I’ve made $1.6 million dollars selling polymer clay food charms since I started doing this full time in 2012.

I now only work on this business an average of five hours a week, and it’s making me six figures in annual sales.

Curious how I pulled it off? Let’s spill the tea.

In this blog post, let’s talk through how exactly I did this, where I’m selling the charms, if I make the charms myself, and what the biggest lessons I’ve learned along the way are.

How I Made Six Figures Selling Polymer Clay Charms

How do I make that much money from selling just polymer clay charms?

It’s a question I get asked all the time. The truth is, it wasn’t about making a million tiny food charms. It was about building a smart, sustainable business.

Every year in business, I had a specific focus because it’s much more effective to do one thing well than to do a mediocre job at a lot of different things.

Instead of spreading myself thin across every social media platform and market, I’ve always believed in mastering one thing at a time.

One year, I would do just Facebook; another year, I would focus on just Instagram, or TikTok, or blogging, and so on.

I’ve tried all the things, and I know firsthand what works and what doesn’t, and I’ll share that with you.

There are really only a handful of things that helped me get to six figures.

I’ve invested so much into social media and gave that a good effort push.

I have tens of thousands of followers on my Facebook and Instagram that took me years to build as a result, and I can say with confidence that wasn’t what helped me build my business to six figures a year in sales.

Getting Featured in the Media

In the grand scheme of things, social media didn’t really matter, and it still doesn’t for me.

What did consistently bring me from just a few sales every few days to having multiple sales every single day was always doing media outreach.

I got my products on the pages of print magazines or in blogs or websites that get a lot of traffic like Buzzfeed or Huffington Post.

It’s entirely free to do, aside from the occasional cost of making some product samples and shipping them to the magazine.

What was even more amazing was it wasn’t temporary, unlike social media, where I have this constant pressure to crank out post after post, which only live for a few hours before they get buried by other people’s posts.

I went from one level, like making a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand bucks on a good holiday month, to an entirely different level in my business because of being featured in the media.

I’m talking about regular five-figure sales months, and it stayed that way for months and years.

Customers would buy from me, saying they found my work in a magazine I was featured in months ago.

Also, consider that when you get your products in a magazine or a YouTuber talks about your work, that’s a third-party endorsement, which is so much more powerful than you talking about your own work.

That’s like someone you trust recommending this great new restaurant in town, making you much more likely to take their advice and actually try it.

But if the restaurant owner tells you they’re the best, you might wonder if they’re just trying to make a sale because they’re biased, right?

So, how do you actually get your products featured in the media?

It’s simpler than you might think. I’m surprised more people don’t do this.

If you were to measure the amount of resources, like time and energy, that go into social media versus media outreach, your resources will yield much bigger, better, and faster results if you put them towards doing media outreach instead.

The expectation is to post something on social media at least once a day, if not a few times a week, right? Then multiply that by all the different platforms there are, versus with media outreach, I’ve only ever done that in spurts.

I don’t do that daily or weekly; I only focus on this a few times a year, and it’s maybe a week’s project for that quarter.

So how do you do it?

The most important phase, which, if you get this right, makes the second phase easier and less important for it to be perfect, is research.

Figuring out where to get your products featured is crucial.

Most people, if they’ve done media outreach before and haven’t had much success, it’s because the research wasn’t done right.

You have to be very discerning about who to pitch to, and you have to think outside the box.

One way to do this is if you sell jewelry, don’t just pitch to magazines, influencers, or websites that talk about jewelry all the time, which is the common trap most people fall into.

It’s the obvious choice, right? That makes it much more competitive and therefore harder to get results from.

You need your pitch and your product to stand out, and in order to do that, you have to pitch outside of your niche.

For example, I sell scented food jewelry, and I could pitch to jewelry places, but I don’t have much success doing that.

But I can pitch to places that talk about perfume or fragrances as a topic, food, lifestyle, kids, or parenting.

I have a s’mores necklace, so I might pitch that to an outdoor or camping magazine.

