Don't Start Your Etsy Shop Until You Hear This!

what's up everybody alicia danielle here welcome to my channel today's video is from the car because honey i got things to do and it's overcast and i'm still trying to be great today so we gonna do this video today's video is why you should or should not sell on etsy so if you're thinking about starting an etsy shop or just starting one not for sure what you should do um it's a good video stay tuned um and i got some good tips for you okay you guys so for today's video we're talking about etsy so if you're not familiar um with what etsy is it's basically an online marketplace you can build your own shop and sell your handmade products we're going to say handmade because it's not all like that but you're supposed to sell your own handmade products on their platform so um basically do i like etsy yes um but there's a whole lot that nobody tells you when you first start selling that um i wish i would have knew you know because i mean it would have saved me a whole lot of trouble and heartache and trying to start over and stuff so i started my business in 2011 and basically i was selling t-shirts um bonnets that sort of stuff handmade things and it went really good i will honestly say that i had starting out i had a good um good experience um i tell anybody if you're getting ready to start um a shopping you're thinking about etsy it's a good starting place because um you got to kind of think of it like walmart um there's so many products even if you don't you can walk in walmart and want some kool-aid and you walk down another aisle see something you ain't even think that you wanted but then you end up getting it because you see it you know what i mean like etsy is that way there's so many different um people that are selling on there so um there's something for everybody so if you're just starting out it's a good place if you don't have an audience already built in people are going to find you if you set it up your shop up correctly and you use hashtags correctly that sort of thing you're going to get some momentum and people are going to find you you're going to get sales period that's really all it comes down to um so if you're a new seller and you don't have an audience it's a good starting place you know that's where i started um and it was cool what they don't tell you necessarily is that um you don't really have as much control over your shop as you think you do so you can set it up you can put your own prices you can um make your own discounts and set your own shipping rates all that stuff um and that's really cool but at any point in time etsy can shut down your store and when i say shut down i mean you can log on one day and get ready to start processing orders and you can't find your shop and you're like what happened like it was here and it's like no so you go look in your email and they're like because of such and such guidelines you know we removed your account da da da da you know you got to do whatever jump through these hoops to clear it up and it's like okay like i feel you they don't have to give you no warning no nothing honey they just they just take your stuff and they don't tell you and like you don't know like if and like at the time i was i had a you know had turned it into a full-time income so that was the only thing i was doing at the time so i log on and can't get my money i'm like oh no it's not gonna work you know it's not gonna work for me so they make you jump through hoops and all this stuff and try to you know to get your shop back open and of course you're going to do it because you want your money and you want to be able to complete your sales and that sort of thing and you've built relationships with your customers and stuff like that you have repeat customers so you're gonna do it but they basically control your shop they control your money your income you know everything so um that's definitely something that they don't tell you and i know a lot of people it's like well what did you do to you know have them do that you did something wrong and it's actually happened to me a couple times the first time it happened um i can honestly say it wasn't me etsy is very much for the customer so um if somebody orders something you can put you can do your best to put everything in the description the size everything you know all that kind of stuff you can put it all in the description and people still don't read point you know i mean that's just what it is people don't read um so i had this one lady who um she wasn't satisfied i guess with the size or something that she ordered and like she was going back and forth with me back and forth and i told her you know i would replace the product or whatever or i would refund her but she didn't want to send the product back like she wanted me to send her another product and i'm like well you know i'm not a big store and i'm not amazon or nothing like that who will replace your stuff and just give you a date to send it back you know i wasn't i wasn't operating like that yeah you know it was a full-time income for me but you know i'm still a small business so like she didn't want to send it back so she kept going to etsy and telling them um because you can dispute something so she kept going back and disputing and you know just paragraphs and paragraphs and stuff so then they would send it to me and say i had to respond by a certain number of days so i'm responding and da da da da and all this stuff well ultimately what it felt like is that they got tired of dealing with it pretty much so they just like refunded her her money so now i was out of a product and money which i totally thought was unfair but in the process they shut down my shop so until i cleared the order up because it was a big mess so basically i had to agree to the refund or [Music] i couldn't you know open my shop back up so of course am i gonna do it yeah cause i'm not about to lose all my other customers because of that one thing so i mean it may sound silly and like you know it's one order or whatever but you know when you're a small business and you know you know that you do things honestly um and ethically you know it's you know you kind of get you kind of get offended you know what i mean like because there are people that will take advantage of the fact you know and they know what they're doing and i feel like that was one of those situations but um yeah you wake up one morning and your shop is gone your money is on hold and it sucks so um that's really one of the reasons why i would say don't do it you know and for the time that i was on there um i was on there for a good five years and you know i made good money there but my shop was closed like two or three times and [Music] what else the first time it was because of a customer the second time it was because it was christmas time and this was like the first big christmas season that i had um and like business was booming like orders were coming in left and right left to right um but even if you put the date up and you say you need to order by such and such a date to guarantee it for christmas um people don't read and they're still like they