Episode 124: Selling on Etsy with Emily Odio-Sutton
Emily Odio-Sutton started selling on Etsy in January of 2023 and now has over 27,000 sales between her two shops. Former educator turned entrepreneur, she loves supporting new Etsy sellers on their journey to passive income with both print on demand and digital products.
For this episode, Emily gives some great advice to listeners who are thinking about selling products on Etsy. Best of all, she points out what skills educators can transfer from the classroom to the Etsy store. There are also some notable tips about advertising. Bust out a pen and paper — you’re going to end up taking notes!
Topics Discussed:
Why creativity isn’t necessary for creating products to sell online
Leveraging organic traffic over advertising
There’s nothing stopping you from starting a store
Resources mentioned:
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Read the transcript for this episode:
Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.
Emily Odeo-Sutton started selling on Etsy in January of 2023 and now has over 27,000 sales between her two shops. Former educator turned entrepreneur, she loves supporting new Etsy sellers on their journey to passive income with both print on demand and digital products. Hi, Emily, welcome.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Hi, Lily, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Lily Jones
I'm excited to have you here, and I would love for you to start us off by telling us about your journey as an educator.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Sure. So most of my career was spent in higher education. I was really involved in college, in my sorority and student government and working on campus, and I didn't even really know that working on a college campus was a job or a career. I didn't even think of that. I obviously knew about teaching in the K 12 environment, but working in higher education wasn't something I had really considered before. A mentor kind of tapped me and was like, Hey, I think you would be great at this. You should consider exploring this as a career option, and I ended up getting my first job at that college that I graduated from, and kind of just dove right in. And I spent a good 12 plus years on college campuses in higher education. I got my master's degree at the University of South Florida in curriculum and instruction. And I've I really had worked in all sorts of areas within higher education, from academic advising, so more on the academic side, but then also to the more involvement side of the house, in terms of student activities, student government, civic engagement, Residence Life, all of that. So I did quite a wide range of things, and my last position on a college campus was Assistant Dean of Students, and that was such a rewarding, but obviously very challenging experience. And through COVID and all of that is what kind of led to, eventually a career shift for me, but my and then kind of parallel to that experience, my most recent job outside of Higher Ed was at a K 12 publishing and professional development company, and so I was still in the education world, but had kind of shifted to the business side, and that was also incredibly rewarding and really fun to learn how to still be contributing to education, but in a different capacity. So I've kind of done a wide variety, mostly in higher education, and then some in the in the business side of the house too.
Lily Jones
That's amazing. I love all of that. And that all sounds really interesting, and like it was able to blend together to give you a wide range of experience. Yes, can you tell us a little bit about that career shift? Like, what do you do now?
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Sure, so now, as of a few weeks ago, I am self employed, which is, yeah, it's super exciting, slightly terrifying. I have a little bit of a panic attack every couple days, like, oh, no, what did I do? Okay? I, you know, I come from a very traditional background. My My dad actually worked on a college campus as well, and so he had a very, you know, traditional job all of my life. My mom was everything from a substitute teacher to working as an administrative assistant in school. She always had some type of, you know, w2 type position. And so a couple years ago, I decided to like, hey, we there's all these people making money online. Like, there's gotta be an opportunity for us. And I it's when I jumped into Etsy. And now, two years later, I'm able to be self employed, which is great. And at the time, I was really just looking to make a little bit of extra money every month, you know, how can we pay for an extra vacation? How can we pay off our student loans? Obviously, that's always like, a big one is the student loans and the debt and all of that. And I never really expected that it would lead where it has, and it's been amazing. And like I said, a few weeks ago, made the official jump out of kind of a w2 position and now into self employment.
Lily Jones
Congratulations. That's a big job, and I think all the feelings are welcome with that.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
There's a lot of them and some. Most days so far, it's been great. And then other days I'm like, What did I do? Oh, my goodness. So we're still working through it. It's definitely still early on in the process.
Lily Jones
But that's amazing. So could you tell us a little bit about print on demand? How does it work? How did you learn about it? And like, how to do it?
