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Category: E-commerce Tips
Tags: BusinessDesignEtsyMarketingSales
Entities: Cassie JohnsonEtsyEverbeePrint on DemandUS Patent and Trademark Office
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after losing her job in 2020 she started an etsy shop and it has made over 500 thousand dollars on etsy in just two years without touching any inventory today we're talking a full-time seller cassie johnson about how she grew her esee print on demand shop and the strategy that she uses to create
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consistent and growing sales be sure to watch the entire video guys you won't hear any of these strategies anywhere else stuff that you haven't heard before so let's stop in the conversation now [Music] awesome cassie how are you
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hi i'm great how are you doing doing great thank you so much for coming on the channel i really appreciate it um we're so curious tell us your story and how how you found etsy absolutely so in 2020 like a lot of people i ended up losing my job in march
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and so i was home and looking for something to do and i stumbled across a youtube channel teaching print on demand and etsy and i'm the kind of person who just gets excited about things and does it right away so within 24 hours i had an etsy
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shop and i had my first listing up for sale crazy okay well back up so we're gonna digest that a little bit so you lost your job in 2020 and you were going on youtube trying to figure out probably what the next i don't know look for something interesting is that kind of like when
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you why you went to youtube yeah yeah i was looking for ways to make money online you know and i ran across a lot of like drop shipping type videos you know find products from china sell it on a shopify store and that all just sounded like a lot but then as soon as i found a video about etsy print on demand
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it was like hey you can start this literally today in 10 minutes and uh so yeah i just started that's interesting and probably print on demand was because one you mentioned like it's just easy fast to start um probably you got attracted to like the lower cost to start also naturally like
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just a little less investment probably to go into yeah pretty close to free i mean you have to buy some mock-ups and pay some 20 listing fees on etsy but pretty low barrier to entry you know you don't have to apply to sell an etsy you can just open up your shop and start that day which i think was the big lure
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to me at the time big time i totally agree like uh i've experienced on like selling amazon walmart and stuff like that and like coming to etsy versus all those other platforms was night and day difference it was so fast you can get up and running very quickly very cheaply uh so i i totally agree with that um and
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you are go ahead sorry i'd say i'm a shopper of etsy for years and so it's already familiar with kind of the platform and what people sell on there and i bought lots of presents and so i felt really comfortable with it since i've already used it for years so cool um
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where did you like where did you get the idea for for what you know kind of niches that you wanted to go into right for having an etsy shop is it because you were already buying some of the things that you wanted to sell or like how did you get to that world absolutely so in the beginning and still
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now you know it's kind of a game of seeing what other people are already selling especially when you first start it's hard to know what people buy t-shirts for you know in your head you're like thinking there's only certain things people would buy t-shirts for but people buy shirts
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for every holiday every occasion every season and so in the beginning it's kind of overwhelming and i found myself making a lot of like really generic shirts like you know butt first coffee you know those kinds of things and i found those just by looking
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through the etsy search results and seeing what people had best seller badges on and if say there was like a bestseller badge on a butt first coffee shirt you know i'd make my own version of the text on a shirt obviously given if it wasn't trademarked and then i would list that
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for sale i love it okay cool um when did you kind of so trying to go back to your first first story as well like so 2020 you found it you found a youtube video you started your etsy shop the same day you made your own listing same day or different day
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first lesson okay what was that the first listing that you created was it the first day or was it like a couple days after when no i had my first listing up the first day yep i made one in three seconds and put it up there you know one thing that i have as a super power is i don't over think things as
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often which sometimes is bad but in cases like this it's good a lot of people sit and spend 30 minutes on the design and try and make it perfect but usually if you just put some words in one cute graphic you know you're good to go you don't have to make things 17 different colors and four graphics and
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just the right size you know simple really does sell better sometimes i love that okay and then when did you think how long did it take to get your first sale i actually got my first sale within 24 hours i think that was just kind of like um a lot because my mother-in-law bought
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from me which i wasn't counting as my first sale that was very sweet of her but because she bought a mug from me that same mug sold that day as well from someone else she do get a little boost in the algorithm if someone else buys something from you and so i did kind of get that immediate
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gratification gosh yeah at that point you're probably hooked you're like wow this is the platform for me at least there's like immediate attraction kind of immediate and um i think that's what we could probably spend some time talking about that a little bit too is like how that happened you just mentioned that your
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mother-in-law purchased that that product from you that kind of sparked the algorithm to be like hey i think like that thing converted pretty quickly and then it probably showed it to more people and then you happen to convert on another one because the listing was probably good and the product was good
