Recently I purchased a Versa Force 150 Watt laser. Being one of the first versions, I got a discount for being one of the first few purchasers of the machine. Usually, when you purchase version 1 products, one finds things that eventually get updated. Sometimes things are forgotten. After speaking with the manufacturer they have rectified the situation and with their help I was able to add the rotary connection to my machine. Although not a difficult installation, it was one that had me learn a lot about the machine. For that I am great full. Below I will show you how to add a rotary attachment to your machine if the factory did not add it, or if your machine did not come with it.

What is a rotary attachment and why do I need one?

The rotary attachment ( tool, accessory, whatever) is an add-on, usually, to your laser. For the most part when purchasing your laser through your manufacturer they will offer this as an upgrade or an additional item for purchase. The rotary tool is critical / essential if you plan on engraving on cylindrical items. If you plan on offering engraving on Wine Glasses, Coffee Mugs, Wine Bottles, Bats ( depending on design ), Rolling Pins, then this is the attachment for you. Pretty much, for a low entry point, you can add an entire different world of possibilities and items to offer your customers.

Installation

Installing a rotary tool to your laser is quite simple and not a hard task at all. This tutorial will show you the steps taken to diagnose your machine and properly install the connector. Lets Begin.

• Step ONE: Locate your laser panels control area. When looking at the  machine itself you’re going to want to go to the right bottom panel. Keep in mind this panel is usually locked and can easily be opened by looking at the tool kit provided with the machine. You should have a set of keys in there (don’t lose them!)
• Step TWO: Locate the X and Y axis controller for your panel.  With the help of tech support we were able to narrow down the culprit to the green square below. The manufacturer of my laser cutter has each one of these cables properly labeled.  The top controller ( orange square ), is labeled X and the bottom controller ( green ) is labeled Y.
• Step THREE: Locate and focus on the terminal block below. You will see each cable is individually labeled and will differentiate itself from one another. No 2 cables will be labeled the same. The cables on my block will be labeled as M V U V+ GRND.
• Step Four: Locate your  factory supplied cable and match the cables color with color. In my situation, this was not possible as the colors on the switch did not co-ordinate with the colors on the controller ( yellow, green, red – VS – brown, blue, black ).
  .After consulting with the manufacturer we were able to finalize the wiring as such.Wire your U cable ( RED ) to the available terminal that matches the BROWN cables
  Wire your V cable ( GREEN ) to the available terminal  that matches the BLUE cables
  Wire your W cable ( YELLOW ) to the available terminal that matches the BLACK cablesPRO TIP: Instead of stripping your wires you can buy  RING TERMINALS ( size 16 – 14awg ) and slide the cable plug into the ring terminal to screw on the post. Links to purchase all additional items used at the end of this post.
  
• Step FIVE (Optional): Cable Management

Tools Used:

1. Cable tie downs and Zipties – Used in cable management
2. Ring Terminals 16 – 14 AWG – Used to connect cable to switch post
3. Split Joint Pliers –  Used to crimp cable to Ring Terminals
4. Flush Cut Pliers –  Used to cut zip ties flush

Be successful be be successful

Alright? OK! 2021 has finally arrived and we’re already a month and 14 days into this shindig. Usually, more successful business(wo)men have already set their goals, budgets, and plan of attack for the year. In true procrastination fashion; I’m 3 hours late to the event and not ready to party! Within the confines of this blog post, I will detail some of my goals for 2021. I hope , that by writing down my goals, I can hold myself to some level of accountability.  I am hereby setting a reminder for 3 months down the road.  We’re going to make “it”!

Endgame, the final boss –

Without stretching myself too thin… I realistically want to be a little more consistent.  Be that with blog posting, adding items to the store, brainstorming, whatever…  However, setting a schedule, and actually following it is easier said than done. I’ve always found myself to be most productive under sporadic spurts of motivation. Those tend to come very few and far between. On the other hand, I can sit in front of a computer, stare into the inter-webs for hours, and go to bed having done nothing but browse reddit. I know, I know… This is unfortunately not going to help me out in my quest for total domination.

• Effective immediately – I will actively start “working” on a schedule (as if it were my 8-5). In hopes of not setting the bar too high and burning myself out.. I will actively start working and dedicating MORE time on Tuesdays.

Social Media, so easy a caveman can do it –

I find that the most successful people on social media tend to be extroverts. Substantially harder for an introvert like myself. For them it’s easy posting pictures of their kids, pets, and their Pumpkin Spiced Latte. I have a hard time finding the desire to just log in and even less to post something for someone else. I could just be overthinking it but its extremely taxing and difficult.  WHY DON’T YOU LIKE MY OUT OF FOCUS PICTURES?

