How to start a digital business on Etsy with Julie Berninger and Cody Berman

Julie Berninger and Cody Berman are entrepreneurs from New England who founded Gold City Ventures which helps people start businesses selling printables and digital downloads on Etsy.

Julie is a mom to a toddler and former tech professional who worked at Apple and Amazon before taking entrepreneurship full-time. She earns over $1,000 per month in her Etsy Shop for printables, The Swag Elephant. She loves selling on Etsy because it gives her flexibility as a toddler Mom. She even took 6 months off Etsy to move cross-country last year (and still made over $10k)! Julie also has a lifestyle blog, Millennial Boss, and hosted a financial independence podcast, Fire Drill.

Cody is a digital nomad who quit his corporate job to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. He started selling digital products in 2018 and became hooked after earning $700+ in one week. Cody also hosts The Financial Independence (“Fi”) Show podcast. In his spare time you might find him traveling, working out, or building another business.

“Until you put products out there for people to buy, you’re not giving yourself a chance to really make money.” – Julie Berninger

“Momentum is the most important thing when it comes to starting a business.” – Cody Berman

Episode Highlights:

Two major shifts that happened during that pandemic in terms of buying and selling businesses
How to start your Etsy store
Marketing tactics for your Etsy store
How to do a keyword research for your Etsy store
How set yourself apart from your competition
How to generate leads using Etsy
Tips on creating trending products for your Etsy store
Some case studies from Julie and Cody’s students

Website and Resources:

Gold City Ventures
The Seasonal Products Secret (Free Ebook)
Be an affiliate under E-printables to get a free 20-page ebook on adding printables to your business!
The Swag Elephant
Millennial Boss
Fire Drill
Cody Berman
The Financial Independence (“Fi”) Show

Connect with Cody and Julie:

Facebook (Gold City Ventures)
Youtube (Gold City Ventures)
Instagram (Gold City Ventures)
Facebook (Julie Berninger)
Instagram (Julie Berninger)
Twitter (Julie Berninger)
Pinterest (Julie Berninger)
Tiktok (Julie Berninger)
Facebook (Cody Berman)
Instagram (Cody Berman)
Twitter (Cody Berman)
LinkedIn (Cody Berman)
Tiktok (Cody Berman)

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire, I'm Jamie Masters. And today on the show, we have Julie Berninger and Cody Berman. They founded Gold City Ventures and it's an awesome business idea that I'm going to let them tell you about. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Julie: Thanks for having us.

Cody: Yeah, excited about it.

Jaime: I love Etsy and I've literally bought I don't know how many printables on Etsy, but please tell me how you even came up with what you're doing.

Julie: Well, it all started back one lunch hour on my corporate tech lunch break, where I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And it was something that was always in my heart, but I was continuing to collect the gold stars in the tech world. And it was something that I just listened to. I consumed content about it, I didn't actually participate. Well, one podcast episode inspired me to start an Etsy shop. And at the time, I was in my 20s, I was going to lots of bachelorette parties and I decided that would be the perfect niche to start the shop in.

So, I ended up buying a bunch of temporary tattoos. I manufactured them, in terms of making the design, and they sold really, really well actually. In the bachelorette space, people are typically buying packs of 15/20 items at a time. They're not being too picky because they're kind of throw away things for one night, which as someone attending a bachelorette, I wasn't thrilled to always be shelling over lots of money to the maid of honor, whoever was throwing the event.

But as a business owner, that's a huge sign of, “Okay, I can have really good margins on this. There's demand for this. This is an important niche to get into.” So, that was going really well. But as someone that had this tech job, and I was trying really hard on that, I didn't have the mental capacity every day to be worrying about my side hustle. And I was starting to think of other ways that I can make this more passive.

So, I went to a conference and I actually met someone that sold printables on Etsy. And that was the game changer for me and my business where I realized, “Okay, I love ecommerce, but I don't have to be physically worrying about inventory. I can just change at the drop of a hat because all I'm doing is spending time on the computer to make these things.”

And then, technically, an infinite number of customers can buy from me with zero or very little action from me afterwards. This business was totally scalable, which is something that I was really excited about. But it was still in Etsy and I still sold in the bachelorette space. So, I still was able to have my fun too.

Jaime: How long did you just listen and consume content before you actually took a leap? Because I feel like most people have jumped, but the people that haven't jumped yet feel crappy just consuming and not doing anything. But it takes a while, so how long do you feel like you did that?

