These four skills are the only ones you need to build a six-figure online store and beyond, whether you’re selling your art or your own physical products.

I’ve been in business since 2006 and I run four of them that make over a million dollars every year.

It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t.

So if I can do it, you can absolutely learn these skills yourself.

When my business struggled to take off or during the times I came close to shutting down, it was these four skills that helped me grow the business or save it from disaster.

I’ve faced countless challenges along the way – slow sales, market shifts, and thousands of moments of self-doubt.

But every time, these skills were my lifeline, my secret weapons that turned potential failures into success stories.

1. Read Data Effectively

The first skill you need to develop is the ability to read data.

Before you close this tab because you’re thinking, “Data is math and I hate math,” hold on.

It’s not about knowing math per se, but it’s more about analyzing the numbers and understanding what to do with them.

When you can do this, you’ll be able to paint a picture and tell a story as to what’s wrong with your business, why it might be sick, and where you need to focus on to improve it.

It will make you better at identifying the root causes and the real reasons why your business is struggling, which then enables you to find the best solution for it.

The problem a lot of creatives in business face that I’ve seen is they’re applying the wrong solutions to the wrong problems.

It’s just like going to the doctor’s, right? If you’re experiencing terrible headaches and migraines but the doctor prescribes you stomach ache medicine, your headache likely isn’t going to go away, right?

They’ve just diagnosed you incorrectly and, because of that, given you the wrong medicine.

I am an artist and creative person myself, and most online store owners I work with are artists as well.

I know that we, creatives, tend to shy away from the numbers and instead rely only on our intuition and feelings to direct our focus and attention.

This isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not the complete picture of how you should run your business.

While I believe your intuition is a very strong sense that we all have as humans, as a business owner, it can often lead us astray.

There have been many times where my intuition was wrong.

I may feel one way about my business, but when looking at the numbers, I realize that how I felt wasn’t really what was happening.

For example, if I get a lot of unhappy customer emails, refund or return requests, I might feel like my product sucks, which might lead me to work on improving the quality or design.

Emotionally and intuitively, it feels like I have a bad product.

But before I take any action (because action takes effort and I want to be sure I’m spending my energy on things that actually matter), I can go into my data and numbers, and check to see, one, how many sales I’ve gotten in the last 90 days.

And two, how many refunds did we get in the last 90 days.

In turn, the data shows me the refunds are only 0.5% of my total sales.

Now compare that to the average ecommerce return rate, which is 17.6% according to this Shopify report.

So, it turns out that my 0.5% refunds are really amazing.

(What was the point of overthinking again? ????)

See, this is a great example of how our feelings and emotions can lie to us.

Many store owners are solo business owners without a team, so if you’re handling your own customer service emails, you might be experiencing negativity bias, which is the tendency to focus more on the negative experiences over the positive ones.

For instance, you might have received 2 unhappy customer emails and 20 happy customer emails, which is a completely healthy ratio.

But because of negativity bias, you might feel like there’s a problem that needs fixing.

This is why numbers are so important to consider as part of your decision-making process.

Don’t ignore your intuition, but don’t trust it 100% either when it comes to business.

I used to be so resistant to looking at the numbers because I felt like I wasn’t smart enough to do it.

But it really is just a skill that anyone can learn and practice.

Most of the data you need to reference are easy to get from your store’s dashboard or analytics section and involve very little math.

For me, how I got over the hurdle was simply deciding I needed the patience and trust in myself to figure it out.

If I didn’t, I was going to keep failing and losing money and time.

That motivated me to learn.

So, take your time, it’s worth it.

Here’s another tricky thing with numbers.

You might have heard the saying that numbers don’t lie, and while that’s true in a simple sense where 10 sales is 10 sales – you can’t lie about that and say it’s really just 7 sales – there’s more to it.

It is also possible to manipulate the numbers to tell a different story in order to validate your feelings and emotions.

For example, 10 sales could be amazing to one person but really terrible for someone else.

