The whole report, read out. Written for the ear, not the eye — no tables read aloud. Fine for the car or the walk to work.
It's a computer voice — the readable version is below and says exactly the same things.
There is a line in your marketing bible that says the problem is closing, not traffic — "0 for 2 at the final step is a CLOSING problem." I think that is wrong, and today's data says so.
Here is every human being who has ever meaningfully looked at this business: 48 ad clicks, 23 search impressions, 4 Etsy views. You cannot diagnose a closing problem from two people. Almost nobody has ever seen it. That is a different problem with a different fix, and getting the order wrong would cost you the autumn.
Etsy shows "2 sales, 1 review ★5" — those are from the spreadsheet shop before it was renamed. No book has been sold. Search position averages 41.7, which is page four; nobody goes to page four.
Why that is good news. A funnel that has been seen by thousands and converts nobody is a broken product. A funnel nobody has seen is an unfinished distribution job. You have the second one. It is the fixable kind — and it is exactly the kind you've now got 32 videos, 10 listings and a working pipeline ready to attack.
Big, old, and violently seasonal. Searches for "personalised children's books" in the UK:
| Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4,400 | 4,400 | 8,100 | 8,100 | 22,200 | 14,800 | 3,600 |
November is five times August. You are currently trading in the annual trough, which is why everything feels dead. It partly is dead. This business will be decided between 1 October and 15 December. Everything before that is preparation for it.
The closest true benchmark in your own research is MagicPictureStory: about 500 sales in year one at $45–51. That is our exact product, done well, in a bigger market. If you matched them:
| If you sold… | Kept per book | A year |
|---|---|---|
| 50 books | £15.70 | £785 |
| 200 books | £15.70 | £3,140 |
| 500 books (benchmark year one) | £15.70 | £7,850 |
So even winning looks like a few thousand pounds, not a salary. That is not a reason to stop — it is a reason to refuse to spend like it's a salary. It sets the whole budget discipline below, and it is why the £15 cost-per-customer ceiling is not negotiable.
You are not selling a personalised book. Everyone sells a personalised book. You are selling the one thing the big competitors structurally cannot do:
| Them | You |
|---|---|
| Pick a skin tone, hair colour, glasses. An avatar that resembles a child. | Send one photo. Their actual child, painted, on every page. |
| Printed abroad, shipped in, occasions missed | Printed in Britain |
| Pay, then hope | See every page before you pay |
Your bible already names the position and it is right: they sell configuration, you sell likeness. The word that carries it is PAINTED.
The commercial consequence people miss: likeness is provable in three seconds and configuration isn't. A photo cutting to a painting needs no explanation, no copy, no trust. That is why video and Etsy's first image matter more here than in almost any other product.
| Tier | Price | What to do about them |
|---|---|---|
| Name-swap cheapies | £7–17 | Ignore. Never fight on price. |
| Premium template hardcovers MyMagicNameBook ~40k sales | £20–32 | This is the audience to steal. They have proven these buyers exist and will pay. None of them paint the child. |
| AI photo-likeness — our segment | £24–42 | Thin, young shops, few reviews. £41.87 dinosaur hardcover proves £39.99. The window is open now and closes as they gather reviews. |
The open lane, unclaimed: nobody UK-based shows the child's photo next to their painted self. And their bad reviews write your ad copy for you — face changes between pages, repetitive stories, occasions missed by overseas shipping.
Win a narrow, high-intent slice of Christmas on Etsy, using free video to manufacture the reviews and the traffic that Etsy's algorithm needs before it will show you to anyone. Do not build an audience. Do not chase brand. Do not buy head-term clicks. Go where people are already holding a wallet, look better than the shop next to you in the first image, and get proof under your listings before November.
Three rules that follow, and every action below obeys them:
The single highest-return thing available to you, and nothing else in this plan works properly without it. Three honest reviews roughly doubles conversion on a new Etsy shop. Sell three books to people you actually know — at cost if you like, £15.54 covers print — on the condition they leave an honest review. Not door-knocking, not strangers: your own circle. If three people who like you won't buy it, that is information worth more than the £47.
You have 4 views. Etsy will not show a new listing to anyone until it has some signal, and ads are how you buy that signal. £2/day for three weeks is £42 — inside the rules because Etsy only charges you against sales you can measure. School and Christmas listings only. Etsy Ads has no API, so this one is manual: Shop Manager → Marketing → Etsy Ads.
Pick one platform — TikTok — and post daily for three weeks. Not three platforms badly. The content exists, captioned, on the NAS. This is the only channel with a ceiling above a few hundred pounds, and it costs nothing but the tapping.
Evergreen, buyer-intent, and the images already exist. A pin found in November was posted in August. This is the one where starting late costs the most.
Hard deadline 30 September. Christmas search starts ramping in September, not October — 1,900 in Sep and climbing. Missing this is missing the year.
Listings need weeks to gather ranking signal before the peak. Going live on 1 December is going live too late to matter.
Free, slow, no camera, no face-to-face. Starting-school books sold to people whose entire job is starting school. Worth doing in September because that is when they care.
The clock matures around 9 Oct. The badge is worth real money in a Christmas search result. It needs fast replies and on-time dispatch — both entirely within your control.
| Item | Cost | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Three seeded books (print only) | £47 | Buys your first reviews |
| Etsy Ads, £2/day × 6 weeks | £84 | Stop any week it isn't working |
| Etsy listing fees | ~£2 | |
| Video, Pinterest, email, content | £0 | Already built |
| Total to reach Christmas | ~£133 | Against £150 already spent on ads that sold nothing |
Set the failure conditions while you're calm, not in December.
| Date | If this is true… | …then |
|---|---|---|
| 30 Sep | Under 300 Etsy views total | Nobody can find you. Fix listing images and tags — do not touch the product |
| 30 Sep | 300+ views, still 0 sales | Now it's a closing problem. Price, reviews or first image |
| 15 Dec | Under 10 orders across the whole peak | The category doesn't work for you at this price. Stop spending. Keep the shop passive and put your hours where they earn |
| 15 Dec | 25+ orders | It's real. Reinvest into January and next Christmas properly |
You asked for a consultant, so here is what a consultant owes you rather than what's comfortable.
The largest risk is not marketing at all. It is that no stranger has yet paid £39.99 for this. Two saw their child painted and walked away. That could be price, or likeness, or the moment, or nothing at all — with two people you cannot tell. A1 and A2 exist to answer that question for about £130, which is the cheapest thing in this entire document.
If you only do three things: get three reviews, turn on £2/day of Etsy Ads, and post one video a day. Those three cost about £130 and a few minutes a day, and they resolve the only question that matters before you spend another pound.