Julie: I started blogging and getting involved in this space in 2012. And it took me until 2016, but really 2017, when I started contributing myself. And I think that's the biggest switch for people, it’s going from being a consumer to a creator. And at the beginning, I was thinking, “Oh, I'm spending all this time, I'm doing all the things, I'm not actually making any money.” But until you put products out there for people to buy, you're not giving yourself a chance to really make money. So, that's something that I learned early on in my journey.

Jaime: Do you wish that you did it sooner? Or do you feel like it did take a little bit to get yourself – Because you gotta work up the courage to do some of it too.

Julie: I think at the beginning, those of us that got started through the blogging path, it's because we had something to say and we really wanted to get things off our chest. So, for me, it was about my student loan journey and financial freedom and debt payoff. And that was what I wanted to talk about. And I almost wrote and created content in that kind of, “Dear Diary,” type fashion.

But when I was starting to think of this more as a business and I wanted to make money, it didn't matter what I wanted to say, it's what do people want to consume? What do people want to buy? And that's a whole different thing. So, from now on, all of my businesses from everything, they're now created with that mindset of being customer focused, versus being seller focused. And that was something I had to learn.

Jaime: I had to learn that too. I blogged for a long period of time with nothing in the finance space also. And then, you're like, “Hey, customers matter.” Yeah, in order for you to quit your job. So, Cody, tell me a little bit about you and how you actually got into this.

Cody: So, gotta hand it to Julie, she was the one who introduced me to printables. But before that, I had become obsessed with the notion that your time didn't have to be associated with your money. So, passive income, these types of side hustles, where you could put the work in kind of beforehand, and then you could kind of enjoy the fruits of that labor in perpetuity. Like Julie was mentioning, once you create something like a digital product, you can sell that thing for thousands of times, unlike a physical product where you’re worrying about shipping, and inventory, and packaging.

And I had a physical product business before, it's not fun. But yeah [00:04:26] all these products, she's like, “I made like six grand from 50 hours of work.” And she was continuing to make money from that initial work, even after she had a kid and she took a year off from her Etsy shop and all this stuff. So, I started to give it a whirl. I started creating some printables, some different digital products. I had never really created a product before, so I didn't have any kind of a graphic design background. I didn't exactly know what I was doing.

But through some trials and tribulations, I finally had some decent looking printables. I was chasing seasonal products, which is a strategy that I often recommend to people who are getting started. And the Valentine's Day after I got started, so I think I opened my shop in October. Valentine’s Day, I had an enormous week of sales on Etsy because there was just that kind of built in search volume to the algorithm. There's so many people searching for last minute gifts and cards to give to their significant other and other Valentine's Day type gifts.

So, after that week was over, I was actually skiing in Lake Tahoe. I had made, I think it was like $800, from just a handful of products that took me a couple hours to create. And at that point, I knew I was hooked. But like I said, I gotta give it to Julie who introduced me to this space and kind of realizing that I could create products that didn't take time to deliver to people after I initially created it.

Jaime: And thank you for helping all the people who forget and go, “Oh, crap, I need to download something right away in order to give a gift.” I have never been one of those people ever. All right, so let's talk about Etsy and selling on Etsy. Actually, both my kids just started their own Etsy shops and we are going over names. I'm not an Etsy expert. I have no idea how to name a store. Can you tell me a little bit about how to name it and actually what you need to do to actually sell something on Etsy?

Cody: So, this is one of the biggest hang ups that new students, new people that we're coaching have is thinking of a store name, getting a logo designed. And the truth is, you can change this at any point during your journey. It's not like some platforms where once you kind of put this thing out into the world, it can't change, like a YouTube video for example. You can always change your Etsy shop.

So, literally, just put your name and then designs. Or put whatever you want just to get that thing started because momentum is the most important thing, in our opinions, when it comes to starting that shop. If you want to niche down later on and you find out that you have a really burning desire to make all these digital planners, then maybe you change your shop name something around digital planners. But when you're first getting started, the shop name does not matter all that much and you can always change it later on.

