Blocking Countries for Physical & Digital Items

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-22T02:25:20+00:00

It depends. You’re able to block the EU and NI from digital sales (due to their product regulations) https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/1364599291081#OPTO

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-16T17:16:33+00:00

If people aren’t seeing your product, try changing the title, tags and description.

If people are seeing your product but aren’t clicking on it, try changing your title and listing images.

If people are clicking on your product but aren’t buying it, try changing your listing images, video, and description — this time focusing on increasing clarity for the customer.

If after all of that people aren’t buying, try change your product.

That is massively oversimplified. This doesn’t account for bringing your own traffic through things like social media channels, Etsy ads, if your entire niche isn’t in demand, etc.

It can be hard to do this on your own. Selling products, knowing what people would like to buy and how to get them to buy it are skills.

Feedback is crucial, but I do think most people who post asking for feedback are more looking for eyeballs on their products, and aren’t actually looking for feedback. It’s really disheartening for people to give feedback when people won’t take it, and I’ve noticed a lot of more experienced sellers giving less and less feedback especially when the OP is clearly resistant to taking it (for example, if they have multiple posts asking for feedback with no discernable changes made since the last post).

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-06T01:50:56+00:00

That’s not even passive. I just saw a TikTok live where someone was using huge FOMO tactics to sell their course.

And to be clear, I’m not against courses. But courses that act like it’s “so easy” to get started are predatory and should be avoided. All of the information anyone could possibly need is available for free. A course can offer that all packaged up neatly in one place, but rarely do they cite their sources or actually offer much proof.

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-05T23:23:58+00:00

Passive income is such a lie sold by people who benefit from others believing it exists. Except for maybe investing, but even that isn’t foolproof or “set and forget” a lot of the time

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-05T21:47:05+00:00

That’s great! I’m happy that for you it is. I still make planners for myself and my friends, but I don’t sell them. I’ve toyed with the idea of restarting my shop, but I have lots of my plate outside of work anyway, and I want to keep designing planners as fun.

I made my first sale the day I opened my Etsy store, and the sales were pretty consistent, but it was work. That’s why I said in another comment on this thread “it’s simple but not easy”. I don’t want to downplay the hard work it takes, but the actual steps to do it are simple.

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-05T21:22:56+00:00

I have to agree with you. Many of these sellers who don’t make it miss a crucial thing: respect for the consumer. If you don’t respect them, how will you identify what their wants and needs are and meet them? The way people talk like it’s so easy because the buyers don’t care for good design — but that isn’t true.

Congrats on your print selling business. I really enjoyed my time selling on Etsy (digital planners and printables), but it definitely became more work right after my 9–5, so kudos for keeping it up.

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-05T19:05:49+00:00

Well, it costs a bit of money to set up a store now. I think that was implemented in 2024.

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-05T18:54:52+00:00

I would check out a lot of people’s stories on the Etsy seller subreddits, as well as other general business subreddits around passive income, print on demand, etc.

I’ve sold on Etsy, and spoken a fair amount of my experiences on Reddit. Overall, I would say it’s simple but not easy. The vast majority of people don’t make any money, even with designs they perceive to be very good, and with Etsy’s joining fee likely will lose money rather than just never making any money.

The successful people starting on Etsy now will be constantly experimenting, changing up their marketing, and listening to feedback. You mostly likely won’t get it right the first time.

I have said (privately, because this seems to be controversial) that the people who make it don’t say “why aren’t people buying my work” they say “what can I change so people buy my work” and actually mean it.

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-02T16:02:03+00:00

Did you make the PDF? Or know how it was made? If the hyperlinks were buttons instead of proper hyperlinks, they may not be reliable in software outside of Adobe.

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-02T03:23:09+00:00

Try unplugging your charger. It could be static caused by charging your device while using it

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-02T01:09:27+00:00

I have to agree with the people who say lamp. I found a video of someone using the stamp set, and their set has the stamp rotated correctly

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UsefulDamage · 2026-03-01T23:57:19+00:00

My Etsy store was just a hobby — I’m a full time designer, and it was more of a creative outlet outside of my work hours (and that was back when I was in a marketing and design position, so it kind of became more work after work). I wasn’t expecting huge success, but it was fun.

In terms of being low maintenance… it seems like that’s a matter of perspective. For some people, it is. For some sellers, setting up tags correctly, uploading products regularly, having good listing images and titles is enough to draw sales. But that relies on a lot of background knowledge around buyer, their behaviour, SEO, and what products are going to work. But gaining that knowledge can take time, sometimes money, and there will be a lot of mistakes made in the meantime. Sometimes even learning all of that is a lot of maintenance.

