 Hello, everyone, and welcome. Today I have a really special interview with a very special person. Her name is Svetlana, and we are going to talk about dropshipping on Etsy. So for all of you newcomers, she has lots of experience, years and years of experience, and you're going to learn everything that there is to know about it with all kinds of golden nuggets that we always like to throw in inside. So for those of you who don't really know about it, Etsy is what we call the new kid on the block. It's a great marketplace to list your products and get lots of sales, lots of profit, lots of organic traffic to your store without having to spend so much money on marketing like we have in other platforms. So we're going to get down to the bits and bytes. I don't want to spoil anything. So Svetlana, thank you for joining us today. How are you? Hello, I'm really good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and letting me talk about this fascinating, you know, platform that I love. My name is Svetlana Dubova and I've been in e-commerce for 80 years, I think. So and Etsy is one of my favorite platforms apart from Amazon. So for those of you who are completely new here, I'll just give it a quick background. The dropshipping business model, which is what we're going to talk about in this podcast, is simply a business model that allows you to host your own online store and sell products on your online store, which in this case is Etsy. And you don't have to hold any products in stock. You don't have to purchase anything. You don't have any huge upfront investments. It's a very low risk and high reward business model to adopt. You just do have to know how to do it the right way. And so we're going to mix in the dropshipping business model with Etsy. And you're going to learn all about that in this interview, of course. So starting off with my first question, Svetlana, can you tell me a little bit about your background and experience in the dropshipping industry? In dropshipping, I think I am about six years. So as my first platform that I started selling on, it's Amazon and mainly Amazon Europe. So and the dropshipping just came into my mind by accident. So I just I had a failure on Amazon one product and I had to sell it. So I didn't know where to sell this product. So I opened the Shopify store and started dropshipping. So it's just kind of like by mistake, which is it's actually a very interesting reason because it's different from most people like me, for example, just like you have been also dropshipping for over six years now. But for me, it didn't happen by mistake. It happened because I was really looking for another source of income, which is what most it's most people's reasons. So I like the fact that for you, it was just kind of like it happened by mistake. You had a product that you got stuck with on Amazon, which is inventory, right? You actually purchased the product. It wasn't dropshipping and then you had to get rid of it, which you did by starting to sell it and also dropshipping on Shopify. Yeah, but actually this this is like the greatest experience I've ever had because from that I built a big baby brand and so it's just crashing. We're going to get into it also into our questions later on. But Atlanta has a huge substantial Russian following. So lots of Russian people who are following her, she's known as one of the best or maybe the best dropshipping mentor in that area. And you're going to have a nice sneak peek because she's looking to teach more people and not just the Russian audience, but the Americans and everyone else that we have. So yeah, consider it. If you're listening to this, you're one of the first ones. You're one of the early birds. So let's go ahead and jump right in a little bit about your history. Like when did you first get started with actual dropshipping, even though you kind of gave us a hint there and what actually motivated you to pursue this business model once you actually learned about it? The product that I had to get rid of, it was a diaper caddy. And so my daughter was helping me in that actually. And she motivated me, okay, so let's build a store. And so I didn't want to buy any inventory. And I just looked into the model of dropshipping to create a bigger store to have more inventory. And you just with one click you add products, any products you want. And so we created a big store and it started selling, you know? So it just, it happened, you know, I don't know how to explain it just because I'm doing blogging and I'm using Pinterest for that. And everything, every product that I started launching in the store was particularly for Pinterest and not like dropshippers sell. And if you buy dropshippers course, so you, they would offer you the products that are, you know, winning products on AliExpress. Like, so no, no, no, I created something different. So because I wanted to create, you know, the brand and I was getting nice beautiful products in the store. And at the end it worked. So it was my main idea was to create for women, for pregnant women some experience to create the nursery and to get into the, you know, developing her baby and the rearing and bearing babies with nice products, clothes, trendy baby clothes and everything. So that store is a hit. So, okay, so nice because for most people who are just beginning with their journeys and they want to become an online seller. And, you know, they're also listening right now and also the questions that's going on in their heads is like, she's, she's telling us like that she's created a store and it started selling, but in our case or in the cases that we've seen people are creating stores and they have problem selling. So I want to dive in and we are going to dive in exactly to how it became to be a success story for you and, you know, what you actually went through to actually get to that it always exists. It's always out there. We just need to learn how to reach out and grab it and also learn from our failure. So let's get into all of that. You found out about the drop being business model. We could say kind of like by accident and when you kind of dove into it and you went inside your niche, your baby niche, it actually turned out to work quite well for you. But there are many selling platforms out there, right? There is Amazon, which you started off with, which in the beginning from what I understood was, was a success. And then at some point it just kind of turned into like, okay, I'm kind of getting stuck with this product. I need to like think outside the box and see what I can do with this and we've got Amazon, we've got Shopify, eBay, Facebook marketplace, WooCommerce, Wix, many others that of course I'm forgetting to mention, but with so many marketplaces out there, why was Etsy or why is Etsy your number one choice? As a FBA seller on Amazon. So I know all the things, you know, and difficulties with selling products on Amazon. I'm really surprised when people tell me that they do drop shipping because Amazon is actually quite strict about any order cancellations, delays. So you can just lose your account. So for me, Amazon of course is number one platform, but only for FBA products. So you should have products in stock. And for today, it's my main revenue. So where I get main revenue. But for drop shipping, I love Shopify. I would tell you that this is the only way to build the brand and brand today stands out and you can sell products much more expensive. But of course you need traffic. So you need either invest into advertising, but advertising is very expensive and I don't advertise on Facebook at all. So either you have to learn organic techniques like I use Pinterest, I do blogging and my main traffic comes from Pinterest. So my Shopify store, so it's just my experiment. So when I started it three years ago, I never advertised. So I and I have organic sales just going and going because I use Pinterest. But in terms of using a platform for drop shipping, I think Etsy is the best because here you can build many stores, right? So there is no difficulty entering the