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and all these other things were good and sure enough it just kind of like steamrolls from there is that would you agree right yeah absolutely and i think one of the big reasons it sold as well is you know if you go by what's selling right now then people are looking for that right
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now so that particular item was a quarantine themed item and so that was a really hot seller at the time you know people couldn't see each other social distance and so a lot of people are sending each other gifts and so that's exactly what mine was so i
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think it's part you know having good simple designs getting it up there but having what selling right now is really important i love that um that's awesome and just to give everybody some context you are what do you do full time now now you
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lost your job in 2020 tell us about your like your full-time gig or however you want to put it absolutely so in june of 2021 i officially quit my full-time job that i went back to after quarantine or a different job anyways and so since june of 2021 so just coming up almost on
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a year i've been full-time just on etsy and then in the last six weeks i started a youtube channel that i'm doing full-time now as well i love that it's so so inspiring right like everybody listening to this but they're inspired because they want to be where you are right we a lot of us are
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very similar right we all want to have like time freedom we don't have financial freedom and we want to have like those freedoms you know that that you pretty much have with your etsy shop and obviously you're going to different ventures now and educating people on how they can do it too and that's super amazing um
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when when you went into etsy like in 2020 what was your mindset is your mindset of hey i want to do x amount of dollars in revenue or profit from my etsy etsy shop in one year or like how did you even think about that absolutely so i didn't go into it with a
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ton of expectations you know the video i had watched teaching you how to do it they were like well i sold 759 000 in my first eight months you know and so i figured that might not happen um but i had high hopes you know i just wanted to make a bunch of money but even at that
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time i don't think that i was really thinking like right off the bat this is it this is how i want to make a full-time income it was more like i've always been interested in having a side hustle maybe this could be it it's amazing and it actually worked
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because because you put the work into it um you were in another conversation that we had and i wanted to share that too is talk about the amount of listings right like you didn't just get lucky i want to make that very clear like you didn't just get lucky you're not a one-off like lucky scenario where
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where you happen to start in 2020 and you happen to get your first sale in 24 24 hours and then you're just like you know everything works great for for cassie right like you mentioned you had tons of listings can you talk to me about like how many listings that you have on your shop and so everybody kind
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of hear the amount of work you have put in absolutely so i've just been just under two years total so i think it's like the first week in may is when i officially officially started my etsy shop and in that time i don't have this many listings active anymore because
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sometimes things fell off but i've made over 5 000 listings amazing two years yeah in two years so it's been a lot of work you know i think a lot of that it just helps you get into new niches you know my philosophy with etsy is that it is a
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general store you know most people coming to etsy have something particular in mind they're going to come search it in the search bar and they're going to look through those results and compare you and the other people that have similar items for sale and they're going to buy the one that they want
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and so if sometimes people will click on your store and actually shop just from your store but i'd say that's probably not as common as people just buying from the actual search results so kind of my philosophy there was i want to try and be in as many niches as possible to find
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the ones that are profitable for me and so i'll put you know one new shirt or five new shirts into a niche i've never sold before and then if it starts selling i add that to new colors i add it to tote bags i add it to mugs i add it on sweatshirts and i'll really just
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make different versions of it make a couple shirts of it you know so soon as you find some of that success then i really try and capitalize on it yeah you double down on what's already working exactly that's the easiest way to make more money for sure i think there's there's so much there that probably
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everybody can take away from but i think at the fundamental like the fundamentals of that of do what do more of what is already working right and just do more of it change it a little bit just do more of it i think that's the whole that's the whole thing with online online selling like we don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time um
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i think it's also amazing how you mentioned that you you're more subscribed to the type of thinking of like a general type of store whereas like that's contrary to the majority of stuff we hear on youtube on blogs things like that about like you need a niche down niche town niche down um
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i'm curious like when did you kind of decide that you're going to be more of a general store did you go into that thinking that way or how's your how did you frame your mind you're thinking around that yeah you know just it just so happened that the videos that i saw recommended doing it
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that way and so i didn't even know that people did niche stores when i started which i think worked out really well for me i think there's some niches that sell all year round but most niches are seasonal and so it's hard to have a consistent
