How I Started Selling $12,000/Month Productivity Planners Online - Early Story (2023)

Hello! Who are you and what company did you start?

Hi, I'm Jess. I am 34 years old and I am from Tasmania, Australia. I startedJagen des Planerfriedens2015 when I was pregnant with my third child. Originally, we were based on Etsy and only sold planner inserts, but have now grown into a one-stop planner shop that caters to seasoned "planner junkies" looking to expand their planners, as well as novice planners who want the fact that We Love Our shop is the only shop in Australia that allows you to create your own personalized ring planner style planner.

Customers can choose their planner size, cover pattern, dividers, accessories, and hundreds of refill options. We have over 300 "inserts" covering everything from weekly, monthly, and daily layouts to fitness trackers, meal planning, habits, health, Christmas, and birthday party planning. We also sell ready-to-study packages, wedding planning, teachers, and more. We really pride ourselves on having many, many options so people can choose the perfect planner to suit their unique lifestyle and needs. For example, a busy mother of three who tries to find time to exercise each day will need a different planner than a young college student living alone. We also offer niche templates, for example for people using the National Disability Insurance Scheme in Australia; there is literally nothing like it on the market.

In recent years we have greatly expanded our range to include not only planners and inserts, but also planner boards (beautiful covers), dividers, notepads, stationery and more. We also recently launched our subscription box service, where customers can receive a "Planner's Peace Box" every other month, filled with Planner and Self-Care goodies. We have many more plans for new products in 2020.

What is your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

When I started Chasing Planner Peace, I was the mother of two very young children and worked part-time at a government job. I found my job extremely unsatisfying and boring, with little room for creativity. I never dreamed that opening an Etsy shop would result in a business that could become a full-time career. I've always been told to find a safe job and keep it, don't take chances!

After the birth of my second child, I became interested in using a paper planner as a hobby. In fact, there is quite a large community of people (mostly women) who combine organization and creativity and love to use their planners as a reminder and scrapbooking tool, using stickers and washi tape to decorate.

I liked the idea of ​​using Filofax type planners where you could really customize your planner by adding whatever 'inserts' (refill pages) you wanted. I would download printable inserts from Etsy for calendar pages, meal planning, etc., but could never find a design that really worked for me. I would also waste a lot of time, money, and printer ink trying to print the printable inserts, since each file had a different format.

Customers are hard to come by - each one is a marketing investment to get them to visit your site and spend money. If you can give them a good experience, they will come back and tell others about it. Focus on the long game.

Finally, I decided to design my own inserts. I wanted a design similar to Erin Condren's popular planners so I could use stickers. I was part of the planner community for almost two years before I decided to put my inserts on Etsy; the name came to mind quickly.Jagen des Planerfriedensfor my shop, as there was a bit of a joke in the planner community that "planner's peace" is elusive, leading to a lot of online shopping to find (or create) the perfect planner. At the time, there were only one or two stores in Australia that sold printed inserts. He knew what Australian customers were missing in our local market: colorful inserts, high quality paper and a wide range of different inserts.

They were all available abroad in the United States, but the postage and exchange rate made them financially unaffordable for me and many others. I am so surprised that someone bought my bets. However, I quickly gained many clients and was very busy selling a wide range of printed inserts as well as planner dividers and accessories. Many of my clients were actually from abroad and took advantage of the exchange rate. We kept growing and got busier every month.

About two years after opening my Etsy shop, I decided it would be a good idea to open one.Shopifykeep only as backup for Etsy. I assumed that only my VIP clients (only about 500 people at the time) would use my site and I figured Etsy would be the main source of income. HeShopifyThe site launched like I never expected. This allowed us to expand our product range far beyond just planner inserts. We now sell our own brand of Filofax style planners, over 200 (maybe 300) styles of planner inserts, dividers, pens, notepads, a subscription box service and much more. During our busy time of year our monthly billing is approximately $25,000 and allows me to work full time from home and employ two people part time.

Walk us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

The first few uses of my planner were really terrible compared to what we are producing now. I had no idea what I was doing and hadn't given any thought to packaging, postage or branding at all. I made a logo in MS Paint out of all things.