Jaime: I really appreciate that especially because I told her I was going to start a store at the same time with her because I have an art studio and make way too many things. So, I have to sell them to get them out of my house. And it's funny because I'm like, “I don't even know what I would…” – And I have not done anything because I didn't know what I would call it. So, thank you, Cody. I really appreciate that. All right, so are you just going based on the algorithm? Is it very SEO like, where you're trying to scoop up traffic that you already have? Or are there marketing tactics that you can do? Give me a little bit of a 101 on it.

Cody: Sure. So, I think Julie and I can definitely kind of add both of our insights here. But the cool thing about Etsy, and we get this question a lot, is you don't need a social media presence, you don't need a big email list because Etsy already has that buyer volume. There's over 90 million people buying on Etsy and the printable/digital downloads portion of that cohort gets bigger and bigger every year. So, unlike starting a Shopify store or maybe selling through WooCommerce on your own website, those places you need to bring the traffic.

You need to have a social media presence, maybe you're crushing it on Pinterest, or Instagram, or TikTok, or wherever. But on Etsy, if you're doing the right things, if you're checking the boxes, if you're doing the keyword research beforehand and making sure that you're looking for products that have decent amount of search volume, lower competition, you can start making sales right away with zero web presence beforehand, which is one of my favorite parts about Etsy.

Julie: Yep, and I’d like to add that Cody and I have two shops. I have my personal shop that started in the bachelorette space, and that's about generating income. So, I sell in multiple niches, last year it made over $10,000, despite the fact that I took six months off. This thing is a very passive side hustle. But I'm going after high search volume, low competition keywords, and using that before I even make the product. But Cody and I have a shop that’s shared together, and we're using it as lead generation. And some of your listeners, they may already have their own business, they know who their target customer is for their other business.

Why not add an Etsy shop, where you're essentially getting paid for every lead that comes through versus you spending money on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, wherever and you're advertising and you're having to pay cost per customer acquisition. Whereas, Etsy is paying you, it has 90 million buyers, there's got to be somebody in your niche. Put products out, attract your ideal customer, and here you go, now there's another lead gen strategy. It's not going to be an overwhelming waterfall like your top lead gen at all. But why not have something that works for you that brings leads into your business that can turn into higher revenue?

Jaime: I love this. I also start on Etsy whenever I look for anything to buy because I want to support local, people that have their own Etsy shop, instead of going on Amazon right away. So, how do we do keyword research? Is there a specific third party or tell me more about that?

Cody: So, there are some free tools and some paid tools. I guess we'll go over a few of the free ones first. Two easy ones you can kind of get your feet wet with keyword research is Google trends and Pinterest trends. It just gives you a good idea of overall, what are people searching for during certain times of the year, during certain periods, during certain events. And then, you can kind of use that as a guideline, as parameters to create printables. Another one Julie and I talk about a lot is eRank, and that is a specific tool for Etsy. It shows Etsy search traffic, it shows Etsy competition, it shows how your Etsy listings are doing matched up with other people. It's a really awesome tool.

There is kind of a lot that goes into it. But once you kind of combine all those tools and start to understand, like a lot of us who have come from the blogging world, trying to optimize for keywords and getting that unicorn, where it's really high search traffic and low competition. The same exact thing with Etsy, the same thing where you're trying to find that product that a lot of people are searching for and there's not that many other people selling that type of product.

Jaime: Okay. And I know you guys are specifically for printables because a) You don't have to have anything, which is awesome. When it comes to printables, I'm assuming if you guys are going after that, you're just going to try and beat everybody else for their printables. No? Is there a lot of competition for printables because it does seem so easy to get into?

Julie: No. And I think that's another common hang up that people have, where they sort of convince themselves that the market is too saturated. But from what Cody said earlier, the demand for printables is only beginning. So, if you think about the pandemic, and how that year was sort of fundamental in changing ecommerce, changing how people buy. Instead of going with their parents to the store and buying birthday party décor, physically in a store, people are DIYing it, they're getting inspired from Pinterest, or what they see on TikTok. They're buying these little printables from Etsy.

I have a 2-year-old daughter, her class exchanged Valentine's. I know exactly where to get the Valentine's. I get them from Etsy, I print them out, I try to make them cute to impress the other parents because toddlers don't care at this point. Right? And that's something that's part of our culture now. So, this is only the beginning of printables. When I started my Etsy shop back years ago, there were other people that were selling printables in the bachelorette party niche. But I saw that as proof that people want to buy this thing.