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business 12 months out of the year every year forever selling just one niche and so i think being in all these different niches has really allowed me to have a really consistent income while being full-time on etsy i think
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that's that's powerful for everybody to hear too because that's the way i view etsy a it's a search engine right it's if you want to compare it to amazon compared to amazon right and some people would hate that but point is like people go there with a high buying intent they're looking to buy something specific um there may be a little bit more shopper intent like on
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etsy versus amazon like amazon if i'm looking for a mouse pad right like i'm looking for a mouse pad and that's pretty much it whereas etsy i'm typing a mouse pad and i may be thinking about like well i want one customized for me or i want like one special or something like that which is but it's still the
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same kind of thing um i don't know if that's a good example or not but uh like i agree with like having more general because yeah we get spread out across across the platform and you have more opportunity to to convert on buyers absolutely yeah i definitely agree you
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know on amazon for instance until i started selling online i thought everything on amazon was for sale by amazon i didn't know that it was like a bunch of little individual people selling everything you know i knew that about etsy because it before it was just a handmade market and that's kind of how
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it was marketed you know but definitely in the last few years when they changed the rules that your items just have to be unique but you can use a print provider you know that's definitely opened a lot more doors for people before you'd have to own your own cricut or your own t-shirt printing
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and that's a lot of extra work you know i think most people are probably in the t-shirt world doing print on demand now because i'm just a one-person business if i was printing all these myself you know in um november of 2021 i think i sold 2400
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shirts i can't imagine having to have sat down around the holidays and hand printed you know that many but it definitely lets you kind of scale it quite a bit more i agree yeah print on demand is certainly like an amazing opportunity that's like available for literally anybody with a
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computer right it's it's wild i definitely like my hats off i get my hats off to people that own their own heat press they own their own printer all those things that's amazing that's but it's just i understand now i've always understood like that's a disadvantage in a lot of ways
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um just because you now you have to like man that heat press and then you also have to like if you don't want to do it you have to have an employee and by the way where you where do you live probably in the u.s or like somewhere that's pretty expensive labor right so now you have a more overhead and you're more risk so i do i do love print-on-demand
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for that world or for that for that reason one downside with print on demand is obviously the competition because it's low-hanging fruit pretty much anybody can have a print-on-demand store how do you separate yourself from from the competitors and your niches absolutely that's a great question so
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there's always new niches i think is the biggest thing you know i think um a lot of people are worried that etsy is oversaturated so i think you are not alone in saying those words you know a lot of people are like well you know there's 40 000 coffee themed shirts how
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would i ever get seen and there's a couple different things that go into me saying it's not over saturated is i think etsy came out saying that they have like 90 million buyers a year and only like 5 million active sellers
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and so there's still a really big gap for all of us to fill to sell all the things to those customers you know there's a big market and the nice thing about the way that the etsy algorithm works is everyone when you search something you're going to get completely different results
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based on what you've purchased what you've clicked on and where you live and so if i live here in michigan someone that lives in michigan as well is more likely to see my listings than someone else and so i don't think that it's
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unrealistic to think that you can get on the first page of some of these things a lot of people think that you can't get seen but if you just have a design that stands out really great mock-ups and the right seo you know i've ranked for the first page of things like teacher
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sweatshirt which is one of the highest searched keywords for that and last month my most highest search term on my etsy shop was batch threat party shirts not even a specific one and so you really can rank for those things but you have to put in the work
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first you know you have to fill out your entire etsy shop you have to make unique designs have gorgeous mock-ups the prettiest ones you can find anywhere have your description fully filled out have your faqs fully filled out you know you get ranked by etsy on
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all of those things combined to get your listing score so just to stand out as far as designs go my favorite way to make sure i stand out is to look through the first or second pages of the results see what everyone
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is designing and try and do something that's been successful in a different niche there's a lot of different design styles out there you know so i might say you know everyone on this page is making like a blocky text with cursive underneath it with every other letter
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being a different color and that's pretty much the whole first and second page because a lot of people like to copy each other and do things just a tiny bit different so maybe in that case you know i'd take a popular style i've seen in a different niche and put like a rainbow with just cursive underneath it
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you know do something i've already been seen successful for a different niche and bring it to that niche that doesn't have anything that looks like it so again only doing things that you've seen success with but bringing it to somewhere that hasn't seen it before yeah i love that yeah