My first inserts were designed with Microsoft Publisher (don't worry, I use professional software now) and it took many, many nights after my kids went to bed. I knew from my own planning experience what would be popular and what was missing from the market. As an avid planner user, I knew exactly what I wanted and I went for it.

Initially, we invested very little financially in the business. I went to Officeworks with my husband and spent $200 on an inkjet printer and paper. I worked on my living room floor and then at a small desk in the kitchen. Since then we have slowly upgraded and researched to find the best paper on the market and now have two commercial printers from a dedicated in-house office. I'm very lucky that we print everything on demand in-house so we can test new products and if they're not popular we just remove them from the site.

We didn't have to spend thousands of dollars on stock we made elsewhere. Many of our early designs began as custom customer requests and slowly the range of products we offered grew and grew.

We started on Etsy, which is very easy to set up and perfect for beginners. Our first few photos were lousy quality, but somehow we still made sales. Over time we got 5 star reviews and more and more orders. It was only after we decided to settleShopifythat we had many requests to offer our own range of planners and at that time we started production with a factory abroad. We originally thought that most of our customers already had planners and would only buy stencils from us. We didn't really expect to sell many planners, we just wanted to offer a small range in case people asked for it (which they occasionally did).

Our first order was for three solid color planners in teal, pink, and navy and it cost us about $4000, which seemed like a big risk. What if the quality was not good? What if people didn't want to buy them at all? They all wanted to tell me their horror stories about dealing with factories abroad. These concerns were unfounded as we and our customers were very happy with it. Offering our own range of planners was a brilliant business move as it allowed us to reach customers who were not yet 'planner addicts'.

We started out by offering starter packs with a planner, dividers, and lots of inserts, which were very popular. Now our line of planners is an important part of who we are and our identity. We have a great relationship with our overseas factory and would love to visit them in person one day. Creating new planner designs is exciting as many of the current planners available from other brands are very simple.

Our "Secret Garden" planner

Describes the process of creating a business.

I was very fortunate that my target market was actually the community I already belonged to: planner addicts. I was part of a Facebook group called Planner Addicts Australia (I'm still a part of it) so I was able to get involved with this group when I started. Since there were very few quality planner insert options on the market at the time, many people in this group were willing to give me a try (despite my shocking product photography, buff logo, etc.). Being on Etsy also gave me access to a lot of organic traffic, and I think a lot of people originally bought from me because I offered custom designs. As I started getting good reviews and adding more products to my store, it became more and more important.

Launching Chasing Planner Peace wasn't a great plan: it was pretty spontaneous to open an Etsy shop and see what would happen.

From the start, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

We are very lucky to be selling a product that customers can keep adding extra time to. We have many customers who have placed 20 or more orders with us. Once people get hooked on planning, the new planner goodies can be something people like to enjoy on a regular basis. We have a 39.9% repeat customer rate, and that's pretty high. We also do everything we can to provide an excellent customer experience. I work very, very hard to ship orders as quickly as possible and if we make a mistake we do everything we can to fix it. If I see that someone may have made a mistake when ordering, for example, they ordered all inserts in one size but a product in a different size, I'll email them to make sure.

We use our VIP group on Facebook as a great place to connect with our customers and make them feel valued. Our VIPs receive regular updates on order fulfillment, new releases, new design input, and many of them share their Chasing Planner Peace designs and orders with the group.

One of the best things we did to increase sales was offerAdditional payment(buy a payment method now, pay later). He was very nervous at first because the fees are quite high, but it really brought a lot of new traffic to the store. Because we have a high customer return rate, any new customer we can gain is very valuable in the long run.

How are you today and what does the future hold?

At the moment our business is such that I can earn a full time salary for 10 months of the year and support my family. March and April are always very quiet for retail in general and the planning community in particular. We average $20,000 in monthly sales year-round, but we've invested heavily in manufacturing programmers and upgrading our office equipment, so our profit margins aren't always that impressive. Now we feel like we're at the stage where we can start to see healthier profit margins. Our annual sales are increasing every year, which is really great.