This means that the raw data (like the number of sales) is just one piece of the puzzle. 

For instance, if you normally sell 50 items a day, then 10 sales might signal a significant problem. On the other hand, if your average daily sales are 5, then 10 sales are fantastic.

The same data point can mean different things depending on your baseline or your expectations.

It’s how you analyze the numbers, what conclusions you arrive at, and what you do with that information that is a skill you need to train.

Ultimately, this is practicing objective thinking when it comes to your business.

Objectivity means evaluating business metrics without letting personal feelings bias your judgment, which can be difficult when you’re deeply passionate and fully invested in your work.

If you allow your feelings and emotions to run your business, you’re likely to drive it in all the wrong directions, and it’s no wonder you never arrive at your destination.

Emotions can lead to knee-jerk reactions.

For example, if you feel panicked about a sudden drop in sales, you might hastily lower your prices or change your marketing strategy without fully understanding the cause of the drop.

Such reactions can often do more harm than good.

But if you can practice being objective with your feelings and emotions and let the numbers help color in the picture, you’ll be much better at knowing the right paths to drive your business forward.

A few tips for how you might start to practice objectivity in your business:

Separate Yourself from Your Business

Firstly, understand that whatever happens in your business – whether it’s high sales, low sales, or great engagement, low engagement on social media, for example – none of that has anything to do with your value as an artist or human being.

These do not define your personal worth.

Sever that link that we all make between the outcome and our value as people.

It’s so easy for us artists to think that if we don’t make any sales, it’s because we suck, we’re not talented enough, or our products are bad.

No, none of that is necessarily true.

Understand that business is never personal.

Practice separating you and your business as separate entities.

Something I did a lot in the early days of my business is pretending I’m merely an employee in my business and my business is simply my job that I love.

That’s it.

I am not my business, and my business is not me.

So if my business isn’t doing well, I know not to take it personally and make it mean something that it doesn’t, like “I’m bad” or “I’m stupid”.

I know that this in itself is really hard to do because for a lot of us, our business is an extension of ourselves, it’s our baby.

But that’s why I say you have to practice it.

As the years go by and you’ve experienced as much as I have, and maybe one day you have a small team, it does get easier to separate the business and self.

Maintain Separate Creative Outlets

Something else you can do is to ensure you have other creative hobbies that bring you joy outside of your business.

So you can still have special moments for yourself that have nothing to do with making money.

Don’t try to turn everything you make into a product with a price tag that you have to sell.

That’s a lot of pressure on you and is also bad business practice because you want to be following the data when you decide on what to sell, not just based on our creative whims!

Another reason it’s important to practice and harness reading and analyzing the data.

Analyze Objectively

Use data to inform your decisions.

Look at trends over time, compare different periods, and use benchmarks to assess your performance.

And, sometimes, being too close to your business can make it hard to be objective.

Seek feedback from mentors, peers, or even trusted customers who can provide an objective perspective to your business.

Objective analysis helps you see the bigger picture and avoid overreacting to short-term fluctuations.

2. Get Traffic Effortlessly

The next skill you need to have a successful online store is the ability to get traffic.

Traffic refers to the people coming to your shop.

Without a steady flow of visitors, making sales becomes nearly impossible. 

And you need to have a certain amount of traffic every day in order to make consistent sales.

Let’s do some backwards math here to figure out how much traffic you need to your shop every day to make six figures in sales per year.

Let’s do some quick math together – don’t worry, it’s simpler than it seems.

Let’s assume a $50 average order per customer.

To hit $100,000 in a year, you’d need 2,000 sales. 

Divide 2,000 by 365 days to find out how many daily sales you need.

You need around 5.5 sales per day.

When you break it down like that, it’s not too bad, right?

Now, let’s assume you’ve got a 1% sales conversion rate, which means for every 100 people that come to your shop, you would make 1 sale.

You would need 550 people coming to your shop every single day.

