It’s always inspiring to reconnect with longtime friends of The Side Hustle Show, and Debbie Gartner aka the Flooring Girl is one of them.
Over the last few years, she’s turned her love for simple, creative projects into a $4,000-per-month digital product business on Etsy.
What started as a personal outlet has grown into a scalable, semi-passive side hustle.
Tune in to Episode 637 of The Side Hustle Show to learn:
how to build a $4,000/month Etsy shop selling digital products
keyword research, customer loyalty, and bundling to increase sales on Etsy
how AI tools can streamline and help scale your side hustle faster
And be sure to check out Debbie’s free Start Your Etsy Shop Challenge to kickstart your own digital product journey.
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Round 1: Building a $4K/month Etsy Shop
Debbie didn’t start out as a design pro. After a health scare that left her reevaluating her priorities, Debbie decided to focus on things she truly enjoyed. Etsy became her creative outlet, and she started small with health trackers like a $1 blood pressure chart.
“I started very, very simple,” Debbie shared. She started with what she was sure she knew and kept asking questions like, “What do you know? What do you like?”
And she began with simple one or two-page printables and gradually expanded her skills. Canva is a great resource for creating digital products, and AI tools can speed things up as well.
Debbie expanded from there, creating themed trivia games for holidays like July 4th, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. (So she’s not only selling digital products related to flooring.)
She uses tools like eRank and InsightFactory for keyword research, focusing on products with decent sales velocity and low to medium competition. Most of her items sell for $1.49 to $10, with many in the $3-$5 range.
She looks for products making at least one sale a week, and found that bundling multiple items can command a higher price point.
Debbie’s success didn’t happen overnight. She hit:
$750 in month six
$1,000 around the one-year mark
now she’s consistently around $4,000 per month 2 years in.
She’s been consistently adding new products and diversifying her offerings throughout that time.
If you’re interested to know more, Debbie’s offering a free “Start Your Etsy Shop” challenge.
Round 2: Donate a Business Idea
Debbie shared a business idea she’d been thinking about for a while if she had more time—starting a podcast. She wants to share her stories to everyone after years of making money online and building multiple side hustles.
“I really got started making money online while listening to you and Pat Flynn and some others,” Debbie shared. It gave me the motivation when I was at my low point.”
She’s even recorded a few episodes but hasn’t launched yet. Debbie sees podcasting as a way to build “unbreakable bonds” with her audience, just like she’s doing with her Etsy customers through email marketing.
While podcasting is more crowded now than when I started The Side Hustle Show, there’s still plenty of opportunity to connect with an audience and build relationships. It just takes consistency and finding your unique angle.
Round 3: Triple Threat
Debbie shared a few great tips in this final round:
Marketing Tactic
Focus on loyalty. Instead of constantly chasing new customers, look at how you can get your existing customers to buy more. Debbie uses loyalty discounts, inspired by a yoga studio that offered her a “happy anniversary” email with a 10% discount after a year of membership. It’s these little touches that keep customers coming back.
Favorite tool
Debbie is all about simplicity and productivity, and she’s found ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini incredibly useful for speeding up her work. It’s a nice reminder that we don’t have to do everything manually. There are tools out there to help us work smarter, not harder.
Favorite book
While she admits she hasn’t had much time for reading lately, she’s got Roctogenarians by Jonathan Greenberg & Mo Rocca on her list. This book is all about people who got started, restarted, or pivoted their lives when they were older — we’re talking 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond.
Episode Links
Previous episode with Debbie Gartner
TheFlooringGirl.com
Start Your Etsy Shop challenge by Debbie
sidehustlenation.com/printablesebook
Selling Printables on Etsy
Spreadsheets Crafter
Digital products related to flooring
eRank
InsightFactory
Pat Flynn
ChatGPT
Claude
Gemini
Roctogenarians by Jonathan Greenberg & Mo Rocca
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