ETSY vs SHOPIFY ✿ my experience, sales stats, pros/cons, which one is better for small businesses?

foreign [Music] welcome back to my channel if you are new around here my name is Millie and I run a small business called Prince by Millie I sell wall art prints greeting cards stickers and loads of fun stationary items and I usually upload Studio Vlogs to this channel but this week I'm coming at you with something slightly different and I'm going to be comparing my experience with using Etsy and Shopify as an e-commerce platform to sell my products online so I actually have an Etsy store and a Shopify store and I currently run both of those and sell all my products on both platforms so in this video I thought it might be interesting for some of you to listen in on my experience on using both platforms because I know a lot of small businesses never know where to start do you start on Etsy do you start making your own website and all things like that so I'm going to talk about the pros and cons of etsy and Shopify and my experience using both so just to give you a little bit of context I started my Etsy Shop about three years ago now and I now have over 20 000 sales so I have been quite successful on Etsy I would say don't want to toot my own home but um yeah I've got over 20 000 sales now so I do have good experience with selling on Etsy and I've had my website for around I think almost two years now or just over two years I can't remember exactly when I started that um so I'm going to talk to you about my experiences with both the pros and cons and also I'm going to delve quite deep into the fees for both Etsy and Shopify because they differ quite considerably and I know the Etsy fees are what a lot of people um really consider when they think about starting an Etsy shop so I'm going to cover all of that in this video and cover your questions as well and I really hope you guys find it useful so if you didn't know Etsy and Shopify are both e-commerce platforms to sell goods online Etsy is a Marketplace so there's loads of different sellers on Etsy selling their bits and Bobs like handmade things and crafts and all sorts whereas Shopify you have your own website so Shopify is just the platform you use to create your website and it's what's used to control it but you completely customize the site yourself and it is your own website so that's the difference of both of them there are pros and cons to both and I'm going to talk you through those in a second I got quite a lot of questions from you guys as well so I posted a little post on YouTube and also in my patreon Instagram group chat I ask for questions or things you'd like me to cover in this video and I had loads of suggestions so I'm going to cover all of those in this video as well so I've got my notes with me on my laptop to my right so if I'm looking over here it's because I'm looking at my notes and there are a lot of notes because I don't want to miss anything so I thought I'll just dive straight in one of the main things that people were asking about was the comparison of fees for both so you do have to pay fees on both Etsy and Shopify there's quite a lot of difference in the amount of fees that you have to pay on both first things first I'm going to talk you through the Etsy fees that you will experience if you sell products on Etsy so when I'm talking about these Etsy fees I'm going to be using dollars US dollars but there's loads of calculators online and things that convert these Dollars to Pounds or other currencies I am going to be talking about a calculator that I've used in a little bit to calculate exactly how many fees you will pay on certain products so when we get to that I will be linking that in the description as well but the first fee you will pay on Etsy is to list an item so every time you put a product or an item on your store you have to pay 20 cents to publish that item so that is the first fee then after four months if your products has not sold then you'll be charged another 20 cents which is the auto renew fee so it auto renews your product for you you can opt out of this if you want to and you'll pay another 20 cents on top of that then for each sale you make the Etsy transaction fee is 6.5 so that's quite a hefty transaction fee and this total is for the product and the shipping combined as well so if you sell an item with say a 10 retail price I'm just looking over here because I've got these details on my laptop and with a four dollar shipping price Etsy will charge a total fee of 65 cents so that's the 6.5 transaction fee for the listed product price plus the shipping transaction fee of 26 Cents so that is 6.5 again of the four dollar shipping price so that's a total of 91 cents for a ten dollar item sale plus four dollar shipping I really hope that makes sense then you also have a payment processing fee for every Etsy cell you make and this is three dollars plus 25 cents so the payment processing rates vary depending on your payment processing service and your regions application vit or tax and things like that so Etsy payments are a fixed rate plus a percentage of between three percent and 4.5 of the total sale price depending on which country you are selling from then there is also a regulatory operating fee this is currently 0.32 per sale but this has gone up even in the three years that I have been selling on Etsy so I started selling on Betsy