In my opinion, you never wanna be the absolute first person to the party because you're going to have to create a market for your thing. You should see what else is already selling from other people, make your product more competitive in whatever way. Still go after those keywords that are still somewhat undiscovered, but there's more than enough room for all of us selling on Etsy. And it's not a real cutthroat – Etsy sellers are nice people, in general, it's really not a cutthroat environment on Etsy.

Jaime: Phew, so it's not Amazon. People get hardcore. Very, very hardcore when it comes to that, which I mean, its business, right? So, I totally understand. I love how you guys, on your website, have templates, white labeled templates that you – So, even if you actually suck at graphic design, everybody, go on their website and you can see all the templates that they created.

And just take those because they are allowed to sell those because they're white labeled, which is killer. So, when it comes to something like that, and maybe there are a bunch of them that are similar in sort of different skinned on Etsy, what do you do to set yourself apart? Is it more customer service based? Is there anything else that you can do for a key differentiator, just besides your brand?

Julie: Yep. So, the first thing to know is that Etsy has a handmade requirement. So, templates absolutely speed up the process. And even someone like me that's been doing this [00:12:55] templates because I don't want to six different checkboxes in a row and get it all aligned. I want to buy someone else's check boxes and then make my product on top of that. But you are required, more than just changing the color, you do have to material change the product. And that comes second nature for those of us that have been around a while.

But if you're new, just try to be creative about how you can turn that template into either a different product, or maybe a niche down version of that product. Maybe it was a general product, but you're going to make it for kids, or you're going to make it a Valentine's Day card for somebody's boyfriend for their first Valentine's Day. Take that down the rabbit hole niche train and then you're gonna be creating a material different product than what was originally provided. But that's something I think that more experienced sellers can do. And they use templates to speed that process up.

Jaime: I never want to start a business, but you're making me want to go like, “Oh this sounds really fun.” Just the creativity behind it, but not overly complicated. Because I know all of yours are Canva templates, I'm like, “Oh, Canva is super easy.” That's really awesome. So, what about the rest of the Etsy process? How do we get the email addresses from them? I know you were saying for a lead generation would be amazing. But what sort of formats are we getting on lead magnet stuff? How do we sort of set ourself apart when it comes to that stuff?

Cody: So, in terms of collecting email addresses from your customers, that's a no-no. You do get the email address from Etsy, but there are some crafty ways around it. So, some successful things that we've seen and that we've tried is putting in your listing pictures, for example, “Join my email list for these freebies.” Or, “Join my email list for a 50% off coupon to my shop.” You can also put this in your listing description, there's a lot of different ways you can do it.

Or even on the printable itself, Julie and I, in our shared template shop, we have, “Okay, here's your PDF download for the template you just bought. And you can access the Canva links and everything here. But also, here's a freebie for some printable ideas. Here is our social media.” So, as we're delivering products to people through Etsy, we’re also collecting their email addresses, if they want to give it to us. But just wanna kind of give that word of warning, you can't just grab every single purchaser from your Etsy shop and throw them on an email list and then start to market your products to them. They do have to opt in.

Jaime: Thank you for saying that. Everybody should already know that, but thank you for saying that again. Because some people do that and I think that they're crazy. But I know I bought printables and I’m pretty sure in the description or something, they're like, “Oh, get it for free.” And I'm like, “Well, I already bought one, so why would I not get it for free?” Right? It just makes logical sense to be able to get their email address that way. When it comes to that though, do you just push people back to your Etsy store, now that you have them on your email list? Or do you guys have sort of more business, other things to sell on the back end besides the Etsy store in the upfront?

Cody: I think this is a great question and there are so many different things you can do once someone purchases that product. So, I know Julie mentioned before, using them as lead gen, if you have any type of higher ticket offer, if you have a coaching program, or a mini course, or a mastermind, and you get people into the door by giving them a printable that's really aligned with that thing that you're selling – Julie and I have gotten people on our email list with our printables before.
And then, we upsell them or they kinda get in our community, and now they're attracted to the other types of things that we're selling. So, if you're already not convinced that, “Okay, I don't really wanna sell on Etsy, this doesn't seem like the right-side hustle for me.” Maybe instead of the, “Join my newsletter,” banner or click box in the middle of your blog post, maybe now you give a really high value printable, or digital download to grow that email list. And then, you can upsell later on.