order it like a week before and they expect it to be done and that's just not in a handmade business where you're making to order that's just not how it happens especially around christmas time and you have twice as many orders as you usually do you know even if you prepare and i did prepare myself and i read all the articles you know etsy talked about they sent you out articles before um christmas time and holiday season and stuff like that to help you get prepared and i did that i felt like i was prepared for the extra but and i did tell people that you know order by a certain date but people still didn't read and they weren't filling it so you know etsy was like well we're shutting down your shop until you um get orders updated to a certain date or something like that and i'm like whatever but then this is like closure number two so i was like whatever okay i'm about to get it done i get my little money but i still like this ain't fair because i feel like i didn't do anything wrong you know what i mean but once again i don't control it etsy controls it so [Music] you kind of got to do whatever they tell you to do you know and then the last time my shop got closed i kind of knew what i was doing but like i feel like it was just kind of unfair because there's so many people so you can go on etsy right now and you can do a search for um like louis vuitton something so you can i guess technically sell like vintage um stuff on etsy um that's not handmade but it's like vintage you can sell stuff like that on there but like if you go in there right now you're gonna see a whole bunch of knockoffs you're gonna see knock off shirts you're gonna see knock off like you're gonna see a whole bunch of stuff and you know i'm like okay like you know i didn't got this aliexpress haul and you know what i mean like i'm just trying to make some money at this point you know like um [Music] and i was booming and i think that might have been what like tipped them off because like i had only been on there for [Music] like two weeks and i was already making like five hundred dollars like like really quickly so i kind of feel like that tipped them off already and probably plus you know because they like yeah we didn't close our shop like twice so but still like i was selling the same stuff and i like i kid you not the exact same products that i had other people were selling them on there too and like had a whole shop towards like these products and i'm like and y'all gonna shut my stuff down really so at that point i was like i don't care like okay shut it down um you refund these people they money back because i'm not doing it you're already holding my money so you know and that's the thing they'll hold your money but they won't give the customers the refund they want they'll close your shop like you don't have access to nothing you don't have access to the orders or nothing the only thing you have access to is like the email that they send you when somebody places an order so you have to work off of that um but they don't release your money until you get ready until you send a stuff so i'm like oh no i didn't do this before okay y'all holding the money um y'all need to give these people their money back basically like i'm about to come out of pocket and keep playing with y'all like y'all holding my money and you want me to come out of pocket and do these orders and stuff like that i'm not doing it because in etsy you can um do your shipping and stuff through them and it automatically takes your shipping out of um like the profit that you made so that's like something you don't have to come out of pocket for um and then they ship you they you know send you to deposit the rest into your account um but when they close your shop they hold everything i'm not doing it like i don't play this game before i'm not doing it and the fact of the matter is you know i don't know i just feel like it's a whole lot true enough they have guidelines i'm not even saying that i didn't do nothing wrong because i did but still um it's a whole lot of people on there that is doing the same thing you know but it is what it is um so i mean you just have to be aware of the fact that you do not have control um and you also need to be aware of the fact that etsy charges a lot is it i think it's 20 cents i haven't looked at this in a while you guys i probably should have did that before i did this video but i'm done with them um it's like 20 cents uh per product to list which isn't bad but then they take a certain percentage from the profit that you make so um and that percentage has went up i think twice since i first started on etsy um yeah and they try to add like oh we're now you can do this now you can do this you can you know all this stuff but i don't really think it's worth it um so i would say if you're gonna start at etsy shop start it um use it as a good platform to build an audience and then get the heck out of there because at some point they're not gonna like what you're doing um just being honest and you're gonna outgrow it and you're going to want to keep more of your money because they do take a lot you want to keep more of your money so um i would say use it to the best of your ability to start out and then get your own platform use shopify or something like that so that you can have complete control over your business because you don't with etsy and that's just something that they never tell you you know and also you know when you look on there and you know this is just personal opinion but when you look on there and you see um even in the commercials and stuff like that for etsy because they're you know they have commercials and stuff now um and you see the highlighted shops and stuff like that you never see like people of color like highlighted on there and i know it's some women you know men too to have stores on there and we are popping on etsy you know what i mean and they making some good money off of us but i have never seen you know a person of color highlighted on etsy and that's that sucks you know what i mean like that sucks i don't know and if i'm missing it or you know y'all know of somebody that has been highlighted let me know because i want to check them out because i support people but um i just haven't seen it so you know um and it is what it is so if you're thinking about starting an etsy shop um definitely do it i'm out of the etsy game so um but i do you know know all the tips and tricks and you know to get your etsy shop started and um like i said i've had three or four shops on there and they all did really well so you know i kind of got um the hang of it after a while so if you want some more info on how to start a shop um and some things you should do to definitely build your audience to move them to a different platform let me know and i'll make a video about that but um i think that's it for today guys so as all the cool kids say like comment and subscribe and i'll see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Our Crazy Blessed Life

Views: 15,859

Keywords: #etsy, #newyoutuber

Id: YQEI6onwD-s

Length: 18min 6sec (1086 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020