If you want to have a more enjoyable time with business, if you can do this, it is probably the best way to go, although it's definitely not easy and you are probably not bothering with Etsy.

There is a maximum anyone will pay for a certain type of good, no matter how great it is, and that is the sad truth you learn when turning hobbies into businesses on Etsy. You can be an expert in something, make something absolutely amazing, 10x better than the next, but people still won't pay more than $40 for it because it's just an XYZ.

If you can make the type of Art that someone is willing to actually pay whatever you charge for it, you have a chance to go up market because you've overcome the first obstacle of picking the right product. 95% of people on Etsy will not or cannot achieve this based on what they sell (or know how to do, or enjoy doing), but many can still be successful.

There are a hell of a lot fewer people who will buy something expensive than something cheap, and having run 5 different Etsy shops selling different handmade items from $3 up to $475 I can tell you it's so nice to get those big sales, but they don't come nearly as often as you'd hope. I make over 6 figures selling an average order value of $20. I still have to make and ship a LOT of stuff and I've optimized on the businesses that are the easiest to make and ship with the highest margin over the big sales that take lots of work.

We'll do craft shows and sell $20 items like hotcakes all day, while the depressed folks in the booth across from us selling expensive art make maybe 1 sale a day, and usually not for an expensive piece. Our $475 item that takes a week to make will turn heads and bring people in all day and we might sell one of them, and 5 other folks will just say they can't justify the cost, despite how unique and big and amazing they think it is. On the other hand, we'll sell wedding invitations that take 10 minutes to print for $500 and people won't even blink when we name the price, and then they'll re-order again because they changed the date. It's shocking.

There are tons of digital download shops that makes 10k-100k sales a year on Etsy at $3-$15/sale and they only need to do the work of producing an item once. Those are amazing businesses and 100x times easier to run than trying to convince someone to buy a $x,000 item via social media and paid channels.

There are ways to make money, it requires work and cleverness and staying on top of things. You can go upscale and play the sales/marketing game. You are better off just starting from the point of already being a marketer/sales person and find something to sell, because trying to do that from just being an artist is not going to be easy. You can sell stuff people want that aren't that hard to make, but certain markets get flooded or less popular and you need to find a good niche and keep on evolving, but it's doable and can be fun. People underestimate how good the long tail is on Etsy and how much they can market for you with the right product. Even with crappy SEO people can just find and buy your stuff, which is mind blowing, but it doesn't work well when what you sell is just "crochet hat" or "pikachu shirt" or "watercolour lilies".