The Road Is Long and Confusing

Since I last wrote, which has been a long, long while ago, I have mastered my KDP account and I have taken on Etsy and its ads in a big way. And just when I knew I had figured it all out…all my victories went out with the wind. And it wasn’t even a strong wind. Oh me oh my.

I would love to come at you with these major triumphs and phenomenal wins but I do not have those. At all. And all I can do is accept that and move on. So with KDP I was getting better. Each month was making profits with one month getting better than the next. I just knew this month was going to be gloriously wonderful. Would I finally conquer using ads? Would I actually, finally make a 5 dollar profit? See some headway? Nope! The month that I knew would bless me with dollar signs, betrayed me with only $0.00 staring back at me. What happened? As far as I can tell, with the holidays starting, competition is steep! Like, the hills are alive, steep. I set my bid amounts to .19. Which I’m hoping I can get back to once all the hub bub is other. At the same time I got rid of a lot of unwanted key phrases that my clicks were being wasted on. If this is greek to you, I do apologize. When I spare a chance I promise, to explain it all. For now it would be the ignorantly blind leading the blind. Anywho, in doing both things I felt I royally did something wrong. Without any previous experiences I have no idea if it’s me or the holidays. I think it’s both. In the spirit of pushing on….I pushed on. Changed my bids from .19 to .22. Started seeing some positive changes but still no sales. I was getting clicks but got nothing in exchange. Got a sandwich with no meat, lettuce or tomato inside! So I bumped from .22 to .24 to .27. Oh mama! I’m getting clicks now but no sales. 😖 I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be happy or sad. On the one, I’m ecstatic that I’m finally amongst the living and my books are being seen but down because now I’m back to ads consuming anything I may make or not making. What is a girl to do?!

Then you have Etsy. Things are actually flying by with it. I mean I am selling my Christmas SVGs left and left with an occasional right. One item has sold over 8 times. It’s my Santa Hat if you’re sweet little mind is curious, Santa Hat SVG. It is pretty cute. 🥰 But with my highs and lows have come some rock bottom, eye opening failures. I just so happened to check out my transactions on my beloved sales and was instantly sickened! I mean blow to the head sickened. I was aware of some of the fees I’d receive but it was more than that. I noticed a transaction fee that I didn’t realize was included. Though I don’t pay for taxes, the customer does, it’s still an integral part of the formula for the processing fee. I was aware of the processing fee but not all that went in to it. Plus my ad spend was out of control. Those darn pesky ads. Well don’t use ’em, you say. With no website following…(ahem, thanks guys) and no consistent Etsy customer base, I am dead in the water. I make a couple of ripples with my ads but I can’t continue to spend more than I make.

Soooo…today I got an injection of some good news. Good news? Don‘t know if that’s the right words. But today I felt like I had some wins. I made 3 sells on Etsy today. On two accounts I felt like some things were going right. For 1, I got 3 sells, uh…hello! Victory shoulder shake. And for 2, I actually made a profit for the day. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Okay. A short applause because for the month I’m still in the red. But today I felt like some things are possible. Some things will become easier. Some things just might become, dare I say normal. 3 sales turning into 10, 10 to 30, 30 to 50 a day. I know it’s coming. I don’t know when but I will keep pushing on. I promise to keep you posted.