Hi! My name is Dina and I'm a lover of all things creative business & personal development. On this channel you'll find tips and inspiration to live your life to the fullest and have confidence in pursuing your creative goals. Leave a comment if you've enjoyed any of my videos! Love, Dina
Follow on Instagram instagram.com/dinadlu
About: I've always believed in doing what you love and making a career out of it. I started my first ever side business selling greeting cards in 2018. I then started to teach calligraphy workshops, and in 2019, I quit my 9-5 government office job to see if I could make it as a creative business owner. There were so many ups and downs, and it was a struggle in so many ways, but I kept going because I knew that if I wanted to inspire other people to pursue their dreams, I had to pursue my own dreams. In 2020, I started this RU-vid channel to share my business journey with you.
I'm also planning on releasing my 2nd etsy but it's really hard because there are so many potential niches out there that I want to try. I like you rationalised why you're doing wall art.
I want to start an Etsy now because of you. And I also really need a side money for my upcoming college. I already use canva for years, so i hope that i could do it. Hoping that when i come back to this, i have been able to at least make some sales hehe. first time trying this. I'm pretty nervous 😢
Thanks so much for this video - I learnt so much! If anyone is looking to start their shop and wants 40 free listings - as Dina said, here is my code to do so! code = 4esTETY
I have digi and POD shops and it's huge difference - starting with people constantly stealing your artwork from MJ (Etsy don't care at all, it's agains MJ commercial licence - you are owner of created artworks, people can make own variations or use prompt but can't take it as it is), lately Temu/Alibaba shops started report Etsy shops - orginal creators, also physical, handmade items - they are claiming ownership so Etsy just suspend shops, you will be also suspended if Etsy's bot will find your stolen listing on Alibaba/Temu (get any sort of visibility and that product will be ther and on Amazon, Shein). All of it is so-so issue, but biggest difference since half year goes with limited organic traffic, it's like there is so many products in this niche that etsy just can't handle it with balance. Over 60% of my traffic is from my SM now, when before it was up to 30% with the same amount of views per month. Practically with all costs it's more profitable for me to have my own website. Same happed to few people I started with (we all are digital marketing agencies owners having from time to time small contests like "who can do it better" both from marketing and designing side), but for us it happend only with shops with digital wall art and tumbler templates, since month and half I would say also shops with png files for crafters started have the same issue (much lower organic&paid traffic; usually for low ticket (up to 25$) digi items ads spend is around 5-10$/day but now even with 500$/day budget it's freez under 20$; most of our shops has at least one etsy choice and few items with bestseller badge, all shops old above 3 months are ⭐ sellers). Why it's issue? Spending money on Etsy fees and spending extra time on bringing traffic from SM is not really profotable (friendly reminder - people from your SM can bought items from recommend by Etsy sellers). I'm curious how it will be since higher ticket digital products, or much more niched down, have traffic as usual, same POD 🤔
Guurl, when I tell you that last night while falling asleep I was thinking which of the two EXACT niches to go with for my etsy shop 🤯 and I also chose wall art because coloring books are too complicated 😀My shop is for digital greeting cards (no AI) and I was thinking of ways to expand it. Keep up the good work and please share the progress! ✨
If you want to make extra cash from calligraphy, there's a TON of things you can do. I have a video titled "10 BEST Ways to Make Money with Calligraphy" that'll be helpful
Hi there, nice video! Just a question, I just got approved for the Amazon USA influencer program! I tried adding my Canadian bank account but it would not allow me as Canada is not stated in the countries to choose from. The only option it to accept checks in the mail! Is this the case with you as well ?