platform. So you just have to have your credit card and that's it. So you open a store and you can open 10 or 12. So as many as you want. If you get banned, you can open a new one. So it's actually, you know, because this is a drop shipping is a bit the gray area. And on Etsy, we have very lovely customers. So they are not Amazon customers who expect product the next day on Etsy, they can wait. So you can put like three, five working days, shipping time. And if, you know, they have some special event, you can ask them if it's for the special event, then you boost, you know, the shipping and you ask them to pay extra. So there is a very nice communication with buyers where you can easily ask for review and they get reviews. So you actually build your store from scratch with no inventory with a very nice audience and you become a star seller without any, you know, serious investment into hiding, you know, how to ask them about review what we're doing on Amazon. So for me, Etsy is the best and price. And one of the most important things for me for Etsy drop shipping is the price. Because here I sell like three prices more than on Amazon. And this is where you can get this money. You're selling them on higher prices on Etsy, higher ticket for the same products that you're selling on Amazon. But I want to take it, I want to circle back to a few things that you said. So first of all, so for all of you listeners, I'm sure that you guys, I took in a couple of quick tips that she gave out here, which again, we're going to dive into soon, but she talked a little bit about us. Madonna spoke a little bit about marketing tactics. We heard some clues about using Pinterest for organic traffic and we're also going to jump into that. But also to as to it's not just Etsy, you're also selling on Shopify. And as you mentioned, Shopify is a great platform for dropshipping and I also don't think they're going to go anywhere. But we also have to also factor in the learning curve, right? Because anyone who wants to start a business right now and they're looking for the easiest way in, but not always the easiest way in, but also a way that will also work, something that will give us sales and profit because as we're looking for at the end of the day, Etsy is actually a pretty good choice here. And if I compare that with eBay's golden days or their golden years, which was about four, five, six plus years ago. So anyone who jumped into eBay at that time, it was like kind of like a golden goose. So dropshippers were creating hundreds, if not thousands of accounts every single day. And they just started, you know, going crazy, just drop shipping, like and selling products from all kinds of different suppliers, not even caring where it's coming from and what's going on because easy, eBay just made it really, really easy for you back then. And in time, they did start to kind of strengthen their belt because they were kind of like also in a huge competition with Amazon and they didn't want all of Amazon's products on their marketplace and you know, they didn't want to make it look like they're Amazon and there was all kinds of reasons. I'm not gonna, you know, go through it all. I'm not also an eBay insider, but what I'm trying to say here is that right now is a great time to join Etsy because I mean, we can also see it inside out of Diaz what's going on. You know, we see a lot of sellers who are also selling on Etsy and the, you know, it looks really good. We're also selling on Etsy, of course, and you know, we also have your success podcast right now where you're also talking about your methods. But yeah, Etsy is definitely on the rise. And I think that if there's any time, if there's any good time to join Etsy, it's definitely, definitely now. And I'm sure that we're also going to get into the point where a few years from now, dropchippers are going to be looking back and saying, why didn't, you know, we open that Etsy account a few years ago when it was like, so, wow, not that I'm saying that in a few years, it's not going to be, but if you guys are looking for good timing, now is definitely that good timing. That's a little bit about why you decided to join Etsy. It's easy to join on Shopify. It's a little bit harder. You have to learn about marketing. You have to learn how to create logos. You have to learn to be a graphic designer. You have to learn how to market your store, whether you're going to do it organically, whether you're going to do it through pay traffic, through ads, whatever. It all takes experience. It all takes learning and it also all takes a budget from your pocket. And if you don't have that much of a budget, Etsy is again your go-to because it's relatively a new marketplace. They're looking for sellers to join because, you know, of course, that's how they're making their profit at the end from the transaction fees and also from other places. But that's usually the main one. And yeah, they're welcoming sellers. They're welcoming dropshippers. Like you said, it's a gray area. Anyway, I don't want to take all of this for myself. But like you said, it also gives you a lot of organic traffic, which is great. All you have to do is go to Etsy, create your account. It's free. Start listing products. Each listing costs like 20 cents, something like that, right? We'll get into it. But that's pretty much all there is to it and the transaction fees list your product and we'll make sure that you'll get traffic as long as your product is interesting and people are searching for it. So that makes Etsy one of the best and one of the easiest selling channels we'll start with today. Let's dive in some more. And this one is a really, really hot topic. So when someone is creating a store right now, the first question that always pops into their minds is what it's not what is the shipping times? It's not what's my store's name or my store logo? It's what product should I sell? What's going to sell? How can I find the products that will sell? Because if I'm not selling, then everything else doesn't really matter. So Svetlana, I spoke a lot. Can you tell us a little bit about how you're finding your winning products on Etsy? How you find them? Is there any specific strategies and tools that you rely on? And yeah, what factors do you consider also to make sure that these are the products that are going to sell for you? Well, so I will start from one thing. So how I discovered Etsy drop shipping. I think that would be interesting. Because so as a drop shipper, so I source products from anywhere and one of my suppliers that I found that was pretty good choice was on Etsy, a Chinese supplier with DHL shipping that was much cheaper than from AliExpress. And then I suddenly saw the products that I sell actually my store and they they sell quite well with AliExpress photos on Etsy. And I said, wow, so let me try. Yeah. So sorry for to interrupt you for a second. So you were looking for a supplier for your products? How is your process of looking for suppliers? How do you start looking for suppliers? It just because on my Shopify stores, I sell expensive products and some of them. So when you search, when, you know, you need better deals. So we search on different platforms and Etsy is also platform to source products because Chinese sell on Etsy a lot. And this is what I discovered. So the products that are on AliExpress, they are on Etsy. And with horrible pictures, bad description, no optimization, nothing, but they don't know how to sell. So don't be afraid of them. And I just tested one store and I just I was adding one product after another after another. And in three months, I generated 24K pounds revenue just in three months. It was skyrocketing. And so this is how I got into it. But that store, I started from my experience in dropshipping in my niche. So you went to a niche that you already know or other suppliers. You found Etsy as a supplier. You opened up Etsy. You kind of looked around there and noticed that this is actually a pretty good selling channel or it's worth to check as a selling channel rather than