How to Start a Stationery Business in 10 Easy Steps

When I was first searching for how to start a stationery business, I couldn’t find much information online.

I hope this article can answer the burning questions I had to figure out on my own through trial and error!

I started my business in 2020. Since then our shop has had over 2,800 orders (and counting) and generated over $16K in revenue!

I accomplished all this while also navigating a big move and growing our family. (You can read my whole story and see my Etsy stats for each year here!)

Selling greeting cards on Etsy is a great side hustle.

✔️ The startup cost is very low.

✔️ The barrier to entry is higher than digital products, so competition is lower.

✔️ It is a fun outlet for your creativity—whether you like coming up with witty phrases, or are very artistic!

1. Open an Etsy Store

The first step to starting a stationery business is figuring out where you will sell your cards!

I love selling on Etsy. I have tried selling on Etsy, Amazon, and in brick & mortar stores—but Etsy is by far my favorite!

It’s basically free to start selling on Etsy, and it is a very user friendly platform.

The customers on Etsy are very kind and friendly, and value supporting small businesses.

You can use my referral link to get your first 40 listings for free! After that, it only costs $0.20 per listing.

I see a lot of people get lost in the weeds during this step—trying to decide on the perfect name for their store, perfecting their branding, etc… it can go on and on.

Many people get so stuck in analysis paralysis that they never even open their store.

Do yourself a favor and don’t linger too long on this step.

Make your motto: Progress over Perfection.

Just get it up and running, and keep going! Focus your efforts on the steps that will really build your business!

2. Research your Niche and Design your First Card

What’s a niche?

Selling stationery online is not the same as selling stationery in a store.

In a store, someone might walk by your product and make an impulse purchase because it is so pretty!

Online, your generic card will just get lost among thousands and thousands of listings that all look similar.

To get in front of customers and have them really want to buy your product, it has to rank for the keywords they type in the search box so they can see it!

A niche refers to a specific target market within the broader stationery industry. Instead of trying to sell generic stationery, a niche helps you really stand out to your ideal customer!

The best niches are specific and passion driven.

A good way to look for niches is by paying attention to special interests you or your friends have!

Some ideas might be Chess lover birthday cards, RV & Van Life themed cards, Beekeeper Valentine’s Day cards, etc! In general, the more specific, the less competition you will have!

Once again, don’t worry too much about this step. The main thing is to get cards up on your site and get through the process a couple of times. Over time you will learn what works well!

How to design your product—options to consider

The next step is designing your first card!

You definitely have options to consider here. Some sellers make customized stationery for weddings, or handmade cards etc.

I personally like a very streamlined process.

I don’t like offering custom options on my Etsy store, since that requires so much communication between me and the customer.

I also don’t like selling handmade cards since it takes a lot of work to make each one individually.

That being said, it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round! This is just my personal take.

I just like designing a card that I enjoy, getting it printed, and seeing if it will sell!

I love using the app Procreate on my iPad to make my card designs. You can draw right in the app, or take a picture of a physical piece of art and adjust it in the app.

3. Find a Print Shop and Make your First Order

I love using Printswell Fulfillment to print my designs!

They are a family owned online stationery store out of Tennessee. They are just fantastic to work with, the quality is great, and they always answer my emails so fast!

I’m not an affiliate or anything for them—and in fact it took me a while to find such a great company! I’m letting out all my secrets here!

Their pricing is also great for small businesses. You can order as few as 10 cards for a really cheap price per card!

In fact, I would recommend only ordering a very small quantity of cards per design to start. That way you won’t be overrun with inventory if some designs don’t sell!

I like ordering A2 size cards, the price for that size makes a lot of sense for an Etsy store. There are a lot of easy to use file guidelines on their site to walk you through exactly how to format your design for ordering.

Don’t forget to order envelopes to go with your cards! There are lots of fun color options to choose from!

4. Order Packaging Supplies

Now that your cards are on their way, you can start thinking about packaging and shipping!

Decide How you will Ship your orders

Before you decide on what packaging supplies you get, you need to know how you will be shipping your product!

This was the most difficult part of the process for me to figure out.

✔️ I would highly recommend going in person to your local postal office and talking with a postal worker there if you have any questions. They are so helpful!

All of the online tutorials I could find recommended sending the stationery in rigid envelopes as a “flat” or a “package” which costs $4 or more to just ship one card!

My Shipping method

For my shipping method, I place my A2 sized card and envelope in cellophane for protection, then send it in a slightly bigger A7 envelope.

I print Etsy shipping labels at the USPS “letter” rate which costs a couple cents less than a forever stamp, and includes tracking!

This way I can ship my orders from my mailbox for less than a dollar!

Below is a peek at the settings I have saved as my Etsy shipping profile for a regular order:

Packing Supplies

These are the packaging supplies I use for my shipping method:

✔️ Cellophane: I order my cellophane from this Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/cellobags?ref=shop-header-name&listing_id=127288033&from_page=listing

✔️ Envelopes: I order A7 envelopes from Printswell when I submit my order.