• Effective immediately – I will focus on one social media platform in hopes of becoming better. My plan of attack will start off with Pinterest and finally end up somewhere on Farmers Only.

CTRL + C and CTRL + V

Copying and pasting a successful store / business is probably the easiest and quickest way to achieve some level of success. Something I am vehemently against doing. My pride wont allow me to out-write copy someones hard work and take the easy route to success. Chivalry aside, I don’t see anything wrong with asking someone for help. Worse thing they can say is no.  Luckily for me, my childhood , (and the teenage girls of yesteryear ) prepared me for an onslaught of no’s.

• Effective immediately – I will actively seek help. I will extend an olive branch in hopes of trading tips with fellow shop owners.

Dress for the position you want, not the one you have.

This year I’ve already started doing things some of the bigger companies are doing. We now have a mail box at the UPS store in order to receive mail separate from our home (13860 Wellington Trade #283 – Wellington, Fl. 33414). In order to improve our customer service and reaction time I have also added another line to our phone plan strictly for the business (561-891-1249).  Finally, I’ve invested a ton of time in migrating our store over to it’s own domain separate from the clutches of amazon and etsy. Hopefully, with the addition of these 3 things, our customer will feel more comfortable purchasing through our store and see us as a legitimate option. Mark this as a goal already finished!

Lamborghini’s for all

Back in 2017 we started our endeavor in hopes of saving enough money to purchase our first home. We wanted the American dream of a family, a white picket fence, and a Lamborghini in the driveway. In 2019, 2 years after we started, we managed to save enough money for a down payment on the house. In 2021 I wish to rekindle the fire that once burned as hot as the sun. This time, my goal isn’t just to save enough to get in through the door.  My goal is to work towards paying off my house, paying off the student loans my wife has acquired, and finally putting that damn white fence around my property.

Today is January 6, 2019 and it’s the second day in 2019 that I’ve had some time to work on the store. I wanted to update anyone who is reading where I’m currently at and what I’ve been up to.

Sales so far – $0.00 ( Just added product today )
Total Current Funds – $-106.19
Google Sheets of all finances for this endeavor

Store Stats

The store currently has 21 listings ( or designs ) that were done today. Currently have items in the following categories -Family, Hobbies, Pets, Professions, and Adult/Life . To drive traffic to the store I have opted into etsy advertisement . My current cost per click ( or how much I am paying per visitor) is 15 cents with a maximum daily budget of 2 dollars.

My total traffic stats for the day are:

We have also had a total of 4 items “liked ” ( Favorited )

Things I need to still do

• Add Product: I think the obvious of them all is to keep on adding product. I’m not a huge proponent of making the PERFECT item and striking it rich. The perfect item may or may not come in 2019… Its all about numbers for me for this store. I would like to ideally have 100 items on this store by the end of the month ( honestly earlier ).
• Fix Descriptions: In my haste to put the items up I was not able to do each and every listing 100% perfect. Although I don’t believe in perfection there are some things that just need to be done. Having a good item description or something for the customer to relate to is an absolute must.
• Start a mailing list: Being able to engage customers a second, third, and fourth time is crucial to the success of this store. Having a mailing list will give me the ability to contact customers over and over again without having to invest additional funds.
• Add additional pictures: Gear bubble does give you a mock up of your design but I’ve noticed that customers sometimes do browse through additional ones. I need to include an additional picture for sizing (so customers can see the different sizes of product I offer ), and a picture with all of my social media ( right now its just instagram and its empty ).
• Shop Policies: This is another one of those absolute must. I need to put information on returns / lead times / also details on the store ( like work space pictures ) etc. On Etsy this seems to be important.

Thoughts on today

Considering today is the first “real” day of having product on the store I think its been a huge success. I wasn’t planning on having likes on any items and or visitors. Since this isn’t really a get rich quick scheme I don’t expect to get sales for a couple of weeks.

In 2018, we started our second online store. In roughly 7 months my second store had somewhere in the range of 25k total sales.  At the top of my new years resolution is to add another 5k to our yearly profits. While adding another 5k to our existing store is in fact difficult, its definitively not out of the realm of possibilities. Whats the fun in that? With that being said I am going to completely start a new store from the ground up and document as much as possible along the way. The goal is to somehow motivate and show you the processes I go through while I try to take a store from 0 to hopefully at least an extra 5k a year ( because who couldn’t use an extra 5k a year?).

I would like to add that I will be all over the place with this blog series. I will post things that I am doing also explanations on what I am doing / what you could do.

List of things I need to do:

• Select the name of the store.  Try getting one where the domain and Instagram are available.
• Buy Domain Name. Important! – .com if at all possible. Privacy Protection is a MUST.
• Register Instagram.   Name as close to store and domain as possible.
• Register Facebook.
• Select a niche.
• Start listing product.