a supplier. And then you just created your account started you're listing your products. How many products did you have to list in order to make that revenue? I think 13 and 30 products for about 24, 25,000. Yes. So unfortunately, I lost that store and I will tell you what not to do. So you should generate too much money on Etsy. Yeah, we want to get to that. We're going to get to that though. Don't give all of your secrets right at the start. So you're already going through a niche that was already working well for you. Are you still selling only that niche today or did you open up to more products? Yes. So after that, I opened a few stores and I spread like the things that I do, you know, in my niche into several stores. And now when I launch a store, so after that I launched in new niches as well that I don't have Shopify stores. And my main source of products where I look for them, it's Instagram and Pinterest. Pinterest and Etsy, they're like, you know, twins. So because everybody, you know, if you search for the search volume of Etsy products on Pinterest, so you will get like huge interest. So people love buying products from Etsy on Pinterest. And you can easily catch the trend. You can understand what people use today, what they wear, what they put in their home, how they celebrate birthday, how they celebrate wedding. So easily you trace all the ideas there. And these products, they are not even on Amazon yet. So there are many products that, so you cannot, you know, like go from Amazon directly, see the best seller, okay, put it on Etsy. This is not my way of creating my shops on Etsy. I am checking, of course, sales on Amazon. I'm doing that as well. But here I see, so what is going to look good on Etsy? For me, the main feature of the product, it should be beautiful. It should be somehow looking like handmade because Etsy is a handmade platform and they can close your winning products just like that because this is not handmade. But well, Etsy is not handmade. So you can check products, what they sell, they're manufactured. And so first, the first thing is the trend. So search the trend, search for these products. If you want to start selling, for example, a blanket, right? So don't go just from your point of view, okay, I like white blankets, this style. So choose what, just you have so many blankets and all interiors in Instagram. Then you check on Pinterest and then you just test it, test it in your store. And if you see the traction, you see likes, you see followers on Etsy because Etsy is a unique organization of marketing itself. So if somebody likes your product, they automatically follow up this buyer and they offer them all this shop has a sale, you like this product and now it's on sale, blah, blah, blah. So this is the thing of creating your environment for your store and you can easily just test a few products but never choose a bad looking product with bad pictures. The product which is not on Instagram and you just have a picture from AliExpress. No, this is not the way. So go deeper into the niche, just spend your time, search for influences on Instagram, on Pinterest and look how they present everything. And this is also the free photography you don't invest into any photography. So there's some really good tips here that are different than the normal day-to-day for the average shop shipper who whether has experience or who is just learning from the average information that we have out there on the internet. So I want to touch up a little bit on that. So one of the first thing that you mentioned here was that and it's very, very true and I also say this a lot. Do not try to sell something that you simply have a hunch on or that you think is going to sell but you don't really have experience in the industry. Don't have experience researching this product in the market and you just think it's probably going to sell well because that's just what you think. So stay away from that mindset and go see what the market is after or check that product to see if the market is interested in it. How do you check if the market is interested on it? Well, there's the old traditional way of doing it. Like you said, you can just go to Amazon, check out their best sellers, but of course that is what every other drop shipper is doing and that is what every other drop shipper is selling. Doesn't mean that you can't sell it and make a profit but in order to increase those chances and multiply them even, you can go to places like Pinterest and Instagram and search for the main niche of what you want to sell. Maybe something that you have a passion for, maybe something that you like but don't go into something very narrow down and specific like a certain type of t-shirt but actually look at what fashion clothes are trending right now broadly on those social media platforms because there you can easily pick up on what's trending right now which is things that most other drop shippers are not looking at because they're off looking at the best seller section on their suppliers' websites. So that's one great takeaway that I would like to mention from what you just talked about and also that product research is really, really important and I don't think anyone can ever undermine the importance of it and how it's important to also check the market, test the market and not stop doing it because that's really the way that you're going to find the products at the end of the day that are really going to sell well for you. And in your case, you started with something that you did. I believe you had a passion for the baby products, the baby store that you opened on Amazon. It's something that you were probably passionate for yourself and in time you also noticed that I like you kind of got stuck with that product on FBA and you moved on to also the drop-shipping business model to also expand and learn about more categories and the last thing that I want to touch on before the next question is, and it's also really, really important, what you can sell and what you cannot sell on Etsy. Now, this is important because it's not like on eBay where you can go and list almost, I wouldn't say everything, but almost everything that you want to sell. You can almost sell it on eBay, right? Except for the extreme cases like firearms, tobacco or registered copyrighted products, things like that. But on Etsy, it's narrowed down more to arts and crafts, DIY projects, party supplies and just things that have to do around that vintage and those are the main categories that you can sell on Etsy. Now, in many cases, you guys will notice that people are selling like other things on Etsy that are not that. Well, they're going to take the risk and at some point sooner or later, their accounts are probably not going to be active anymore. But for us, this is what Etsy supports and if we want to stay here for the long term, which I hope that you guys are, those are the products that you want to sell on Etsy. So one of the nicest strategies that I learned here is that we can also use social media channels searching for what we like and seeing what results are selling really well. Also, maybe seeing some influences on social media, what they're shouting out on because they also know what's trending and getting those ideas and then looking for suppliers. Speaking of suppliers, that's going to bring me to my next question because now that you kind of have like a clue of how to find the products that you might want to sell on your store, your next step is to actually look for suppliers, good suppliers who can sell it to you at great conditions, fast shipping, great prices, high quality products and all the important things to look out for. So, Sovetlana, when it comes to working with suppliers, could you tell us a little bit about the suppliers that you work with on your drop shipping stores and how do you actually find them in the first place? Well, first I want to tell you that on Amazon, I sell only home improvement products. I don't sell baby products. Because it's the... Well, for suppliers, I love selling from Amazon. So