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again you're trying to replicate the success that you're seeing from another niche oh so in regards to you're going back a little bit in regards to the ranking right and how you showed up for i think teacher sweatshirt you said i think it's also important for everybody to hear is everybody gets a chance to be ranked
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like everyone has a time to shine like for example if i launch a teacher's reaction today uh and it's a brand new listing very likely my listing is actually going to be ranked for that teacher sweatshirt at some point for a short period of time it's like what we call a honeymoon period that's the same thing where we see like
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if we type in teacher sweatshirt right now you're gonna go through a bunch of results on the first page and you're gonna see some that have like thousands and thousands of sales and then you're gonna see a listing that has like five sales or ten sales right it's like a brand new listing you're like how the heck that thing even gone there um the
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algorithm rotates the listings actually to that first page actually gives everyone a shot to see if it see if it performs well so it's kind of a nice way for etsy to kind of test out your listing so i think that's what you're kind of saying is it's the complete package that matters it's it's all of it it's the
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descriptions the titles seo it's the faqs the images the video if you can write the mock-ups all of it and it presents your product in the best light possible and then if you do well the market will respond positively to it which will convert in a sale right exactly if you have all the right
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pieces in place then you're giving yourself the best shot it's hard though because i think a lot of people get bogged down with the kind of like details of having an etsy shop you know a lot of people that i know they'll spend hours looking through the you know
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out the um like statistics and their favorites like well i've gotten 20 favorites on this shirt why hasn't it sold and they'll spend half their time working looking at the past and i think that that's kind of a big mistake one thing i
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did after a couple months starting my etsy shop that i think did me a lot of favors is turning off the notifications for favorites all together forever i haven't looked at my favorites in almost two years at this point it's been a really long time and so i think
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it's it all comes back i guess is what i'm trying to say is the 80 20 rule you know you're going to list 100 things 80 of them will probably never sell and the 20 of them are going to sell the majority of your business and so the more listings that you can get up there the more things you can try different
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colors different mock-ups and figure out what's working and then capitalize on those you'll do better than kind of dwelling on the little things it's a big mistake i see a lot of people making i guess you nailed that i totally a huge subscriber to like the 80 20 power law type of that rule it's real it's so real
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it's been real and etsy it's been real for all the other e-commerce platforms it's real in life probably in general right there's a reason why it's a thing uh but i agree like the the successful shops that i that i speak with that i see that i analyze are they have like a thousand listings and
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the majority of them literally like the majority of them are terrible terrible sales like they don't really do anything right 20 of them carry their entire shop revenue and really make that shop you know deemed successful so it's interesting to hear you say that yeah i think it's something a lot of
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people need to hear so i'm glad you agree yeah oh my gosh yeah i kind of preach that on our on our channel also um what's your process for creating the amount of listings that you have because it seems like that's a daunting amount of listings that's a daunting amount of work to
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majority of people how do you create that many listings efficiently absolutely so that is kind of my specialty i think if there was anywhere that i particularly shine compared to other people it'd be there and i've got a really kind of simple formula to it so
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what i do is i can make a template for a design so like let's use that rainbow design i talked about earlier and maybe i find an adorable rainbow graphic and i put cursive words underneath it and if i start getting sales on that design then
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i'll add that to new niches so i'll just put something else in cursive underneath you know maybe i'll do first grade teacher maybe i'll do speech therapist maybe i'll do one more chapter reading niche but it all looks identical because i've already found out that that design style people
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enjoy and so i can make new designs in new niches this quick and then when i find a new template of a design that i like that starts to sell well guess what i take that same design and i go back and i remake all the niches i've been
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successful in again using the exact same seo and so i'm really only making probably five or six different design style shirts if you look through all my listings they're all really similar looking but i'm just in hundreds of
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niches and then my shirts all look exactly the same and then when i go to list them to give myself the best opportunity to sell i'll put it on two to three color shirts in three listings two to three color sweatshirts in two to three listings a
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mug a tote bag maybe an accessory pouch and you use that exact same seo for all of those items but just switch out the word mug for shirt and sweatshirt and so on so i can get 50 listings up in a day no problem with you know 10 designs and
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then if they don't perform well which it's without a doubt some don't perform and some do but if i hadn't listed all of them maybe i wouldn't have found the one that eventually sold 100 things while the other souls nothing so after you know the period where it renews i usually
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give things at least two renewal periods to see if they sell and if they don't you know i let those ones expire so it is kind of just like a shotgun approach you know you're just throwing everything out and seeing what sticks but i know some people are