in 2020 so I'm in my third year now and this has increased I don't think it's increased every year but it definitely increased within the last year I can't remember what it was before I have a feeling it was 0.25 but don't quote me on that but it is now currently 0.32 per sale and then another fee that you may or may not use on Etsy is you can pay for Etsy ads as well so you can pay for Etsy ads and then what that will do is Etsy will push your listings further up the search ranks so when someone searches for for example if you're selling positivity print it's the one searches positivity wall art print and your item is that then if you pay for Etsy ads your listing will be higher in the ranks than it would be if you want to pay for Etsy ads I've never actually used Etsy ad so I don't have any experience with using it but I know people who have and they do say that it is quite effective if you pay a certain amount a day so it needs to be ideally like five or ten pounds a day to see the benefits um but again I don't really have any experience with this I've never used Etsy ads so that would have to be a bit of an experiment on your part but yeah just consider that as well if you want to use those Etsy ads then that will be an additional fee on top of all the other fees that Etsy charge okay so I found a really good Etsy fee calculator online I'm just looking through now to find exactly what it was okay so it's a website called craftkit.app so it's just a website it's not actually an app and you basically put in the price of your item price of postage all things like that and it gives you a breakdown of all the fees that you'll have to pay on that and then what your actual take home amount is so again it's called craft kit I'm going to leave it in the description but as an example I'm going to pop it on screen now for say my enamel pins I sell those on Etsy for eight pound fifty with one pound 49 postage that's the total revenue of nine pounds 99 and then the fees I didn't put any of the order costs in because I just wanted to know how much the fees would be just for this video so the listing fee would be 18p transaction fee 65p payment processing fee 60p which is a total fee of one pound 43 so I would actually take home eight pounds 56 of that nine pound 99 so it's not an incredibly massive amount but that's for a relatively cheap ish item whereas if you're selling items that are like over a hundred pounds you can imagine how much those fees will actually take off your Revenue like the amount you'll actually take home will be a lot less than what you've put it on for so that's something you really need to consider when you're selling on Etsy I actually have higher prices for my items on Etsy than on my Shopify store because the Shopify fees aren't as Hefty as Etsy and we'll get to those in a second but yeah that's one thing worth considering workout out how much your fees are actually going to be for the product that you are about to list and then if you need to just put the price up ever so slightly to make sure you are actually taking home money and profit for that product because you have put time and money and effort into that product and you need to make sure that you are getting a good decent profit from it as well as small businesses so yeah Etsy fees are quite Hefty but use the calculator see what it's going to come to for you and you can go from there just need a sip of coffee if my throat is going really dry so I'm really sorry if there are any Etsy fees that I missed there I think I covered them all but if I've left any out or if you can think of any more then just pop them in the comments to help people out as well I've tried to gather as much information as I can but I'm bound to have missed something because I'm just one one small person just trying to gather all this information and it's quite a lot to take in so yeah any help in the comments would be greatly appreciated let's move on to the Shopify fees and discuss those next so on Etsy you don't have to actually pay to have an Etsy store you can sign up for free it doesn't cost you anything per month you don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee or anything like that but on Shopify you do have to pay to have a Shopify site so there are four prize plans or price plan options for Shopify there is Shopify starter basic Shopify which is the one I have it's the most popular one normal Shopify and then Advanced Shopify so I actually have the basic Shopify plan at the minute and that's the only one I've ever used and I've had my Shopify store for I think two years now I think it will be two years in September honestly forgotten when I opened my own website for roughly two years so I have the basic Shopify plan and I pay around 25 pounds for this a month I have app add-ons as well and this takes this to about 35 pounds a month so that is the fee that I pay every single month to Shopify to have my Shopify website 35 pounds a month it would be 25 if I didn't have any of the ad app-ons so these are things like an app so that customers can leave reviews and apps so that I can add personalization text boxes to my orders if I want my customers to put a personalized message so if they needed a personalized name on an item then they'd leave that in the box and other things like that so if you want Little extras like that then you do actually have to pay for those