Does anyone buy anything from etsy

Well, the sky is the limit. Some fantastic shops like Simple Shapes make a million dollars a year or more! But for every shop making the big bucks, there are at least making almost zero.

An Etsy shop is like any small business, there is significant potential for failure, and you have to be willing to put in a good chunk of upfront work before you see the cash start to flow. That said, all the shop owners in the Showcase make some income from their shops. Many of them have seasonal shops that pick up significantly around Christmas or spring, though they tried to provide their best approximation of an average month to give you a good idea of how the business actually looks.

The 20 shop owners in the Showcase had a broad range of sales. The lowest volume shop had an average of 3 sales a month while the highest volume shop sold products a month.

At the median, Showcase participants made 20 sales a month. There is a big difference between selling three quilts and hair pins or printable menu planners. The pricing and time dedicated to the products will be vastly different. I found those numbers staggering and expected them to be raking in major profits. Now here comes the scariest part when it comes to Etsy. Have you ever looked at something on Etsy and thought it was too expensive?

Or thought there was no way the product costs that much to make and they are pricing in too much margin? Looking at the hourly income, I have to conclude that Etsy is only a good side hustle if you truly love your craft and would do it regardless of the income.

If you want the most value for your time, there are hundreds of other things you could do for a higher hourly salary. The exception is if you can make beautiful printables. If you can design printable journals, nursery art, organizers, or similar products, Etsy can more closely approach passive income.

The Etsy shop owners who participated in the Showcase universally enjoyed running their shops. They all had a host of reasons they gained joy and validation from selling their products, but I asked them to each narrow down what they enjoyed to their top 3 things.

While everyone had their own personal views, I was interested to see three themes pop up in almost every response. Etsy gives people a way to chase their artistic dreams and passions, while also making money from their efforts. A well set up Etsy shop often means the owner gets to experience the joy and satisfaction of seeing a product they made themselves being valued and loved by others.

Check out the graphic below for some of my favorite quotes from participants on what they love about Etsy! Alright, so all these shop owners are giving us the feels and making us believe we need to go open our first shop right now! Running an Etsy shop, like any business, is not all sunshine and daisies. There is some miserable stuff too. Besides the whole potentially making less than minimum wage thing… Here are the top 3 things people dislike about running an Etsy shop. Overall, Etsy is an enormous, standard platform for a huge set of non-standard items.

You have to treat an Etsy shop as a business and commit time to learning the rules of the marketplace to be successful, as well as making your products. Check out the graphic below for some of my favorite quotes from participants on what they dislike about running their Etsy shops!

The hourly pay for most Etsy shop owners likely means it is only a great side hustle if your craft is something you would already be doing anyway. The exception, which I have mentioned a few times now, seems to be high-quality printable products. Either way, competition is high, and you will have to take the time to set up your Etsy shop in a way that differentiates you from other artists. If you love your craft, you have nothing to lose!

Etsy has a very helpful Seller Handbook that all the shop owners surveyed viewed as highly valuable. To visit the Etsy Seller Handbook and get started with your shop today, click here! In a side hustle with so much competition, it was awesome to see artists all wanting to lift each other up instead of keeping others out. Not so different from the blogging world! The shop owners also recommended reading the Etsy Seller Handbook cover-to-cover and joining Facebook groups specifically for Etsy shop owners.

Both will give you a free way to get answers to your questions, which you are sure to have a lot of at the beginning! Most of the shop owners in the Showcase started their shops at the encouragement of family and friends. Some owners started their shops with only items, while some had upwards of On average, the figure was around 10 items.

You want to be sure to have enough in your shop that you look established and customers can see the range and quality of your work.

All but three shop owners promoted their shops as soon as they started! Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and spreading the word through family and friends are great ways to start building a reputation for your shop. Often, problems arise in situations where the shipping fee is not properly calculated, and the seller realizes they have to pay more for shipping than originally intended. If this happens repeatedly, it could significantly increase the total cost of doing business on Etsy, especially when the cost of insurance is included in the shipping charge, which drives the cost further.

A solution is to do the research and find out exactly how much shipping items to different locations will cost. Shipping is never free on Etsy or any other online shop. Etsy sellers who offer free shipping should be prepared to include the cost of shipping into the sale price.

The total cost of setting up shop on Etsy includes the listing fee, transaction fee, payment processing fee, shipping fee, and any promotions you take part in. Also, remember none of this includes the cost of goods sold COGS. So if you price your items too low to attract more buyers, you may eat into your profit margin and sell online products at a loss.

There are always external charges to consider if you want to manage your business properly. Get a spreadsheet ready to track your inflow and outflow to be adequately informed on what is going on in your business. Try not to get ahead of yourself until you see a decent return on investment ROI.

Etsy makes the process to start selling easy. Here are the steps on how to sell on Etsy and set up your own online shop. Being your own shop manager, you can set your shop preferences for how you want to sell your products. Select the language for describing your products, and the currency for trade, include your location, etc.

This is the part where your creativity can come into play. You should come up with an Etsy shop name that reflects your personal brand. Your name should be synonymous with your product offerings and easy for customers to remember. The name needs to be between four and twenty characters with no spaces or special characters.

Add Photos: Etsy sellers are advised to have a minimum of five photos for each item, to be taken from different angles so buyers can have a proper idea of what your product looks like. The pictures should be of high quality and shot with a nice background. Adjust thumbnails: Thumbnails are the first pictures a buyer comes across when they search or stumble upon your product.

