Build a Sticker Empire The $100 Sticker Business Plan for Artists/Designers/Doodlers and/or Schemers

Table of Contents

Welcome Aboard (Skip this if you’re in a hurry)

Phase 1: Designs and Branding

Phase 2: Stocking and Prepping for Orders

Phase 3: Etsy

Phase 4: Wholesaling

Welcome Aboard!

Hi there, my name is Evan and I’ll be your guide today. I may not have the gaudiest numbers in sticker sales, but gosh darn it all I’m proud of the little business I’ve put together and I think I’ve got a lot to offer those who want to start a fun side hustle that just might grow into something more. I’m calling my most successful venture to date Alki Supply Company. It has 1,500+ orders fulfilled on Etsy and it wholesaled over 4,000 stickers in the year of 2021. Those sticker sales aren’t paying my mortgage yet, but someday they very well could.

“Learn from your brother’s mistakes” - Dad. I heard that phrase here and there growing up, like after the time my brother stuck his finger in the sketchy bathroom fan at school. That’s part of what this mini business plan is intended to be: “learn from my mistakes”. HOWEVER, I believe there is a different level of understanding that occurs when you make a mistake yourself. There’s a break-even point where the value of a lesson learned can outweigh the cost of the mistake. I suppose that’s life; you know what they say, “You’ve gotta risk it, for the biscuit.” Wise words. Wise words indeed. After all, my brother still has all his digits - and who knows how much notoriety he garnered after that 8th grade fan stunt.

So stick around (pun intended) and you just might learn something from my mistakes and fortunes - but better yet, maybe I’ll inspire you just enough to get out there and make some mistakes of your own.

Bellingham Stickers > Alki Supply Co.

I was born and raised in Bellingham, WA - The City of Subdued Excitement. It’s a sleepy town about 30 minutes south of the Canadian border and an hour and a half north of Seattle. It’s gotten rather popular in recent years due to its variety of outdoor activities which has earned it’s placement on “Best Outdoor City” listicles like this one. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t notify you that Bellingham is home to the Waterfront Tavern. Esquire surveyed the nation and found the Waterfront to be “the roughest bar in America” for the surprising number of serial killers who have bellied up to the bar for a frosty pint of Rainier. 

I studied civil engineering in college and found myself back in my beloved hometown in 2014. I’ve always had a creative streak and for years that quality manifested in writing and recording music, but something funny happened in late 2015.

You see, earlier that year, the Seattle Seahawks lost to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 49. The only thing anyone remembers from that game is an ill-fated slant route that sealed Seattle’s fate. However, there was a funny celebration earlier in the game performed by Doug Baldwin which I still remember. The celebration was penalized because #89 pretended to… defecate on the ball. When asked about it, Angry Doug said, “I guess you could say it was just kind of a built-up frustration I was letting out in that sequence”. Love it. Obscure Seattle sport references aside, I had an idea to show Baldwin’s silhouette from his celebration, but instead of squatting over the ball he would be squatting over the Super Bowl 49 logo. To bring this design to life I signed up for a free trial of Adobe Illustrator (Ai) and hacked my way to creating my magnum opus: The Baldwin Squat. The next day I decided this design was too dubious and even the die-hard-est of Seahawks fans wouldn’t want to revisit such painful memories. 

I still had that Ai subscription though so I decided to hack together some designs of minor landmarks in Bellingham. I liked what I came up with but I sat on these designs for MONTHS, I wasn’t sure what to do with them. 5-6 months later I was at a brewery and my friend bought a sticker from a food truck to put on his water bottle. That StrEAT Food sticker changed everything - I finally knew what to do with those designs I’d been simmering. 

I got some stickers printed from Zazzle and was totally unimpressed. I tried Stickermule next and was totally blown away. From there I showed some friends what I’d made and they had really positive reactions. I was on to something. I consulted a family friend and he encouraged me to get a simple webstore started and to pound the pavement asking local shops if they’d be interested in retailing my stickers. Bellingham Stickers was born. 

Three years and countless hours in Ai later, I got a beer with Brad Lockhart (a graphic designer in Bellingham who was doing similar things to what I was doing) and he recommended I try out Etsy. The Alki State was born (a store similar to Bellingham Stickers but with a broadened theme of Washington State). Less than a year later I wanted to stop giving myself strict theme ceilings so I rebranded as Alki Supply Co. which is how things stand today.