Track my expenses of the new project by bookmarking this.

Selecting a niche:

Targeting a niche should be your primary focus. Try to make and or sell products that are specific to a particular person or group of people. You’re going to want to target very loyal and borderline obsessive people within their hobby or niche. The best way to select the niche is to find something you’re passionate about. When you’re apart of the select few, you understand the terminology and can understand what is good and not.

If you decide to start your own store and cant find a niche you’re passionate about the best thing to do is start doing research! A quick google search for popular hobbies shows:

Going over the list there are some that stand out to me. Knitting, Exercise, Sewing, Hunting, Dance, and Soccer.  Because what I try to sell I try to personalize I always look for niches or markets that tend to buy personalized items. I also tend to look for niches that might not have a lot of personalized items made for.

Whats NEXT?

So you have selected your niche…. Now what the heck are you going to sell? If you plan on going the personalization route, there are some defacto items you can do to start getting your foot in the door. Hats, Bags, and T-shirts are good ways to start getting into selling for these markets. If you have the capital, you could buy the machinery make the products yourself.

• Make it yourself: The advantages of making your own product is the absolute full control of the entire process. The downside is that you have to do the entire process. From creating the item to shipment. Its all on you.
• Print on demand: You create the design, drive traffic to your store, once the customer purchases the design you have the company ( IE: Printful) create the final product and ship it to the customer. This normally tends to be less margins…. But after the design is made you just do customer service and collect a paycheck.

Disclaimer: This is my journey to make another 5k a  year. I might not make it and I might lose out on all the money I invest. Online stores do take a lot of time at the start and progressively go down a little. This will never be a 100% passive way to gain money. You will at some point or another have to handle customer service and in some cases all of the production details.

5k logo taken from – https://www.khcpl.org/resources/databases/250-pebblegoanimals

Finding our what you need to handle shipments is an ongoing process that doesn’t need to be fully tackled right away. Some items are absolutely required and some just offer comfort / speed increases.

1. Weight Scale – The size of the products you’re selling will determine the scale you’re going to use. For our Etsy stores,  ubermugs and Drink Everyday we use the Ozeri Pro II. Our home business consists of selling customized wine glasses and coffee mugs that tend to not weigh over 14 ounces ( with box and packing ). The small footprint and ability to measure minute changes makes this perfect for our use. Being able to accurately measure the weight of your items also lets you give your customers their exact shipping cost with no added surprises.

2. Printer – Depending on the size of your store, and frequency of shipments, investing into a laser printer might be a good option. The printer we started using is a Ricoh C250 laser printer. The price point of the printer tends to be on the lower end of the spectrum and it gives us the versatility to print in color (if need be) and print our shipping labels.

A great alternative to buying a standard printer would be a thermal printer. Thermal printers work by applying heat onto specialty label paper which then exposes the content you printed.  The printers themselves are also a tad bit expensive if you compare them to standard home printers. The thermal printer we use is the Dymo LabelWriter 4XL, which lets us print on 4 x 6 paper ( perfect for shipping labels). The downside to using these printers however is the paper itself. Original (OEM) paper can be quite expensive in the long run so we went with an aftermarket source (linked below). The speed at which we can produce and apply shipping labels to our orders makes this a no brainier. It’s literally print, peel, stick, ship.

• DYMO LabelWriter 4XL Thermal Label Printer
• Aftermarket Paper: DYMO 4×6 Direct Thermal Shipping Labels 4XL

3. Bubble Wrap and Void Fill – A pivotal part of shipping process is making sure that it makes it in the same condition you sent it in. Leaving empty spaces in a box makes the boxes less dense and more susceptible to caving in. Make sure you bubble wrap your items whenever applicable and use void fill to help fill up the rest.

TIP: You can use newspaper and easily shred it into strips to use it as void fill.

• • Bubble Cushioning Wrap 175′ – This comes perforated every 12 inches. If you’re sending small to medium items make sure you get something similar.

4. Tape (and TapeGun) – From securely closing your boxes to sealing your shipping label ( if done on a standard printer) this is an item you must have. While the tape gun is an option and not a requirement its ease of use and increased speed make this essential for your small business. If you’re shipping items under 5 lbs then the quality of the tape inst really an issue. If your store / shop / business tends to send items a little heavier than that then consider investing into better quality tape.

5. Boxes – By boxes I don’t mean just any ole box either. A dangerous thing to avoid when shipping merchandise is both the over-sized and undersized box. Finding the right box for the items you are shipping is imperative to the success of your business.  The first thing to get hit before your item is always the box!

We ship our wine glasses and ceramic coffee mugs in single corrugated boxes that measure 6(L) X 6(W) X 6(H). Single Corrugated means one inner wafer like cardboard sandwiched bettween 2 flat sides. Depending on the value of your items this may or may not be enough!