as well most of the time you can get free options for these but if you want a good decent option you usually have to pay a monthly fee for those as well so just bear that in mind so as well as that monthly subscription fee you also have Payment Processing fees like Etsy but these are a lot less so these vary depending on which Shopify plan you choose but I'm just going to talk about the basic Shopify plan that I have because that is the most popular one so for the basic Shopify plan the payment processing fee is two percent Plus 25p for domestic orders so it's really small and it's 3.1 and 25p again for international Elders so just a slightly more percentage there this is if the customer pays via Shopify payments with their debit or credit card so if they pay with their bank card then that is the payment processing fee that they'll pay but it's slightly different for if they use PayPal to check out so the PayPal fee is slightly more so this is 2.9 as opposed to the two percent if they pay by a bank card and the 2.9 is standard for in the UK so domestic orders and there's a fixed fee of 30p as well rather than the 25p if they were paid by bank card so if your customer pays through PayPal the payment processing fees are slightly more than if they're just paid by their bank card but again it's still nothing rarely compared to the 6.5 the X you take and again I actually found a website that has an online calculator so you can work out how much PayPal will take in terms of payment processing fees I didn't find one for the Shopify payments but I'm sure there is one out there if I find one I will link that below as well but just for the PayPal um transactions I used the calculator to figure out what my take home would be for certain sales so for PayPal I put in as an example say if a customer um had an order totaling nine pounds 99 I would take home nine pounds 40 of that because the PayPal fee would come to 59 Pence you can select the different currency or where the buyer is and it will tell you what you'll take home from that so again I will leave that linked below this website is called wise.com so it's different to The Crafty kit one so again all these links will be in the description box if you wanted to have a look at these calculators so that is it in terms of fees so you can obviously on Shopify as well pay for um Google ads so that if people search for a certain product then your website will come up higher in the rankings on Google but that takes a lot of expertise to figure out Google SEO I haven't even cracked it yet I don't think a lot of people have unless you're like an SEO expert so it is really difficult um to do that is you may need an expert to help you with that if you wanted to pay for SEO ads but in general the Shopify fees are a lot less than the Etsy fees okay so now we've got the big thing of fees out the way I'm going to move on to talking about the pros and cons of both Etsy and Shopify so we're going to start with Etsy and then move on to Shopify so there may be a bit of crossing over here where I talk about both um in terms of certain points and things like that I'm gonna try and keep it as Etsy pros and cons and Shopify pros and cons so that it's nice and simple for you guys okay so one of the big pros of etsy is that it's much easier to find customers and to drive traffic to your store as Etsy take control of this and do a lot of this for you so when people search for a product on Google Etsy is already pretty high up in the ranks because it's such a well-known website and it's so used and things like that so your products may actually come up in the shopping tab on Google and things like that if it's a successful product or if it's a really unique product then it will come up on that first page of Google because Etsy is that certified website and Etsy will be paying for ads to come up really high on Google searches and your product may be one of those that come up as well so it's a lot easier for people to find your products on Etsy as opposed to your own website Etsy SEO as well so for those of you who don't know I just realized I never said what this was SEO means search engine optimization so that means when someone searches something online it's how well or how high your product comes up when they searched out on Google or on Etsy or anything like that so Etsy SEO is a lot easier to figure out in my opinion than Google SEO so for Etsy I'll just make sure I research and use really good tags and keywords in my titles and things like that so that I rank higher in the searches I do try to do this on Shopify as well but it's a lot more difficult to rank high on Shopify with your own site because you don't have the credibility of etsy and you don't have anybody paying for Google ads for you either um so yeah basically it's a lot easier to get traffic to your Etsy site than it is to your own website another Pro of etsy that I've written on here is that my business would not be where it is today if I hadn't have started on Etsy those three years ago so basically starting an Etsy shop for me that's what grounded my business and has given my business credibility because when I opened my own Shopify site I was able to say I've got you know over a thousand five star reviews because I had got that over on Etsy so even though they're Etsy reviews they're still about my products and my store and my customer service and