“You become financially free when your passive income exceeds your expenses.” - T. Harv Eker

Case Study: Turning Her Passion Into A Thriving Business

Rachel Jimenez is a 36-year-old mom of two who left her day job to sell printables on Etsy. At first, things started out slow — it took her two weeks to make her first sale for $5. Her first month, she made $45. Slowly but surely, Jimenez was able to scale her business 100x to earn $4,500 a month. In 2023, she made $77,000 through her Etsy shop.

Starting From Scratch

Although Jimenez started her Etsy shop with no prior experience in printables, this wasn’t her first foray into the side hustle game.

“I have always been interested in business and entrepreneurship,” she said. “Over the years I tried many different side hustles, from dog sitting to freelance writing to giving talks about budgeting and investing.”

Jimenez came across the idea for an Etsy shop in a roundabout way.

“In 2019, I heard a podcast where someone was talking about a new course that was launching about how to make money online with blogging. When I looked into the course, I realized the course creator also had a course about how to make money by selling digital products on Etsy,” she said. “After messaging the instructor and asking her a bunch of questions about which one would be best for me, I decided to buy the blogging course and the Etsy course.”

The online course she followed provided Jimenez the framework to get started.

“I watched the course I bought every morning while I got ready for work, and then implemented what I learned on my lunch break and in the evening after my son went to sleep,” she said. “I had experience using Canva, so I was able to easily create digital products, and the course helped me learn what I needed about Etsy. As for startup cash, I didn’t need any because it only costs $0.20 to list something on Etsy, and you only pay the other fees after you sell an item.”

Scaling Up

Jimenez’s growth from $45 a month to $4,500 occurred when she really began dedicating more time and effort to her Etsy shop.

“When I first started my Etsy store, it was basically a hobby I was doing for fun that had a chance of making money,” she said. “However, being part of the course I bought and the online Facebook community that they have, I was able to see that people that took it seriously were starting to make money after a few months.”

Jimenez focused on her marketing strategy to ramp up sales.

“Once I learned better marketing strategies and how to find niches that allowed me to show up in the organic search results on Etsy, I started to see my Etsy store sales grow substantially,” she said. “My motivation was increased, which helped me create a lot more products at a rapid rate, which also helped increase my revenue.”

Choose Your Side Hustle Wisely

Jimenez credits her success with choosing a side hustle that had real money-making potential.

“The biggest mistake I made for years was doing side hustles that seemed fun, but didn’t necessarily have market demand,” she said. “I would recommend people try to find the sweet spot between what the market wants and needs and what they like to do.”

Her other piece of advice is to stick with it once you’ve selected your side hustle.

“I used to start with a lot of excitement, not see fast results, and then give up and move on to something else,” she said. “Success may be right around the corner, but you’d never know it if you always give up when things seem hard.”

In addition, Jimenez said to seek out resources that can help you scale and grow.

“I would recommend people stay humble and get help in order to not give up too soon,” she said. “Help can be in the form of asking questions of a mentor, buying a course or even joining a group or community of people also trying to start a successful side hustle. It can get lonely and demoralizing trying to do something challenging like start a business all alone. If you have a strong community and support system, it can help you keep going when times are hard.”