Join me on my journey from launching an Etsy shop to facing low sales, and ultimately considering to pivot toward printed photography, storytelling, and exploring local opportunities in my future new town in Andalusia.
A year ago, I participated in a six-month group coaching program called Launch with Mel Robbins. It was a brilliant program that sadly she no longer offers.
During those six months, I learned an incredible amount, and as a result, I opened an Etsy shop selling my photography. It was a steep learning curve. I decided to start with digital downloads which was a completely new world for me.
It took me three months of preparation. I had to learn about aspect ratios, zip files, mockups, listing videos, and more. And in November last year, I finally opened my shop with its first listing. I had even created a schedule to list one picture per day for the first 100 days.
By March, I had listed quite a few images and had made 9 sales. I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad, but my hopes were still very high. I figured that with enough listings, things would pick up. Once I hit 125 listings and was still sitting on 9 sales, I booked a consultancy session with an “Etsy expert.” That session happened in May and it was a turning point.
A Shocking Consultation: Misunderstood and Misjudged
The conversation left me in complete shock. I already knew that Etsy was a saturated market, especially for digital downloads, and that breaking through wouldn’t be easy.
The expert began with some basic stats:
75% of Etsy buyers are American
Most are women
Their age range is 25 to 45
Immediately, I knew this wasn’t my ideal audience.
A door in beautiful ‘rose’ village Camon
Then came the part that completely threw me. He asked me to describe my listing process, using an example: “I want to buy a photo of a door in Paris.”
I replied: “That’s possible, provided I have a picture of a door in Paris” and I began walking him through my process.
He stared at me and exclaimed: “OMG — I thought that you had created all your pictures with AI!”
I was floored. All my photos are my own work: all of them taken and edited by me. If he had spent even a few minutes looking through my shop, he would have seen that each listing is marked as not AI-generated. My “About” page clearly states that I take and edit all the images myself.
This expert, who was meant to assess whether we could work together, didn’t even prepare properly. And then he had the nerve to say: “Well, everyone can create images with AI, so there’s nothing special about your listings.”
At that point, I lost trust in him and the word ‘pivot’ came to mind.
Discouragement, Low Visibility, and Tough Choices
The purpose of his free session was to determine if he could help me grow my shop, for a substantial fee, of course. Although he was two minded, he said it could work, but it would take time, a lot of effort, and a substantial investment.
I opted out. Life was about to get hectic with a move from France to Spain, and Etsy wouldn’t be high on my list of priorities for the next few months.
Still, I can’t pretend I wasn’t disillusioned. For starters, I lost a lot of motivation to continue listing new pictures. Then I updated many listings to emphasize that they were authentic photos, not AI-generated images. I had ticked all the boxes to optimize my listings: titles, tags, descriptions, SEO — but despite all that, my visibility was practically zero.
Etsy is a saturated marketplace, and the algorithm seems to favour sellers who already make Etsy money. Without consistent sales, my shop likely won’t surface in searches no matter how good my work is.
What Now? Pivot, Pause, or Push Through?
I still believe my pictures are worth selling. But maybe Etsy isn’t the right platform. Maybe I shouldn’t offer them as digital downloads at all. Perhaps I should present them as finished physical products — framed prints, canvases, or greeting cards.
So now I am wondering: When do you quit? Or pivot in a different direction?
Right now, I feel a little lost. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe this pause is where the next step begins.
After doing a bit of planning ahead for 2024, I felt like reflecting on the year 2023 so far. In January this year I set myself a goal. My goal was and still is to create the foundations for a new business that hopefully and eventually can give me a ‘retirement’ income.
The job I have at the moment is not a bad one at all. I work online and as long as there is good internet, I am able to work where ever I want. No need to commute and to spend money spent on office outfits. A huge disadvantage is the lack of time freedom as it is essentially a job from 9-5.
So the aim is to ‘fix’ that with other income streams. I am aware that this is for many people a dream goal and it may not be as easy as it sounds. I am having a go and the year 2023 was the year to set up a few structures and work towards that goal.
Moving forward in the year 2023
During the first three months I have been focussing on my health and decluttering. Not literally decluttering but shifting unnecessary baggage from my mind and my computer. They do say, if you get rid of un-necessary clutter, you create space for new things. And somehow that happened and an iPhone photography course showed up in my social media feed.
It was affordable and I got stuck in to it when I finally caught covid in June. This little critter made me feel very tired so doing a course seemed a good way of passing the time. I even followed it up with an editing photo course. Very creative stuff and it motivated me to take pictures in a more focussed way.
I have to admit that I dabbled at photography since I was an eight year old. I grew up in a house with a dark room to develop pictures and I had a go at graphic design and photography at art school. You can read more about it at a later stage.