So you really do need to be creative here, and you’ll see a lot more success.

Then the second phase is writing the actual pitch and following up with the magazine.

Most people get this wrong.

I used to think it was super important to have a specific order of words in your email to increase your chances of being featured, but over the years, I’ve seen that your pitch can be mediocre.

If you’ve done your research right, they won’t care because they’re going to fall in love with your product regardless.

Having said that, writing a good email pitch is within your control, so why not spend a bit of time to make sure it’s good, right?

The problem people tend to have with pitching is they come from a place of desperation and neediness.

They say things like, “Please feature me, I need you to feature me, this is me, me, me, me,” which is very self-absorbed, and you’re not coming from a place of service when you do this.

Instead, you really want to make it about them and how you can serve them, which really just means doing your research well and ensuring that you are a product they will very likely find appealing to introduce to their audience or readers.

That is extremely valuable to them because that’s their job, and they’re always looking for products to show their audience.

Media outreach has really helped me spread the word so quickly and easily to millions of people for free.

If you need a deeper dive into how to do media outreach, I go into much more detail in a free workshop that I teach.

Once I built my business to a full-time income level, I started having the cash flow to invest in other forms of marketing.

Running Ad Campaigns

Doing things like paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram was the second biggest lever for bringing in sales for me.

I already knew my products sold well to the right audience, and I had the budget for it, so that enabled me to jump into doing ads.

These days, I don’t even do media outreach anymore personally; I have an assistant who does it for me, and she does 20 pitches for me every month.

Even though I use a lot of paid ads, here’s why I don’t recommend it to most people.

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.

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.

Pretend your business is like a garden; organic sales you’ve gotten for free are the healthy plants that have already sprouted.

Paid ads are like fertilizer; if your garden is already growing, the fertilizer can help it flourish even more.

But if you haven’t planted anything, no amount of fertilizer will make anything grow.

Paid ads only amplify what is already happening in your business.

If your business has zero sales right now, you’re going to keep getting zero sales even if you do ads.

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, or even 1,000 sales if you have the budget for it.

That’s the how, now let’s talk about where I sell my charms.

Where I Sell to Get to $100k

Do I sell on Etsy? Is that a good place to set up shop?

Most people make this huge mistake.

They invest a ton of time, energy, and money into a rental house, which is essentially what Etsy is.

You invest in making it cozy, you invest in growing a garden and making it your own, except, deep down, you know it’s not really your own house.

It’s your landlord’s house, and every month when you’re paying for rent, your landlord is growing their equity, and you have zero.

If your landlord decides to kick you out, they can, just like how Etsy can just shut down your store at any time, and it’s out of your control.

So what’s the alternative? Renting isn’t bad, and depending on where you live, it makes financial sense, like how some people don’t want or need to make money from selling their work—maybe they’re just hobbyists, and it’s just fun for them.

Then by all means, Etsy is totally fine for them.

But if you want your business to pay you a meaningful income, one day quit your job, and work from home doing what you love, you need to invest in your own house that you buy. In other words, have your own website.

I built my own site using Shopify.

Yes, buying a house is a higher barrier to entry; you have to pay a 20% down payment, just like how having your own website requires you to pay a monthly fee even if you haven’t made a single sale yet.

But the advantage is your house is your own.

You control it, you can do whatever you want with it, just like with your own website.

No one can take it away from you, and the more you invest in your house or your website, you just keep stacking equity in your own name over the long term.

So you keep reaping the rewards of whatever you invested in years ago for promoting your business.

That’s why selling on Etsy often feels a lot more like a roller coaster.

We’re never sure when the next sale is going to come in.

One day, you might be getting a ton of sales, and the next, it’s completely quiet.

That’s because you have far less control over Etsy than you do with your own website.

Your own site might take longer to get started if you don’t know what you’re doing, but you get to have more stability and long-term success, and I would choose that any day over the Etsy roller coaster.

I have an Etsy shop and do sell on there a bit, but I don’t focus my attention on building up my Etsy shop.