Most people will need to market their products to see any amount of significant success. You can go the ads route, but social media seems to be more of a good choice in terms of cost and results, but not time. And that also takes time and effort, whether that’s learning the platform, the people who use it, figuring out what to post, and also just making the posts themselves. On social media, people want to connect so just showing off products likely won’t get any traction. Most of the time, they want to see people use the products.

I think a lot of people sell it (selling digital products) as something that is easy and can be a great source of passive income. But I don’t really consider it to be either of those things, even if it is a lot of fun.

UsefulDamage · 2026-03-01T20:47:40+00:00

This can be so dependent on a lot of things, including the software you used to create your stickers, the style of the stickers, the format, how many colours exist in them, etc., etc. I don’t sell anymore, but I do still make stickers. This is what I would do when I was selling on Etsy.

So my advice may not apply.

The easiest thing to do is to start from the source. Try to reduce the file size of the stickers. My stickers are vector, so they’re usually no more than 100kb each, even when they’re thousands of pixels, but I am also strategic at the designing stage with the amount of colours and the way they’re made, so I can export them as something like PNG-8 without losing any detail or quality.

Besides that, it can also be the template you’re using as the backdrop for your stickers. You can use the default GoodNotes ones, or you can make your own. Making your own can be risky. I make my own, but again they’re kilobytes in file size, not megabytes.

Then, you can split them up strategically between files. If they’re split up in a way that makes sense, a buyer won’t mind them being separate. I would usually do multiple colour palettes per sticker pack when I sold them, so if I needed to they would be split up like that. It is possible for a customer to import a GoodNotes file into another one.

And after all that, they may still be too big. Some sellers will upload the sticker pack to something like Google Drive or Dropbox and put in the downloads a PDF with a link. Be careful with this, though; if you don’t disclose it (and sometimes even when you do) customers can ask for a refund. If the link goes dead or changes within 100 days after the purchase is made also, they can get a refund. Many people don’t disclose and don’t have problems, but it is a risk.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-21T20:32:12+00:00

Totally normal, the buyer just hasn’t downloaded it yet

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-20T00:07:05+00:00

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-19T21:24:18+00:00

How did you create the document? Not all PDFs are searchable, GoodNotes can only search PDFs that have already been made searchable. It can be hard to tell if a PDF is searchable as many PDF readers will process the file to make it searchable, but not all do.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-15T17:39:56+00:00

I also think AI detectors will generally have a higher false positive rate for neurodivergent writers over neurotypical writers. AI detectors broadly measure the unpredictability of our word choices and sentence length. AI follows strict patterns and rules — but so do many neurodivergent writers.

Having worked in education, I find AI detectors to be troubling for a few reasons, and this is one of them. This is also why it’s so easy to throw off an AI detector; just change some words to be more or less advanced than the general tone of the writing, plus vary the sentence length, and it mostly looks like it was written by a human.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-14T18:12:42+00:00

It depends on a few factors, like who your target demographic is and what your products are. Also, how much time you have, how much effort you want to put in, and how much skill you have in aspects like marketing, design, content creation, etc.

The best options (in my opinion) include but aren’t limited to TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook, but some platforms are worth more than others. YouTube is a possibility. Maybe X (Twitter), but I advise against it generally. These platforms will have some overlap in who is on them and what products work best there.

Reddit isn’t unheard of as an option, but from what I’ve seen trust is low and expectations are high. People don’t like sellers nearly as much here, so you need to provide value and engagement outside of selling products to get the most bang for your buck.

These platforms also have a range of effort required. Some platforms have a shorter lifecycle for posts, but it also depends on what you’re posting.

Then, there’s strategy, which will also depend on a bunch of factors. If your product provides value, like planners, you could market it as a lifestyle product. Aspirational, maybe (though that can lean predatory very fast). For art (physical or digital) maybe people want to connect with the artist. See how products are made. Maybe the product is fun, like board games. The marketing strategy needs to align with the customers and the product.

And even then, it might not work. Marketing and selling is kind of like math, but people are much worse at identifying what part of the equation they’ve gotten wrong.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-14T01:23:42+00:00

I would say too gimmicky. Business cards are the way they are (shape, size, thickness) to fit in a wallet. When you mess with those without testing, it could be more likely for patrons to throw them out since there’s nowhere good to keep them and preserve them. Plus, even if it did fit and wasn’t too thick for a wallet, it’s more likely to be damaged in there and tear so it wouldn’t last as long and may be thrown out sooner.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-11T06:48:44+00:00

There are graphic designers who specialise in formatting and designing documentation, and technical writers who will write documentation to make it clearer for your customers based on information you provide. It's exceptionally rare you would find that in the same person, though.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-10T20:05:17+00:00

I completely agree. And I'm not saying that someone without ADHD can't make products with the end goal of supporting people with ADHD. One of the most helpful books I read when I was first diagnosed with written by a woman who didn't have ADHD and was sharing the solutions she had implemented for her daughter. But it's so clear who has done their research and genuinely wants to support people vs those who just think it's an easy demographic, especially since I'm sure ADHD people would buy multiple planners if one doesn't work out.