things so I took that and used that as credibility for my own website and things like that and you've also you've built a bit of a customer base as well honestly that then may move over to your Shopify site so yeah if I hadn't started on Etsy I would definitely not be where I am today with my own website and things like that as well so I definitely think Etsy is a great platform to start on because it's a lot easier for people to find you and your products and then Shopify or having your own website can come maybe a little bit later on when you're a little bit more grounded and have that credibility another Pro event Z is that there are no startup or subscription fees so you don't have to pay a monthly fee or subscription fee to have your Etsy shop it's there and it will stay there for as long as you want it to be there until you deactivate it um it's always going to be there and you don't have to pay anything per month you just pay per sale basically or pay per listing you put on another massive Pro of etsy for me is that personally I found it a lot more simple to set up international shipping on Etsy than on my website so on Etsy they have my most of the taxi side of things sorted for you for example they already have their own iOS code which is I'm just wearing it here because I wasn't 100 sure yeah it's used for shipping to countries within the EU so if I'm sending something to a country within the EU the customer receiving it won't have to pay any tax or Customs charges or things like that because Etsy already have that iOS code which shows that Etsy have already covered that tax side of things they've already paid the tax on the sale if that makes sense whereas when you're selling on Shopify you'd have to have your own iOS code which is quite a theft again and I think you have to pay for it as well but a lot of people choose not to do that because it is quite expensive I believe and as I'm thinking of something else but I don't think I am um I remember looking into it but that just means that when a customer receives their package sometimes they may have to pay a little bit of tax on that on import so you've just gotta make it really clear on your Shopify site if you're having a Shopify site as well that customers may have to pay a small amount of tax although you've tried to avoid this as much as you can and another massive Pro of etsy which is quite recent actually is their purchase protection program so this basically means that if you purchase your postage through Etsy which I do I purchase my labels on Etsy which is another Pro super easy to buy Royal Mail postage on Etsy um and print the labels but if I purchase my labels and postage through Etsy and then a customer messages me and says my order's not arrived obviously I've sent it I've bought the label and sent it out there's not much I can do if I haven't selected the tracked option because I just sent send things second class most of the time or International orders are just International standard without a tracking number if they haven't selected the tracked option so there's not much I can do I don't know where their parcel is so more often than not they might open a case on Etsy because the item has been lost if I haven't been able to refund them or claim the item as lost through Royal Mail Myself then they'll open up a case on Etsy for the order say that it's been lost and then what Etsy do is through their purchase protection program they will refund the buyer but they will allow me to keep my funds as well because they realize that it's not my fault um because I have purchased that postage through Etsy so they know that I have actually sent the item so that is a massive perk of etsy I think and it's only come about recently I can't remember exactly when but there's been a few times where that has really helped me out because if someone buys a large print or a large selection of products and it's cost me a lot to send and also the products have cost me quite a bit it would be so heartbreaking if I had to refund that Customer because obviously it's not their fault either that it's not turned up and then for me not to get that money back either so that is a massive perk of etsy so about all the pros that I have written down there are probably more but they're the ones that came to my head first so I write those down and if I think of any more I'll add them in the comments um as well but now we'll move on to the Etsy comms so one of the Etsy cons is that the fees could increase at any time so I've only been on Etsy for three years now and the fees have increased at least twice since I've been on it only buy a small amount but you just never know one day they could turn around and say we are now taking you know 15 of every sale and there's nothing you can do about that so that is pretty scary that the fees could literally increase at any point and you have no control over that another con is that Etsy control your store basically you do have control over your own store as well but your store is on a Marketplace it's on a huge platform and there have been horror stories that I've heard of where people stores just get taken down randomly for no good reason and their shops are terminated and they don't know why and that absolutely terrifies me I've known a couple of people that this has happened to and they had quite successful Etsy businesses so it's just a really daunting