So many people start selling on Etsy, and they struggle to make sales because it’s too competitive, and you’re often neck and neck with other shops that live in countries where the value of their currency is so low that they can afford to charge much lower than you, or they’re just hobbyists, so they’re not priced right.

Whereas you’re actually trying to make a living from your business.

I’ve made a lot of sales from Etsy; I’ve made $114,000 in sales on Etsy since I started my shop.

But here’s what I do instead that made a huge difference: I focus on selling directly on my own website using Shopify.

I’ve made almost $1.7 million dollars from my Shopify website, which is 14.89 times more money and sales than I’ve made on Etsy.

Most people start selling on Etsy and never make an effort to have their own website because managing Etsy alone is more than enough work.

This often leaves them stuck with Etsy, making it hard to switch gears to something else.

If I had put all my eggs in the Etsy basket at the start, I really don’t think I would be seeing seven figures of sales from selling my charms online.

I’m not saying don’t ever sell on Etsy – Etsy can be great – but don’t just sell on Etsy alone, and it shouldn’t be your primary focus.

So, how did I continue to make six figures in sales every single year for over a decade?

My shop isn’t just a trend, and it didn’t ride some social media viral wave.

The Secret to Consistent Sales

How was I able to achieve consistency in my paycheck year after year?

In the early days, I did something that I feel many other shop owners don’t do.

I often see people in Facebook groups or Reddit threads complaining about their customers, whether it’s lost packages, one-star reviews, or rude behavior.

I’m often shocked at how many people respond in a very defensive way.

It’s easy to feel like the customer is taking advantage of you or being disrespectful, so the knee-jerk reaction is to defend ourselves.

I understand that because we work so hard to make our products and promote our shops.

Here’s the thing: if you can’t empathize with your customer, they are not going to leave your shop with a positive impression and therefore will not feel compelled to tell their friends about you.

Most of my sales have come from word of mouth, and I think a lot of people don’t realize how powerful that is because you can’t see it happening.

But just think about how we naturally do this so often in our everyday life when we’re hanging out with friends, family, or colleagues.

People talk about their favorite restaurants, favorite food, favorite books, favorite people, and favorite new purchases—which could have been your product.

I think we need to be a lot more compassionate and understand that some people just had a really bad day.

Maybe their dog died that morning, and if they spent $50 at your shop the week before and your package to them was lost, and you refuse to work with them on a resolution that will make them happy, how do you think they’re going to feel?

You have essentially just added to their grief, sadness, and frustration.

You never know what’s happening in someone else’s life.

Treat everyone with kindness, even if they didn’t offer that to you themselves.

That’s on them, and you can’t control that, but we can absolutely control how we respond.

It’s a huge part of my philosophy to do whatever we can to make our customers happy, even if it means we are losing money on a customer and not making any profit.

To me, that’s worth it because, on average, I’m still making money from the other sales I’m getting.

I also know that this is going to make an impact on the other person—they’re going to feel it, and they’ll want to tell people about my shop.

I don’t do it because of that, but because I just don’t want to focus on expanding negativity.

These days, since we’re doing so well, if I have a very difficult customer who is completely unreasonable and nothing we do can make them happy, we often just give a full refund and call it that.

But save that for the absolute last resort if you can, especially in the beginning.

So many of my customers come back to shop from me again and again, and it’s because of this.

If you care about your business, you have to set your ego aside, or it’s going to get in the way of growth.

The Reality of Running a Six-Figure Business

Now, I sell six figures worth of charms.

That’s a lot of charms, and do I make them all myself? I’ll get to that in a bit, but first—how did I go about creating designs and products that were guaranteed to sell?

In the earlier years of my business, many of my initial sales were custom orders.

People would come to my shop, see what I could do, and then email or message me to ask if I could create something different.

If I felt confident that I could pull it off, I would take on the project.

And if the item turned out really well, I would make it a permanent part of my product line.

This often led to those items becoming bestsellers.

