Etsy Seller Interview with Alex of TheGoodTravellers

How TheGoodTravellers 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?

Hello, we’re the Marra brothers. We began selling on Etsy on exactly January 1st to make tracking fiscal years simple  😊

We wanted to start our own business since we value freedom and independence above everything else, and we finally made this our top priority in autumn of 2024. We decided to give Etsy a try since it’s well known for being the place to find handcrafted goods. As far as our product types go, we contemplated several ideas and created a bunch of different prototypes to determine scalability, ease of production, and of course…“cool factor”. We ended up going with laser-engraved wood art with a traveling theme as we love to travel and hoped that we’d be able to do more of it if our business was successful.

Besides the end product looking amazing, laser engraving really spoke to us as it blends multiple different disciplines that we enjoy – woodworking, image editing, and even a little programming. It’s like the perfect combination between new technology and old-fashioned craftsmanship, and we’re very pleased with what we’ve been able to create and sell so far.

Favorite items

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

Our favorite crafted items are definitely the city street maps. We use a program to pull road data from OpenStreetMap to create an engravable road network which we laser into wood. There are serious issues when it comes to scalability though…the job requires a low-wattage laser in order to produce fine lines so that the roads don’t end up looking “smudged” on the final product. Unfortunately, a low-wattage laser means lower power and longer processing times, and some of our pieces can take 3-4 hours to complete. However, the end product looks so cool that we can’t help but offer them to customers and show them off in our shop.

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?

We received our first sale about a week after the shop opened, which was morale-boosting after all the hard work we had to do to get it started. Creating a single Etsy listing feels akin to filing your taxes – there are so many things you need to fill out and boxes to check, and if you mess up in one place or forget to include something, it could seriously affect your search visibility!

We currently attract customers by running monthly sales, paying for advertising, and creating pins on Pinterest. We also include some business cards in our packages so that happy customers can share them with their friends and family. 

Managing TheGoodTravellers

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 (Alex) manage the “computer” side of the business (creating new designs, creating listings, optimizing SEO, etc.) while my brother Bill handles fulfillment. As far as tools and apps go, our operation is pretty low-tech at the moment – we mainly use Excel to track products and inventory and we use a program called Amazing Marvin to track our to-do list. If we ever get to the point where we’re selling hundreds of products a week, we’ll probably transition to using fancier tools like Quickbooks, but that’s not necessary at the moment.

Of course, we also use Alura! Etsy’s algorithm is esoteric and figuring out the right combination of keywords to use feels like trying to crack the formula for the Philosopher’s Stone at times. Alura helps us greatly to hone in on what keywords have low competition and what customers are searching for in general. If we didn’t have Alura, we’d probably still be using basic tags like “wood art” and would have been wondering why we only get two views per week across our entire catalog!

The future of TheGoodTravellers

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

Our current goal is scalability – a bigger workshop, faster machines, etc. As we mentioned earlier, some of our city maps take 3-4 hours to complete…if we got 10 orders of those in a day, we’d be working day and night for a week! Of course, selling a bunch of products is a good problem to have  😊

We’d also like to branch out and try creating new product types in the future. We love to learn new things and it would be neat to try creating stickers, necklaces, and other craft goods. However, we’re focused on making our current product line as perfect as we can before taking on something else.

Advice for new sellers

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

First, you must realize that running a business is a massive amount of work – don’t be fooled by some YouTuber telling you that you can make thousands of dollars a month by clicking a few buttons every so often. It’s much more than that.

However, if that doesn’t deter you and you decide to give it a shot, don’t give up! That passion for artistry and independence came from somewhere deep inside you – don’t let low initial sales or the troubles of life smother that yearning. Just keep moving forward and everything will work out in the end.

Speaking of low initial sales…another word of advice – don’t hitch your wagon to just Etsy! The platform is going through a bit of a crisis at the moment with the proliferation of Print-on-Demand services and AI-generated art. There’s more competition than ever, but there’s also more platforms to sell your products on than ever too – Facebook Marketplace, Amazon Handmade, etc. Bill and I have sold many more products outside of Etsy than within it, and we’re also looking into new avenues for sales like farmer’s markets and retail stores.

Even though Alura markets itself as Etsy-oriented, we’ve found their keyword recommendations and listing optimization tips to work equally well on other platforms (if people are using specific keywords to search on Etsy, they’re probably using the same keywords on other platforms too). If Etsy doesn’t work out for you, keep your chin up and branch out. There’s a world of possibilities out there and a place for you in it.