These dictate the look and feel of your shop, so make sure they are consistent and match your brand. Complete your listing information: Your product description should have a title and description that describes what it in detail. Buyers look for products on Etsy based on keywords, so make sure these keywords match what is in your tags. Enter inventory quantity and price: Add the price for each item and make sure you factor all the costs into your sale price.

Include the quantity in stock, and also if there are product variants such as size, color, and material. Set the shipping fee: This is where you include shipping fees, country of origin, processing time, weight, and size. You can always update this information later if needed. Preview your Etsy listings: Look at the shop to see if there are any changes to make.

There are many types of electronic payments available on Etsy. You could offer PayPal or Etsy Payments which is what most sellers use.

Etsy Payments allow sellers to get their money through different options like credit and debit cards as well as store credit , and Etsy gift cards. This will depend on your country of origin. Etsy may want a credit card for authorization and identification. You will also provide a card where Etsy can charge you for fees and commissions. Add Your User Profile: This will include a short bio about you with a photo.

This will let visitors know who you are and increase your credibility as a seller. You can use this opportunity to create a personal connection with your customers and give more insight into your product. You can also add processing and shipping timelines so customers can have an idea of how long it will take to get their product. Return policies if any also fall into this section. Add A Store Bio: This is the section that allows you to talk more about your ecommerce store and who you are.

Etsy sellers are given 5, characters to write your biography. Remember to write with passion and create a connection with your potential customers.

People value transparency, so try to be open about your values. You can also show them how you create your products by inserting photos or videos of your workspace. Etsy has made this easy to do with a new marketing tool to allow sellers the opportunity to share their products on social platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Now that you have your Etsy shop set up and optimized, how do you drive sales over time? People are visual — we want to see, touch, and feel products before we buy them.

First, hero shots are close-ups of your products with a simple white background. These are great for your main photos and should be in high resolution so users can zoom in and see the product by itself.

Next, lifestyle shots show the product being used by a person or with more background context. A final tip is to use a combination of both of these styles, as well as shots in between. For example, an image of a craft supplies set could be disassembled to show all of the parts and laid out in a beautiful pattern. Etsy allows a maximum of 10 photos, so uses them all. High-quality photos on your Etsy shop will help drive sales for your products.

SEO, or search engine optimization, enables you to increase visibility online on platforms like Google. But Etsy SEO is key to driving sales too. SEO techniques depend on the platform. However, the basics are the same and it all comes down to keywords. What are items on Etsy are people searching for? Use as many valuable keywords as you can so users search can match with your products and bring out your business in the search results.

But the marketplace forced her to pick one single category for each new item. The result? Lorena moved HaldeCraft over to its own Shopify store. There, she was in complete control of how she displayed products—and more importantly, of the categories she created. Brooklyn Candle Studio is an ecommerce business that sells eco-friendly soy candles.

However, much like many other Etsy sellers, Tamara wanted Brooklyn Candle Studio to grow beyond the limitations of Etsy. So she opened a Shopify store to go alongside her Etsy listings. There was an app for that called Bulk Discounts , which was huge, so all I had to do was upload an Excel spreadsheet.

Popov Leather is a bespoke leather goods manufacturer based in Nelson, British Columbia. It had humble beginnings on Etsy, relying on the marketplace as its sole revenue driver for the first 18 months. It worked: its founder, Ryan Popoff, learned to game the algorithm. Very early on, we were looking at how other people were presenting themselves and images, and a lot of it was the white background, like Amazon, whatever the standard is.

And so I was like, "How do I stand out from this? Just 18 months later, the retailer turned away from its Etsy storefront and toward a custom Shopify store.

As you can see, there are upsides to selling on Etsy. Sellers can take advantage of the millions of potential customers already using the marketplace to buy products like theirs. Often, it can be more beneficial for business owners to look for an Etsy alternative to go alongside their storefront—or to replace it entirely. This inherently limits the way you can build and present your brand.

Plus, like any sales channel owned by another company, selling exclusively on Etsy leaves your small business exposed to policy and algorithm changes—all without warning. Moving your Etsy storefront over to an owned platform, like a Shopify store, gives you full control over your website, brand, and online business. Etsy is one marketplace or sales channel to reach your customers, but there are many more.

Etsy seems like the perfect platform for you to sell your products, right? Focusing only on Etsy means you miss out on those local customers.

Asking shoppers to remember your Etsy store URL and visit it later is an uphill battle. The alternative—carrying large lumps of cash around—is dangerous. People can visit your online store and buy items whenever. Point-of-sale POS systems allow you to take card payment from customers at the fair.

Grow your brand beyond the limitations of Etsy by creating your own online store. Bring on other curated brands if you miss the small business community feel of selling on Etsy. Add wholesale pricing to reach a new type of customer—one with bigger deal values and the distribution network to get your products in front of new audiences.

Either way, an online store never limits your business development decisions. Grow when you want, how you want. Take Artemis Design Co. Email marketing, SEO, retargeting, social media —all of these are challenging to do on Etsy. And yet all of these approaches are highly profitable ways to acquire customers at scale. Customers will also see recommended products from other sellers beneath your listing. Do you need to expand your horizons beyond Etsy?

You can import much of your existing Etsy store into Shopify. The best part? Opening a Shopify store automatically gives you access to Shop Pay. Your store will also appear in their Shop feed, encouraging them to come back and purchase again—win-win. But what looks like an appealing opportunity to reach potential customers using the marketplace is not without a few compromises. Selling on Etsy comes with limitations. Founders are constantly playing the algorithm to reach customers.

And, its fee schedule takes a cut out of every product sold.