9 Alternatives to Running a Sticker Shop
We've heard people talk about how they are considering closing down their sticker shop due to not having as many sales or being able to keep up with it, but they want to stay engaged with the planner community. Or perhaps you are interested in starting a side hustle in the planner community but don't want to compete with the saturated market of planner stickers. In this post we share 9 alternatives and side-hustle ideas for shop owners who want to stay in the planner community without running a shop.
9 ALTERNATIVES TO RUNNING A STICKER SHOP: SIDE-HUSTLE IDEAS
1. Switch to Printables/Digital Files
Selling printable and digital planner files/inserts is a great way to make passive income. Some cons are that you will need to spend time designing the digital files but once it’s done, you can sell it indefinitely. Physical products do seem to bring in more revenue overall, but digital files are a great alternative that also offer low overhead costs.
2. Selling Planner-Adjacent Products
Stickers are a very saturated market. However, you could move to a less saturated category in an adjacent niche such as planner charms, planners, pens, washi and inserts–just to name a few, and you could really stand out.
3. Selling Your Art
If you’re an artist, you could always sell your art. As sticker shop owners, we are always looking for new art. A lot of artists sell on Etsy and Creative Market, which is where we find most of our art. The license for your artwork (for someone to sell a product with your artwork in it) is also another revenue stream to sell your art in addition to the actual art file itself.
4. Offer Design & Production for Other Shops
Some sticker shop owners outsource some of their designing or production to other shops who have bigger production capacities. If you only like the designing part or the production part, this frees you up to do only the parts you enjoy.
5. Become a Manufacturer Liaison
There are quite a number of shops who are interested in ordering from manufacturers but are not able to find the right fit for whatever reason. They either don’t know how to find these manufacturers, the minimum order quantity is too high, they need help with the product design part, or the shipping is too expensive to make it worth it. If you could help connect these shops with the right manufacturers, or help connect multiple shops together to place manufacturing orders to meet minimum quantities, you could charge a fee for being the liaison.
6. Video Editor for Other Shops & Creatives
Many shop owners also create YouTube videos or other video content. If you are skilled at video editing, this is definitely something you could do–not only for YouTube but also for short-form video content like reels/TikTok to help free up their time to focus on other shop owner responsibilities! You could also edit videos for influencers who film a lot of videos for content on their channels, like plan with me’s, unboxings, etc.
7. Setting Up Shops/Websites and Helping People Transition from Etsy to Shopify
If you’re good at website design, you can help people set up their Shopify site. There are also shop owners who want to transition over to Shopify from Etsy, but they’re intimidated, not sure how to get started, or they’re too busy to do it. You could help them with setting up the site and Shopify features, transferring over listings, etc.
8. Become a Social Media Manager for Other Shops
You could use your expertise and skills with social media to manage the social media accounts for other shops: Instagram, Facebook groups, YouTube, TikTok, etc. This could also include things like content planning, creating graphics, and increasing engagement and brand awareness for their shop.
9. Become a Virtual Assistant for Other Shops
If you are a shop owner, you understand alllll the different tasks that a shop owner has to do, so this would make you the perfect virtual assistant to help other shops. This could include anything from making product listings, writing newsletters, responding to customer service emails, managing PR teams, etc.
Listen to the full podcast episode for all the details on these side-business ideas!
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xo, Lisa & Lucy
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