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magical unicorns and can list 300 listings and get 15 000 sales but that's just not me i have not found that success this is kind of the way that i found works best for me i love it yeah you're basically like using you're reusing what you've already done and just you applying it to different different
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products different niches i think it's so great for everyone to hear that because so often i speak with people that like they they have this one product they are they have like you know 50 listings and they're just they're struggling to get you know their their sales and they're just wondering
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why and they're trying to like tweak their tags and tweak their tags and tweak their tags and they're just not getting any traction and i think i think it's just so important to be like sometimes you have to go more shotgun approach and you have to just find that one to find the one golden nugget you know and you know out of all of them
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that you list and then go run with that one but until then you need to almost like hunt for that one right just kind of like keep throwing things up there um and the way to do that is obviously be efficient like swipe what you're doing exactly and either you can never over saturate any
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all by yourself there's going to be thousands of listings for any niche that you look at if you start getting some sales in one niche wouldn't you rather compete with your own listings than everybody else why not have 50 listings in one search
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result and then however many pages they go through you're bound to be in there a bunch of times you know if they even click on one of yours guess what you're even more likely to come up when they search anything else because they've already clicked something of yours and so the more you can be in front of
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the people that you want to buy your stuff the better option you're going to have you know i think some of my niches that i've done well in like teachers for example i've probably 700 teacher shirts because that's a niche i've made a lot of money in and a lot of those have never sold
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but i am there in every search result for every teacher shirts you know all that i love that um when you say like you basically use the same seo for every every listing you create obviously you swap out mugs versus you know tote bag um but that's
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interesting because i was always i'm curious about this sometimes too because i hear different schools i thought like some people when they copy the listing make a new one they say tweak the tags i hear this a lot hear some people like you just said like hey just duplicate everything it's all good it's different product um do you think how do you view like do you
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think that they ever compete with each other like as far as like ranking goes for like getting into rotation what's your thoughts right i do so i think it comes back to the scientific method you know you only want to split test one variable at a time you know if i'm making a couple different listings with different
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mock-ups that's already such a huge variable because someone looking through the search results might specifically want a white sweatshirt over a black one so if i had only posted the black one they might never click on it and see that it also comes in white
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and so you just scroll down a little bit and hey there's my white one so i want to be in the same search results personally when i'm posting all those designs let's say i have a design that does really well you can look and see what keywords make that one successful
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because the way that it works is usually it's one keyword that you end up really ranking for you know you'll get a piddly amount of 20 other ones but the majority of your search for a listing is going to be on that one key term
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and so what you can try and do is niche down you know maybe make a more specific shirt so maybe if you had a teacher shirt and that one did really well you would niche down and make a first grade teacher shirt you know or a math teacher shirt you know you try and get somewhere else more specific with using that same
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big keyword for teacher shirts maybe that you ranked for but try and show up for some of those smaller niches so i think split testing the mock-ups being different for your first round and then if that's successful use the keywords that you found to be successful
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in your next batch of designs for that one but then try some different ones and replace the keywords that didn't get search results is kind of my thought i love it um how often are you looking at your stats your dashboard how much of it is a numbers game to you
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i don't look at my stats um very often you know sometimes i'll look and see like what like i said with bachelorette party shirts being my highest searched uh term last month you know i always try and keep an eye on what i'm getting searches for because a lot of times
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there's little golden nuggets in there you know someone will search something that's close to what you said but not exactly and so you'll get to find some of those like sub niches and you're like oh i didn't know someone would want a mom version of the shirt that i made and they just happened to
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click on mine and so then i'll try and like make new ones but typically most of my time is spent looking for new niches and making new designs awesome um how do you use because you're an everb member how do you use everbe to kind of like help you
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do that stuff like a lot of questions i get is like hey how do i get the best use out i'd ever be like what should i be using it for how should i use it how do you use it in your process absolutely so my favorite way to use everbee is stalking my competition so i've got this list on my computer of
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shops that i've been stocking for a long period of time so if i find a shop that's really successful what i'll do is i'll write down their shop name and i'll write down how many sales they have and the date and then periodically i'll check back in because it's really hard to tell when you find a shop that's been open for