dropshipping from Amazon is amazing, especially for Etsy. They have a lot of customization on Amazon and this is one of the things that you should definitely add to your store because once you have customization, then that means it's a handmade and it's a longer process and on Amazon, you have it in jewelry, in any field, in any category, you can find them. And of course, on Amazon, we have next day delivery. So if you need some for the date that they expect, you know, a baby shower or a wedding, then you have Amazon. In China, it's a more complicated process. And here my advice would be to open a test store because once we start working with supplier, we need to figure out, you know, the shipping time, if he packages it well or if a customer is happy with the quality of the product, everything. So we need to be sure. So I always, I have like one store where I test products before, you know, launching it into the store that I build seriously. And for suppliers, it's important if they communicate well, if they respond fast, if they're open to any, you know, to put a note for the buyer, you know, because on Etsy, it's important when they write a message as a gift. And for me, because my stores are all UK stores and it's hard for me just to close, you know, only for US market. I know it's the biggest one, but since my business is in the UK, so I have UK cards. So once you enter UK card, okay, so your store is UK. So for me, it's important that the supplier ships to all, you know, worldwide, yeah, to all countries. And this is the thing that I like about that. So they ship to US, right? So they ship to UK and to Europe, you know, that in Europe, there are many things that, your regulations, you have Lucid, like if you sell to Germany, you have to register IOSS, you know, many, many things. And here from China, they take everything on themselves. So you charge them VAT, everything on your store, and, you know, you get a big margin if you sell to Europe from China. So for me, that's the biggest part. And many AliExpress sellers, they have stores in, they have inventory in Poland. I have never found anyone in the UK, but in Poland and US. So for me, this is like a strategic position. So if I have sale in Germany or France, so it's three days delivery. Of course, it takes time to build this relationship. And I have my Chinese agent. So it's hard to work in dropshipping if you don't have your own Chinese. So we build it. So if I cannot find a good supply, so she just sources for me the product and she shapes herself. Okay, interesting. So there's actually a lot going on here. One, you're working a lot with Amazon as a supplier. I know many dropshippers who are sometimes having trouble with them when they start to scale up their business and they get a lot of sales, then they notice Amazon, like if you're using the same account and shipping to so many different multiple warehouses at once, sooner or later, they lock that buyer accounts because they don't like really support the whole dropshipping business model. But of course, there's so many ways for dropshippers to put up with this. For example, I mean, I've been doing it for over six years now. I see that you're doing it. I know that many, many dropshippers are still doing it. So of course, there are ways to overcome that. But before we even get into that, I like the fact that you were talking about when you are working with Amazon, you're actually going for the customizable products. So as you guys know, when you're searching products on Amazon, you notice that some of them are actually, some of the products are actually customizable, right? Like if you go to jewelry, you can embed something on the necklace or on the earring or on the bracelet or whatever. You can do the same thing with clothes. Of course, the print on demand model can also kind of, can also work here on Etsy. But the customizable products are the ones that you're looking for on Amazon because that's actually what's going to give you a customized product on Etsy, which is what they're looking for. So that actually goes together and that's really, really, that's a really great idea. I also like how you have one store for actually checking products. So you have like a dropshipping store where the whole point of that store is just to test, test, test, test, test, and then you'll make some sales on the products that actually start to sell well. You move them to the winning product store. You can call it that. And then that store is the one that's booming in business giving you the sales and then you're running your analytics and getting even more info on your winning products while continuing to research for products on the product research store. Let's just call it that. So I think that's really cool that you have that thing going on. And it's also a great idea if anyone wants to like not confuse one store half products that you're testing and half products that you know that are proven winners. This is actually going to differentiate between those two so that you'll be more organized. So that's actually pretty cool. And also the fact that the advantage of working with, there's of course advantages and disadvantages of pretty much everything, every decision that you make. But if you're going to work with the Chinese supplier like from AliExpress, you can actually find them in warehouses that are actually close to you or close to your audiences, your buyers, your shoppers so that you can actually ship quickly to you. So not every product that we find on AliExpress is actually being sourced out from China. And you can also find them in warehouses all over the world. There's even warehouses where I'm from in Israel. I've noticed I even bought one. I purchased a few products, some audio equipment for this room right here. And I didn't even notice after I checked out the product arrived within about five days. And I was like, that doesn't really make sense from China. I went into the order details and I realized that the seller doesn't live that far away from me, from AliExpress. So that was pretty cool. So it's nice. And also the fact that they pretty much cover you when it comes to a VAT and all the extra things that you need to pay, it's already paid for from the Chinese supplier. So it will reach its destination easier than places that were shipped out from Amazon, let's say, which most times it's not included. So that's actually also a pretty cool tip to here. Do you have any, do you have any solutions for like, did you ever get your accounts locked when you were dropping too much from Amazon and what you had to do to put up with it? Yeah, I had this problem because I'm also from Israel where I only recently moved to Spain and yeah, it was suspicious like shipping to many addresses. So it was like a story I created, a story crying, you know, because products are not being shipped to Israel. Look how I'm locked. I asked my friends to ship for me. Yeah, and they didn't ban it. Well, of course it's a bit gray. So that's why it's better to, when you start with Amazon product, so find a Chinese supplier and to be safer, just ship then orders from China. It's easy because this is what Amazon is absolutely Alibaba. So just a bit improved. And sometimes more strict when it comes to drop shipping. Now we're not saying that it's not possible and it's still being done all the time. I'm still doing it. I can see that you're still doing it. I think it's great, but we do have to learn to work around. If we still want to be, what's the word I'm looking for? We want to be, we want to insist on working with Amazon. We don't want to hear about anything else. Then you're going to have to learn the work around. And there are some of them you can create multiple accounts that are not linked to one another and, you know, just ship out different orders, not all from the same account on the same day. You can use automatic order services, which we also have in AutoTS. So it's being automated for you without using your buyer account. So you don't really have to worry about that. But of course, I think