How to Start A Sticker business With An $80 Printer
I recently ran into Tim Koa’s YouTube channel and it’s a great resource and inspiration if you’re looking to start a side hustle. In 2020 he found that he had some extra time at home with the pandemic and thought he would start a business. He had experience in graphic design but he didn’t want to sell his skills as a service as it took too much time and he already had a full time job. So he decided that he would sell a product.
He came across stickers which he thought was a great fit as he could use his graphic design skills, the materials were inexpensive and they were easy to ship. So with an $80 printer, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop he was off to the races (you can use Canva if you don’t have Adobe). Tim also picked up a Cameo vinyl cutter so that he didn’t have to cut out all of the stickers by hand.
He decided to sell on Etsy as it was the easiest way to get set up quick and instead of having to drive traffic to your site, you can sell to the people already on the platform looking for your product. And it worked! Tim made his first sale after a few days on Etsy. He started on August 20, 2020 and by the end of the month sold… $56, including a few sales from friends and family.
But then it started to grow. In September he sold $446, October $588, November $496 and in December 2020 $741. So $3,034 in sales for a partial year in 2020.
Then things take off in 2021. By March Tim is selling $2,600 a month and it grows to over $9,000 in August and 2021 ends with over $43,000 for the full year in 2021.
Tim continues to build his shop and along with his Etsy store has his own store run on turtletags.com and a YouTube Channel with over 70,000 subscribers. So take some inspiration from Tim and start your own side hustle!
Other Tips from Tim
Start your idea as quick as you can so you’ll find out if it works without too much effort
Try to stand out, don’t make your pictures look like your competitors, when Tim changed his backgrounds from the standard white everyone was using to bright green he saw an uptick in sales
Get more reviews with review raffles, he left a note in every package letting customers know that he would send one reviewer a gift card to his shop every month