The first sale is thrilling.

I still remember waking up to an alert on my phone and feeling like it couldn’t be real.

While I was sleeping, someone had wanted to pay me $1.80 in exchange for my digital product.

The next sale did not come quickly. It was 19 long days later.

My first month selling on Etsy was less than impressive:

My first month on Etsy was June 2023. I had 3 orders and made $6.60 in revenue.

Sales were sporadic until late August when one of my seasonal items took off.

This product became a best seller, and the increased attention led to more sales of my others items, and more best sellers.

Sales went up and down over the next 6 months, but always stayed above 0, so they were consistent in that respect, but certainly not consistent in number! My highest sales were over the Black Friday weekend at the end of November, with the peak day bringing in 44 orders.

My shop’s number of daily orders over the next 6 months. There were ups and downs, with peaks in September (Halloween) and Black Friday weekend (Christmas).

One year later, now with hundreds more listings in my shop, daily sales were still consistently above 0, but still varying wildly from month to month, with a slow Summer. Overall my sales were higher than my first year, with my best day (Black Friday weekend again) bringing me 81 orders!

My shop’s daily orders one year later, peaking at 81 in early December.

The following year, Black Friday weekend brought me 546 orders over 3 days, with the peak day bringing 197 orders. I wasn’t expecting this! But that’s the beauty of digital products. I didn’t have to do anything to fulfil those orders.

I don’t have a pretty calendar to show you for 2025 as I stopped making them about a year ago because of all the manual data entry, but I do like seeing my sales this way! It show the extreme seasonality of the type of products I sell as well as the large day-to-day swings.

But here is the graph directly from Etsy.

My shop’s number of daily orders from November to December 2025.

Why am I telling you all this?

I wrote this post because this question gets asked a lot in my Etsy Digital Seller community.

“How long does it take to get consistent sales?”

Of course it’s different for every shop, but for mine it was about 3 months.

I believe this was for a few reasons, in order of importance:

1. Seasonality: Q4 (Quarter 4, October to December) is always my shop’s busiest period. My products for Halloween and Christmas sell well. So in opening my shop in June, the quiet Summer season, I was really setting myself up for a challenge!
2. Understanding customers: I would have had over 100 listings when my shop took off. In making all of those products and listings, I was improving my skills and learning what customers wanted through research. My first best seller was a combination of a couple of themes that were already popular on Etsy, presented in a way that no one else had done at that time.
3. Etsy ads: Looking back on my records, I did start advertising rather early, a few weeks after opening my shop, when I only had one sale. That was a bit risky, but I do think it helped raise my visibility. I think advertising in June was probably too early, but certainly advertising from September would have been a good idea as I sell in a competitive niche.

So if you are in your first few months and your sales are sporadic, don’t lose hope!

All it takes is one popular product or the right seasonal event to come along, and things can change very quickly. Three months from opening my shop I went from 1 daily order to 32 daily orders in less than a week!

Other than keeping going and creating more listings, I would say to make sure you’re creating products that customers are looking for. If you’re not sure how to do that, check out my post on how to do product research on Etsy.

If you’re interested in the best way to run Etsy ads in the early days, take a look at my post on Etsy ads for new shops.

Or for a complete guide to selling digital products on Etsy, I have a short but value-packed ebook that should help make everything clear so you can get started with confidence.