that is one solution. It's a great solution. The best solution is to work with multiple suppliers. Don't just work with one. So once you're mixing in Amazon and Aliexpress, you're already, or Alibaba even better, you're already opening up yourself and you're not relying on one supplier. If they ever let you down, then your whole business is pretty much being let down and nobody really wants to put up with that. Okay, just jump on to the next one. We pretty much, maybe we have a clue on this, but maybe not. What is your favorite niche to sell? Well, so my education is interior design. So for me, of course, home decor is very natural to start with. Which is what you did on Amazon? Yeah, so that's why that was my first niche. And in baby, also I sell in baby nursery decor. So it's more about decor. But I recently discovered amazing unique niches. Yeah, I'm not going to tell all of them, but yeah. Whatever you want. If there's anyone in particular that you like, you can, or maybe something that you like in the past that you don't really like anymore. Yeah, so but for Etsy, you should look into wedding. Absolutely wedding is a winner. And now it's going to be the season of wedding. Home decor, of course. Jewelry, jewelry. You can start very easy, you know, the store on jewelry and then buy your own inventory very cheap and start, you know, with your fulfillment. That if you just have no idea, just start from jewelry. Now for recording my new course, I started the pet store. And I think because I see the potential in that one, and again with my unique strategy of picking the products, right, so I'm not going like to sell a cooler, you know, yes, yes, because that's what it's all about. You can create another pet store, you can create another pet store and then it'll just be another pet store and that's fine. But it's the products, right? It's the products and also how you market them. But if you're if you're doing your special product research that you talked about, then of course you're going to get the more special products, you're going to get the more unique products that are trending now that other dropshippers probably still haven't found yet because they're not using that same method to find trending products that people are looking to sell now. And like you said, it's good to start with with maybe with a jewelry store because it's like all year long. And so as pets, it's all year long. It's not seasonal. So you won't sell for three months and then not get any sales for the next three or six months. So it's a very good niche to start pet jewelry are all great niches. But of course there are other dropshippers who opened it. So from here, it's all a matter of what is your marketing technique and what is your product research technique, which is what you are talking about, which is what makes your case stand out more than most other dropshippers. But I want to add one thing. So in order to start selling to the audience, you need to understand what exactly they are looking for. So for me, it was a big discovery in my wedding store that while me coming originally from Russia, we would never use any artificial flowers anywhere. And for me, it was a revelation that they get married with the artificial bridal bouquet. So in everything, so you should learn what they use and go for it. Yes, it's an audience research, I think. And what they're looking for is that that's the pinpoint of what you're trying to do when you're researching for products and not just what they're looking for, but also what it's made of, right? Is it real? Is it artificial? I mean, it gets down to that. And not just in general, what is the product they're looking for? Because if you're not going to narrow it down, then you're going to be broad. And if you're going to be broad, then there's a little bit of less chances of it selling. So of course, it's good to niche down and to narrow down on the products that you're selling, not just what, but also the type and the materials and more things like that. And that's why the product research is really, really important. And you don't want to keep this at a general or at a basic level. This is where you want to put most of the hours of your work on. And you can maybe like later on think about how the store looks and customize it more, decorate it more. But in the beginning, it's the products. And after that, everything pretty much starts to roll and you'll know what to work on next. But product research is always, always ongoing, at least in my case. And I'm pretty sure it's also in yours. My next question is a little bit about profit margins. This is also another question that many new beginners are having problems trouble with. So we found products. We found suppliers. We know that we need to sell these products on our stores and we just need to mark up the price because that is a drop-shipping business model. We take the product from this supplier. We'll sell it in our store for a higher price so that when someone buys it, we can ship it from the supplier to the end customer and we'll just keep the profit between what we paid, our supplier to what our buyer paid us. So when it comes to profit margins, I see many job seekers who are starting below the 10% line. And I just don't like really seeing that because I remember when I started off, it was pretty much the same. I wasn't even looking at percentages. I was just thinking, you know, even if I make 50 cents profit or $1 profit on an order, that's 50 cents or $1 more than I had before that order. So that's money. And I was just thinking like, I just need to be cheap. That's what's important. The products, we just need to be cheap. People will buy it. And I realize really quickly that that's not the way to do it. So I like to learn a little bit from you about your profit margins. What is your preferred profit margin? I know that there's many variables on the product and the marketing and the locations, but how do you work with profit margins today? I charge a lot. That's my room. That's good. That's where I'm meeting you. But yes. Yeah, my advice to everyone who starts on Etsy don't cannibalize Etsy because you will ruin the platform. So charge, you should put the highest price on your product because before going to Etsy, everybody thinks that they buy a special product, a handmade and they are ready to pay more. So never lower down your price because some Chinese seller is selling something similar with bad listing. So it's obvious it's Chinese. So create your unique environment, your store and just put high price. So for me, it's minimum 100%. So I don't go for Etsy less than 100% from the you know, the sourcing price because you know, you have on Etsy, you have a lot of things that they will charge and especially in the UK account, they will do the conversion rate. So you have many things they will charge you. You will be surprised that you get much less money than you would expect to. So it's better to charge more. So when I see that, okay, my profit margin is getting lower. I just put higher and just for the comparison. So on Amazon, the product sells in the niche. So this is like the average price is $50 and on Etsy, I sell it for 150. So this is the things and that I discovered and I think the minimum, if you want to start 50% if I'm glad to hear you say these things. One, don't ruin the Etsy platform. That's it's I think it's a really good takeaway for here because that's exactly what happened on eBay. So I was I talked a few minutes ago about the golden, the golden days or the golden years of drops being on eBay. So many drop being gurus came out teaching about new courses on how to sell on eBay and there were like in the beginning was tens and quickly hundreds and quickly thousands of mentors who didn't really do it that much or there's all kinds. Okay, there's all kinds. I'm not going to say that they're all one one type, but there was a boom of mentors which brought a boom of new dropshippers who don't really know what they're doing and they just went with their own rules and they pretty much made eBay's platform. They