2022 In Review - Q4 With Etsy and KDP

Quarter 4 2022 was a very exciting time for us at Sunset Creative Publishing. We opened a new Etsy store early on with the idea of adding spiral notebooks to our collection of products to complement what we currently have on our Amazon KDP store. The idea was to add items to Etsy that already exist on KDP to save us time in the creation process, but that didn’t seem to work out. Then we got an idea while watching an episode of the She-Hulk series on Disney+. In one episode, some of the characters were excited to buy bootleg Avengers merchandise named Avongers. This gave me an idea, so I researched if this term was trademarked (it wasn’t) and created a mug based on the image, which I found online (and later purchased from another vendor on Etsy). To my surprise, this product started selling well, and we decided to sell more mugs and t-shirts.

Meanwhile, in Q4, we stopped producing new books on Amazon KDP temporarily. We started focusing on Amazon ads and social media to sell our existing products. This work resulted in a record-breaking year-end for us, but we still have to learn to improve our advertising budgeting skills. Although we sold many books, we spent WAY too much money on Amazon ads. Correcting this will be a priority in the new year.

In the coming year, we decided to take a more goal-oriented approach to our business. We set a goal for Q1 2023, goals for each month in that quarter, weekly goals, and daily goals. Organizing our ideas and tasks for both our Amazon KDP store and our Etsy store could help keep us on track to reach and surpass our goals.

What would you like us to discuss in our next blog? Something about our processes or maybe you have questions about our products? Let us know in the comments below!

P.S. We’d like to thank all of our followers and customers for all your support and hope you continue to support us in the coming year and we continue to add products and value for you!