Being on a roll
Since then an online Finnish magazine chose two of my pictures and and published them in one of their online editions. One is the feature picture for this article and the other one is just below. I also have created an account with a stock photo company and I have now submitted close to 20 pictures.
To date, they have accepted 9 of them with a good rating and these nine pictures are now for sale. One photo got a rating of 4/4 and it happens to be the same picture that the Finnish magazine chose. Maybe it is indeed a good photo and you can see it just below.
Published in Docu Books volume 39
I feel I am on a roll. I have even gone so far as making the decision to create a photo gallery website. And after a few weeks of brainstorming a business name with friends and family I have now registered a domain. More about that to come!
So if I draw the year 2023 to a close, I have done two photo courses and have 9 pictures for sale on a stock photo website. Two of my pictures are published in an online magazine and I registered a domain for a photo site. I feel that is a fair bit of progress!
There is more in the pipe line but I am not ready to get that off my chest. After all the year is not finished yet…
Since I have been tracking my habits on a daily base, I have become aware of a few obstacles that could stall my progress. The habits I am tracking are exercise, sleep, alcohol intake, just to name a few.
To be precise, these obstacles are examples of self sabotage that unfortunately stop me from getting ahead. By tracking all kinds of things in my daily life, I have become alarmingly aware of some of my ‘lesser’ thoughts and actions. They must have been around for most of my life and I see how they have affected many aspects of my life.
My worst obstacles in a list
1.The first BIG one is procrastination. I realised that tracking and making daily notes, helps to reduce procrastination. As soon as I do not track, whatever I plan for next week is on dangerous grounds. Whenever a more urgent matter pops up, it seems to get more priority. Even if I write my intentions down, it is sadly not a guarantee I will do it.
Once certain behaviours become a solid habit, I tend keep to them as I don’t want to break the chain. A relevant example is doing daily steps. I have now been doing a minimum of over 5000 steps per day since the beginning of February. It has become part of my day and I don’t like to see a day with only 2369 steps so I make an effort.
2. That bring us to the next one – priority. I probably don’t give enough priority to my dreams and as a result they remain just that – dreams. Typically, I plan around a few aspects of these dreams but I don’t seem to make real progress. To be honest I am still not really clear why I do this but it is a stubborn recurrent pattern.
I feel that I let everything that ‘seems’ more urgent, come in the way of my goals. As if I ‘found’ an excuse not to have to commit. I say ‘seems’ because as a matter of facts I can say no, but often I give in and don’t. This not only refers to external requests from other people and situations, it also concerns my own choices. Will I write a blog post tonight or watch Netflix? Will I do yoga or sit on the couch? Familiar patterns to all of us, I am damn sure!
3. Number three has to be ‘feeling overwhelmed‘. I obviously want to do too much and have not a clear oversight of what I want to achieve. Maybe I need a coach! That kind of bugs me as I am always coaching other people successfully so why would I need a coach for my own stuff? This has to be a flaw of many coaches and counsellors. After all, if you can help others you must be able to help yourself, right?
I wonder if that is really the case. I am in the middle of all my thoughts, plans, intentions and dreams and as a result I obviously lack overview as I am part of it. So how do you create sanity in this chaos that you are part of yourself? How do people do that?
So obstacles or not, here is a quick recap – I have made 2023 a year of planning and creating the ground work for a future online business. And here I am making a fuss about not being able to ‘see the light’ in March. Do I ever learn? No wonder it does not make sense
4. So that brings me to the next obstacle – impatience. There is a wonderful quote by Tony Roberts about this.
Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in two or three decades.
Tony Roberts
Putting it in perspective
Instead of working steadily on this plan, I obviously imagined to have it ‘done and dusted’ by the end of March. That is quite ridiculous. So to put it in perspective, I have done a quarter of this year and so far I have worked on my health. I make sure I have a regular sleep pattern, minimise alcohol – in fact it is virtually zero at the moment. I do my daily steps and work my muscles, I meditate 4-5 times per week and I journal daily. All these things have become part of my daily routine and are no longer cut short by any obstacles. Not a single thought of procrastination in sight! An interesting take on how to beat procrastination is described by Mel Robbins. She reckons that the cause is avoiding stress.
If the above were the achievements from another person, I surely would applaud them. Yet, I don’t do this for myself and I wonder if how common this is…..
So to sum this up, I am in motion and I am making progress. Quarter 1 of 2023 was all about health and awareness of my physical condition. Now I have to plan what quarter 2 will be about – my gut says defining my NICHE.
During February I have been busy tracking a lot of my activities on a physical and mental level. My previous post was about habits and keeping track so I can find out what could do with a change.
I like to follow up with how that worked for me during February. The idea is to explore a few things in my life. One of them is how to become the type of person who is capable of setting up an online business by the end of 2023. I intend to reflect on that process once per month in a blog post. This is my first reflection.
The first thing I did!