The Road Map

We’re gonna attack this thing in 4 different phases. There’ll be a lot of overlap but I believe in boiling things down to manageable pieces. 

In Phase 1 we’ll cover some sticker design ideas to get you started and some store branding tips. 

In Phase 2 I’ll express my love for Stickermule and how you can leverage this awesome company to get your biz off the ground fast.

In Phase 3 I’ll express my more restrained love for Etsy and give you a few tips for starting out on the platform. 

In Phase 4 we’ll talk about where the money is (likely) to be made - aka how to wholesale your stickers.

Phase 1: Designs and Branding

Why sell stickers?

Stickers are fun, affordable, have diverse applications, and are inexpensive to ship. They’ll help you find the strike zone for your target audience and they can also act as a springboard to other printed or manufactured products. For these reasons, stickers are the perfect starting product if you are an artist/designer/doodler trying to hack your way to some extra cash. 

Sticker Design Ideas

Here’s just a few ideas to get you started, this is nowhere near an exhaustive list. 

People don’t buy with their heads, they buy with their feelings. Think of things worth celebrating. I started with places. You may not know it yet, but you are an expert on where you live. You know the cool landmarks in your town - I don’t. From there, try broadening it out. Etsy is flooded with state outlines with illustrations within them, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something new to be uncovered. Do a sticker for your state bird, flower, mammal, food, motto, geography etc. Try to find interesting factoids about where you live that you could put into a design. National parks are also a big trend right now that might be worth looking into. What kinds of things do you like to do or talk about? What kind of sticker would earn the right to be put on your water bottle or car?

Don’t get pigeonholed by the idea that your designs all need to be of the same theme. It doesn’t hurt, but I also don’t think it’s necessary. I’ve found that most people on Etsy will arrive at your item through search or Etsy’s suggested listings, not through your storefront. It's nice to have a cohesive storefront, but I don’t think it is required to be successful. 

Name and Brand your Business

Be careful with your name. Naming your business “Bellingham Stickers” might be good to start because it says exactly what you do, but can also put a ceiling on your operation if you want to broaden your focus down the road. Try your best to look into the future and imagine where this could go. At the same time, it’s not the end of the world if you decide later on that the name you chose isn’t the one you want to carry forward. Don’t get paralyzed with fear over choosing the wrong name. 

Unless you are a skilled designer I’d recommend keeping your branding as clean and simple as possible. You don’t even need some sort of fancy icon, just a clean, simple piece of text can do the job well.

Custom Domain

Highly optional, but highly recommended. For $12/year you can own a .com web domain, head on over to domains.google and see if you can snag a domain that will work for your brand name. In your Google domain manager, set up your unique domain to forward directly to your Etsy shop URL. This way you can put a nice clean website URL on your business cards and/or social media accounts instead of using a long gross Etsy URL. Using a custom domain will make you look like a pro. Later if you move on from Etsy to a Shopify store you can turn off the URL forwarding and you won’t need to update your business cards, social media etc.

Phase 2: Stocking and Prepping for Orders

Printing Stickers

Stickermule.com is great. They’ll make your design look it’s best in the analog world. They make excellent products, have friendly customer service, make reordering a breeze, bestow you with free hot sauce (if you spend enough money), run weekly deals, have a limited selection of different products and let you order in very small quantities ($9 sample order). 

Recommended Sticker Size

This is tricky and will be subjective. I find that I like a 3”x3” sticker size, which equates to 9 square inches and feels like a good size. If you’ve got a design that is long and short, play around with the dimensions until you approximate 9 square inches (4.5”x2”, 4”x2.25”, 3.5”x2.6”). You’ll ultimately have to decide for yourself what you think the optimum size is for each design.

Sample Orders

Always place a sample order before ordering a larger quantity. Getting a design from your screen into the real world helps you to verify the size and colors are what you expected without breaking the bank if you’ve made a mistake. You can also grow your online shop and appear much more established by having lots of designs without having a ton of inventory - but I’m getting ahead of myself. Sample orders allow you to test the viability/popularity of a design with little to no financial risk. Don’t expect to be as profitable on your sample order stickers - that’s okay, the sample run is more about experimentation and verification than it is about making money. 

