Rachel Rofé

Setting up a “production flow” can be the make or break for a business. And while it may not be super sexy,  I’ve seen in LHS that it’s been the difference between big sellers and small sellers, between hobbyists and business owners.

If you want to create $3k, $5k, $10k+ a month with LHS, thinking like a big business and applying production flows is a great idea.

And if you’d like to bring in even more, you can take the next step by launching ads and creating production flows for that.

(I know, I used to not be such a big fan of ads. Don has been relentless in showing me how impactful they can be, so I’ve been testing them out and — he’s right. You’ll learn about this more over the next few weeks when Don’s Dropshipping on Demand comes out.)

Creating consistent production flows for both of these goals — pulling in $3k, $5k, $10k+ a month and scaling up with ads — helps you stay more organized and intentional about your progress.

The key is to always hold yourself accountable. Once you create a production flow, you need to stick to it.

Below, you’ll learn about the different types of production flows along with three examples of production flows pertaining to creating new designs and products, launching and optimizing ads, and combining those two tasks.

Let’s get started…

There are three types of production flows…

1. Daily – Do this task every single day without fail (e.g. get one new design up).
2. Weekly – Do this task every week without fail (e.g. get one new ad up).
3. Coordination with your team – This refers to linking together different people or departments (e.g. designers, keyword researchers, those who launch the campaigns, etc.) so they can work hand-in-hand, matching each other’s capabilities and timelines to optimize your production flow.

You should be consistent with your production flows and make sure nothing gets in your way of following through.

Production flow for creating new designs & products

Creating new designs and products is key for your business’ growth. So you want to set design- and product-creation goals for yourself and then hold yourself accountable for meeting those goals each day and each week. Set a goal to create X amount of designs each day and get X amount of new products up each week.

For example, you could aim to create a production flow as follows…

Monday

Choose a niche to create designs for.

Tuesday

Create five new designs.

Wednesday

Launch five new products.

Thursday

Create five new designs.

Friday

Launch five new products.

Saturday

Take time off.

Sunday

Take time off.

Production flow for launching & optimizing ads

And if you want to scale up with your designs and products, you can start launching ad campaigns. Your ads are dependent on your new designs and products, however, as you can’t really launch new ads without having new products to promote. So make sure you’re diligent about sticking to your product-creation goals.

Below, you’ll find an example of a production flow for creating and launching new ads.

(NOTE: Launching ads isn’t part of the Low Hanging System, but if you want to ramp up your business, I do recommend doing this. And, again, you’ll learn more about this from Don’s Dropshipping on Demand.)

Monday

Launch one new ad.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the previous week).

Tuesday

Optimize your ads.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the previous week).

Wednesday

Launch one new ad.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the beginning of the week).

Thursday

Optimize your ads.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the beginning of the week).

Friday

Launch one new ad.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the beginning of the week).

Saturday

Take time off.

Sunday

Take time off.

Production flow for both

After figuring out how many designs, products, and ads you want to launch each week, the next step is to combine those production flows so all of your goals progress simultaneously and harmoniously. Below, you’ll find an example of what I mean.

Monday 

Choose a niche to create designs for.

Launch one new ad.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the previous week).

Tuesday 

Create five new designs.

Optimize your ads.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the previous week).

Wednesday 

Launch five new products.

Launch one new ad.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the beginning of the week).

Thursday 

Create five new designs.

Optimize your ads.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the beginning of the week).

Friday 

Launch five new products.

Launch one new ad.

Scale the ads up or down (ads from the beginning of the week).

Saturday 

Take time off.

Sunday 

Take time off.

After operating according to your initial production flows for 2-4 weeks, it’s time to double your numbers.

So, for example, if you start by launching 1-3 ads and 8-10 new designs and products a week, after a few weeks go by, double those numbers and start launching 3-6 ads and 16-20 new designs and products a week, always making sure to hold yourself (and your team) accountable.

And if you’d like to learn more about how to scale GOOD ads to make this part of the flow effective, I’ve got ya covered in the coming weeks.

What are your thoughts on production flows? Do you currently have any in place? If not, where could you use some? Please leave a comment and let me know!

When it comes to selling products on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon you need to have as many products up for sale as possible. It’s often hard to predict which designs are going to be winners, so your best bet is to create lots of listings.

This isn’t even just an ecommerce thing. Even geniuses like Leonardo Da Vinci and Pablo Picasso created thousands of works, but only had a few pieces that were considered masterpieces.

You can do that by scaling up on what’s working, or you can keep adding in new designs (or better yet – both).

To give you some ideas, below I detailed 10 simple ways you can add new products to your stores. None of the ideas require hiring a designer or spending any money and many of them work with designs you already have.

If you’re struggling to come up with new offerings, I think you’ll find this post really helpful.

Let’s dive in…

Offer versions of your products that customers can customize

Offering the ability to customize products (via adding someone’s name or incorporating a unique photo into the design) is really appealing to shoppers. Plus, it’s an easy way to add more products to your shops.

You can take a design you already have that has a simple text message. Then, create a new listing for that design, but this time, give customers the ability to upload a photo of their choosing so they can create something unique and personal to them.

(If you’re in LHS the “how to” for this is covered in the Amazon section.)