thought that you don't really have much control over your store your store is a part of to say this huge platform and if they want to get rid of you they can and there's not really much you can do about it you can obviously challenge it and appeal it and things like that but yeah your store could be taken down also I've known I know a few of my patrons have experienced this as well they've recently started Etsy stores and their funds have been paused um so I can't remember exactly how many days it's been paused for but they couldn't withdraw any funds from their Etsy account for a certain amount of days or something it's like part of a trial or I can't quite remember but even things like that is just so heartbreaking like if they've made sales they're going to need that money probably then to buy new materials things like that um and yeah it's just pretty rubbish really it's fun to pause because it kind of puts a pause on your business as well so yeah that is a massive con another con I've got written down is that it's really time consuming to list items so it takes so much longer to list my products on Etsy than it does on my Shopify store so on Etsy you have to put a title and use a certain amount of characters you have to put a description you have to import your photos and they only like it to be certain amount of pixels so you have to figure that all out as well then you have to put up to 13 tags and you need to use all of those really to bump up your search engine optimization um so you have to research those tags you also have to put your product into a category and you need to set up the shipping and all things like that and it takes absolutely ages to list a product on Etsy another thing is that you have very limited control over your store design so because it is a Marketplace everybody's stores pretty much looks the same the only thing that makes them different is your products because your listing images are the only real thing that people see you do have an Etsy Banner as well so you can completely customize that and obviously put your logo as your profile picture so you can customize it and brand it to a certain extent but it's very limited um and it's not really a place to Showcase your branding because it's literally just your listing images that people see it's not like a website where you can customize the colors of the background and things like that you are very limited as to the control over your design another con I've got written down is I didn't know how to word this to make it make sense so I hope it does make sense to you because I think I was just overthinking it as I was writing it I was like they're not gonna know what the hell I'm on about but I've written here that you can't put products into multiple collections so our collection is where you have like a list on the side of your Etsy shop where you can have like greeting cards wall art prints pins bookmarks things like that so people can select the collection and then everything is there within that collection so if you have for example I've put the example here as a wall art print that it has a plant on it and a positive quote so I have a print on my store I'll try and pop a picture here it's the you grow girl print and it has plant on it hanging plant and then at the bottom it says you grow girl so this is like a positivity print but it's also a Botanical print because it has the plan on there as well and for example if I have two collections on my Etsy store for Botanical warlock prints and positivity prints I can only put that print into one of those collections you can't put it in multiple collections unless they've changed that but I don't think they have um you can only put them in one collection so I'd have to choose between those two and then obviously if someone's looking for like a positivity print and they click on that collection on my shop they may really love that you grow girl print with the plant on as well but they're not going to necessarily see that because it's not going to be in the positivity print collection if I've chosen to put it in the Botanical one I really hope that makes sense but yeah basically it's hard to categorize products because you can't put things into multiple different categories or collections another huge Con on Etsy is that there is increased competition so people are joining Etsy every single day hundreds of people are joining Etsy and the originality is kind of being lost a little bit and I know a lot of etsy sellers feel like this as well there is masses of increased competition and it just sucks a bit really because you know that increased competition could then make you lose out on sales or the other person and it's just like a hamster wheel going around basically there is a lot of competition on Etsy and it's quite hard to get established now and grounded as a business it can be done of course but I feel like it just takes a lot of time and energy to make sure that your store and your products stand out um from the rest of the competition so just bear that in mind I've also written here that I feel as though Etsy is kind of losing its USP it's Unique selling point because Etsy is supposed to be a Marketplace hosting handmade items crafty items handmade Goods um and things like that and there is now a lot of mass manufactured products on Etsy being sold as handmade so I've seen a few things crop up