Stickermule Hacks

Deals hack: when Stickermule runs a deal on a product you might want, go ahead and order it even if you don’t have a design ready to go. They won’t charge you until you have approved your proof. Stickermule will eventually cancel your order after a period of time, but even then you can still reactivate a canceled order by uploading an image and you’ll still get the discounted rate that you originally ordered. 

Multiple designs discount hack: Stickermule offers discounts when your order includes more than 1 design (excluding sample orders) so always try to reorder multiple designs in a single order to take advantage of this.

Here’s some free sticker cash to keep those startup costs low - Stickermule $10 Credit

Mailing Supplies

To start you’ll need envelopes. That’s it. If you look a little further down the road though I’d recommend a few other things. 

Let’s start w/ envelopes. I like these #7 “coin envelopes”, I find they are a little bit sturdier than a typical envelope, and you can get them for ~.$.06/piece (plus with the type of printer I have, I can print a shipping label through Etsy directly onto these envelopes. Next I’d recommend some cellophane bags - they are the easiest and cheapest way to improve your packaging game. Be careful with the sizes of the previous recommended items - the #7 envelopes are too small for my best selling sticker design. I would also recommend you add a little thank you note. I use a business card with my logo on one side and the other side blank to handwrite a little note.

Phase 3: Etsy

Why Sell on Etsy?

Etsy is low-cost to start, has tons of customers (browsing at all times of the day and night), and helps build social trust (online and in the real world which is great when it comes time to start wholesaling). 

Pricing 101

If X is the cost per sticker,

Retail price = 4X. 

Wholesale price = 2X. 

This is just a rule of thumb to get you in the ballpark. Ultimately you’ll need to do some testing of pricing and see what works best. I retail on Etsy for $3.95/sticker and I wouldn’t recommend selling for less than that - unless you are willing to lose money on single sticker orders, which could be a good way to get orders and reviews on a new storefront. It’s up to you. Once I sell out of my Stickermule sample order for a particular design, I try to reorder at a quantity where I’m getting each sticker at $0.50/sticker. I currently wholesale my stickers for $1.50/sticker direct to businesses, and wholesale at $2.00/sticker when selling through Faire (more on this later.)

Post 5 Listings

Okay, 3 listings will work. I believe Etsy will force you to post a listing when you open your shop so you’ll want to have some images ready to go.

You don’t need photos: (but it doesn’t hurt to have good ones if you can get them)

If you are a strong photographer, by all means, take some snazzy pics of your sticks. Or if your friend takes great photos, ask them for a favor. If you’re like me, the photos you take never turn out the way you want them to, that’s okay. Go search “sticker mockup” on Creative Market or any other place that sells digital goods and find a mockup generator that you like. Alternatively, you can also put a drop shadow on an image in Illustrator that can serve as a decent mockup. I used this method for years before upgrading to a Photoshop mockup. The more images you are able to show per listing the better, don’t be stingy. You’ll also want to get something together for your Etsy shop icon and banner. 

You Don’t Need Stamps

Etsy has made a big push to COERCE encourage sellers to provide tracking on every order through their Star Seller initiative. They’ve actually made it very easy to do so by purchasing shipping labels through Etsy. Pro Tip: What you want to do is get yourself a printer that can print directly onto envelopes. I personally have an HP Tango, but I imagine there are tons of printers out there with this capability. Keep in mind though that Etsy shipping labels are 4”x6”. If you proceed with a #7 envelope as I recommended earlier, you’ll need to find a creative way to get that shipping label to print onto the 6.75”x3.75” area of a #7 envelope. I’ve created a template in Illustrator that I import Etsy shipping labels into which reformats the label to print onto a #7 envelope.

Share your Shop

Ask a few friends and family if they wouldn’t mind placing small orders through Etsy (your stock will be low so make sure they don’t wipe you out!) This will help you to help you iron out any kinks with Etsy’s shipping label system. This also helps to prime the Etsy pump - make sure to ask your friends to leave you some 5 star reviews. Some sales will hopefully get you out of the basement of Etsy’s search and strangers will be more likely to order from a shop with ten 5 star reviews than a shop that has no sales or reviews. 