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Yep. So as I mentioned two years ago, I was tuning in to all these people making money online. I was researching every side hustle opportunity that there was out there. Part of my motivation was that my daughter was getting ready to start kindergarten the following year and having children in as everyone listening, well, no having children in the in you know. Public School System or just an elementary school on that schedule is really hard for two, nine to five working parents. And so I was like, Okay, let's see what we can find out here. Let's make some extra money. Let's have some more time. I never really thought it would actually work, to be honest, but I tried selling on Amazon for a bit. I explored Amazon KDP, which is their kind of print on demand, but like printing journals or books, things like that. And then I was on YouTube one day and came across a content creator that was posting about print on demand on Etsy. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this hits everything that I'm looking for. It's low risk because you don't have to buy inventory. It doesn't cost a lot of money to get started. I can do all of it for my laptop. And so it really hit all of those things. So what print on demand is, is basically you as a seller, create designs for products like T shirts or mugs or journals or candles. You attach them to a product in a print provider, the third party print provider, like printify, is who I use, and you list it in your Etsy shop. And when it sells print, if I does all of the hard work of actually printing the item, packaging it and shipping it to your customer, so you never actually have to touch the product yourself. And so it hit all of those things that I was looking for. That low risk aspect. I didn't have to buy a bunch of inventory beforehand. I could do it when my kids were sleeping or during my lunch breaks. I didn't have to actually go anywhere to do it. I was able to just kind of do it on my laptop, and everything could be done for my laptop. And then the last one was I really wasn't interested in building a social media following at that time, and so I didn't want to have to put my face out there. I did have a full time job, I had kids. I wasn't really interested in in building that kind of business. And so this fit that, because I could be completely faceless. And so it really kind of hit all of those aspects, and I dove right in. That was January of 2023 and then January 2025 is when I actually left my job. So it's been great. It's been amazing. And I absolutely love it, because I just feel like it's such a good, beginner friendly side hustle. For many people, I had zero business experience. I'd never run my own business like I hadn't. I didn't know up from down when it came to business, so it really allowed me to kind of dabble there and explore and test and experiment in kind of that low risk setting.
Lily Jones
That's such an interesting thing to do. I mean, I'm so intrigued that I would love to hear more about, what you first started selling and like also, is there a design component that you had to learn, or did you feel comfortable in the design side of things?
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Sure. I had zero design experience outside of being in education where, you know, we might design a flyer or maybe a t shirt, but we usually had student graphic designers that would do that kind of thing. I never really used Canva myself. I had put slide decks together before, but that was really that was really it. So I did not have any graphic design experience. And what I've learned, and what many Etsy coaches and people will tell you, is that simple really sells on Etsy, and it's more about the emotional connection and finding words or phrases and things that really connect with people, because people are going to Etsy for something unique that they can't find at Target, right? So they want something different, they want something funny or sentimental, and so I really learned how to tune into that and just do pretty much most of my designs are just text, like black text or white text on a product, and that's it. And pretty quickly I realized, like, Okay, you're not a graphic designer by trade. You have, don't have formal training, and yes, I have gotten better over two years, obviously, but so I'd really tried to start simple. And when I was starting, I always recommend to people start with something that you know, or the people around you have familiarity with or know. And so my sister in law is actually a speech language pathologist at an elementary school, and I was talking to her about this, like, Oh, I'm going to start at Etsy shop, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, Oh, we love to buy shirts and bags and everything on Etsy. So I started there, and my first sale was actually in the SLP niche, and I started making sales there and branched out from there over time. But, you know, I really just started with what I what I knew and what the people around me knew did very simple designs, straightforward, but things that would just kind of be different and connect with those customers and that that worked for me. So it was great.
Lily Jones
Awesome. That's fantastic, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about like, advice. For getting started, particularly around marketing products. I can imagine that when you put your first things up, you're excited, and then I'm not sure what happens after that.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Yeah, and not a lot at first, to be honest. Yeah, when you're first starting, and even now, I always recommend to people, you know it's going to take a while to get good at it. There's a lot of different components to listing on Etsy. I would say none of it is hard, but you're just learning. And when you're in the middle of learning, it's going to take you a minute to really kind of master and understand all the different avenues and aspects to that. And so when someone is starting, I the first thing I tell them is the the best way you're going to learn is by doing it so you can watch all the YouTube videos, you can take all the courses, you can listen to all the podcasts. But until you actually start doing it yourself, it's the same as in the classroom or anywhere else like until you actually do it yourself, you're not going to truly be able to learn and get better. And so I always recommend, you know, watching content, listening to content, but doing it at the same time. You know your listings are not going to be perfect. Mine are still not perfect, but you have to just keep trying, and you have to keep putting things out there, because then what happens is that you get data in return, in the fact that you'll see what people are being attracted to. So if you've listed 30 products, and you have one that you're getting a lot of views, or you're getting a sale here or there, we're getting a lot of visits on that, that means you're doing something right. And again, data rules All right, so we want to look at that and then do more of that. So I would say patience is really important. Learning by doing is really important. And it's just it's having that messy but kind of intentional action is so key, because you really can't move further unless you just start taking action. So open an Etsy shop, connect it to Printify, which is the print provider, and start watching content, take a course, do whatever it is, and really just start practicing.