made eBay's customers really mad because they didn't really know what they're doing in the first place. I just took some course. I know that it's I'm making I can make a lot of money from this. All I have to do is list these items and then I sell them then I need to sell it to the customer, but the items were quickly going out of stock and dropshippers didn't know what to do with it. The prices started changing and the dropshippers weren't ready for it and they were shipping out their items to not quickly enough, not on time, not according to their policies, many returns, many cancelation requests, many mad customers, many mad buyers at eBay. So eBay noticed that their product is the buyers, not what you're selling. What you're selling is your product, but eBay's product is the buyers and if you're not going to take care of their product of the buyers, then you're not going to be here. You're not going to be a seller here and many sellers pretty much made it much more difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible, but they made it much more difficult to start a dropshipping counter on eBay, whereas an Etsy, it still hasn't happened at least not yet. And that's why I want to emphasize what's the Atlanta is saying on take care of the platform. Don't ruin it. Don't start doing things without knowing what you're doing. Don't ship out. Don't use don't use anything in your policy, in your shipping policies. Don't set anything unless you know for sure how fast you can ship out the product. Even give it more days in the beginning and once you notice that your supply really ships it quicker, then maybe you can kind of change down your, you know, bring down your shipping times, for example, but don't ruin it. Don't under price it. Don't try to cut all the prices because you're not going to reinvent the wheel here. You're just going to damage yourself and other sellers that are around you. So we don't want that to happen. We want to take care of Etsy. We don't want the same thing on Etsy to happen that we saw. We don't want the same thing happening on Etsy, you know, the things that we saw happening on eBay. And so those are some really nice tips there. And now a question that doesn't have to do with all of the good stuff. Let's talk a little bit about difficulties. So can you talk to me a little bit about share some of the challenges or difficulties that you faced along the way while building your job shipping business on Etsy? So what challenges you had and how you were actually able to overcome those challenges? Well, in the beginning, I was very careful with packaging. So I didn't want customers to know that, you know, this is actually coming from Amazon. So I had the person who was repackaging, you know, receiving from Amazon, repackaging and in normal parcel sending to the customer. I still have the margin. So it wouldn't like lower my margins. But then I realized so that many Amazon sellers they already sent to Amazon, you know, now there is no logo or nothing. So I shipped now directly from Amazon. I have some buyers who even might, you know, post the picture it was delivered from Amazon. But it doesn't stop my sales. So I just saw, okay, so you didn't like that I shipped it from Amazon. Then the the others wouldn't even look at this review. And you can always create behind the story that, okay, this is our store on Amazon. We sell on Amazon this price on Etsy with a price. So you can always, you know, figure out your way. And this is not Amazon where you immediately get banned. And one challenge that I see now is just if you start generating a lot of revenue, they put reserve on your account for some time. For beginners, for beginners, how do I count mostly? No, not only for the bigger ones. So it's different than anything. Yeah. So it's the like periodically. So you have like, so it's better to have like a normal amount of sales without any high peaks in order to get your money fast because Etsy is good to get money the next day. So it's not like Amazon. It keeps the money for two weeks. And here you just get money next day. So here, yeah, this challenge now exists. So that's why I have several stores. And so in order not to show Etsy that there is such, you know, lots and lots of sales in one store. And anyway, you have find your way out giving good tracking numbers and well, I don't give Chinese tracking numbers. So because, you know, you can wait until the product reaches the country, for example, in the UK and the tracking number changes to every so you put the every local tracking number and that's it. They have a good tracking number after a couple of weeks at cc's that you have really good tracking numbers and they release the reserve. So it just there are ways to come out of it. But yeah, that's actually very interesting. You know, I want to circle back to a few of those things because like some things I'm hearing for the first time and I and that's why I really love these episodes because even if you're in advance or expert dropshipper, not just a beginner, you can still have a lot of golden nuggets that you got to learn here. So first of all, I want to circle back to Etsy selling fees because it was one of the things that we talked about before about profit margins and knowing exactly what your profit margins are. So guys, it's important to know what your selling fees are knowing what you're selling in Etsy. I don't remember the exact numbers around 10, maybe 12 percent, something like that, or maybe even less. But so what it's so yeah, so they usually take it from also from from your transaction. So after you make a sale, they're going to take a certain percentage percentage of that. And that's actually your your breakeven because after that breakeven, you're actually making your profit. So there's a transaction fees, which you can learn about just search for Etsy selling fees on Google. And also there's a listing fee. So as soon as you list a product, you can even list a thousand products on day one, which something I really like on Etsy, they're not limiting you. They're not saying, hey, if you're a new seller, you can only list 10 products. For example, that's what eBay is doing right here. You can list as many as you want. The only thing is and you're not going to pay a monthly subscription unless you got that Etsy Plus program, but you really don't need it to be successful is how many is for every listing you're going to pay around 20 cents fee. So take that into consideration. Don't list a thousand products on day one that you haven't researched and you don't know if they're trending yet. Don't list them because you're going to pay 20 cents for each listing. So five bad listings is one dollar. It's not a lot of money, but if you're going to put a thousand listings and you haven't researched them well, it's you're probably going to be wasting the better a portion of that money. So make sure that your product research is on point, learn Etsy selling fees, whether it's when you're listing or after you make the sell. The second thing is Amazon packaging or supplier packaging. This is a question that many, many, many beginners ask and I was one of the beginners who used to ask that question before I got started because I was also wondering myself, I mean, if I'm going to order a product and I'm going to get it in Amazon packaging is the isn't that going to be weird because I knew that I ordered it like on eBay or Etsy. So why am I getting an Amazon package? But you answered it pretty well and any drop through with experience knows today that this is the answer to that question 99% I would say of the customers simply do not care out of my tens of thousands of transactions and I'm not exaggerating here. I can count how many customers actually message me about it. And even when they do you can easily come up with some cover story like you explained exactly what I've been doing throughout the years and really it's no issue and it's not a question that you're going to keep asking after you actually start drop shipping and making sales a scaling slowly and