One of the things that I implemented during February was tracking. I had my birthday in January and funnily two of my presents were tracking devices. To be precise, a Fit Bit and a really fancy planner called the Happiness Planner. Both of them are perfect to track a variety of things and that is exactly what I have done.
From a health perspective I tracked my sleep pattern, my heart beat, my water intake, my daily steps and exercise. It is quite cool to see what you can measure with such a thing. Furthermore I noticed something interesting.
While I was tracking my behaviour and my habits, I became more aware and motivated to do the behaviours I had chosen. For example, I decided to do every day 5000 steps as a minimum. Before I set the actual number as a minimum on my Fitbit, I did not achieve 5000 every day. Since I set the 5000, I make sure I walk that extra mile as I want to tick it off the list.
Tracking – does it work?
I love updating spread sheets and marking what has been done. Tracking steps, daily exercise and water intake seems to make me do what I need to do. It definitely helped me with measuring my progress and I did not want ‘to break the chain’. I wanted to show up and add to the chain. On top of it I really enjoyed doing it and was amazed how I managed to fit it all in.
Filling in the Happiness Planner is a similar activity. It asks me to think about intentions, habits and awareness to name a few. It also focusses on self love, gratitude and what to look forward to. I have noticed that I am natural good at tracking factual things such ‘to do’s and what to schedule.
When it asked me to reflect on ‘what I love about myself’ and ‘good things about today’, I have to dig a bit deeper. However, as such questions are asked on a daily base, I can’t do anything else than fill them in or at least have a go at it.
I am reading the well known book Atomic Habits and in there it says, that for a habit to stick, you have to feel successful even if it is in a very small way. I do have a feeling of achievement about last month – a sense of small wins. In reality not much has happened but I know now that I can walk every day 5000 steps. I make an effort to drink between 1-1.5 liters of water and my heart rate is behaving like it should.
Additionally, I have been doing a short meditation every morning after waking up, did the yoga sessions I scheduled and filled in my planner. I did this all before I started to work so getting up in time was crucial. Simply the act of tracking sparked my enthusiasm to continue doing the things I had set out to do.
All this has given me a sense of fulfilment. Above all it forces me to stay honest with myself as tracking acts as evidence of the progress I am making. To be honest, it is almost a bit addictive. And it means I have stuff to write in my planner.
On my list was the write a monthly blogpost about all of this and there you go! Here it is!
Feel free to let me know if you are the type of person that tracks! Even if it is just to see how you actually spend your time. There may be a dark side to the habit of tracking and that is that it becomes more important than the purpose of doing it. I surely keep that in mind!
January is usually the month where many of us tend to review our habits. Full of hope we set New Year’s resolutions and we hope to become a better version of ourselves. Unfortunately most of us will have forgotten about our good intentions by the end of the month.
Lately I have seen a new trend where people object to setting New Year’s resolutions. Instead they decide to set intentions and hope they have more chance of getting a successful outcome.
Believe it or not but intentions don’t seem to work either. None of these things are effective unless you back them up with measurable goals and a solid plan of process.
I also have set New Year’s resolutions in the past and forgot about them soon after. Looking at my goal setting history, I realise I may have to make a few changes to my approach if I want to be effective.
Therefore, I have decided on the following. Instead of setting goals and focus on the end result, I will concentrate on the process that I will need to go through. In addition, I am going to assess my beliefs and habits and see if they are congruent with the outcome I am aiming for. I am pretty sure my beliefs and habits are not as helpful as they could be. Consequently they may need a bit of ‘reframing’.
The plan is to do this with the help of the famous book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. I have been wanting to buy this book for a long time and for some reason it did not come my way. Until recently when I found it at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.
I started following James Clear almost a decade ago. At the time he was a photographer, a blogger and a body builder. Looking at his track record, he is walking the talk when it comes to creating new habits or getting rid of unhelpful ones.
Habits and identity
What appeals to me most is what he writes about the role of identity. This is not the first time I hear this but it comes down to the following. If you want to achieve certain things, you will have to become the type of person that is capable of achieving such things.
An example close to my heart is alcohol. If you are interested, you can read my blogpost ‘What is the best decision you made in 2022’ right here.
For instance, if you want to stop drinking alcohol, you will have to become a person who does not drink alcohol. It is not enough to remain someone who tries to stop. Another example that interest me is creating a successful online business. In order to do that effectively I have to become the type of person who knows how to create and market an online business. I obviously won’t be successful if I have have a go at it without having the necessary skills, strategies and timeline.
I have a few ideas for an online business. My intention is to explore how to become the type of person who is capable of setting up an online business by the end of 2023. I intend to reflect on that process once per month in a blog post. Writing about it will hopefully help me to keep on track and may give you a few ideas to act upon for yourself.
I hope you’ll find it inspiring to read and follow my experiences.