Lily Jones
I love that advice too, to just get started, because I think sometimes we all can be so deep into like, I'm gonna just plan it out perfectly. Yes, before taking action, or, like, before starting the shop. And you're right. Like, everything I've learned about business too, was through, like, flailing through it, being like, okay, I guess I need to figure this out now. And so I think you just don't know what you're gonna have to figure out until you get in it. And that makes any learning, like, if you're taking a course and actually starting your store imperfectly, then you can really kind of grapple with it and figure it out quicker.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Yes, definitely. I mean, I think that's such an important part. And of course, you always want to be still learning and absorbing and trying to get better every time, but at the same time, like, the best way you're going to do that is by actually putting it to practice.
Lily Jones
And with an Etsy store, do you have to be on social media, or how do you find customers? Is it all through people coming to Etsy already?
Emily Odeo-Sutton
That's also my favorite part. I do not do any marketing outside of I outside of Etsy, I should say so I don't run any social media accounts. I don't really do anything outside of that. It is one of my goals, potentially for this year, is to look at some marketing opportunities, but I have relied mostly on organic traffic from Etsy, and that comes from researching what's in demand. So what are people looking for? And what I think is neat about coming from the education world is that being in, like a service oriented field, you're always thinking about other people and what what's best for them, and how can I serve them? And it's the same in an Etsy shop, you're trying to serve your customers, and so you're trying to provide goods that they either need or they want, or are unique and special to them and and kind of have an emotion attached to them. And so the sellers that I often see do best are those that can approach it from that lens. And that's why I've seen actually a lot of teachers or educators do really well in this area, is because you're able to think about the customer and not necessarily yourself. And so I having that understanding, learning how to kind of research what's even trendy, what's what's popular, what's in demand, what are people looking for? And then putting that in your listings is what's led to, to my sales. I run very minimal ads on my products, like very, very small. And so I think last time I calculated about, like, 96% of my sales were organic. So, I mean, it's, it's very small, the the piece that is coming from paid ads.
Lily Jones
Mm, hmm, cool. And so you mentioned this of how print on demand could be a good fit for educators. Can you talk about that a little bit more of like, why are educators a good fit for this?
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Yeah, so the, obviously, the coming from that service-oriented perspective and being able to use that experience. I think educators in general have a great handle. The Etsy customer is primarily women, which is, which is great. And I find that those of us that come from education have a good eye for things. We have a good eye for knowing kind of what people are wanting, looking at things, finding patterns, but also being resourceful. I mean, in education, you have to be really resourceful, and that's part of starting a business yourself, especially, and on Etsy, is like figuring it out, like all of the figure out ables, like you have to go and find answers and like, figure out what's working and what's not. And I think educators, naturally, or at least over time, have acquired that skill of being resourceful, being able to figure it out. And then I think lifestyle wise, like I mentioned, this is so low risk. You know, I didn't want a side hustle where I had to invest a ton of money up front, because, again, I have kids, and I have a family, and I was working in education. It's not like we had a ton of, you know, flexible income to just throw at a business that might or might not work. And so for this, the startup costs, you know, you can start truly for under $50 at the most, and each listing is only 20 cents. And so you're looking at a very minimal startup cost for the potential return, you know, that you can get on the back end. So in that aspect, I think it's really great for educators, because it is safe. I would say too, lifestyle wise, that you're able to do it from your laptop. You know you if you're in a classroom or you're in another field within education, you know you're working all day, all of that. You want something that you can come home that isn't going to make you leave the house again and have to go somewhere else. I was speaking to actually an educator the other day who's interested in starting and right now she's tutoring, which is amazing, and it's a great second income, but she's looking for something where she can be home and she can do it after her son goes to bed, and do it on the couch, and, you know, all of that. And I think this is a great option where you're able to kind of have your your lifestyle, you're able to keep your job. I had my job for two years while I did this, and it's very much possible, and so for a lot of different reasons, but I think there's just a great... it's a great option for educators in so many different ways.