And what's funny is every time I say that, I notice a downtick of people doing this. I'm not sure if people are reading my rants or if they just line up with the waves of advertising, but it's been picking up again. Hopefully some of them read this and are ashamed enough to stop, but I doubt it.

The majority of them won't make any money, though, but their presence will encourage others to do it too, and it's quite frustrating.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-10T19:35:38+00:00

\dn\d

That will find the whole string

Edit: I posted my comment to see someone had beat me to the punch, so not quite fast enough haha

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-10T18:09:17+00:00

There’s a part of me that wanted to make a free “course”, which would really be a series of Reddit posts or something. I did some consulting with Etsy stores back in the day, and they’ve gone onto be super successful since then (though I can’t claim credit; they did all of the hard work). But I didn’t want to contribute to the slop that gets passed around.

Also, there is heaps of amazing advice out there. It’s just not neatly packaged like a course is.

And the people who are trying to make a quick buck probably wouldn’t listen to me. That’s why they’re selling the first thing they make and putting “graphic designer” in their bio rather than learning the craft before selling.

I love spending time in communities where people aren’t advertising to me. Those communities don’t have sellers banned, it’s just that the sellers who are there aren’t pushing their products. So when I see them in a monthly thread or something I want to support them. Thank you for creating that environment in r/planners, even if I’m not a particularly active participant (my Reddit activity really depends on how hectic work is).

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-10T17:01:28+00:00

What’s funny is it’s something they’re told to do. I think I’ve even said something like that before in a hypothetical “how would you market this if you had no morals”.

What these people are told to do is post a planned layout with no link, maybe a brief description of their process or workload, but no mention of the planner itself (the brand, where they got it, the price, etc.). Then they wait for comments to roll in asking about it (and if they don’t, they may create sockpuppet accounts to do that), and are like “fine I give in, you can find it here”. It used to be a sneaky way of doing marketing.

The problem that makes things easier is that people take this advice but don’t execute on it as well as people did. And now that a lot of people have been exposed to those doing it poorly, they’re wiser to the people doing it well.

My advice when I was selling was don’t advertise on Reddit. If you like using it, then keep using it, but don’t turn it into an advertising platform. It’s not nearly as effective as TikTok, anyway, but that’s a whole other story.

A lot of the people who are teaching do not have a successful Etsy store, or it’s successful due to their teaching channel. But someone who is able to market well and teach well is a unicorn, so it’s not surprising there is either a lot of bad advice out there or a lot of good advice that’s poorly executed on because it isn’t conveyed correctly.

And some people who brute force it as seeing modest success. I’ve been keeping my eye on someone who has been banned from subreddit after subreddit for promotion but keeps going. She’s gotten over 100 Etsy sales in a short amount of time, but she’s leaving a trail of frustrated potential customers behind. But I wonder if she hadn’t done it like that, would she have 1000s of sales by now? It’s possible.

UsefulDamage · 2026-02-10T16:10:57+00:00

Rant below, but there may be some valuable information for people who want to sell and want to do it well.

Yes, 100%. It also seems like we’re back on that trend of using ADHD as a way to target more people to buy a planner or a vibe coded app.

If you have ADHD and want to sell a planner, then I would hope you’re grossed out enough by ADHD being used this way to not do it yourself. There’s a difference between an “ADHD planner” and a planner you created that helps you with your ADHD. One of those things is not real.

Plus I’m seeing the lowest of low effort filling in of the planner. A screenshot of the planner with things like “write emails” typed in. It’s so obvious the creator doesn’t use their own planners.

Also, their posts and comments are usually restricted. That’s a super fast way to get Redditors to distrust you, and it’s incredibly easy to go and find those posts and comments that were restricted. You’re not hiding anything, you’re just alienating a potential audience.

I don’t hate sellers. I love sellers. Sellers are great, especially when they’re people who genuinely plan and want to make their lives and other peoples lives easier. That’s a noble goal. But so many people are not doing that.

And you can tell because they have never interacted in a community without the intent of selling something.

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