Don't spend too much time on "fun" things like packaging, website design, etc. If your product is good, it doesn't matter what your logo looks like.

We now print our inserts in large batches using commercial print, cut and punch equipment. This makes us much more efficient than we used to be when each order was printed directly onto A5 paper and then punched by hand. Batch printing has allowed us to really increase our "ready to ship" inventory, allowing us to fulfill orders much faster.

Our team now consists of me, my assistant Clio (who works from home and manages all of our social media and newsletters, helps with customer service, and is also a great source of new ideas and a sounding board for my thoughts) and Jane in Packing helps with the orders.

We have big plans to expand our range of inserts - there are still some styles we don't offer and we'd love to offer other products too. We really want to start selling planner stickers as there is a huge demand for them.

Did you learn anything particularly useful or beneficial starting a business?

I've learned a lot. I really took a 'progress trumps perfection' philosophy and started with no knowledge of photography, graphic design, print technology or e-commerce. Everything I learned was completed in a short time, but I think it worked in our favor to really grow as our customer base has grown as well.

We made a lot of mistakes. The things I do differently now than when I started is I don't do custom work, I calculate the value of my products, and if someone says it's too expensive, that's fine. I always say that unless some people say you're too expensive, you're not charging enough.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Most of our sales are running nowour websitewhat's happeningShopify. We use a paid theme fromget out of the sandbox. We also continue to sellEtsy. We get most of our traffic from Facebook, primarily by sharing our products in Facebook groups that allow ads. We have a very active one.VIP groupOn Facebook. We also get some trafficInstagram.

We have a small marketing budget, but we continue to use it.facebook adsand recently experimented with paid influencers on Instagram. We also send out a few free planners a year to brand reps who take photos of us and share them on Instagram in exchange for the free products.

Clio and I useTrelloYgoogle calendarto keep up with what the other is working on. we also useGoogle Driveto share files while Clio works from home. I usuallyquick booksfor my bookkeeping (and hire an accountant to handle all my finances).

The applications we use in ourShopifywebsite arerate me,SeligYCharge. These are great.rate meHighly Recommended: Send emails to your customers requesting verification as soon as they receive their order. Testimonials and reviews are invaluable in getting new customers to buy. We also use email marketing (we useomnidirectional shipping), but we are very conscious of sending emails only once or twice a month.

What were the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

One of my favorites ishow i built thisby Guy Raz. He interviews some big names and I love hearing how other entrepreneurs started their journeys. I think the most important thing I learned is that there is no right way. Some people get investors on board early and spend a lot before launching, and some people take many, many years to grow very slowly and make a lot of mistakes.

A great Australian podcast that I love isThe bite-sized retail spacecontaining extremely useful "bite-sized" tips that are really easy to implement. Host Kayla Houlihan runs a multi-million dollar skincare business here in Australia and is generous in sharing what has helped her.

Any advice for other entrepreneurs who want to start or are just starting out?

You really, absolutely don't have to have a perfect business or invest thousands of dollars in a business before you get started. Just get started and discover as you go. You're definitely going to make a lot of mistakes, but that's part of the process.

My one big piece of advice is a bit cliché, but customers are the lifeblood of your business. They are the people who put the food on your table, so be nice to them! Very often in dealer groups, I see people arguing with their customers, not communicating with them, or not helping to resolve missing packages, etc. place to come to spend money. If you can give them a good experience, they will come back and tell others about it. Focus on the long game. You may lose money on an order by issuing a refund, but overall your business will be much healthier.

Also, don't spend too much time on "fun" things like packaging, website design, etc. If your product is good, it doesn't matter what your logo looks like. We have been in business for over four years and only recently paid for a professional logo. Focus on providing a great product and service; customers don'tActuallyIt doesn't matter what your logo is.

Where can we learn more?

• website
• Facebook
• VIP group

If you have any questions or comments, please post a comment below.

Planner Peace has provided an update on their store!

Almost 2 years ago we continue with Planner Peace to seehow did it gosince we published this article.

11 months ago we continue with Planner Peace to seehow did it gosince we published this article.