{"id":293,"date":"2025-02-06T06:39:05","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T05:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mateusztatara.com\/en\/?page_id=293"},"modified":"2026-06-15T13:57:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T11:57:51","slug":"using-my-product-skills-to-increase-revenue-from-a-side-project","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mateusztatara.com\/en\/using-my-product-skills-to-increase-revenue-from-a-side-project","title":{"rendered":"Case study \u2022 Product Management \u2022 Art Direction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Using My Product Skills to Increase Revenue from a Side Project (the road from $150 to $1,300\/month)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My role<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project management,
Data analysis, 
Prioritization,
Design & execution<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Results<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revenue increase:
from 150$ to 1300$\/month.

Order conversions
rate increase:
from 0,5% to 2%.

Traffic increase: 
from ~100 views a day to ~400 views a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What’s the challenge? What’s the goal?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible”<\/p>Tony Robbins<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was running my e-commerce store on Etsy since 2014 and after an initial good start things started to get worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the past year, my revenue from this project was differing between 27-150$ a month and my traffic since the best period dropped by 82%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Traffic in my Etsy shop (2014-2018)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There wasn’t a single day I was not thinking to do something about it but to be honest I wasn’t acting on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was always a side project for me, like a laboratory where I can test my ideas & assumptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m still amazed by the new wave of entrepreneurs that through creating an online business are able to create more time for themselves. All of them are able to scale their businesses without increasing the time they are spending on managing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a few books like Elaine Pofeldt “The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business” or Paul Jarvis “Company of One” that show many examples of how it can be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all the online tools that we have now, there has never been a better time to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having the ability to scale your client base and profit without expediently scale increasing your employees or resources is still mind blowing for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat’s it!\u201d I said to myself  \u201cIf you never try you will never know\u2026\u201d

In August 2018 I decided that I will focus more time on my side project.
Learn as much as I can so my side project would be my main experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal: Bring more value to my clients and increase my sales to 700$ a month in next 2 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sounds like a plan!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“A goal without a plan is just a wish”<\/p>Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I knew it was not something I could do in a weekend. The time that I could spend on this project was limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew I needed to commit to the process so that It could be effective for me in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many frameworks that I love (Design thinking, Lean development, Lean Startup, Google Sprints) and there are many articles about their similarities & differences and how to use them (so I I will not get into detail about this now). What I would like to focus on is that all of those frameworks at the core are based on the same formula; Build-measure-learn loop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Build, measure, learn loop cycle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My plan was to apply these into my process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Develop hypothesis<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Get an idea\/product\/strategy to the market\/target group as soon as possible<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Measure the results<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Learn from the results<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Repeat the process every week<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. In the long term find ideas that are scalable\/repeatable<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    I took those 3 steps to set up my “Build-measure-learn loop” up and running.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cGive me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe\u201d<\/p>Abraham Lincoln<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    1\/3
    I took a deep dive into my data & I made a competitive analysis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    I was using mainly Etsy Stats, Google Analytics, Etsy Rank, Marmalead, SimilarWeb & Buzzsumo to take a closer look at:<\/p>\n\n\n\n