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five years before ever be you know how successful each individual listing was and how many sales they're actually getting on average and so again you know my biggest you know advice is to do what's working for other people but make it your own and so i really now that
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i've found ever be saved me so much time i like going to these shops that i'm already kind of getting inspiration from and then sorting their listings by the most amount sold or the most average sales per month in an individual shop is
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where i use it most often and that's where i find most of my new niches because if someone has a best seller in one thing they're probably doing the right things to be ready for bestsellers and other things and you can find a lot of other little hidden gems
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for niches to try and get into as well i love it yeah thanks for breaking that down too i i so for everybody kind of not familiar with herbie basically go to a specific competitor shop that does it seems like they do well like they have a ton of sales that you kind of aspire to be like them click on analytics
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and basically sort by as you mentioned like the monthly sales total sales or monthly revenue and basically pull out which ones are actually performing the best for that shop that's awesome yeah before ever be it was a much more manual process most people have things
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on sale so you can't just tell at a glance looking at their shop what people have in their carts and most people have hidden like the if you click someone's number of sales you can see what they've sold in the past every single item but most people find out about that and hide
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it and so i'd have to sort their reviews and look through all of their reviews until i see the same one over and over again then i'd click that one and see it has 300 reviews you know so everbee definitely does the exact same thing that i was doing manually before but in
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seconds instead of you know 20 minutes of looking through someone's hundreds of reviews and there's only five on a page so you know or however many it just takes a lot longer so it's definitely been a really great to the process i already was doing that's awesome um what are you talking
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let's talk about conversion rates what are you seeing that's like kind of if someone were to ask like hey is my conversion rate good or bad is it average what is like an average conversion rate in your head what should someone be targeting for like in a print on demand space yeah i mean it's definitely low you know etsy is a pretty
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competitive market and so anywhere from i'd say three to six percent is a pretty good average conversion rate if you have higher than that again you're probably a magical unicorn and i have no advice for you um but that's kind of where my average has been
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but then there's also times where like you have a lot of competitors shopping you and shopping all the results so i think it all gets a little bit skewed i think all of those metrics are nice but i wouldn't say that my conversion rate's something that i'd be concerned with
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unless i just wasn't getting any sales and then it probably goes to you missing something yeah aren't good you know okay perfect that's kind of where i wanted to go to because i sometimes i find you know some folks i talk with and they have like a 1 conversion rate when
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i know the average for that industry that niche is probably about 2 and above um that definitely should be the target but they're like one percent and below what would you say to somebody that has like a one percent conversion rate and they're not happy with their sales like what do you see is the issue where can they improve
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absolutely so again i think it comes down to having everything be as professional as you can so if you have a one percent conversion rate i'd really take a hard look at your own etsy shop do you have a professional looking logo do you have a professional looking
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banner do you have the best mock-ups that you can literally find or are using printfire printful's mockups with a white background is your design look realistic a lot of people put their designs on the shirts in the wrong spot or angled wrong
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or too bright like does it actually look like a real shirt i love that you know a pretty size chart do you have a good description you know you want to have everything be right i agree yeah and sometimes people don't know what those ever things are so i
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appreciate you kind of breaking those down too i think like some of the simple thing is like just make sure you have more images i see a lot of times with like two images okay that's me is it it is i have it depends on how many colors i do if i'm doing one color in a shirt i'll
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do two pictures so if i'm selling just a white t-shirt i'll have two white pictures of t-shirts i'll have a size chart and then i'll have a little picture saying like we don't take returns and exchanges check the size chart you know it says like three or four little things on it
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but that's it i don't do so you have four you have four in that case right like four yeah oh so you're saying maybe someone would have like a picture of a shirt and then just a size chart and that's it or sometimes i'm in the size chart like they'll just have like a picture of a shirt and then like another picture of the shirt i don't know like just
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basically i think more images equals typically equals more credibility and more trust with with the shopper yeah has to be done in the right way for sure you know i'd say at least two pictures of the shirt you know if i'm doing three colors i'll do
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one picture of each color you know that's nice enough i like to do like a flat lay shirt where it's like laying on the ground or hanging up by a hanger and then also do like a model mock-up as well so they can really get an idea of what it would look like on them yeah
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okay so yeah when i was saying that that's that's definitely not you what i was kind of thinking at least more so i was thinking of very like hey just throw this picture up there take it on my phone send it up there it's got like two pictures and that's it but you're establishing trust credibility plus your shops like