So, there are infinite things you can do. Yes, Jamie, you can definitely send people back to your Etsy shop. “Hey, I just created all these awesome new products for,” insert occasion. “Come check it out on my Etsy shop if you want.” But you can also kind of steer people in any direction, the money is in the list, and it's so true. And if you use it as a list builder, get people into your ecosystem, into your community, the possibilities are endless.

Julie: And one thing I wanna add, this advice is tailored towards people that already probably have a six figure business, and they [00:16:57] funnel, and they're moving towards that seven figures. At this point, we've taken almost 4,000 students through the course. Not everyone is just there in their business journey, and printables can be really, really simple. And that's where you need to start. So, before you start thinking, “Oh, I got to create a website and I have to do a blog and I got to do social media.” And then, suddenly you're truly too overwhelmed to be successful because you're distracted.

Go back to the basics. Etsy has 90 million customers, all you need are good titles, good tags, the right product, and that's where you start. And then, once you get maybe 5,000 sales or you're moving along, then you're ready to start taking people on your journey. Or if you already have an existing funnel and you already can just hook up your lead gen to your funnel. But I did wanna mention that because we're speaking from the perspective of seven figure business owners. But if you're on day one here, or you're still pretty new, just don't overwhelm yourself, start with the basics, small wins every week, that's where you're going to get ahead.

Jaime: That's why I wanna start – I know what's involved in a real business, not real business, but you know what I mean. I know what's involved. It's crazy. And this seems like something that's very simple and contained, like my kids could actually go ahead and do it too. They’d probably outsell me also. So, tell me a little bit more about titles. And actually, give me some tips in regards to some of that because I’m gonna make my kids watch this, just so you know, hi children. But give me some more, so that way they know how to rank, a little more keyword research, because we are geeky here.

Julie: So, with the younger people, they are more comfortable buying digital products online. I actually started to dabble more in this space. And whenever you're selling a product, that you're not the target consumer for it, you really have to make sure you get it. So, one keyword that I found that was good, aesthetic, is kind of what all the young people want. They want all the same color and pastel and I can't even explain to you what this is, but I realize, “Oh, this is a massive keyword. So, let me try to figure this out.”

So, I started making these iOS app icons. Apparently, your iPhone is not pretty enough, you have to change all the icons, so that your whole screen is the same color or whatever. Honestly, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever, but I'm someone that I don't care, if people are willing to buy this thing, then I'm gonna figure out how to make this. So, that's something that I leaned into. So, I guess my advice to your kids, yes, we can say, “Make sure that the title has – the first keyword that you use is the most important, obviously. Make sure you're coming up with 13 high value tags.

But really, it's the way that you win is before you even make the product. You got to find things that are trending and your kids will know what is trending. Because [00:19:26] people tend to be on top of that stuff, already going to be at a huge advantage. If there were more young people that were putting out shops, it would be insane. I was one of the first people that were realizing that that was a good keyword, back a year and a half ago. I'm sure there are people that still haven't realized it.

Jaime: Do you know how many things I have bought for my daughter that said the word – she's obsessed and she changes every iPhone thing, and it's a whole thing that I also had no idea. So, I appreciate that I'm not alone in regards to this. I bought so many printables that are all purple aesthetic for the room. Do you know what I mean? And then, they change their mind a little while later and then we buy all blue. But for you, that's an amazing business because you have people like me that have to keep buying it over and over and over again. I think that's amazing.

And like you said, knowing your target market in any business is huge. How did you research that? I have a 12 year old daughter, so that's the only reason why I know about this. When you found that keyword, how did you research 12-year-old girls?

Julie: So, I don't have access to 12-year-old’s, but my younger cousins are in their 20s. I have two female younger cousins. They seem very hip. Honestly, they convinced me to buy mom jeans over Thanksgiving. I still don't know if it was a mistake or not. It's a moment where I'm like, “I'm not cool anymore.” I just went on abercrombie.com and bought tons of mom jeans. It was such a mistake, like weird, what am I doing? But I reach out to them and I try to get info.

And they're like, “Oh, lol, this is what it is.” But they're not telling me from a business perspective. I need to really say, “Okay, well what is this? Are you guys using this? Do you buy water bottle stickers?” And they're like [00:21:03].