Remember, this is an average; some days may see more visitors, others fewer.

This is the part where most beginner business owners really struggle.

While there are numerous ways to generate traffic, relying solely on social media – often the least effective method with the lowest return on investment – can be frustrating. 

I’ve seen so many people spend a ridiculous amount of energy and time to create content for platforms like Instagram and TikTok with the hope that some of that content will attract viewers that hopefully turn into traffic to your store.

This can be highly unpredictable unless you consistently create viral content or have a large, engaged following.

The reality is, it’s going to be really hard to get 550 people coming to your store every day through social media.

It would have to be your full-time job and I know most of us artists don’t particularly enjoy social media.

So start to think about all your other options for traffic.

For example, there’s search engine optimization, content marketing like blogging, podcasting, or YouTube.

You can do paid advertising or media outreach and get product placements on magazines and popular websites that your customer loves to go to.

You could do more community-based marketing like through a Facebook group, giveaways, or collaborations with other artists.

Each of these methods offers distinct advantages: SEO builds long-term visibility in organic search results, while media outreach can yield rapid, impactful results if you connect with the right influencers or platforms.

It’s a good idea to learn how to do well with a few of these strategies so you can start building diversity in your traffic streams.

That way if one thing doesn’t work so well for that month, you’ve still got traffic coming in from other sources.

Personally, I would pick the strategies that don’t constantly change which means I’m required to always be on a hamster wheel learning curve.

For example, social media algorithms constantly change so I’d have to always be researching and learning what tactics I need to do to be effective on social media.

That’s exhausting and a poor use of my time.

I want strategies that are timeless and once I learn that skill, I have it with me for years and years.

You might be wondering which of the strategies I mentioned are like that.

I recommend strategies like SEO and media outreach because they offer more stability and longevity compared to the constantly evolving landscape of social media algorithms.

Once you master these skills, they can continue to drive traffic to your store for years with minimal ongoing effort.

We have limited time, and I want to ensure I’m putting that time into what will really make a big impact.

Content marketing can be great too if you love making content, but it can be extremely time-consuming without much of a payoff until much later.

My favorite way I like to recommend to most business owners is media outreach because it’s free to do (if you do it right) and it can lead to extremely fast and big results if you connect with the right person.

My first $10,000 sales month in my polymer clay jewelry business was when I was featured in an online gift guide on a website called Daily Candy.

My first $20,000 sales month was when my jewelry was worn by Amy Poehler in the Parks and Recreation TV show.

And my next $20,000 month was from a feature in the Rachael Ray magazine.

Even though I have tens of thousands of followers on my Instagram for this business, Instagram has never gotten me to those kinds of sales numbers for my shop.

I would get my products on YouTube channels or on musicians, for example, and it would easily be a $2,000 week or day of sales for me.

And all of these, I never had to pay any fee except to make some jewelry and ship it to the person.

So if you’re curious and want to learn more about how you can do this yourself to generate traffic on demand, here’s a link to a free workshop I teach where I talk about this in more detail.

And, while paid advertising can also be effective, it’s not for everyone.

I personally love using paid ads to get traffic, but it’s hard for me to recommend this to most stores unless you can set aside a consistent budget of at least several hundred dollars every month to do it.

Paid ads require a lot of testing before you even see any sales come out of it, and you need to always be doing it.

You can’t treat it like something you start and stop whenever you like.

So it’s extremely risky for most people, and I don’t want you to waste your money.

Only do paid ads if you’re already making healthy sales organically for free, you have a consistent budget for it, and you’re willing to take the time to learn how to do it well.

Most people think paid ads will fix all their traffic problems, which it can, but it doesn’t necessarily fix your sales problems.

I like to say that paid ads only amplify what is already happening in your business.

If your business has zero sales right now, what’s zero times 10? Still zero, right?

But say you’re already regularly getting 10 sales every month from your own organic forms of marketing.

Then ads have the potential to get you 50 sales, 100 sales, even 1000 sales if you have the budget for it.