Lily Jones
Having that flexibility is so key, it feels foreign. I think to many teachers. I know when I left I also left the classroom when my daughter was born. Was like, I want something I can do from home, and it still feels she's 13 today. Actually. Happy birthday. Thank you. But still feels like so amazing that I don't have to go somewhere. Yes, I can do everything from home and have that flexibility and be able to drop off the kids and, yeah, come back and be able to go on a field trip or whatever it might be, yeah? So yeah, that flexibility is so key.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Yeah, yeah, it's great.
Lily Jones
So thinking about your journey on Etsy, starting your own business, I know you said, like, it was a real learning curve as it is, I think for everyone, like, just normalizing too. Like, who knows? I mean, if you didn't go to business school, right? Like, who knows about starting a business, exactly, until you actually do it. And so I'd love to hear what you've learned about yourself through this process.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Yeah, it's interesting. I think I used to really undersell my skills in some ways. You know, it was like, Oh, I've, I've been in education my whole career, and I'm that's all I know, is like education. But I think I learned how much of that is transferable to business. I think as educators, we're very resilient, and we there's a lot of other duties as a sign there's a lot of things that come at you, different problems you're solving and emergencies you're responding to, and things like that. And I don't think I gave myself enough credit for like how much I actually like how resilient I was, and how many different skills I had acquired over my career so far, and I think by doing this on my own and realizing like, Oh, I I can do this, like, this is I have this skill, or this is unique, that I bring this unique perspective to my shop and to Etsy, and, you know, all these different things, that I think it has given me more confidence in that, in the abilities that I feel like I've acquired and learned. And I think just overall, that's been the biggest lesson for me is like, okay, you can figure this out. You can do this. You have the skills. Don't undersell your career experience and the things that you know. Because I think oftentimes, as again, as educators, or any of us that have worked in a service field, you just kind of are like, Oh, I'm just, you know, I'm here. I'm doing what I know, and that's it. But honestly, there's so many skills that have transferred, and I think that's something I've just learned to have that confidence in myself and know that I can do this and I can figure this out.
Lily Jones
I love that, and I think that's such a great reflection of being an educator like we do so many different things, and we're figuring things out all the time, and so you sometimes don't even know those skills until you take them and use them in a different context. But I think even though we do all the things and have built so many skills, there's still, of course, many things that have to be learned, and that might feel overwhelming. So being able to, as you say, you know, think about I can figure it out, is so powerful, and really can be such a game changer,
Emily Odeo-Sutton
For sure. And I think too creativity is something I... You don't have to be creative to to do print on demand by any means, because ultimately, I think the data and looking at what's selling and understanding that and doing that research is really important, which also in education, we use data, so that works really well as well. But you, you are creative in so many ways. When you have, let's say, in education, your budgets are low, or you don't have a lot of resources, and you're trying to create creative activities, opportunities for students, all of that. And I think a lot of that carries over to just learning how to think differently and how to work with with very little. You know, I didn't have any graphic design skills, but I had, I could figure it out like I was gonna, I was gonna find a way. And I think that all really transferred really well for me.