Jaime: There we go, actually talking to your target market. Who knew? It's so funny because when we're online businesses, everyone just assumes we have to find a group and survey them and blah, blah blah. You're like, “I have a random cousin that knows what aesthetic means. And I ask some questions about it. Tada.” So, it's not like we have to go nutso. What did you do once you found them and you got that information? How did you morph it into selling more for that store?

Julie: Then I had to understand what the top keywords were because I know what their personal preferences are for aesthetic, but that doesn't mean that that's what – and I wanna go after what the majority of people want. So, at the time, boho was another keyword that tended to be trending along with aesthetic. So, I looked up what does that mean? I'm on Pinterest, I'm really trying to get to the bottom of this. And this is where we see a lot of students make a mistake with this particular part of the journey.

So, for example, we had a student that recently wanted to make coloring pages for kids, and they were selling them in a pack of one. But me, being a toddler parent, I know that parents are giving those to their kids because they need time. And my daughter will color that thing in five seconds and then she's asking me for something, and I need that 15/20 minute block to get something done. So, I need a pack, one isn't going to interest me. So, those type of things, you need to either know someone in the target market, or just be willing to spend a lot of time keyword researching.
We have very specific strategies that we teach, that we use, using various websites to try to get that full picture because both Cody and I sell in spaces where we're not the target buyer. We didn't have printers before we even started this. So, for me, it's not in my heart. Whereas, I have friends, they’re printables people, they’re Etsy people, it's in their heart, it comes so naturally to them. For us, it's not us, so we end up spending a lot of time doing that research.

Jaime: Yeah, Cody, digital nomad is not going to have 1,000 pictures on a wall or a printer in his backpack, I'm guessing. You tell me, Cody.

Cody: You’re absolutely right.

Jaime: Well, how did you, Cody, sort of start to figure out what your Etsy – because are you an Etsy person in general?

Cody: I became one after Julie exposed me to it. But yeah –

Jaime: He’s like, “Money.” Yeah.

Cody: I was just obsessed with the passive income piece of this. Like I said before, I kind of came from the side hustle, personal finance background. And I was trading all this time freelancing and just doing things that involve me to physically do something. But how I've kind of adapted my shop, or the strategy that works for me is the seasonal product stuff that I was talking about before. So, when you're thinking about what products to create, think about the holidays that are coming up.

Because there's just so much inherent search volume built up for that holiday, like Valentine's Day just happened, recording this in February. If you're creating printables in October or November, think of the next thing that's coming up. Oh, Christmas is right around the corner. There's a ton of search volume for Christmas printables and Christmas gifts and digital stuff. So, I've used that and kind of adapted or adopted that strategy into my shop, and how I think about creating printables.

Because once you have, kind of going back to the template idea, once you have that base template, now you can kind of adapt that template to whatever holiday, whatever event, whatever season. You could have a Christmas planner; you could have some kind of a Valentine's Day, love, adventure planner. And this is just from the regular planner template. So, there are infinite possibilities once you kind of understand the keyword research [00:24:33]. Yeah, that's kind of been my strategy, is just following the seasonal stuff, letting the demand come to me, rather than chasing the demand.

Jaime: I love it. All right, so tell me a little bit about – because you guys, of course, I'm interviewing you. You guys know what you're talking about. Tell me about your students. Are there any case studies of other people that aren't as cool as you that might have figured it out because you taught them how?

Julie: Yes, and that's been the most fun part. Because, for me, I was collecting all my awards, gold star, trying to do the corporate tech thing. And it was actually really hard for me to leave that career to do entrepreneurship. But the pandemic made that really easy because I became overwhelmed so fast with everything going on, no childcare. No one needs to hear me say this because I'm sure a lot of you went through that at the same time as me. But the success that some of our first students have had and where they are now and some of them – we do this as a side hustle.

This was always a side hustle course from day one. But some of our students they just loved Etsy so much, and they were also struggling, there are a lot of parents and people that are in my demographic. They ended up putting more time than we suggest. We say you can do five hours a week on this side hustle; they're putting 15/20 hours. One of our students, she made $150,000 I think it was last year on Etsy. We had another student, she's an accountant, she has two kids. She ended up being able to leave her full-time job. And she travelled in an RV with her kids for a year, which was really cool.

We have someone else, she is in the UK, actually. UK tends to be another place – people in the UK haven't hit on to printables, it's more of a US thing. But there are a lot of sellers that are coming from there. And she was able to leave her full time job just recently. But she decided, you know what? I'm going to get a printer because why not? There’s a big market, not everyone wants to print themselves. She actually offers shipping too and she'll print at home and she'll ship. She had a friend that was in the printer business, helped her pick out a commercial printer, and that's what she does.

