Has anyone here earned a livable income without paying for Etsy marketing?

Year 2021 was when I started my Etsy shop. I sold mostly digital products, my niche was in gaming and I sold a lot of streaming designs and elements, as well as created gaming designs to sell them as merchandise with the help of Printful.

I got excited so I went ahead and paid for marketing, I thought I was doing it right because I there were months where I was really earning more than what I was paying for marketing expenses. I also did marketing on Pinterest, I had my own Twitter, Facebook and Twitch page that allowed me to market too. I do basic searches on keywords to see if I pop up and was glad to see that I really did when I was paying for Marketing.

Long story short, I gave up because marketing on Etsy just became too expensive to keep up, so I closed shop. But lately I've been seeing a lot of people's experiences and I've been thinking about going back in again, maybe in a different niche this time, but I wanted to know if going in without paying for marketing at all is worth it, with thoughts in mind where I'll be posting new products and in this economic climate?