Overview
If you have handcrafted, vintage, custom, or unique items you want to sell; Etsy is where you can meet potential buyers.
Etsy is a global marketplace, filled with a variety of extraordinary, creative items from a community of sellers around the world. Etsy sellers connect with buyers on the platform and showcase their unique goods with the help of Etsy’s support system and tools.
Fair warning, because of the size of the platform, being a seller on Etsy can feel like being a needle in a stack of needles. You’ll need to make sure your products are unique, use high quality photos and well-written descriptions with key phrases that buyers search for in order to make selling on Etsy a success. Luckily, Etsy helps you achieve this with detailed analytics to help you see what you need to improve, plus plenty of tools and services to help with your promotional efforts.
Who Is It For?
Anyone can sell on Etsy, as long as you have the kind of products described above.You won’t need to invest too much time in your shop beyond setting up your listing, interacting with customers, and preparing shipments for any orders placed.
Who Is It Not For?
If you won’t be able to commit to creating handmade crafts to fulfill an order, then it’ll be difficult to retain customers. Dispatching orders quickly is also crucial to keeping your customers happy, so you’ll need to make sure you have time to send out the order. At times you might come across challenging customers and it might take time and a whole lot of patience to come to an agreement. If your schedule won’t allow for these occasional, random disturbances then selling on Etsy will be a challenge.
How It Works?
The Etsy creative marketplace has over 33 million buyers around the world, always looking for something unique and crafty to buy. You can sell your crafts to this vast customer pool by opening your Etsy shop on the seller page. The default shop falls under the Standard package which has all you need to start, manage, and grow your business. For more advanced tools, you can get the Plus subscription package for a monthly fee of $10, or the Premium package for a slightly higher fee and more advanced tools.
Once you decide on a subscription package, you can open your shop, set your location and currency, choose a name, then you can start listing the items you want to sell. For each listing, you’ll be charged a listing fee of £0.15, regardless of the package you’re using. Your listing will remain active for 4 months or until the items sell.
Thanks to Etsy tools and services such as the Sell on Etsy app, you can manage orders, update your listings, and interact with customers on the go. To reach more customers for a better chance to make a sale, you can promote your listings or share your items on Etsy and social media using their free tools.
Etsy also provides detailed statistics of performance trends and traffic sources so you can understand your customers more and what they need, and use that information to adjust your marketing strategy and improve your business as a whole. Once your listed items are purchased, you’ll be charged a 5% transaction fee and a 4% + £0.20 payment processing fee. You can set your preferred payment method to receive payments for your products and also set a billing method for paying your Etsy fees.
What We Like?
- Low listing fees and charges.
- Support from specialists is available whenever you need help or tips
- Plenty of easily accessible tools and services you can use to manage, promote, and grow your business.
- You can sell on Etsy at any time so you don’t have to move your schedule around to fit it in, plus the mobile app makes it easy to manage your business wherever you are.
What We Don't Like?
- Lots of competition from other sellers.
- There are limitations to the types of goods you can sell on Etsy.
- A lot of promotional work is required in order to sell successfully.
How Much Can You Make?
Etsy earnings vary according to the type of products you sell, the price you sell them at, and the number of items you sell.
As long as you promote your products well and provide a good product and services then you can charge a premium price.
Conclusion?
A lot of hard work goes into making selling on Etsy a successful side hustle. In fact, if you dig around on the internet you’ll hear of seller experiences as different as night and day. Don’t let the bad ones stop you and don’t let the good ones fool you either. You’ll never know how it will go for you unless you try, so take a shot and create your Etsy shop using the links provided below.