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credible because you have a lot of sales and reviews so the combination really works for you um that's interesting okay cool uh tell us about revenue tell us what should like give us an idea of how you've grown your successful shop you know in two years
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like what does that even look like what's successful to you absolutely so my first eight months on etsy so like i said i started pretty much in may of 2020 and between may and december i sold 134 000 in revenue
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was what i actually sold in t-shirts and the crazy thing about that is i sold 70 000 of that in november well now in 2022 in april i've sold over 525 thousand dollars on etsy so over the
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half a million mark now which is pretty crazy for the first two years wow that is incredible i feel like that's so much it's a milestone for so many people it's a huge milestone and you're gonna be probably getting million dollars pretty soon i'm sure yeah i think it's just like anything else you know it's such a slow start but
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as soon as that snowball starts going you know so your first hundred sales are the hardest then getting to a thousand feels really hard beginning to 2000 isn't this bad and so on now i think i sold over 20 000 things and it all happened it really feels so fast so you
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have to keep in mind that the work you're putting in now is really going to pay off later you might not see the results three four five weeks from now but a couple months from now you really will and it will change your life that's amazing yeah 500 000 in etsy i mean that literally is a life-changing number for a lot of people especially a matter of
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two years right it's that's that's a big amount especially i know print on demand is is like a little less profit margins than some niches but i still imagine it's probably what 30 35 type of profit margins is that kind of what you'd expect the print on the main world yeah absolutely i think
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just to give people an idea in 2021 i sold 348 000 in revenue and about 90 000 of that was profit amazing that's one really important thing for people to remember is it's more about the end of the year you know the last quarter you'll
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probably double if not triple what you made the rest of the year combined so a lot of people that start this time of year and start really slow you know they get discouraged they stop trying and then they end up not being ready for christmas which is the biggest mistake anyone could ever make in my opinion
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christmas for me you have to kind of live in the future starts in july i start doing listings i actually have if i could give someone one tip to be ready for the holidays is at the end of any holiday like right now easter is right around the corner it's too late to
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list new things but what you should do right now is go see what's been best sellers since everything's a best seller that's going to be a bestseller at this point and take down notes of what to make for next year because nothing's worse than july coming and christmas being months
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away and there's no best sellers you don't know what's going to sell and so i have a list from last year with a hundred different designs to make and so i'm not starting from scratch this time this is something i've kind of learned myself that's been really helpful the last few holidays is as soon
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as it's time to start designing i already know what i'm doing it's just a matter of making the designs finishing the seo and listing it and moving on i already have a plan if that makes sense i love it okay that's a great great great tip um because you have so many
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listings you obviously run into some other big issues right like trademark concerns uh copyright concerns how do you battle that stuff how do you make sure you kind of stay clear of any type of those issues absolutely so copyright stuff as long as you're not copying anyone else you know
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that's why you have to make your designs unique and different than the search results in the same niche so if you don't copy anyone else you should be mostly good on copyrights but then you also need to stay away from any celebrities any tv shows any movies a lot of people
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will sell those jeeps i know like 100 people who've gotten trademark infringements for using the word jeep so stay away from any brand name i know you'll see hundreds of etsy shops selling disney shirts but just don't do it they'll get you eventually it's just
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a you know a matter of time and so if you stay away from any of those things trust me there are enough niches to make money in without infringing on someone else's copyright and then as far as trademarks go i definitely check
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uspto.gov for any trademark terms before you make the designs nothing's worse than spending all this time making a pretty design and making mock-ups and then finding out that it's trademarked so check if it's trademarked first and then one tip i'd give since things can
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get trademarked after you make them is unless you think someone's specifically going to look for that term that you put on the shirt like let's use that but first coffee design earlier if you think there's really going to be hundreds and
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hundreds of people searching butt first coffee then fine use it in your seo use it in your title but they're probably not they're probably looking for like funny coffee shirts so instead of saying butt first coffee in the title or tags just say the generic seo funny coffee gift gift
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for coffee lover that way if that term gets trademarked in the future the person who holds the trademark is going to go search butt first coffee and etsy and guess what you're not going to come up you have time to find out that it got trademarked and take it down i love it okay that's awesome really really great
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tips i feel like uh so many successful sellers that do over six figures six figures per year on etsy have this issue right it's a concern it's a it's like an anxiety thing in the back of their head like you know just because sometimes you don't know what you don't know yeah um yeah it's always kind of in the back
