Etsy Seller Interview with Aliyyah of PuffinPagesCo

How PuffinPagesCo got started

Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?

My name is Aliyyah, and I am the owner of Puffin Pages Co. We are a stationery store that specializes in planner and diary pages. We offer them both as physical refills as well as in a printable PDF format. In addition to our Etsy store, we have a standalone e-commerce website. I started Puffin Pages Co. in late 2019—initially as a creative outlet. I was finishing up my Master’s degree at the time, and I had to make a lot of decisions regarding my career and future. Amidst all the chaos and uncertainty, I found that a planner was the perfect tool for me to create structure and a safe space for myself. As part of that hobby, I started designing and printing planner pages for my own personal use. I initially used free software I had access to as a student, such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Eventually, I graduated (pun intended) to using Adobe InDesign when I needed more sophisticated features and functionalities.

The inspiration to start selling my planner pages on Etsy came when I discovered the concept of digital products. I found it fascinating that you can create a product once and continue to benefit from a stream of sales passively. Furthermore, as a student, the low start-up cost was really appealing too. Due to the low barrier to entry, the market for printable planners on Etsy was quite saturated. In order to differentiate my store, I focused on creating designs that were functional and had a minimal, clean aesthetic—something that resonates with my own style and design preferences.

Favorite items

What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?

My personal favorite is the A4 Meeting Notes Template. It was one of the first designs that I listed on Etsy, and I made my first sale with it. When it started getting multiple sales, I took that as validation that there was still space in the market for a new printable planner store on Etsy.

The A4 Meeting Notes Template is still one of our bestsellers to date. A couple of factors contributed to its success. The first is that the item is catered towards an underserved customer segment on Etsy: the busy professionals who are looking for simple but functional and well-designed planners that help them stay organized and productive. Most printable planners on Etsy (at least at the time) had bright, colorful designs that were catered towards planning hobbyists.

A second factor is timing. I listed the item on Etsy around January 2020, just before the start of lockdown and the subsequent birth of the Zoom meeting culture. My thinking is that more people were looking for templates to help them organize their notes due to the surge in online meetings. The listing also hit all the right keywords, i.e., keywords that had high monthly search volume but low competition.

Getting sales on Etsy

How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?

My first sale came around three months after the store went live. The sale came organically from an Etsy search. At the time, I did not invest in any marketing channels and only focused on optimizing my listings for Etsy search. I also didn’t tell anyone about my store, just in case it didn’t work out. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this to anyone looking to start their own store, but I can definitely empathize! Now, I focus on various channels to drive traffic to our Etsy store and website. A huge driver of traffic is Pinterest. To build a Pinterest audience, I have created and pinned original pins daily for two years. Now, even without actively posting (pinning), Pinterest still brings in consistent traffic due to the evergreen nature of its content.

Other big sources of traffic are Instagram and YouTube. I try to post regularly on Instagram to stay engaged with the community and our audience. I also periodically work with content creators to create video content for YouTube. Like Pinterest, the evergreen nature of YouTube content means that people are constantly discovering (or re-discovering) your brand.

Managing PuffinPagesCo

How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?

I run the store primarily on my own. I bounce around ideas and strategies with my partner. I also get his help on things that he has knowledge of or experience in. For example, using his software engineering background, we built a tool that lets me automatically upload listings to Etsy in bulk (it’s how we manage to have 1000+ listings on Etsy!). Readers can feel free to reach out to me on Instagram if this is something they would be interested in for their own store.

In terms of shipping and fulfillment, 80% of the products we currently offer are digital, which means they are automatically fulfilled when a customer purchases them.

For the physical products that do require shipping and fulfillment, I process them daily out of a small home office. I print and cut the planners on demand, so I don’t need a large storage area for inventory. This also allows me to offer multiple designs without worrying about waste. I did invest in a printer, a paper cutter, and a paper punch that can handle heavy use.

In terms of tools and apps, here are some of the ones that I use day-to-day:

OneDrive: I store all of my files, including the design files and final PDF files, on the cloud so I don’t lose them in case anything happens to my computer.

Adobe Creative Suite

I use InDesign to design and create the planners. I also use Lightroom for editing photos and occasionally Photoshop for working with mockups. I have also recently started using Premiere Rush for creating short-form video content.

Plann: Plann is a great tool for scheduling and managing content for multiple social media channels.

Google Analytics: As a solo entrepreneur, you have to ruthlessly prioritize what you do with your time. I rely on insights from Google Analytics to make data-driven business decisions.

The future of PuffinPagesCo

What goals do you have for your shop in the future?

As a primarily digital product-based business, I would like to automate most, if not all, of the day-to-day processes involved in running an Etsy or e-commerce store. Where automation isn’t possible, I would like to look into outsourcing. The goal is to free up more time for me to spend on more value-adding and revenue-generating tasks.

Advice for new sellers

What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?

Before investing in equipment or inventory, try to find cheap ways to get validation for your product. By "validation," I mean making sure your product is something that people want to buy. You can be creative with the strategies for testing your product. As an example, when I first started Puffin Pages Co., I uploaded a new design every day for a month. After giving it some time, I culled the designs that weren’t selling and doubled down on the ones that had views, sales, and positive feedback.

If you sell physical products, you can use mockups to list your products, and if you do get sales, you can initially work with a print-on-demand company (for example) to fulfill the order. Alternatively, you can sell products on a pre-order basis or just create one of each item. Of course, if you do get validation, you will have to find more scalable ways to manufacture and fulfill orders.

If your product or idea gets invalidated (e.g., no sales or views), that's a good signal too! That means you can pivot, make changes, or move on to a different product entirely without having spent too much time or money.