Real Housewives TV show in December 2022. She doesn’t remember which one, but she remembers the months of research that went into that moment.

Her oldest daughter will start kindergarten next year, and she knew she couldn’t leave her 9-to-5 job in the middle of the day – even though it was a remote gig – to pick up the kids from school, gymnastics or swimming lessons – exclusions .

During her “doom scrolling,” Odio-Sutton found a series of videos on YouTube about print-on-demand, an e-commerce method in which sellers create designs for products such as T-shirts, tote bags and mugs and then list them on online marketplaces such as Etsy or Amazon. When a customer places an order, a third-party manufacturer prints the design on the product and ships it.

Odio-Sutton decided to give it a try. Her store, which specializes in gifts for people with specific jobs or hobbies, According to documents reviewed by CNBC, Make It has brought in at least $236,000 in revenue so far in 2024 – an average of more than $26,200 per month. It has already exceeded sales for the entire last year.

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In her best month yet, her side hustle – which she says takes her about 10 hours a week – brought in $54,900. She estimates that about one-third of her store’s revenue is profit.

Odio-Sutton prefers not to name her Etsy shop to prevent copycats, but its success helped her reduce her job as an internal operations manager at a children’s book publisher to part-time last summer. She says it shored up her family’s finances, paying for a vacation and a $20,000 student loan.

Here’s how Odio-Sutton experimented and found a profitable profession.

Finding a match on the side

Before launching her Etsy store, Odio-Sutton tried her hand at another online business, often called “Amazon FBA.”

She visited brick-and-mortar stores near her home in Melbourne, Florida, purchased products that were trending on Amazon, packaged them, and shipped them to a nearby Amazon warehouse. It would then try to sell them at a small margin through the e-commerce giant’s Fulfillment by Amazon program, he says.

If trends had changed before she put her items up for sale, she would have lost her margin. After three months, she says, her house was filled with boxes of Hoka running shoes and Two-Faced makeup products.

Print on demand seemed more appealing: she didn’t need any business or design experience, and the time commitment seemed smaller. As a full-time working mom, “I didn’t have the time privilege that maybe another side hustler did,” Odio-Sutton says.

Her first attempts ended in failure. She was selling T-shirts for Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, but her Etsy site was already flooded with similar offers. She says shifting to more gift-friendly products such as mugs, candles, tote bags and magazines has helped, as has creating designs tailored to specific professions or interests, from speech therapist to podcasters.

Odio-Sutton uses Google or ChatGPT to brainstorm niche interests or careers and turn them into simple, mostly text-based projects using a program called Canva. For example, a podcast candle might have the following text printed on it: “The only podcast I listen to is the voices in my head.”

If the design starts selling, he’ll replicate it – changing to another hobby or job – to try to replicate its success. She says she earned about $5,000 last October, which is about the monthly salary of her full-time job.

She makes more money during popular shopping months: Between November and December last year, her store brought in more than $100,000 in sales.

Paying “nice and responsible” bills

Odio-Sutton’s extra income covers both “fun and responsible” bills, she says. She and her husband also worked with a financial advisor to invest some of their funds in the stock market and in college savings accounts for their daughters, she adds.

Working 20 hours a week in publishing and 10 hours a week on Etsy gives her time for other sources of income, Odio-Sutton says. She still has a seller account on Amazon, and last year she opened a second shop on Etsy, where she sells downloadable event templates – schedules, invitations, and so on.

She also works as a trainer at Gold City Ventures, which teaches aspiring Etsy sellers how to open their own shops, and works with business owners who hire her to manage and promote their Pinterest accounts, she says.

Sometimes people leave their jobs to pursue their side hustles full time. Odio-Sutton says she would consider that option, but only if she could still spend as much time as possible with her daughters.

“In the afternoons I live according to a plan. “I pick up my daughter from the bus and then I go to take her to gymnastics classes,” he says. “My initial vision (for this program) was always really strong.”

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