Megan Walsh jolted awake at 2 a.m. and anxiously paced around her bedroom in Manahawkin, New Jersey.

It was March 2021, and she was completely overwhelmed. Walsh, normally a part-time endoscopy nurse, was working full-time to help with the influx of patients at her hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her father, a gardener, had died six months prior, she says.

In nursing school, she made crafts and sold them on online marketplace Etsy as a stress outlet. Seeking the same relief, Walsh sat at her computer and researched ways to be artsy with plants as an homage to her dad.

Aromatherapy calmed her at home, so she ordered a pound of fragrant eucalyptus online for $40, and used it to create some wall decor in her living room. Her decor — which now features various other dried flowers, too — brought in more than $121,400 in sales on Etsy last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Walsh's shop, called MegansMenagerie, is on track for a similar performance this year: roughly $9,800 in monthly sales, through September.

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A couple months into selling wall decor, Walsh scaled back her nursing schedule. She now works 24 to 32 hours per week at her hospital, and spends 12 to 24 hours per week on her Etsy side hustle, she says. She's personally profited about $60,000 from the Etsy shop so far this year, nearly as much as she'll make as a nurse, she estimates.

"I don't have to have a full-time job because of Etsy," says Walsh, 41. "It's been my way to save, buy things for the family, host birthday parties. When my daughter started driving, I was able to buy her a car."

Here's how Walsh built her Etsy store, and how she found side hustle success after more than a decade on the platform.

Navigating the momentum of an online side hustle

Walsh first started MegansMenagerie in 2009, at suggestion of a family friend, while pursuing an associate's degree in nursing at Ocean County College. Her first sale: a $40 crocheted cowl-neck scarf, she says.

She casually crocheted outside of class, putting her sales toward her bills and oldest daughter's birthday parties, she says. Three years in, Walsh noticed that chevron — a zigzag "Charlie Brown" printed pattern — was growing popular among retail and Etsy sellers. She bought bulk orders from knit fabric vendors and made chevron scarves on her mother's old Singer sewing machine.

The scarves were a hit. Walsh sewed early in the morning and late into the night to keep up with the demand while continuing school, she says.

"I lived in an apartment at the time, and I'm glad that the neighbors below were OK with me waking up super early to sew. We're talking like 5 a.m.," Walsh says. "I had to put rugs down because the machine was just so loud, like a metal thumping noise for hours."

Each scarf took 30 minutes to make, far less than the four hours it took Walsh to crochet a cowl-neck one. That year, she says, she used her increased Etsy earnings to buy a then-new 2013 Dodge Journey, which had a starting MSRP of $19,990, according to Kelly Blue Book.

Demand remained high for about two years, and the shop brought in between $40,000 and $50,000 per year, Walsh says. Its momentum faded in late 2014, around the time she finished her bachelor's degree at Thomas Edison University and had her second child.

Growing and running a popular Etsy shop

Walsh continued crafting as a hobby — adding macrame wall decor and jewelry to her portfolio — and kept her Etsy store open as she began her nursing career. Her need to create heightened during the pandemic, she says.

She opened her first shipment of eucalyptus in March 2021, soaked the plants in glycerin to preserve their scent and color, and strung the pieces together, letting them dangle from a wooden pole meant to be hung with a nail on a wall.

That year, her Etsy shop's annual revenue jumped to $78,400. In 2022, the shop brought in $108,300.

Over the years, MegansMenagerie has paid for another car, family vacations, student loan payments and her and her husband's 20-year vow renewal ceremony last year, which cost about $20,000, Walsh says. Her husband, a former restaurant manager, can now be a stay-at-home dad to their three children and assist Walsh with her business' shipping logistics, she adds.

Walsh adjusts her hours at both of her jobs around her kids' schedules, she says. Whenever she starts feeling overworked, she cuts something back. On top of her endoscopy role at her hospital, for example, she worked as a sexual assault nurse examiner for a couple of years — but stopped when her Etsy shop regained popularity.

During the last two months of 2023, at the height of the holiday season, Walsh took MegansMenagerie offline to mentally recoup, she says.

"I didn't want to deal with the struggle of shipping deadlines and customers needed something they ordered [immediately]," says Walsh. "I'm not Amazon. You are legit getting a handmade product I made in my living room."

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Walsh's first sale from her Etsy store was a cowl-neck scarf.

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