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your head so if you just always keep it in the front of mind and be mindful and try and be careful you'll probably be fine but if you ignore it and forget to check you have to check every word you use in your title every word you use in your tags every word you put on your shirt even
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individual words sometimes can be trademarked so you just have to take the time to check it all even though it's annoying yeah totally i think it's just part of the business that you're in that's one downside right there's a bunch of upsides to put on demands a bunch of upsides to like selling an etsy but there are some downsides like anything there's always a sacrifice and you have to be mindful of those things
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those are really really important for your business um how do you make sure you don't copy someone's design right like let's say i see a t-shirt sweatshirt and i'm like i want to sell like teacher sweaters too i like that niche i'm a teacher or something like that right and i see this one's crushing right it's doing like 5000 a month in revenue i'm like i want
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to make something like that um obviously i don't have the intention to copy them copy the design but i do want to model it right take some pieces that do well but obviously i want to make sure i'm not copying by any means how do you how do you get somebody
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through that thinking right how do you make sure that they're not doing that absolutely so i would give someone the advice that the more important thing to copy is their seo that's why they're successful you know their design is probably good but the reason why they are where they are is
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because of the seo and people finding them in the first place so you can have the most beautiful design in the world but if it's on the last page because you did a crappy title no one's ever gonna find it and so you know a lot of people have that mindset in the beginning that you need to be like the same style to get
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sales but you're just being the off-brand version you know no one wants to be the aldi of t-shirts you know like just make the name brand one that's yours and you'll find a lot more success because there's already so many people copying that one it's just a
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waste of your time to make anything similar so again like i said you know maybe do some research if you're new to designing go through one day and take a bunch of pictures of shirts that you like the layout you know you like where the words are on the shirt you know like
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words curved up here over a graphic with straight words underneath and take a bunch of pictures of layouts that you like and then maybe one day take a bunch of pictures of shirts that you like the color options that they have you know maybe the four or five colors in their
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design are really gorgeous and then when you're going to make a new design look through those two folders and see if you can find some inspiration from something that's been successful in a different niche to make a design for this one because if you use the same
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layout of words with different colors in a new niche that's not copying you're making it your own you're combining different things but you're taking inspiration from things you already know work if that makes sense yeah that's awesome thanks for knowing that down i get that question all the time because a
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lot of times and i understand it definitely it comes from a play it comes from good intentions right like i don't know nobody wants to copy everybody's stuff like i don't believe that people want to do that they just want the result that that would potentially get them that's what they're after so if they just knew it my mission is like to show them a better way to do that um
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because nobody everybody knows that if you copy stuff it just makes you feel bad uh it's big risk for your shop it's a big risk for you it's not good for the marketplace um so i think it's just like our mission as educators is to like help people see that there are better ways more efficient ways
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that get you the same result or better actually probably a better result for everybody so right um that's awesome that's pretty much the main things that i wanted to talk about really uh do you want to like share with everybody like where they can find you where they can learn more about you
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follow your story and follow like the fundamentals of strategies that you teach about etsy absolutely so you know i did just recently start my youtube channel but i've already got you know i think over 30 videos available there with teaching a lot of these nitty gritty things you know it's not a very fluffy channel i like to get down in the
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details and show you step by step frame by frame exactly what to do so if that's your style you can follow me on cassie johnson on youtube awesome i will link to that in the description below guys you guys need to go follow cassie she is awesome as you know um but yeah i really
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appreciate you staying on with us and talking and telling your story yeah thanks so much for having me i love ever be so excited to be part of your channel that's so awesome yeah thank you okay talk to you soon bye damn you guys watching the videos the end again be sure to check out her youtube channel and link in the description
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below um she shares tons of free strategies free tips on growing your etsy shop second if you're not using everybody yet go sign up for free in the description below you guys need to be using data to make decisions in your business find the best products to sell find the best tags to use on etsy by using everbee if you guys are already using everbee we love you we appreciate
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you won't be anywhere without our amazing 10 000 plus member community and finally what did you guys learn from today's video i'm curious you know what was there any big takeaway that made you say aha you know comment down below we do this videos for free so any kind of feedback really helps us kind of craft the content that we provide appreciate you guys and i'll tell you soon
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[Music] you