✔️Half-sheet Sticker Paper: I use this sticker paper in my regular printer. It is slightly longer than the envelopes I use, but I just fold it over the edge for a little extra protection during transit.

5. Decide on Pricing and Profit Margins

I’ve created a cheat sheet for myself in Google Sheets that has formulas to help me price my products.

The numbers I like to know are: Total cost, Price, Gross Profit, Percent Markup, and Percent Margin. I’ll show you how to calculate them below.

✔️ Total Cost: This one is easy! Just add up all your expenses for a single order.

My expenses are: shipping label, A7 envelope, Cellophane, Postage, Etsy listing fee ($0.20 per sale), Etsy CC processing ($0.25 per order) + 3% of price, the Etsy 6.5% of price fee, the cost per card from Printswell, and the cost per envelope from Printswell.

The Etsy fees will come out of your sale, so they won’t be out of pocket expenses, but they still have to be considered.

As you can see, my total cost usually comes out to about $3.24 per card.

✔️ Price: this is whatever you decide! You can do market research on Etsy with comparable products to see what you should charge. It’s nice to have an excel sheet with formulas like mine so you can adjust the price and see what the best one is.

✔️ Gross Profit: Price – Total Cost = Gross Profit

So in my example the gross profit was 6 – 3.24 = 2.76

✔️ Percent Markup: Gross Profit / Cost x 100 = Percent Markup

To continue the example:

2.76 / 3.24 = 0.85

0.85 x 100 = 85%

✔️ Percent Margin: Gross Profit / Price x 100 = Percent Margin

2.76 / 6 = 0.46

0.46 x 100 = 46%

You can do some research to decide what to price your product at. A great starting place is to learn what common markups and margins are!

I base my prices more on gross profit than margin & markup because that’s my preference!

6. Take High-Quality Listing Photos

If you think about it, pictures are one of the most important part of your listing!

Most mobile phones and tablets have excellent cameras. Once you have taken the picture you can go in and edit it until you like the end result!

I use this portable photo light box to take my listing pictures. That way I always have great lighting!

You can also start out taking pictures on a neutral surface next to a bright window or outside.

The best pictures are taken in bright but diffused lighting.

It’s also highly recommended to take a short video of your stationery. Etsy statistics show that listings with videos sell twice as much!

7. Create and Optimize Your Listing

Now that you have your product, packing supplies, pricing, great pictures, and hopefully a short video, it’s time to create your first listing!

I’ll walk you through the most important sections you’ll have to fill out.

Title

It’s a good idea to write a list of keywords to describe your product that your potential customer would write in the search box to find it. You can even use AI to help you brainstorm this step!

Try to come up with 13 key words so you can use them as the tags later in the listing.

You can use a keyword tool like Erank (I’m not an affiliate, but I’ve tried several keyword tools and this one is my favorite for Etsy!) to research how much search volume and competition there is for each key word.

It’s a good idea to incorporate the best key words into the beginning of your title.

Description

This is where you can give your customer any extra detail about your product that they might need.

I like to list the dimensions of my greeting cards, materials used, and what color envelope it comes with.

It’s best to also incorporate the key words you have listed into the description of your product! Many customers won’t expand the description box to read the full thing, but it will help your listing show up in the search results for those key words.

Shipping

Use this opportunity to decide on your shipping settings and save them as a shipping profile so that all your listings can use the same profile. It’ll save a lot of work!

I also highly recommend choosing “Free shipping” and working the shipping cost into the price of your product rather than charging your customer what feels like extra.

Ads

After experimenting with it a few different ways, we have decided that the return on investment with ads is not worth it for a product as cheap as stationery usually is!

I’ve noticed that even if I select “no” on ads for a new listing they will often automatically still go on. So I go in after activating the listing and manually double check that they are off.

Renewal Option

I like to select “automatically renew.” It’s only $0.20 for each renewal, and it’s much easier to keep track of!

8. Activate your listing!

Congratulations!

After completing all the steps above, you should be ready to activate your first listing!

Listings are really the bread and butter of your store. The more you can get up, the better chances you have of making sales.

The first time walking through the process will feel arduous, but the more you do it the easier it will get!

9. Promote and Share your Etsy Shop

A great way of encouraging more sales is by posting your products to social media like facebook, instagram, or even creating Pinterest pins that lead back to your listing!

You can also create videos of different parts of your process to generate interest.

I’ve never been good at creating a social media following myself, since I avoid spending much time on it. But some people are really good at driving sales this way!

10. Persist!

No matter what endeavor you are pursuing, Stick-to-it-iveness is the most important quality—I truly believe that!

Even in my little experience, I have seen so many people start things and then gradually stop working at them. The only reason they didn’t succeed at their goals was because they stopped working on them!

If you will keep plugging away at your goals, I truly believe you will see success in time as long as you don’t give up!

“All hard work brings a profit.” Proverbs 14:23

and…

“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”

2 Corinthians 9:6

If you are considering starting a stationery business and have questions or advice you would add please leave a comment!