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Make things people wait for
Everyone teaches makers how to get found. This is the other way round: an audience of your own, a date in the diary, and a launch that lands on the day you picked
Sales land on a date you picked, not the day the algorithm decides to notice you, and that only works if people are already waiting for it when it comes round. The planner is the six weeks that gets them there, and it costs nothing
More listings was never the answer
You’ve done what they told you. Better photos, better tags, more listings... and the shop still sits there in silence, because the belief underneath is that Etsy sends the customers. Etsy takes the payment. Getting seen was always going to be your job, and nobody says that when you open the shop
Listing it isn’t the same as selling it. The sellers who sell out aren’t the ones with the most listings, they’re the ones with people waiting
The Anticipation Method
The selling happens before launch day, with the people who already care. 6 phases, worked backwards from a date you choose
Phase 01
Shape the collection
Phase 02
Add the digital layer
Phase 03
Set the launch date
Phase 04
Price everything
Phase 05
Build the anticipation
Phase 06
Emails and launch week
Phase 5 is where the sell-out is actually made: the 6 weeks where people watch the collection take shape and put the date in their diary. Launch morning is one email, not a prayer
The whole argument, in five short reads
What a launch morning actually looks like. What is really going wrong when the shop goes quiet, and why none of it is the quality of your work. Why fixing your listings never fixes it. Where the selling actually happens. And then what it takes to run one
What it did for me, and what it cost
£12,000
I sent one email, over one weekend. A Christmas launch to people who were already waiting for it.
£180,000
Year three. I had a breakdown at the end of it, running everything through my own two hands, which is why the systems exist.
157
Sales of my first digital product, which I'd priced at £2.50. Daft of me. It sold anyway.
Where this goes
Four steps, and you can stop at any of them. The first one is free and it is a real thing rather than a taster, because a plan you cannot read the end of is not a plan
- Free
The Handmade Launch Planner
One date, one pagePut in the day you want to launch on. It hands back the six weeks in front of it, dated, with the one job for each week and the thing that usually goes wrong in it
- £19
The Launch Email Swipe Kit
Eight emailsThe words that go in those six weeks. One email for each week of the runway and three for launch week, ready to put your own collection into
- £97
The Handmade Launch System
Run it every collectionThe Anticipation Method as a workbook. You pick the date, work backwards from it, and the same plan runs again for the collection after this one
- £249
The Handmade Launch Sprint
Six weeks, with me in itYour next launch done together, a call every week, and you finish holding the next three dates and the runway back from each one
Start at the top. The planner costs nothing
I’ve been the maker with the silent shop
Feathers on eBay in my late teens, Swarovski jewellery in my twenties, then quilts and bags on Etsy sewn from cotton I imported from America, and craft supplies after that. I made the things, I listed them, I refreshed the stats, I hoped
What changed it was realising the people who’d already bought would happily buy again if I had a way to reach them. Everything here is the version of that I wish somebody had handed me. The longer story is here
From the library
All articles →11 August 2026
I emailed my list and nobody bought. What went wrong?
Usually nothing you did on the day. I sent one email to 100 people and got 1 click, and the problem had been decided weeks before I ever hit send.
8 August 2026
What should I put on my digital download delivery page?
The page at the end of your download link is the one part of the sale Etsy doesn't own. I bought 14 digital products to see what makers were doing with it.
8 August 2026
Why am I not making any money on Etsy?
Busy is not the same as paid. The backwards sum that shows what your shop really pays you an hour, and how I fixed mine without ever touching the price.