Add “extras” to your existing products

For example, if you sell mugs, you can create different size and color options. If something’s working, you can try adding white text on a black mug, metallic mugs, maybe even a color changing mug. Again – this is ONLY if your other design is selling well.

All of these new listings would use the same design; they would just offer either different color or different size options.

Or, if you sell apparel, such as t-shirts, hoodies, or tank tops, you can offer a larger variety of sizes, including XXL and XXS. Or, if you currently sell only t-shirts, you can start selling tank tops and hoodies as well. You can also branch out to include more color options, like red, green, blue, and purple, and create a separate listing for each color.

This suggestion works for other products as well — not just for coffee mugs and apparel. The same concept can be applied to things like shot glasses, pillowcases, bibs, and tumblers too.

Turn one design into many 

This won’t work for every design. But if you have a design that mentions a specific person (mom, dad, brother, sister, friend), occupation, animal, sport, school subject, political party, et cetera — I think you get the idea :-) — create a series of new designs using the same original premise but by swapping out those specific words for other fitting words in the same category.

For instance, if you reference moms in your design, maybe the same design could also work if you reference grandmas or aunts, or maybe even dads, grandpas, and uncles.

As a basic example… take the phrase “World’s greatest dad.” That phrase could work for just about any other family member. Plus, it could also work for occupations: “World’s greatest doctor” or maybe even political parties: “World’s greatest democrat.”

Create gift bundles by combining products that pair well together 

I’m a big fan of gift bundles. They sell really well, especially around the holidays and when you market them as great gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions.

For example…

A nice gift bundle could include a coffee mug, t-shirt, and magnet featuring related or complementary designs on each item. You could create a dog lovers gift bundle that includes a mug, t-shirt, and magnet that all feature the same dog design or you could include items with varying dog designs, just as long as the items are related and go well together.

Similarly, you can create holiday-themed bundles, such as a bundle for Mother’s Day, including a coffee mug, women’s tank top, and necklace, all with heartfelt Mother’s Day sayings on the items.

Just offer the bundles at a slight discount to what the total cost of the items are when you add up all of their individual prices.

For instance, if a coffee mug costs $12.95 and a t-shirt costs $19.95 and a magnet costs $4.95, instead of selling the bundle for $37.85, sell it for a slightly lower rate to give shoppers an incentive. You might sell it for $34.95.

Offer “surprise bundles” of products with excess inventory 

This is a great way to push inventory that doesn’t seem to sell super well. It’s also a great tactic if you have extra FBA inventory you’re trying to sell.

The way it works is you bundle together designs and styles you want to push, even if they don’t necessarily relate to each other. Then, sell the items as “surprise bundles” for a more significant discount. (These bundles are a surprise because customers aren’t able to make any of the size style, color, or design selections themselves.)

Sell products together as a set

Especially when it comes to items like coffee mugs, coasters, pillow cases, and shot glasses, people often want to purchase more than one item at a time, to create a set.

For example, if a customer has a family of four, he or she may want to purchase four coffee mugs at a time so each member of the family can have one. Similarly, people often purchase more than one coaster, pillowcase, and shot glass at a time.

So, in addition to selling your products individually, you can offer listings for sets of two, four, and six (or more) for a slightly discounted rate as a way to incentivize “bulk” purchasing.

Sell “collections” of items together 

This is a similar concept to creating bundles and selling items in sets. But another tactic you can try is taking items that pertain to a similar theme — for example, all the different mugs you have that feature a design related to being a parent — and group them together into collections of 4-8 items and then sell the collections for a reduced rate, marketing them as a “parenting mug collection.”

As another example…if you have a lot of designs in the pit bull niche, you could take all the pit bull shirt designs you have and group them together to create a “pit bull t-shirt collection.”

You can do this for pretty much any niche you’re involved with.

Create new listings of old products using different photos

In addition to creating more product listings, this idea also presents a good way to split-test your listings. Just take products you already have listings for and create new listings using different photos and maybe different copy too.

For example, if you have a listing for a coffee mug featuring an image of the mug by itself against a plain white background, try creating a new listing for the mug using an image of a model holding the mug.

If you’re a member of the Low Hanging System, you can use the mockups in there to do this.

Team up with fellow shop owners 

A great way to introduce new products to your shops is to collaborate with other sellers on products that incorporate what each of your brings to the table.  This tactic can work especially well when you team up with artists who create and sell artwork that you can then take and add to a coffee mug or pillowcase, for example.

Last year, my assistant and I tried this technique with a few different Etsy sellers. We found sellers whose artwork we liked. Then, we asked the sellers if we could put their designs on our products and share the profits.

You can read more about the process we followed here.

Sell downloadable version of your designs 

I recommend using this tactic for your best-selling items, especially. But really, this tactic can work for any of your designs.

A while back, my assistant and I did a case study about photo-sharing websites that let you upload your designs to and then sell them as downloadable prints (you can check out the post here to learn more).

You can also do this on other platforms and pitch your products as “printables,” allowing customers to purchase your designs, print them out, and then do basically whatever they want with them.

These printables generally don’t bring in tons of revenue, but they are super easy to create (you already have the design files) and the income you earn is passive.

What do you think of these suggestions for adding new products to your shops? Can you think of any other easy-to-implement ideas? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!