Hey everyone

I started my Etsy store about a week ago and am slowly getting the hang of it. I’m starting nursing school soon and I’m overwhelmed with the giant loan I have to take (40k) combined with inevitably not being able to work full time anymore (already working in nursing at a SNF which is a Skilled Nursing Facility). Therefore, I’m trying my hand at this side hustle NOT to be “rich quick” at all, but to make some kind of extra income to set aside to pay for my loans or help me get by while I’m in school. I plan to be rich working as a nurse lol.

So, here is my dilemma. I’ve posted 8 items so far from mugs to a phone case to a shirt, notebook etc…

I’m finding it ridiculously time consuming to design all of these things because I don’t want to put out something ugly or half-assed, and aside from the time it takes to design stuff (using procreate on my iPad Pro) it takes an excruciatingly long time to search for mockups, design those too, make sure the design overlay is as close as possible to the actual product printiy will make (or their suppliers, whatever) and then edit and post them etc…

I’ve been spending all my time outside of work and my days off going in circles trying to make this cohesive and organized both on my store, on my iPad, my files, my folders etc… I want to find a way to kind of set up an easy template and file system where I can spend time designing my products on procreate which is the fun part albiet time consuming, easily pop those onto a few pre set mockups, and list my item as easily as possible.

Sure, I know it’ll take time for my shop to get traction and get my first customer and reviews unless I have a family or friend do that for me which I’m trying to avoid because I’m a little embarrassed to ask and feel exposed this way… but that aside I’m more concerned with having a cohesive shop that I can come home to, spend an hour or so making a design, and spend another 30 minutes making it on Printify and making my post and go on about my daily life and responsibilities which I’ve also been neglecting because of this.

How do you guys all streamline this experience and make it easy to where it doesn’t consume your life? As a side hustle, yes it’s still a job and I expect to spend time on it - but not when I can just be working overtime at my SNF instead before I start school.

Also, what is your opinion on only selling shirts on Etsy? Again im asking this thinking about making this experience more streamlined so I have to worry less about all these different mockups and editing them and hunting them down… just use the same mockup with every design basically.

On top of that, we have to think about book keeping and being organized about tracking down our spending on this, all the fees, money we have to set aside for tax purposes if we actually sell… its a lot!

Any thoughts, opinions, suggestions, advice is greatly, greatly appreciated! Thank you kindly for reading all of this and helping out.

TLDR: How do you simplify making mockups for your products so you don’t spend the entire day doing this and have a clusterf*ck of files scattered all over your computer and are editing over and over again to get it to match the actual product that will be shipped?