Lily Jones
I love that. Awesome. And so thinking about teachers who might want to start their own businesses, whether on Etsy or maybe in another area, what advice would you give to them? Sure,
Emily Odeo-Sutton
I think going back to patience. Patience is something I see kind of make or break new entrepreneurs or those that want to start their own business or are trying different things. I think lack of patience often leads to giving up too soon. And so I think having really giving yourself a time frame or something to just let yourself commit to it and sit in it and work through it and try to get better. I remember when I started, I told my husband, okay, I'm going to give myself six months, and I'm I'm going to commit to this for six months. I'm going to spend every hour that I can working on it and really try to figure this out. And that worked really well for me, because I knew mentally, like, Okay, you can't give up. You have six months. You're going to do this through the end of June, and then you're going to reassess. And of course, obviously things were going well, so I continued. But I think that patience piece is really important. I think also giving yourself credit, like I mentioned that you do have a lot of skills. You do bring a lot of skills to the table and realizing and trying to learn how all of that is transferable, is is incredibly important, and that's going to come with time too. Like all of it comes back to giving yourself time. You know, it's, there's, there's so many skills that you learn in life that you know when you ride a bike, you know, cliche, like you don't ride the first time, like it's going to take time. And when you're learning an instrument, it's going to take time. It's the same with learning how to run or start your own business. I'm two years in, and I'm still learning, like, I'm still trying to understand now, LLC stuff and escort, like, all these things that I I'm like, I have never had to learn this, but trying to give myself grace and be patient and again, just kind of figure it out. And then the last thing I would say is, often what I hear when talking to those that are interested in, starting on Etsy or even other platforms, is, isn't it too late? Isn't it too saturated? Don't you feel like there's too much competition now? And there is absolutely not. I joke, if there were 10 of me, I would open 10 more Etsy shops, and I know exactly what I would do in each of them. It just takes time to figure out where the opportunity is and where that demand is, and that also comes with time and patience and working at it. And there's room for all of us at the table to have a piece of the pie. We're all going to do something a little bit differently. No one's going to have the same exact shop or the same exact business, and you have your own unique perspective to put on it, your own unique experiences. You know, another cliche that someone once told me was like, when you go to the grocery store and you walk down the bread aisle, there's a million different kinds of breads, but there's a bread for everyone, and so on Etsy, it's the same thing, like someone, there might be several people selling, you know, a teacher mug, but you can do something different, and you could bring a different perspective to it and a different design to it, or a different humor. And so knowing that there's just opportunity there, and that you can bring your own unique experience to it.
Lily Jones
Yes, patience is so key, too. I mean, I think sometimes it's so fascinating to me how our brains just talk us out of all these things our brains, like you're saying, of like, there's too many other people doing this. Like, why should I do this? Yeah, that's not true, right? And then same thing with like, we started business, we wanted to be successful right away. And like, also not true, but it's our brains being like, you're trying something new. It's scary, like, let's keep you safe. And so I appreciate both of those pieces of advice, because it does take time, and the taking time is actually how we build our skills, yep. And it also made me think about how you said, like, starting your store right away. That doesn't mean being successful necessarily right away, but it means getting in it and like playing around and testing things and looking at the data and through that is how we gain the skills and how we learn the things. And so I think particularly for teachers who like, I feel this, you know, like I need another job yesterday, like I want to get out of the classroom, it could feel really frustrating to try something new and be like, it's not working. But I think just reframing that like it's a process, and that you can start things now that like, may grow, or they may shift, or they may change, but we need to start to be able to see where they're going to go.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Absolutely and I think if you start somewhere, like you're saying you might be surprised where it leads you. You know, I started selling on Amazon, and was like, Oh, this isn't for me, but I did commit, and I was trying to make it work, and it was working, but I realized, like, this isn't the right fit. But through that experience, I learned a ton, and then somehow got tuned in to print on demand on Etsy, right? So, like, you might just be surprised by opportunities that pop up, or things that you just learned through the process, but definitely that patience to give yourself time to figure it out and know that it is possible. It just, it just takes time, and it takes time to learn the right path for yourself.
Lily Jones
And there's really no shortcuts. Like I do think the trying it out and the feeling and feeling overwhelmed and persevering is all important, and it's all part of the process. And so just normalizing that too, that there's nothing wrong with this business idea. If it's not immediately working, you might need to shift or go to a different platform or try a different thing. But it doesn't mean that you should give up on it entirely.
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Absolutely. And it's hard to like on social media these days, with how many posts about, you know, make $10,000 next month, selling XYZ or this course or whatever, and it's hard to kind of sort through the the noise out there and so mute some of those accounts. You know, I started muting or unfollowing or whatever that is, because it was making me feel like I'm not where I should be. And that's not, that's not how it should be. This is like you're saying. It is a process. It does take time, and that's okay, and everyone's going to do it in a different time frame also.
Lily Jones
Well, it was been awesome talking with you, Emily, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. Can you tell people where they can connect with you?
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Sure? So my Instagram is at E com. Emily, that's e com with two M's, and you can also find me with gold city ventures. They are an amazing Etsy group, and there's they have information and coaching on digital products, and then also now print on demand, so I am partnered with them. I am super excited about that, but yes, follow me on Instagram, e com, Emily, and then my website is also e com, emily.com
Lily Jones
Wonderful. Thanks so much, Emily,
Emily Odeo-Sutton
Yeah, thanks for having me.
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