Francisco Rivera’s “original plan” after graduating college was to work in the music and travel industries.
But after graduating from Full Sail University with a degree in music production in 2017, he was unable to find a job in the industry. So Rivera made money where he could: He worked at an Apple Store and then landed a part-time job at the online tutoring company Outschool.
Those jobs were neither satisfying nor lucrative – at least compared to what he does now, he says. In February 2023, Rivera began selling print-on-demand candles on Etsy. At first he worked four to five hours a day and only earned a few hundred dollars a month.
Two months later, Rivera had an appointment where his sideline skyrocketed in popularity: He received over 70 orders that day, compared to the usual 10, he estimates. “I was so distracted because my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing.”
Now that Rivera’s shop is up and running and has accumulated over 5,000 reviews on Etsy, he says he only has to work 20 minutes a day to manage customer relationships. He made $462,000 in sales last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. That’s an average of about $38,500 per month.
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Rivera estimates that 30 to 50 percent of each sale represents a profit. The remaining money will fund Etsy fees, which were nearly $55,000 last year, as well as marketing and Printify. the service he uses to contact manufacturers. (Rivera has asked that his shop’s name be kept secret so that other sellers don’t copy his products.)
The success of Rivera’s Etsy shop allowed him to quit his job as a tutor in December. This year he’s been using his extra time to travel the world – he just returned from Bali – and work on personal music projects, he says.
“Some people love structure… but I just realized it wasn’t for me,” Rivera, 26, tells CNBC Make It. “Being my own boss is very fulfilling.”
Here’s how Rivera honed his skills from previous jobs to open a successful business and how he stands out in a saturated print-on-demand market.
Use existing skills
After college, Rivera worked at Apple Stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for three years. There, he says, he learned to multitask, build relationships and solve customers’ problems even when people yelled at him.
In 2020, he moved to Orlando, his hometown. There he took a job at Outschool, where he taught 7- to 12-year-olds how to develop social and critical thinking skills using the popular online game Minecraft. The pay was good, up to $100 an hour, and it was his introduction to the online business, he says.
As demand for online tutoring waned after the pandemic, Rivera began looking for new sources of income, he says.
That’s when he came across a YouTube video about print-on-demand. The popular side business has a simple concept: Sellers create designs for products like T-shirts, tote bags or mugs and then offer the designs on online marketplaces. After an order is placed, a manufacturer prints the design on the product and ships it directly to the customer.
As Rivera did more research, he realized how many people were already selling clothes. More competition, another YouTube video informed him, would make it harder for his shop to go viral.
He searched the Printify catalog for more ideas and landed on candles – a relatively new and less popular product, he suspected – even though he’s allergic.
“I wanted to create an aesthetic, neutral candle that would fit into any room. I also love humor (so) I liked the idea of collecting phrases for specific niches,” he says.
His customer service skills also likely helped his store quickly rack up positive reviews and boost its reputation on the platform, he says. (Etsy doesn’t disclose how its algorithm ranks its search results, but its seller’s handbook says shops need “fabulous feedback” to be successful.)
Trial and error lead to the formula for success
Rivera is experimenting with strategies he’s learned through trial and error and YouTube tutorials to help his Etsy shop stand out, he says.
He changes his product descriptions, updates product photos and invests in internal marketing on Etsy to get his candles in front of as many users as possible, he says.
It’s not an expensive model: listing each product on Etsy costs $0.20, then the platform takes 6.5% of each sale. He borrows someone else’s Canva account, but the pro version costs $120 per year.
Rivera’s part-time model is also simple. He starts with a photo of a candle with a blank label and adds a phrase on Canva – like “Smells like a promotion” – that’s popular with other sellers. He then uploads the design to Etsy and his linked Printify account sends the design to a manufacturer, who ships the final product directly to customers.
When traveling, Rivera still works less than an hour a day. When he’s home in Orlando, he says he devotes two hours at least one day a week to researching platform trends.
The research phase is time-consuming but crucial to his success, Rivera says. He’s spending this time figuring out how to appeal to hyper-specific groups like hockey moms, new parents who hate dirty diapers, bridal showers, divorcees and people in long-distance relationships.
“I actually don’t have to work every day…you can do this passively all year round if you want,” Rivera says. “You just won’t make quite as much.”
Rivera is considering expanding the business and possibly using his tutoring skills to produce his own print-on-demand YouTube videos, he says — but that comes at a cost. He would have to give up his free time and therefore some of his music and travel.
“Time, value and flexibility are valuable,” says Rivera. “I would take a pay cut if it meant I could still do what I do (in my free time).”
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