Make Someone’s Day

You know what it’s like to get something in the mail, it’s the best. But check this out, “It is more blessed to give than receive” - Jesus (for real though, Acts 20:35). You get the chance to make someone’s day here - you don’t have to send them a love letter - but leave a nice note, express your gratitude for their support and package that baby up as nice as you can using cellophane or tissue paper (I love my custom printed tissue paper from Noissue.com), add thank you stickers or get a rubber stamp that says something nice. Put some magic in their mailbox.

Moving on From Etsy

The biggest perk of being on Etsy is traffic. Etsy’s biggest drawback is the % they take on small $ orders. For each sale you make, you’ll get hit with 3 fees: listing fee, transaction fee, and processing fee. Etsy has raised its fees recently (and could do so again at any time). These fees take a greater percentage of your profit the smaller your listing’s price is. On a single sticker order, for which I charge $3.95, Etsy currently takes ~20% of the spoils. If you were to sell the same item on your own Shopify store you’d only get hit with a processing fee (according to Stripe.com their current processing fees are 2.9%+$.30) but you would have to pay for the website hosting which is currently $29/month. All this to say, the break even point is around 72 single sticker orders per month. So, if you are getting 70+ sales a month and are able to maintain those sales on your own webstore, it’s time to consider cutting ties w/ Etsy to keep more profits in your pocket. The difficulty is maintaining those sales without the massive customer base that Etsy offers.

Phase 4: Wholesaling

Why Wholesale?

The margins on stickers aren’t huge and you need to sell a bunch of them to make any real money. Moving larger quantities of stickers helps you order in larger quantities and only improves your margins.

Ordering Stickers for Wholesale Orders

If you can help it, try to get a wholesale order from a store before ordering a large quantity of stickers. Again, I try to get stickers at $0.50/sticker when ordering larger quantities. For a 3”x3” sticker you’d have to order around 300 stickers ($150) to get that price point with some of the hacks we discussed in Phase 2. Depending on where you live I’d recommend wholesaling stickers for $1.50/ea-$2.00/ea. If everything goes according to plan, you should be able to make your money back pretty quickly. 

Where Should I Try to Sell my Stickers?

Any place that’ll take ‘em! I’ve found that a lot of coffee shops, breweries, cafes and such aren’t the best spots to try out. A lot of these places only want to sell their own branded stuff which is totally fair. If you know of a coffee shop that’ll sell your stuff, don’t let me stop you, get over there ASAP. My biggest success has been in gift shops, boutiques, and outdoor shops. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box a little here, check out airport gift shops, hospital gift shops, museum gift shops, skate shops, book stores, pipe shops, grocery stores etc.

The Wholesale Pitch

When possible, make your wholesale pitch in the analog world. Walk into gift shops and ask for a manager/buyer. Show them your stickers, tell them you sell stickers on Etsy and you think your products would do well in their shop. There’s no special script, just try to be relaxed and hopefully they’ll be in a good mood. Forewarning: this will be an exercise in rejection. That’s okay, you’ll find it’s worse in your head than it is in person and will make the wins even sweeter. Make sure you have answers to the questions that will be asked if someone is interested in buying. What is your Minimum Order Quantity? (MOQ, say you don’t require one) How much per sticker? How soon can you deliver?

Faire Online Wholesale Marketplace

I’m new to Faire.com and was very happy with the platform in the month of January. I’ve never run a brick and mortar retail shop but I’m learning there are obviously seasons for reordering. The post Christmas season is one of those times to restock and test out new products. My orders on the platform practically dried up until June when another surge of orders came through. I think the platform has a pretty high potential.

Fiverr Lead Generation

Imagine you’ve exhausted all the gift shops in your town and you’d like to start selling more regionally. You need to figure out where else you could sell. You could spend hours scraping the internet for gift shops and contacts and such that might want to buy your stuff…or you could pay someone else to do that mind numbing work for you. Nevermind that they’ll do it faster and probably more thoroughly than you would do it. Hop on over to Fiverr.com and search “lead generation”. Just remember that whatever kind of information you tell them to look up is the information you will receive. So if you get a list of junk information consider the input you gave them before dismissing the output. I learned that lesson firsthand.