TIP: If you’re sending items via USPS priority sign up for a USPS account. There is a supplies section where you can order  boxes in different sizes free of charge. However they must be used solely for shipping items using PRIORITY and with USPS.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Clicking some of the links on this post will grant a commission sale which helps keep the site afloat.

There is no better feeling than opening your store and getting your first sale. The sensation, excitement, rush, is definitely something hard to replicate. Your first sale is the culmination of hard, dedication, patience, and perseverance. The problem however is reaching that milestone. These tips are suggestions that will help you in your quest to obtain the ever elusive first sale.

1. Have Patience.

Do not expect to be an overnight success story. My wife and I opened our first Etsy store, Drink Everyday , in early July of 2017. We didn’t get to experience the joy of  euphoria until the very end of the month. There were times of doubt, uncertainty, squabbles, and quitting ( my wife ). My stubbornness however didn’t allow me to give up!  It is absolutely normal for a store to not get a sale in the first couple of months.  Just like in life there is a learning curve to selling online.

2. Take better pictures.

6 Tips and Tricks To Get Your First Sale On Etsy | Take Better pictures with a photo booth / Lightbox

While having a DSLR , studio lighting, and a professional take your stock photos is great it’s definitely not practical. Make sure you take hi-quality, professional, and white background (whenever possible) pictures. Etsy currently allows you to add up to 10 photos to display to your potential customer. Take as many photos as necessary to show your  customer every nook and cranny possible. Make sure you give your customer an in store experience online.

Additional TIP: Depending on the lighting conditions in your home you should consider investing into a product photo booth. I was able to purchase a small photo booth with LED Lights and camera port for less than 20 dollars shipped off WISH.

3. Add content.

Once you’ve managed to get someone to get  to your store you’re going to want to make sure that your have something for them to look at. Not having a logo for your shop or a picture of yourself  shows you’ve done the absolute minimum to start a shop. Visitors are more willing to buy when all of the options are used. You’re going to also want to add a few listings to your store. If you have variations for your products try to add them as separate listings vs one so it shows you have more than what you do.

Ideally you will also want to have compelling descriptions that connect with your customer. Try to ask yourself what would I need to know in order for me to buy this item? Make sure to describe the process,  lead time, and shipping terms.

Additional TIP:  There is no shame in looking at what someone more successful is doing. If you find someone with a similar shop, see which ideas work best for them.

4. Learn how to understand some SEO.

Advanced levels of SEO  ( Search Engine Optimization) take hours and hours of trial and error to perfect. Make sure you follow some generic SEO tips when it comes to having proper titles, keywords, and descriptions.

Additional TIP: Common best practices for SEO.

• Make sure your most targeted keyword are towards the front of your title – both etsy and google will limit the search possibilities as they restrict the amount of characters they list. Having your strongest keywords in the front will ensure exposure to them.
• Your description should mention your top keyword or keywords
• Use all 15 of your keywords – Use word variations that describe your product.

5. Use promoted listings!

Getting traffic to an unknown store is a bit difficult at the start. Etsy tends to not “trust” you so-to-say so it buries you the search until you get some follows / likes. While promoted listings is an additional cost it should be something you consider.

Promoted listings are paid per click advertising. Your product will potentially be displayed on any of the 3 promotion panes etsy has per page. Deciding how much you want to pay per click boils down to you deciding if you want etsy to take the wheel or if you want to set a specified predetermined price. Your advertise will continue to run over and over until you reach your max daily limit (you set this when you start advertising). Advertisements are displayed in such a way where the highest bidder will receive more adverts until their daily limit is exhausted.

Additional TIP: Drink Everyday – Promoted Listing Details:

Our store has paid $505.22 promoted listings, has received 223 orders, and we’ve sold $3,615.66 worth of merchandise.

Depending on your bottom line this may be good or bad for you. Since we make our products our margins tend to be a little higher than most. We averaged, after cost for promoted listings, $13.94 per sale.

6. Use your tools!

Etsy provides you with some basic tools that will tell you a couple of things based on your visitors habits. It will include some of their searched terms, how many have visited, what country, and times of visits.  While powerful in their own right they definitely leave a lot to be desired.

There are 3rd party free / paid services that offer you a more in depth look into your business. One such company is called Etsy Rank. Etsy rank tends to give you some behind the scenes information that is not made readily available to the naked eye. 

The most appealing features to me have been Missing Tags, Missing Images, Missing Attributes, SEO Score, and Tracked Competitors. There is no better way to optimize your store to the best of its potential without a tool similar to this. Signing up is free for a basic package and they also have a paid version. I high suggest signing up for at least the free version so you can see what is offered. *This is not a paid advertisement and there is no affiliate link for Etsy Rank*