Selling through Etsy

I'm really looking for opinions from owners of Etsy shops on the positives and negatives of selling through shops there. Mostly I'm looking for DD related shops just because that's what I'm thinking of doing, but any informed opinion would really help.

 

I have been trying to do research on what I need to take into consideration before opening an Etsy shop, and frankly I'm overwhelmed. I really love Etsy and have shopped there many times. I think it would be a great place to use for finished, made to order, limited custom clothing, and maybe some polymer DD sized foods. The site itself is well laid out, easy to navigate, and highly visible making it really ideal.

 

At the moment I'm just overwhelmed by trying to figure out the payment options, and all that needs to be figured out for US and International shipping. My obsessive-compulsive nature is being really brutal making it feel like I have to know everything in minute detail before I can do anything. I am overly aware how important it is to have reasonable shipping, but I am highly tempted to just use flat rate shipping and the postal service's correctly sized packages, even though it would be more than twice the cost of the carefully thought out and researched option. I know this is something that I could improve over time, but at the moment I can't think my way through this to just get things listed.

 

What has your overall Etsy experience been like? Was it really worth your time compared to Ebay, DOA marketplace, or even our custom shop section here?

 

~Sister Kyoya

I'm mostly a seller on etsy. I make jewellery for people and now dolls too.

I know jewellery is a tough section because designs and materials used aren't to everyones liking but i find people favourite/like my stuff more than they buy it :p

Edited August 8, 2013 by Guest

You didn't ask about Storenvy, but I use that and I think it might be related to your question...

 

The shipping on Storenvy is like, "the initial shipping price" and then an additional price per item. It's very hard to figure out, because I want to charge the fairest shipping as possible... Too high of shipping can push customers away. But also I don't want to lose money to the post office, since my prices for my items are already very reasonable.

 

What is unfortunate is that the rates at the post office are getting higher and higher, especially for international shipping, and most people don't know that... I charge as low as I can for shipping on my items, and a few times I've lost a dollar or two just because I did not want to have that large shipping number scaring my customers away.

 

I'm not too sure of what you are going to be selling, but Priority Mail is slowly becoming around the same price as First Class Mail, and it's way faster. Whenever I add new items to my Storenvy store, I will probably adjust the shipping to be Priority Mail rather than First Class. Priority is faster, it comes with tracking automatically, and is not that big of a price difference from First Class anymore. It used to be First Class was $2.50 and Priority was like, $7.00... But now First Class has slowly crept its way up (while Priority has gone down), and is almost not worth the hassle of figuring it out anymore.

 

I don't know if etsy uses the same system, but I figured I'd let you know how it was like for Storenvy.

Oni-Chan- I've had a non-DD store on Zazzle for over 3 years now and it has really taught me to pay attention to the importance of the sales I have made and not worry about the canceled ones or the number of people who look at my store and never buy anything. Zazzle has no way for the seller to know when people favorite your items and it gets really frustrating not having even that minor feedback. Being able to see something like that per item at least gives an indication that someone likes the product. The only way I know that on Zazzle is when someone actually buys something.

 

I do appreciate your response though.

 

Arienette- I forgot about Storenvy since I haven't heard about them in a long time. I have to say I'm really impressed that they allow you to have your own customized storefront and the ability to use HTML & CSS. I point this out because Zazzle just did an entire site redesign and eliminated these options to the sellers because in short they thought their site looked messy because everything wasn't uniform. Now everything has a white background and is painful for me to look at, the layout stinks on a normal computer because it was designed for a mobile layout, and you have to dig and dig to even find the new products. I used to love it there, but now it is painful and confusing even to someone who knows what they are doing.

 

Last year when I took my web design class I made an entire webpage for Tamayuki that I've been aching to use again but didn't have much reason to use it. Personally I like having my products divided up into logical categories like I can on Zazzle but can't on Etsy (that I know of), because I can have themed 'mini shops' to divide it all up. It looks like with Storenvy I can at least give it that same look, making it a lot more fun for me.

 

On Etsy they have a $0.20 listing fee, and then 3.5% of the selling price is taken out when a sale is made, I think there is minor fees if you have their checkout option (buyer pays directly from their credit card instead of through PayPal)... I just feel like my head is spinning.

 

I checked the relative cost & shipping of a similar item on the Volks USA site & Alice Collections and compared them to the flat rate box price. It's a little more expensive than AC, but nothing near what Volks USA is. One thing I do like about the flat rate boxes is it increases how much can be shipped without the cost going up so if someone were to buy multiple things that fit into the box, they would save a lot rather than buying things individually. I really wish the USPS website was set up better. I'm pretty sure it's set up to give you the highest rate they can when you are trying to figure out the shipping cost. A few times already I've forgotten to click on the lower links for the shipping without the bells and whistles, leaving me gaping at the cost. So...very...confusing...

 

Personally I find it worth it to have the slight cost increase if it includes the automatic tracking. I'm trying really hard to make sure my prices are fair, but at some point I just have to choose when to stop bending over backwards. There are always going to be people who get things for as cheap as they can, but that's not what my business is about. Either they like my items enough to buy them at the cost that I offer, or they won't. Finding the happy medium is a bit of a slippery slope.

 

Thank you for the info, I really appreciate it!

 

~Sister Kyoya

As of right now, Storenvy does not take any fees. The only fee is the PayPal fee. I think that Storenvy is probably the better option (over etsy). I think the only downside is that more people use etsy, and would be more likely to randomly be browsing and find your items. But I think if you advertise enough, your Storenvy store would still get a lot of views.

 

I really like how Storenvy lets you have custom layouts as well. I think it allows the store owner to give a certain feel to the store... In my opinion it's kind of like how when I go to a store in real life. If I like how it looks then I'm more likely to stick around and browse. Whenever I find a Storenvy store that is very plain or not customized, I don't normally stay on the page for as long as I do if it has custom colors or banner.

 

I'm glad if anything I said could help you out~