10 THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE SELLING ON ETSY

Recently I've been in contact with a number of old classmates (Yeah Sweethome Class of 74'!!) who, upon noticing my Etsy Shop, have asked me about selling there.

After nearly 4 years on the site, what do I tell them?  Without going into the gory details, the struggles, and all the hard work, I've decided to come up with a list of things to keep in mind if you want to sell on Etsy.

1.  Look around the site, particularly the categories you want to list in.  Read the rules regarding what is allowed on the site.  I would recommend staying away from the forums.  It is a huge time suck, and 99% of the questions you may have can be answered by reading the FAQ's.  If you can't find an answer to your question and you know someone else on the site with a shop, send them a message.  You can also send an email to support#etsy.com, though the wait time on answers can be long. 

2.  Etsy is a place to buy handmade, vintage and supplies.  Understand that handmade encompasses everything from obtaining your own raw materials and processing them yourself into a finished product to commercially, mass produced items 'put together' to form a finished product.  Vintage is anything (and I mean anything) that is 20 years old, or older.  Supplies can either be commercially made, or handmade.  This is the only place that mass produced items belong, as long as they are a craft supply that is used in the making of a finished product.

3.  Etsy has a hard time enforcing their own rules.  The handmade ethos has kind of flown out the window.  You can still find wonderful handmade products by talented artisans, but the site is also overrun with resellers selling mass produced clothing, jewelry and handbags (among other things) so this has tainted many a seller and buyer's experience.

4.  Etsy has it's own idea of what is popular.  Etsy has a reputation for being 'hipster'.  That's ok folks, I never heard of that term before either.  Consequently, the shops that have that cool, edgy, urban vibe tend to be the ones that get face time on Etsy.

5.  Etsy plays favorites.  Because of this tendency toward favoring a certain look and feel, there is a lot of repetition with front page features and blog articles of the same people and the same items.  Some people have made the front page hundreds of times, often multiple times daily and weekly.

6.  Etsy is clunky,  From the listing process, to search, to checkout.  It takes 5 pages to list an item.  If you don't hit 'finish' you lose your listing to the inactive section.  Choosing categories and tags is difficult because the category system setup is illogical.  Tags are subjective so tag abuse is rampant which messes up the search.  Paypal is your only option for credit card payments and is not integrated with Etsy, so people can 'buy' an item and take it out of your shop (goes into sold section) without actually paying for it.  Sure, you can relist the item and cancel the transaction to get a refund on your listing and final value fees and try and hunt your customer down to try and find out if they just changed their mind or they can't figure out how to pay.

7.  Etsy does no outside advertising.  Etsy has always espoused the 'viral marketing' concept.  You tell two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on.  Etsy sellers are expected to advertise for themselves which in turn brings more customers to Etsy.  Most of the articles written about Etsy and features done by people such as Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray and The View have emphasized the selling aspect more than the buying aspect and as a result, there are over 200,000 shops on Etsy and more than 5 million listings.  While Etsy may have a measure of built in foot traffic, don't count on it as a way to make consistent sales.  Especially if you're not one of the 'chosen few' that Etsy likes to feature.

8.  Etsy is not really cheap.  Sure, each listing is .20 for 4 months.  Sounds like a bargain, doesn't it?  Until you realize that sellers have learned to game the system by renewing listings daily, at a cost of .20 per renewal.  Why would people do that if a listing lasts 4 months?  Because Etsy search is based on recency and not on relevancy.  So prepare to absorb or tack on an extra dollar or two to each item you list so that you can renew items often.  Just remember, thousands of other sellers are also renewing all the time so it's constant pile on that you're never on top of for more than a few seconds.  The final value fee is 3.5% of the selling price.  Pretty reasonable until you read #9.

9.  Etsy has no tools for you to offer sales, discounts, gift certificates or coupon codes.  Sure, you can work around most of these things by having the customer send you a convo before purchasing so you can adjust a listing to reflect a discount, but that is tedious and time consuming and really deters those impulse purchases.  You can refund them the amount of the discount price via Paypal, but you will still pay the final value fee on the sold price, not the discounted price.

10.  Etsy does not 'care' about you.  There is a common misconception that Etsy is a community of sellers who support each other and that Etsy is our friend.  While up to a point it may be true, Etsy is first and foremost a business and their first priority is to make money and be profitable.  They have investors and venture capital.  This means that at some point, these investors want to see a return on their investment.  It also means that at some point Etsy will go public.  They will do what they have to to continue to make money, even if those of us who use Etsy disagree with their choices.  We can suggest and request for the things we want, but ultimately Etsy will decide if and when they will implement any given suggestion.  This is logical for most, but for others it has been a bitter pill to swallow to realize that Etsy is not their 'friend'.

Does that mean that I don't recommend Etsy?  no, not at all.  If you can accept it for what it is, keep your expectations reasonable, diversify so that you have other outlets in which to sell and realize that selling anywhere, regardless of how much foot traffic they have, requires work on your part then you should have minimal frustrations with Etsy.

Admitting 'you can't'.

I was reading a thread in the Etsy forums this morning, about a young girl who was asking for advice on how to fit Etsy into her full time school and work schedule.  Being frustrated with not having enough 'Etsy time', she asked for advice on how to balance it all.

Having read similar stories about people trying to 'Etsy' with already overflowing schedules made me consider this phenomena a little more deeply.  Sure, some people are trying to make an income, whether supplemental or more.  But others, for some reason, are trying to fit Etsy into a tiny little slot in their schedule, as if it's a requirement and not something extra.

Granted, many people balance work, kids, home and Etsy, or any other combination of circumstances.  But the reality is, that there are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, and so on.  There comes a time when you have to admit that you just can't fit anything else in without sacrificing something else.

Maybe it's an age thing, or a generational thing, but young adults today seem to want to do it all now.  When my kids were younger I worked part time, kept house and was a volunteer fireman.  I did do crafting when I had time, but I couldn't imagine trying to fit in a serious committment to selling those crafts during that period, no matter how much I might have wanted to, or how much it might have supplemented our income.  Something would have suffered.

So here I am, 20 years later, still crafting, and having successfully sold those crafts for many of those years.  Now I have the time to devote to making this a full time business if I so desired, without sacrificing something else.

Don't be afraid to admit that you can't do it all.  Nobody can, no matter how it may appear to you, I know these things, I'm old and wise.  Well, ok, I"m old.  Wise, not so much, but my years of living have taught me a few things.  It's ok to say no, and it's ok to admit that you can't do it all.  It took me a long time to learn that.  You are much better off the earlier in life you learn and accept this fact.

If you really want to do something, fit something in, then you find a way to balance all the things in your life.  Only you know where you can cut back, or find the time.  The reality is, if it's bringing you stress, then consider the possibility that now is just not the right time for it.  Life is stressful enough without inventing things to add even more stress to it.

While crafting and selling those crafts can be a pleasant outlet, in most cases it's not a requirement or something that must be done right now, so it's ok to wait until you have the time make the committment, even if it requires a bit of a balancing act.