My vinyl decal business is now in it’s 6th year and wedding season 2023 was one of my busiest and most successful yet! Despite that, I’m always looking for ways to grow and improve it further, so I thought I would do a video of some ideas I’ve either implemented previously or am planning to try in 2024.

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Before we start, if your goal this year is to level up your business completely then check out my latest bundle, which includes the following:

A Guidebook full of information and tips for making more sales, saving time and increasing profit.
A 30 day social media challenge to help you create a consistent voice for your brand and build real connections with your customers.
A Notion template designed specifically to keep your business organised.
Access to my popular supplier’s spreadsheet, with links to some of the best quality and priced suppliers for materials, and packaging from around the world.
An editable Social Media Templates bundle,
PLUS A BONUS
Etsy SEO guide and checklist for anyone who wants to improve their Etsy business in particular.

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Let’s get into it and at end find out my favourite way to make extra money!

1. Make sure everything is optimised

Even if you’re already getting fairly good traffic to your website or Etsy shop, are all of your listings or products being seen?

Take a look, and if not, it might be time to go through each one and make sure it is properly keyworded, the photos are bright and clear, your description is accurate and up to date and there isn’t anything there that shouldn’t be. Click links to make sure they’re not broken.

When it comes to keywords, check that they are included in titles, descriptions, tags, categories and then also in the alt text of your pictures.

Did you know you can add that now on Etsy? This is definitely something I need to go through and do for sure!

And if you need some help with coming up with extra keywords, take a look at your website or Etsy search stats to see what customers have been searching to find you and make sure those phrases are included somewhere within your listing.

If you are not aware already, Etsy has changed the way their photos look when customers are browsing - where they used to be rectangles, they are now squares. So if your pictures are formatted to the old size requirement, that may be something you want to look at and re-do.

I’m not always the best at keeping up to date with this, but I do try to do this every year. And a few months later if the changes haven’t made any difference and I’m still barely selling any of that listing, I usually just take it down from my store to make room for other products.

2. Assess your suppliers

This is something I tried to do a lot of last year. I looked at my income against my expenses and figured out which areas I could save money in to therefore increase my profit margins.

For example, I was previously paying about £30 for 500 ‘Thank You’ stickers for my packaging, and now I’m paying £6 for the same amount. The more expensive ones were bigger and a cuter design, but they’re not worth 500% more than the cheaper ones, and I honestly don’t think my customers have noticed the swap at all.

You don’t want to cut costs too much and affect the quality of what you’re sending out, but I do think there are often areas where you can slim things down.

I also tried to buy way more in bulk, and plan ahead which colour vinyls I needed, especially during summer when I was busiest, and the savings are so noticeable when I do that. And it means I get free shipping a lot of the time as well so I don’t have to build that expense into my costs.

Again, check out my bundle to get access to my list of amazing suppliers in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Check out my bundle

3. Get more organised

One of the most consistent ways I’ve managed to improve my business is by giving myself more time to work on marketing and creating designs, and I’ve done that a lot of the time by improving my organisation.

Whether that’s finding ways to cut down the time it takes me to make orders or having my files arranged in a way where they’re easy to access, or just making the whole process of dealing with customers quicker and easier using templates and auto-replies.

I am also a Notion convert and addict - I first signed up for it ages ago after seeing lots of people recommend it, and I remember opening it and being like this is the most confusing thing ever. I closed it after 5 minutes and went back to Trello.

But then a bit further down the line, I saw someone talking about Notion and how they use it, and they were selling a template and I thought I would give it another go, and I have never looked back. I couldn't be without it now, it keeps me so organised! I can’t show you my personal weekly plan, mainly because it’s slightly chaotic and I think that maybe only an ADHD brain with multiple businesses could understand it.

However, this is the template that I sell within my bundle and also separately on my Etsy shop and it has areas for your daily and weekly to-dos, goals, finances, a brand hub and a content planner. And I include a video on how to use it too if you are a Notion newbie like I was.

4. Build a community, not just customers

Some of the most successful businesses I’ve seen that sell a lot through social media or email marketing have built communities rather than just customers! And I don’t mean the people who have 100s of 1000s, or even millions of followers, as sometimes their engagement rates can be a much smaller percentage than someone who has a few 1000 or so followers. I believe they’re what you call a micro influencer in fact!

That’s the key, to make sure that when you post, people actually engage with what you’re saying, they want to share what you’re doing and when you share what you’re selling, they will click through and look at it.

There are so many ways to do this, and I think one of the best ways to start is to…

Look at past content you’ve created that has had lots of engagement and brainstorm how you can replicate this in different ways.
Look at content from people you follow or regularly engage with yourself and think about why you like what they post and how you may be able to apply it to your own business.

This is definitely something I need to get better at with my decal business, in particular, as I have neglected that area somewhat. I should probably also do the 30 day social media challenge too.

Let me know in the comments if you want me to do some sort of follow-along to see how I get on.

There are a lot of helpful articles about building your business community at Buffer, Healthy Dash of Social and Forbes.

5. Other ways to make more money

Another way I have tried to continue to grow my decal business is by making sure I am capitalizing on all of the extra ways I can make money. And ideally, the more passively I can do that, the better.

Sell your designs

I’ve sold digital designs for years now, and I started by selling some of the designs I was using for my decal shop so that people could print them or make their own decals with them. So if you create your designs, or you could easily create your own, then this could be something to consider.

You might think this will take away sales from your existing business, but it actually makes it easier to sell worldwide. The people who can make their own decals or crafts were probably never going to buy from you anyway, and the people who are buying to print, are looking for prints, not decals. So you’re kind of maximizing your customer reach by branching out into digital.

And yes, you may get some competitors who buy your design and then sell the craft themselves, even if you’re selling with a personal license only. But unless it’s something super unique that they wouldn’t be able to copy otherwise, then you may as well get some money from them as they might just steal the idea anyway.

A great place to start is by selling on places like Creative Fabrica or Design Bundles if your designs are relevant.

Affiliate links

Another great way to make some extra cash is by recommending complimentary products to your customers. Recommend products that you know they will like, and use affiliate links so that if they purchase you will get a little commission. Obviously, only ever recommend things that are relevant and hopefully good quality.

Collaborate

You could also collaborate with another business, or be paid to promote other businesses if you have a large social media following or email list.

For more ideas, check out my post here which goes into it in a bit more detail.

I’m sure there are many other ways that you could do this and it’s always good to be on the lookout for how you can maximise your income.

I hope you found that helpful and it gave you some ideas.

Again, don’t forget to check out my latest bundle if you want the resources to help you implement all of these things and more. And let me know in the comments what your goals for your business are this year, and if you have any other tips for improving a craft business.

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