3. Make More Sales Consistently

So this leads me to the next skill you need to have, which is the ability to get sales.

This is imperative if you want to make any money in your business.

This is different from traffic.

While attracting traffic to your site is important, what really drives revenue is converting those visitors into paying customers.

So, just because you have people visiting your site, doesn’t guarantee that any one of them will buy from you.

Which is why I think chasing the idea of going viral on social media isn’t always a good thing because more views and traffic doesn’t always equate to the right kind of traffic that will actually buy from you.

Now, learning how to be good at making sales isn’t necessarily what you might think.

When artists and creatives think of sales, we have this visceral reaction like it’s something icky.

We think of tacky used car salesmen.

It feels pushy and aggressive, and often it’s for buying things you don’t want.

My belief in the skills that make someone good at sales is actually the opposite of all of that.

It’s about having deep emotional intelligence and empathy.

It’s understanding your customers on a profound level and anticipating their needs before they even express them.

You need to develop an ability to think in shoes other than your own, particularly those of your ideal customers.

The best sales experiences I’ve had didn’t feel like a sales experience.

It felt like genuine assistance rather than a transaction.

It felt like talking with someone who actually wanted to help me find something that would make a meaningful difference in my life.

It often was someone who was good at listening to what I wanted.

It didn’t feel like a pushing energy, but more like a pulling one instead.

Sales can be really complex, like there’s so much psychology and science behind it, but I believe at the root of all of that is the desire to be of service to others.

If you innately have that within you, you would naturally do very well with sales, you just have to harness that into your business.

Sales can feel good when it’s coming from a place of service.

When you really care about helping the other person find what they’re looking for, make a decision, or solve a problem they might have, even if it’s a small problem like not having any clue what to buy for their 6-year-old niece’s birthday present.

Now when it comes to online stores, the skill of sales isn’t exactly the same as when you’re chatting with a potential customer at a craft show or over Instagram DMs.

But it’s transferable.

The questions your potential customers are asking you at a show or in the DM’s, or the ones that they might be thinking about but not outrightly asking you, are all the same questions you need to answer on your website in one way or another.

To give you an example, most strangers might have the question, “Can I trust this shop?” They’re thinking, “If I spend money here, will I actually get a product that I’ll be happy with?”

So what can you do to answer that question on your website? 

It might involve having a professional-looking website, clear contact information, a generous return policy, high-quality product photos, and social proof such as customer testimonials or reviews.

Additionally, customers might have specific questions about your product, like say you sell upcycled clothing.

They might think, “How will this look on me?”

But because it’s an online store, they can’t try it on, right?

So maybe this means you’ll have to photograph your upcycled clothing on models with different body shapes and sizes.

You could include a detailed size chart with measurements, and in your description you can describe the fit and feel of the fabric.

So keep doing that exercise to then incrementally improve your store’s shopping experience and your sales conversions will go up.

And you can see how this process requires a lot of empathy on your part, right? To be able to objectively look at your online store and product and to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask these questions.

Remember, we all think our products are amazing but our customers don’t know that yet.

While you may adore your products and think that people should buy them, your customers need convincing.

So how can we communicate that to them?

Selling your products, then, ultimately requires empathy and strategic communication on your end – a genuine desire to connect with customers and meet their needs, which can significantly improve your online store’s performance.

4. Keep Going Persistently

The fourth skill you need to have to build a six figure online store is persistence.

Persistence is the quality that allows someone to continue doing something even though it is difficult or opposed by other people. (Britannica)

Persistence is the ability to persevere despite challenges, setbacks, or opposition – a quality that separates successful entrepreneurs from those who give up prematurely.

This is a crucial skill to develop because I guarantee you, there will always be challenges along the way.

This is why so many businesses fail, is because we give up when the going gets hard and because they don’t have any of the skills I’ve mentioned in this blog.

These businesses fail not because they lack potential or opportunity, but because their founders lose heart when faced with adversity. 