payment holds is also a really important thing. So you want to take into account in the beginning before you start getting your payouts you may have to you will have to pay for your first several orders until you start to get that money flow coming into your bank account from yourselves which you can use to purchase the products and slowly the money that comes into the bank will be the profits and not just to pay for the next product because of the payment holds. So scale slowly and even open up multiple stores in order to show Etsy that you're not raising you're not increasing by 100% but you have three stores so average up between them is like 33% growth for example. So you want to kind of balance it up between your stores and the China tracking trick is actually pretty cool. So you're you can ship out the product from your Chinese seller who can supply a tracking number within the time of your shipping policy and by the time it reaches a UK or wherever you're shipping to you're going to get a localized tracking number which that tracking is what you're going to use on Etsy so that Etsy can actually see that you're selling from selling domestically which they will like to see a lot more. So that's actually a really cool trick to learn about and I also charge for shipping. I always charge for shipping from UK. Yes you charge for shipping even if you're not paying for shipping and I know that's well I'm also doing it but you can also add for example expedited shipping with like for like another four or five dollars even though you're going to use the same shipping service and it's going to arrive at the same time just because you want to make that you want that chance to make the extra few dollars and you know it's completely up to us where the sellers and you know we can choose what we want to do with it and I think it's completely fine. At the end of the day the customers are buying something that they want to buy. They're paying the price that they agree to pay and they get the product that they that they expected to get. So that's also one of the reasons why they really won't care about the packaging. They just want to make sure that they're getting the same product that they requested that they bought from your website and one thing that we didn't talk about is the bad product descriptions and the bad titles that we're getting because you mentioned it that the Chinese sellers are just not making great product pages so we can easily optimize this. I don't know if you're using AI today but ever since like chat GPT came out I've been using it on all of my titles all of my descriptions. So I just take an AI tool and I take the bad titles and descriptions from my suppliers websites. I go to the AI tool I tell them hey rewrite this product description for my e-commerce store use bullet points make sure that all the important information is there like the product specifications and the materials and the dimensions and all of that and it's just going to rewrite your product page and make it so professional when we compare it to the Chinese sellers. So are you using a little bit of AI today in your stores or not yet? Yes. Yes. Of course chat GPT you know for description it's amazing but first you should carefully check for the keywords especially for you know so it should be for this platform right so you give it the keywords the and then then yes so chat GPT is great. Of course it's definitely great and I highly recommend anyone to use it and you notice I didn't ask you if you're using it yes or no I asked you yes or not yet because sooner or later I think everybody is going to use artificial intelligence and if not you're just kind of behind can you talk to us and you really don't have to but it's really how you feel about it about your we call it estimated monthly revenue just to get people to understand like numbers what we're talking about here. Well I tried to calculate it and so what I see like the winning store it generates annual annual revenue is one hundred K pounds. So this is the one of the biggest it's hard to talk about the monthly because we like seasons yeah ups and pounds so Christmas of course you have a very you know big spike but yeah it depends because in one store like you have less in one more and so it's I don't know it's estimating it would be hard to speak about it now in in summer yes from September from September you will get different numbers but higher numbers but it's still first of all it's like I'm not I think the numbers are great right and especially when you're talking about around the hundred percent profit margin so I was expecting the private market profit margin answer to be around what I'm selling today because you know I'm I am my best my best experience and for me it's around fifty sixty percent and usually I hear dropshippers twenty percent thirty percent maybe fifteen percent and I'm tired of hearing these numbers right and when you're talking to me about a hundred percent I'm just happy to hear that you know I'm not the only one who's not afraid to profit and I see it every now and then I don't see it as much as I wish because I wish dropshippers will be a little more convinced that you can mark up your products even more and make more profit if you haven't tried then how will you ever know right but it exists it's out there and dropshippers are making lots of profits we're not talking about twenty fifteen percent those are not the profit margins that we're looking for especially if we really want to feel that profit in our bank accounts that's another thing that I wanted to point out so for me I don't look at revenue I look at profit and for me it's important so if I see okay this store brings me two thousand K per month profit right so this store is working well so there is a store that brings five K month profit so you fill the money and then you invest into anything you want so for me dropshipping it just to skyrocket the Amazon business to invest into FBA so it's so you can play around with it in so many ways yeah you can just play around with it in so many ways it's amazing I really think that's amazing just like in your case how you turn selling channels into suppliers and suppliers into selling channels and I think it's just amazing very flexible and just shows you some of the potential that you have here there's more than way way more than just one way of doing things here okay so let's talk a little bit about things that people don't really want to talk about all the time but I still think that it's important because it's a part of the business so as fatally can you walk me around a little bit how you handle returns and customer service it's a part of the business right every now and then in my case it's around two three percent returns sometimes I get a little a little bit lower than that so it's not the biggest part of our business but when it happens we have to learn to deal with it otherwise we're not going to have a business so how do you do how do you do around with handling returns and customer service on Etsy well here you should place the customer on the first place yeah if you want to build a good store because they will leave you a good feedback so I I figure out you know so how can replace the product first of all not not to accept you know the returns we don't need returns anyway so product is bad so there is no point to return it so if if you know the customer is so angry just it would be easy just refund and forget about it not you know not to have these cases about your store because you you will get the money back with the next order easily but but this is the way to learn about the supplier because yeah this is what I had like they they didn't package the properly the baptism dress for the baby and this is how I discovered and I had like horrible messages so I I apologize I refunded and that's it and sometimes I will even send something for free as a present from our muscle just to satisfy the buyer because Etsy this is the family like platform you should build your community like and every store that's my recommendation