Oh, also does EverBee let you gauge competition and how much saturated a given niche is? And if you don't min me asking how long is editing a video take you roughly? You know, those other type of vids that are not as much about screen sharing, but rely heavily on stock footage and B rolls? They sometimes may seem pretty intense, but you make them look natural and smooth, that's what I like about your content. I wish you could make more vids about the RU-vid side of things, but I know this is not your focus. 🎥
Yes, market research tools like EverBee help you determine the competition.. but you need to know how to interpret the numbers. I'd watch some RU-vid videos on "how to do market research with EverBee" if you're more interested in that. But for gauging competition, you can also just literally look at Etsy without looking using market research tools. I have a video titled "How to Find a Digital Downloads Niche on Etsy (NO PAID TOOLS)" you can check out! Editing a video with b-rolls takes around 6-10 hours. But I do have a video editor who helps sometimes. I usually trim the videos, and then my editor helps add b-roll and text, but not for every video. It depends if I have time or not / or if I want to edit the video myself. And thank you so much! I'm glad the videos seem smooth. Yeahhh... I've tried making some videos about RU-vid, but typically they do very very poorly lol... so I've stopped. But if you're interested in more the content creation side of things, my email newsletter (download any of my freebies in my description box) shares more about that sometimes, and also on Instagram stories (@dinadlu)
Congrats on all the hard work on the shop so far. Yes, please give us either monthly updates or once every couple of months, so we can follow along. Would you say these were all the expenses for the shop you got starting out - the ones you listed toward the end of the vid? And many interesting themes within the videos from research to the actual products, the prompts, etc. You can maybe do an entire vid about researching a niche from scratch. Unless you have one. I'll need to look around. Best of luck with the launch and the shop going forward. Right in time for Black Friday and the holidays. 🍀💰
Thank you so much for the support! Yes, those were all the expenses. They're pretty small, except for the photoshop expert. Obviously, Etsy has fees too when I start selling. In my "How to start an Etsy shop selling digital products" video (~approximately 1 hour tutorial), I show you how I researched a niche from scratch.
Hi Dina! So proud of you for your 2nd Etsy its amazing🇨🇦 Im at brainstorm level for my 1st etsy shop. If you would have chosen the colouring books, do you have to look for parthership with a company “print on demand” to fullfill the orders? Its where Im stucked because I have my products in mind but need to find companies to send the actual items. Thanks for your help❤🎉🥂🫶🏼
Hey Karine! Thank you so much! For the colouring books, I was planning to just make a digital product, so NOT print-on-demand. I would sell a printable colouring book that has 10-20 pages and it would be a PDF where people could download and then print themselves with a black and white printer. Good luck on your Etsy shop/POD shop!
Good Luck, Dina! I'm gonna join you on this challenge, but a month late (from October). I recently got a new powerhouse Mac mini, just need to get a monitor and can't wait to create digital products! I have a physical item shop on Etsy since 2021, POD since 2023, and now it's time to make it digital! :)
What is your price point? $1-2k /mo. might be unrealistic the first few months. Especially if you’re not advertising. It also depends on overall traffic to that niche.
I'm thinking probably $8-15 per wall art. And yeah, $1-2k is my goal but obviously it's going to depend on the niche and other factors, but I'm quite confident in this niche. Let's see what happens haha!
Anything is worth a try. I hope you do really well with this store :). Please keep the awesome Vid's coming, I am really enjoying watching your process, thank you :).
Thank you for sharing. Always interesting to see how you do these breakdowns on a monthly basis. Also hope that the work you produce with mj is distinct enough, coming more from creative standpoint (as a fellow illustrator/designer) of view, you wanna be mindful for sure of copyright infringement as that's definitely a gray area. Which I am sure you are aware of.
Thanks, glad you're enjoying my content! And yes, I've put a ton of work into making a distinct kind of AI art on midjourney via a lot of trial and error and using very specific prompts. Thanks again!
Opened my new etsy shop 3 days ago, and about to do POD, while am living outside us that would be very hard to reach visibility on us market eventhough it could be work if i can hit the best design and list more until it show up on us market search's. And found your channel that bring me more confidence to do digital product if it should be more approachable for sellers outside us like me Do you think it will be work more efficient to do digital product for my cases ? Your thought would be really help my first journey on etsy ! Thanks Dina
Excited to share my 2nd Etsy shop plans! If you're looking for a market research tool, buy one month, get one month of EverBee for free (limited offer) 👉 tinyurl.com/dinaeverbee
im proud of you for trying a 2nd time. it shows you have persistence and patience for the process! im fully supportive of you and expect great results in the future!
You will need to pay a new shop fee of $29 USD, and then there are listing fees ($0.20 USD per listing). Other than that, you can start an Etsy shop without other costs. For example, you could use the free version of Canva if you want to design templates. If you're making wall art, you might be able to find some AI websites that let you generate images for free, but personally I'm using Midjourney right now $10/month. Whether or not you get good results, that depends on the quality of your products and marketing, but yes, it's doable.