I often see other makers focus too much on creating products they want to make, which is totally fine if you’re doing it for creativity’s sake.

But if you want to run a business that makes money, you have to consider what customers want as well.

Designing products in a silo can be risky because you don’t know if people want what you’re making enough to pay for it.

But if you find the overlap between what you love to create and what other people want to buy, you’re much more likely to create products that sell like hotcakes.

I have an entire module in my “A Sale a Day” program that dives deeper into this process if you’re interested in a more step-by-step framework.

Now let me ask you this: which do you think sold more often and generated more revenue?

A $28 necklace or the same item priced at $49.99? I’ll tell you in a bit.

In order to make six figures in sales selling polymer clay jewelry, I had to charge accordingly and be very strategic about my pricing.

I would have to work a lot harder if my prices were lower.

Currently, a necklace I sell is priced between $30-40, which is considered high for polymer clay jewelry.

Most other shops selling similar items charge a fraction of what I charge.

Imagine if you were only charging $15 per necklace—you’d have to work twice as hard to make the same amount of sales as I do.

Many people think that to get more sales, you need to lower your prices to make it easier for people to buy.

While this can be true in some circumstances, I’ve found that most artists aren’t charging enough for their work.

Charging less won’t solve your sales problems, nor will it get you to six figures without a lot of effort.

I did some pricing tests recently, and $49.99 was the price that sold more necklaces for me and generated more revenue than selling the same item at $28.

Now, I’m not suggesting you go and double your prices immediately.

I definitely faced pricing pushback in my earlier years.

People would often balk at my pricing, saying it was too expensive for what it was.

It took some strategy to get to higher prices.

My customers are usually moms and aunts buying gifts for little girls, and they couldn’t justify paying more than $10-15 for something they thought might break in a few days.

This was a recurring problem that I managed to solve by addressing the underlying issue: how can I justify a higher price for my necklaces?

I spent a lot of time working on this, starting with upgrading my materials.

I sourced higher-quality chains that were both beautiful and sturdy.

Instead of buying from regular suppliers, I had them custom-manufactured to my exact specifications.

I also switched from using Sculpey III polymer clay, which is easier to work with but more brittle after baking, to Premo polymer clay, which is harder to work with but produces charms that are much more durable.

These changes allowed me to justify higher prices and ultimately led to greater success in my business.

Your rebranding was a smart move—shifting from a cutesy, juvenile logo to something more elevated and sophisticated, like a French patisserie, instantly changes how people perceive your products.

A more refined brand image appeals to an affluent customer base and justifies a higher price point.

Instead of thinking, “That’s too much,” potential buyers are more likely to think, “That price makes sense.”

There will always be people who have complaints, but they typically represent a small fraction of your audience.

It’s important to stay focused on what works for the majority of your customers and not make major changes based on the 1%.

As I mentioned earlier, I only work on this business for about five hours a week.

How can I make six figures with such a part-time schedule?

Well, I’m not the only one making the products.

In fact, about 90-95% of the products I sell are made by my small team of production assistants.

I found them online; they work remotely from home.

I train them using prerecorded videos, send them supplies, and they send me the finished charms.

Then I send the charms to my shipping assistant, Daisy, who handles all the orders.

So, my involvement is minimal—maybe stepping in to make some charms if the team can’t keep up, handling light admin work, reviewing email campaigns, answering questions from my team, and deciding on next month’s sales campaigns.

For the most part, the business runs itself.

Growing Your Business Beyond Six Figures

If you’re at a point where you’re ready to start delegating tasks because you want to grow or you can’t keep up with orders, and you’d like some mentorship around that, send me a DM on Instagram @creativehiveco with the words “Shop Studio Youtube.” I’m starting a new experience where I’ll be working closely with a few shop owners to help them reach the next level in their business.

My goal is to help you add $10,000 to your shop every month.

So if you’re interested in potentially working together, send me a DM!

And if you’re curious about how to build your own six-figure business, check out this blog post where I talk about the only four skills you really need to build a $100,000 online store.