I make £93k a year selling charms – here’s how you can rake in the cash too & why you should avoid selling on Etsy
A WOMAN has revealed how she makes £93,000 a year selling charms online – and only works five hours a week.
Mei Pak, who runs the Creative Hive YouTube channel, opened up about the secrets to her success in a video.
She said: “I have made $1.6million selling polymer clay food charms since I started doing this full-time in 2012.
“I now only work on this business on average five hours a week and it’s making me six figures in annual sales.
“So how do I make that much money from selling just polymer clay charms?”
She shared how every year she would focus on a different thing, with Facebook being year one, then Instagram or TikTok or blogging.
Mei added: “I have tried all the things. I know firsthand what works and what doesn’t and I will share that with you.
“There are really only a handful of things that helped me get to six figures.”
Social media didn’t matter
Mei claimed that social media “didn’t really matter” for her business success.
Instead, she said having a strong media outreach did far more for raking in the sales.
The businesswoman said: “I get my products on the pages of print magazines or in blogs or websites that get a lot of traffic like BuzzFeed or Huffington Post.
“It is entirely free to do aside from the occasional cost of making some product samples and shipping it to the magazine.
“And what was even more amazing was it wasn’t temporary unlike social media where I have this constant pressure to crank out post after post which only live for like a few hours and then it gets buried by other people’s posts.”
After she switched her focus from social media to media outlet, she went from making hundreds per month to having regular five-figure months.
And she advised being creative in her media pitches.
Mei shared: “You need your pitch and your product to stand out. And in order to do that, you have to pitch outside of your niche.
“For example, I sell scented food jewellery. I could pitch to jewellery places, but I don’t have much success doing that.
“I have a smores necklace, so I might pitch that to an outdoor camping magazine.”
Paid advertising works well
Once she had started bringing in steady sales, she had more cash for paid ads on Facebook and Instagram.
However, she did provide a warning around it.
Mei said: “Only do paid ads if you are already making healthy sales organically for free, you have a consistent budget for it, and you’re willing to take the time to really learn how to do it well.
I now only work on this business on average five hours a week and it’s making me six figures in annual sales
Mei Pak
“Organic sales that you’ve gotten for free are like the healthy plants that have already sprouted, right?
“Paid ads are like fertiliser. If your garden is already growing, the fertiliser can help it flourish even more.
“But if you haven’t planted anything, no amount of fertiliser will make anything grow.”
Look beyond Etsy
While online marketplace Etsy can be a great way to get your product to customers, Mei highlighted the drawbacks for her business.
She compared listing on Etsy to renting a home and said “deep down you know it’s not your home.”
Mei advised: “If your landlord decides to kick you out, they can.
“Just like how Etsy can just shut down at any time and it is out of your control.
“If you want your business to pay you a meaningful income, one day, quit your job, work from home, doing what you love, you need to invest in your own house that you buy.
“In other words, your own website.”
Paid ads are like fertiliser. If your garden is already growing, the fertiliser can help it flourish even more
Mei Pak
She added that selling on Etsy “often feels a lot more like this roller coaster”, and said: “We’re never sure when the next sale is going to come in.
“One day you might be getting a ton of sales and the next it’s completely quiet.”
Mei shared: “You’re often neck and neck with other shops that live in countries where the value of their currency is so low that they can afford to charge much lower than you, or they’re just hobbyists and they’re just not priced right.
“Whereas you’re actually trying to make a living from your business.”
She compared how she’s made $114,000 (£87,000) in sales on Etsy since she started her shop, but raked in almost $1.7million (£1.2million) selling my charms on her Shopify site.
Start with custom orders
Mei advised against “designing products in a silo all by yourself” as you may not know what customers want.
She shared: “People would come to my shop and see what I could do and then they would email me or message me to ask if I could do this other thing instead.
“If I felt I could pull it off, I would do it and if the item turned out really good, I would make it a permanent part of my product line and this often leads to that item becoming a best-selling product.
How to start your own business
Dragon's Den star Theo Paphitis revealed his tips for budding entrepreneurs:
- One of the biggest barriers aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners face is a lack of confidence. You must believe in your idea — even more than that, be the one boring your friends to death about it.
- Never be afraid to make decisions. Once you have an idea, it’s the confidence to make decisions that is crucial to starting and maintaining a business.
- If you don’t take calculated risks, you’re standing still. If a decision turns out to be wrong, identify it quickly and deal with it if you can. Failing that, find someone else who can.
- It’s OK not to get it right the first time. My experience of making bad decisions is what helped develop my confidence, making me who I am today.
- Never underestimate the power of social media, and remember the internet has levelled the playing field for small businesses.
- Don’t forget to dream. A machine can’t do that!
“I often see other makers focus too much of their time on creating products that they want to make which is totally fine and healthy if you’re just doing it for creativity and enjoyment’s sake. but if you are wanting to run a business that makes money, you have to consider what customers want as well.”
Now 90 to 95 percent of the products she sells are made by my small team of production assistants, which has freed up her time.
People praised her advice, with one saying: “Truly advice I don’t hear talked about! Thank you for this.”
Another added: “Thank you so much for generously sharing things that helped you!”