to build it in in niche like so if if some people are interested you know in in baby nursery decor so they will follow you they will look at your new products and if you are nice to them with the first order they come back and buy and buy so that's why if even if I have you know angry customer so I try to turn it into positive experience and I I don't get like return like you know so I don't need this product anyway what is what is your what is your return rate around in percentages do you have that figure I haven't looked at that well in any case I really agree with the things that you say and it's things that I always always like go over over and over again because one it's it's also the same that goes for me I really really it's important to take care of the customers for the long run of your business and I think that that's one of the reason that we have our businesses running for so long now I think this is one of the main factors besides knowing what to sell it's also how to take care of our customers and dealing with those returns when we have them it's the lower percentage I like I said it's not the main part of your business it's not what you're going to be doing all day what you're going to be doing all day is product research and adding more training products to your store and the rest is the rest right but but you're not going to be dealing with it that much but when you do have to deal with it do it like the way that you would want to be treated as a customer yet sometimes and I take this a lot into you'll you'll learn a lot about the products and your suppliers from your customers feedback so when a customer send you a negative message don't see it he doesn't know what he's talking about I know what I'm selling no you have to listen to your customer and realize if you have a problem with the product with the quality of it with the shipping quality with the supplier itself you're going to learn about it through that so sometimes your worst customer can actually turn out to be your best teacher for your business okay so you want to take them to consider into consideration and always take care of your customers if you're here for the long run so Svetana thank you for also clearing that up for us yeah yeah podcast went on long enough but I still want to leave room for this question do you have any like funny or amazing encounters something that really made you like you know kind of laugh because I mean it's not the point of the business but it's nice every now and then to get a smile on our faces from it too so any funny or or amazing encounters that you had while drop shipping on Etsy or other platforms I think it's all about suppliers that I have my experience so I I started selling very expensive posters on Shopify store and the markup so so if I sourced them for $10 I sell them for $100 so you can imagine so what they expect and I see returns refunds so they they just stripe these boots and I say what's going on so I'm just losing money and one of the customers they they send me the picture that the poster was folded you know like folded not you know at that time I had a sourcing agent from hyperschool and he said I said what what are you doing with my product so actually so send me the video and he made the video it was the finest video I have ever seen how he was showing how he's folding my extensive post well and that those are posters that you're marking up 10 times the price and they're just folding it up like that saying it to customers customers are receiving it obviously we know the reasons that they were doing it right because they were trying to to pay less for the shipping right for the packaging and the shipping but at the end of the day the customers are getting products that that are supposed to be high ticket posters that are just folded up and that just look like I don't even want to say the word but so what did you do with those customers I mean did you just have to deal with the loss I had to I lost those tribe these boots of course and so I just change the supplier so I supplier maybe change the product or the supplier but yeah that is how we learn that's how we learn and sometimes it's going to cost us money to learn sometimes we're going to learn from other people's mistakes which is the optimal way to learn but sometimes we're going to learn from our own mistakes which is also a part of the process and it's fine right what happened if you were to say at that point you know what I just lost a lot of money I don't think this business is good for me I'm just going to go find I don't know an office job or something and do something that will give me money for that will bring me money for our failures and we continue trying to grind that we continue trying to find that success point like I said it's always out that we just have to learn how to reach out and grab it and it's not just you know I'm not it's not just like a kitschy sentence or something like that it it's actually true and I see it just playing out all the time so it's amazing so Savannah I would like to summarize this and sum it up because the podcast went long enough I think that we had a lot intermediate even expert dropshippers if you guys ever thought about Etsy I'm sure that now you have a much at least now you have much more reasons to learn why you should want to consider also selling on that platform like we said take care of that platform we don't want to see it getting ruined now because lots of dropshippers are hearing about it now they're making mistakes because they don't actually know what to do so Svetlana is there anywhere where our viewers and listeners on on Spotify and Apple podcasts or YouTube channel or wherever you're hearing or seeing this podcast if they want to learn more about you and about and about your teachings is there anywhere where they can do that well I started my YouTube channel it's Svetlana Dubova and I have my Instagram Svetlana Dubova blog that I'm going to develop in English so it's been long enough that I was in my comfort zone with my native language yes so like I said earlier this video you've got that you've got the Russian following that they've learned a lot from you but it's time to open up spread your wings to the bigger markets and and to let more people to give more people the opportunity to actually learn from you so what I'm going to do is I'm going to be leaving the links to that below this video but this though if you guys want to see the links you'll have to go to our YouTube channel if you're listening on on Apple podcast or Spotify or anywhere else that you're hearing a podcast go to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash auto DS and under this video playlist you'll find this one under the video I'm going to leave the links to our course and and Instagram where you guys will be able to learn learn it in English of course once it's ready of course so Svetlana and so if you guys want to learn more about drops being on Etsy if you guys want to be one of the first ones to learn about the amazing strategies that I've learned so far from this really quick podcast with us Svetlana I'm sure that if we narrow it down if we break it down to bits and bytes there's only so much called the nuggets that we can learn from here so Svetlana I would like to say thank you very much for joining us today and maybe you know we'll have you soon here again on our channel with more stories more selling channels more suppliers you've been doing this for years and it doesn't look like you're going to go anywhere so thank you against for learning us I was really happy to have you here thank you and I want to think auto DS platform because it actually helps us to build winning Etsy store so and that that will be my course that I'm going to do how to build as the successful drop shipping store in one day on Etsy when we combine it was also with automation we're really going to be able to scale it so if you guys want to learn about that the links of course are going to be below this podcast episode thank you for watching bye bye for now Svetlana bye