So, we've had all these kind of crazy students, where I've made $1,000 per month. Last year I took six months off to move 3,000 miles across the country with my family. This has been a side hustle for me, but we have students that they’ve just blown our numbers out of the water because they just love it and they're into it. So, yeah, it's been really cool seeing them succeed.

Jaime: Yeah, I love it. And testimonials are like gold, right? You’re like, “And I helped somebody in life.” Tech is awesome, don't get me wrong, but it's really amazing to change people's lives. What about the upkeep? Because you said you moved and took six months off, how much – let's say they build it up in five hours a week. Once it's going and maybe they are making 1,000 plus a month. How many hours a week is keeping it sustainable?

Julie: Well, I spend zero, if that helps everyone out. The only thing I did was message people back. Because Etsy has – they're very big on customer service. So, if someone would ask me a question, in the digital download space, we'll tell you right now, it could be a meme. It's the same exact question. “How do I download this?” And then, you have to tell them, “Oh, you have to go on a computer.”

Because for some reason, Etsy doesn't let them do it on their app. So, it's the same question, that's all you really have to do. And by the end of the six months, I started dropping $200 a month. And that's a sign of, “Okay, you got to put some more products out there.” Maybe I lost some competitive edge on a few of them. But the other businesses I do are not passive, this particular one is as close to it as you can get.

Jaime: Yeah, zero. And I love that we can hear your kiddo in the background. I get it. I totally understand.

Julie: Story of my life.

Jaime: Yeah. The pandemic was great for moms that had children at home and they get to have homeschooling and business. It's great. Cody's like, “Yeah, sweet.”

Cody: I'm like, “Not yet, not yet for me.”

Jaime: Awesome. Well, I know we have to start wrapping up soon. So, I’m gonna ask you each, individually, the same last question I asked every single time. Oh, aw, now there's a kiddo. Hi. Staring blankly, I love it. All right, so Cody, we'll start with you. What is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Cody: If people haven't got a taste of passive income, it is honestly a life changing feeling. Even if that is $5 from selling a digital product. And that's why we're so excited about printables, in general. Of course, printables you might not make as much money as buying some kind of business, or being an angel investor, or investing in real estate. But it's one of the easiest businesses to start and actually get a taste of what passive income is like. Literally waking up to your phone notification, “You made $10 while you were sleeping last night.” It's a crazy feeling, and most people haven't experienced that.

So, if you have not experienced any type of passive income, create a digital product, throw it up on Etsy, just see where it takes you. Momentum is so important, I know I mentioned that earlier, but just getting that first product listed, even if you're scared, if you're worried about your shop name, or you're worried about your logo, or all these other things that can be stumbling blocks for some people, just get started, get that first taste of passive income. I promise the taste is so sweet that you will not go back to thinking how you did before.

Jaime: I love it, the taste is so sweet. All right, Julie, what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Julie: I have one that's a little more of a left turn. But given that I had that interruption with a kid, I'm gonna say this, you do not have to build your business by yourself. So, Cody and his girlfriend, they were in Aruba, Park City, and Greece in the last – his fiancée now, in the last three months.

Meanwhile, I'm in here with my daughter, childcare issues. We're in a whole different life ballgame here. But because we build this business together, he's covering for me when I need it. I've been able to cover for him when he does what I consider a little bit more fun things that I’m doing, although raising a kid is rewarding. That’s something that we’ve done from the beginning, so you don’t have to do it by yourself.

Jaime: I love that. Now I wish I asked so many questions about partnership. Maybe we’ll have you guys come back on the show. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, tell us where we can find more about you, and where we can get the templates, and the printables, and all that fun stuff.

Cody: Sounds good. Yeah, thank you so much for having us. This was a ton of fun; Julie and I love talking printables. We talk for hours on end every single week. Goldcityventures.com is where you can find us. We do have a free eBook for your listeners that we sell, but we’ll give that to you guys for free. You can find that at goldcityventures.com/eBook. You’ll be able to find the templates, all the other stuff just on our regular website, goldcityventures.com.

Jaime: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, and thanks for your little kiddo to say hi to. Have a wonderful day, guys.

Cody: Thank you.

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