When you can practice all the other three skills well, persistence comes more easily because you’ll always have a plan for what to do.

You might have seen this cartoon before, illustrated by Dum and it’s a really great visual example of this.

In the 18 years I’ve been working as a handmade business owner, I’ve already encountered hundreds of moments that tested my resolve.

Early on, my family often questioned when I’d get a “real job”.

Maybe you can relate to that. Frustrating, isn’t it?

It’s very demotivating, thinking about how they don’t believe in what I’m doing.

A lot of things had happened to me that made me think about quitting.

Like when my Facebook profile was hacked and I was permanently restricted from doing paid ads.

Or when I couldn’t make a single sale at a craft show.

Or when I had a barrage of unhappy customers emailing me for refunds.

These things definitely made me emotional and disheartened.

And if you feel the same way, just know that your feelings are totally valid.

However, while it’s important to feel all the feels, it’s also important not to wallow in those feelings for too long.

Successful business owners learn to manage their feelings constructively.

For me, this means allowing myself a couple of days to process setbacks, then shifting into problem-solving mode.

I analyze data to pinpoint areas for improvement, because maintaining a six-figure business requires this constant cycle of adaptation and refinement.

That’s going back to skill number 1 – see how important that is?

So learning how to manage your emotions becomes an important ingredient you’ll need to be more persistent.

Persistence also involves focusing on what you can control rather than what you can’t. 

For most of us, we can manage our emotions and how we respond to all these things we experience.

But we can’t control what our customers think or the postal service or the economy.

As much as we want to, we also can’t control Etsy or the social media algorithm.

So rather than investing time and energy into those things we can’t control, let’s focus on the things we can – areas where your efforts can directly impact success.

This includes product quality, customer service, and marketing strategies.

And then go back to skill #1, #2 and #3, and rinse and repeat until you get to six figures.

I’ve been paying myself a full time income from my businesses since 2012.

I have no other option that I would want to pursue.

I have no resume to speak of so if everything fails and I don’t have the persistence to fix the problems, I don’t have the option to get a 9-5 job without starting totally from scratch.

So for me, this is my lifestyle, it is my career.

I treat my business like a job.

And that’s the thing, most people don’t.

They treat their shop like a hobby.

They’re not applying the same level of discipline and diligence to their business as they would to a salaried 9-5 job.

And this isn’t because of laziness, but I believe because there’s no accountability with your own business.

Without a boss or manager overseeing your work, maintaining discipline and motivation falls entirely on you.

There’s no consequence in your business if you stop showing up.

But if you stopped showing up at a job, you would be fired, right?

So how do you build in that accountability for yourself with your business?

For me, this has been about getting really clear with myself on why it’s so important to me to have my own business.

What’s your personal motivation for pursuing your own business?

Whether driven by a passion for creativity, a desire for independence, or a specific career goal, getting clear your reasons empowers you to persevere through challenges.

Making a career out of my creativity has always been my dream.

I’m like a magpie, I love surrounding myself with beautiful things, which I’ve done with the products I sell and my student’s products.

It’s fueled me to keep showing up every single day even when I was struggling.

I’m at a point where I’ve built such huge businesses that I have built in accountability now to my team and my customers.

But in the beginning when you don’t have any of that, you need to do some soul searching and really understand why you want this.

This introspection isn’t always easy; it requires honesty and self-acceptance to align your actions with your aspirations.

If you discover that entrepreneurship isn’t aligned with your core motivations, that’s okay too.

But if it resonates, use this clarity as a powerful motivator to propel you forward each day.

Once you figure out what your motivator is, always remind yourself of that and let it be that fire under you that gets you out of bed every morning to work on your business.

This will take some level of self-reflection, and lots of people don’t want to be honest with themselves because they may not like their answer.

So if you can do this without ego or judgment toward your answer and with acceptance instead, it’ll be extremely powerful in helping you show up and persist for your business.