STARTING your own business can be a lengthy process, with tons of time dedicated to getting it off the ground and huge initial overheads.
Despite having no prior experience, one mum-of-two decided to take and now makes an extra £61,000 per year ($77k) – from home.
Ironically, this wasn’t the first side hustle Rachel Jimenez had tried.
Alongside her normal nine-to-five, the entrepreneur struggled to get her businesses off the ground and her initial excitement would quickly wear off.
“I have always been interested in business and entrepreneurship,” she told , adding: “Over the years I tried many different side hustles, from dog sitting to freelance writing to giving talks about budgeting and investing.
“I used to start with a lot of excitement, not see fast results, and then give up and move on to something else.”
In 2019, her life changed forever after she came across her best-selling idea by chance.
Keen to make some extra cash, she’d heard about a course teaching people how to make money from blogging on a podcast and decided to check it out.
When she went to look at the short course though, something else caught her eye – a tutorial on earning money from the small business marketplace, Etsy.
After chatting with the instructor, she decided to buy the latter courses – not knowing how it would change her life.
It detailed how to make sell printables on Etsy, like wedding invites, with Rachel learning how to design them around her busy family life.
She recalled: “I watched the course I bought every morning while I got ready for work, and then implemented what I learnt on my lunch break and in the evening after my son went to sleep.
“I had experience using Canva, so I was able to easily create digital products, and the course helped me learn what I needed about Etsy.
“As for startup cash, I didn’t need any because it only costs 16p ($0.20) to list something on Etsy, and you only pay the other fees after you sell an item.”
Despite leaving her coperate job to focus on the bussiness, the 36-year-old admits that it wasn’t easy to make sales and that she treated her side hustle more like a ‘hobby’ initially.
“When I first started my Etsy store, it was basically a hobby I was doing for fun that had a chance of making money,” Rachel revealed, adding: “However, being part of the course I bought and the online Facebook community, I was able to see that people that took it seriously were starting to make money after a few months.”
Having made just £3.97 ($5) from her first sale, which took two weeks, but the mum was still determined to make the small business work.
Focusing on marketing, the mum-of-two suddenly saw her sales start to rapidly increase and eventually found her niche on the site.
This gave her the motivation to keep going and create plenty of new digital products which her customers loved.
From earning just £35.69 ($45) in her first month, she now makes roughly £3568 ($4500) per month – that’s an extra £61,000 ($77k) per year.
Having created the successful Etsy shop, Rachel now encourages other entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams.
She added: “I would recommend people stay humble and get help in order to not give up too soon.
“Success may be right around the corner, but you’d never know it if you always give up when things seem hard.”
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