on my Instagram wheels and things where people have seen things on Amazon say for example I can't remember exactly what it was it was some kind of like cute desk lamp kind of thing um that was being sold on Amazon by like a legitimate company and this Etsy seller was selling the exact same thing just for a slightly higher price and they'd obviously just bought it off Amazon and then a selling it off as a handmade item and it's like that's not what etsy's for and I feel like Etsy just aren't cracking down on these people and these sellers who are not selling handmade Goods like that is what Etsy is for that is it's USP and it's just being taken the power of basically um so yeah I feel like Etsy you really need to crack down on that because I know that it's upsetting and annoying a lot of sellers because we're over here trying to sell our like handmade goods and crafty things what it's for and then there's other people just being slimy people trying to sell off things that they've just bought from Amazon so yeah that is a massive con as well and it needs to be sorted out and the last con that I've got written down on this list for Etsy is that it's against the rules on Etsy to use customers email addresses and add them to a mailing list so every time a customer on Etsy places in order if you go on the customer name on like the drop down menu on the order you can see their email address but it's against the rules and regulations to use that email address and add it to your mailing list um which completely makes sense because obviously they may not wish to be added to your mailing list but it would be good if they had an option to like if you could ask that customer whether it would be okay to use that but I think that would still be going against the rules if you are using customers email addresses outside of etsy I think there's a um terms and conditions about that so that is one pretty big con because you can't then you know they can't then get in on your discounts and sales and see about new products on your mailing list and things like that it's not a massive issue you may not even have a mailing list but if you do like me it would be great if there was somewhere around that where you could add your Etsy customers to a mailing list so that you can then contact them and they can find out more about your business and things like that um so yeah that is a pretty big con so they're all the Etsy pros and cons that I thought written down and we'll now move on to Shopify pros and cons starting with the price so the first massive Pro on Shopify is that you have complete control over your store it is a branded space that is what Shopify is for so you choose a theme on Shopify and then you can completely customize that with your brand colors your logo and you can just completely change the way it looks and have it exactly how you want it which is an absolute dream it's basically just like a little portal of your small business or merged into one where people can find absolutely everything about you so I have a section on there with my YouTube channel with my patreon with my products that people can shop you can also link a Blog um on there as well so if you write blog posts you can link them on there too and yeah it's just an amazing space to Showcase your business and for people to shop your items and yeah it's super exciting designing your first proper website I remember the feeling of it and I still get that now like when I come out with a new collection a new product launch um customizing that home page so that it showcases that product collection is just so fun and yeah it's just amazing how you can completely customize that space suit your brand the second Pro I've got written down here is that it's much easier to list products on Shopify than it is on Etsy it takes much less time there's not as many things you have to fill out and add and also Shopify have a new feature where when you list a product you can use this Shopify description tool that writes your description for you so hopefully I can put a screen grab over the top of this video so you can see what I mean but basically you just put in some keywords that you want it to use in the description and then it generates a description for you and you can select whether you want it to be like playful serious um educational things like that so I always choose the playful option because it's quite quirky and fun which is like my products and it always comes out with a really really good description and then I usually just tweak it just ever so slightly just to make it a little bit more um unique to me so yeah that is such a huge perk that's only come about recently on Shopify but it's literally a game changer it takes hardly any time now to list products on Shopify another Pro as well that makes your business seem just a lot more credible and legitimate is that you can have your own website domain so I want to see your shop just comes up as www.etsy.com Prince family UK which is what mine is um whereas on Shopify you can have www.princeformily.com and that's it so it's a proper website domain you do have to pay to have this I think it's about 14 or 15 pounds per year so you have to pay 14 or 15 pounds every year to keep your domain and to renew it um but I think it's completely worth it and if you don't do that I think it's something like your domain is like www.princefamily.shopify.com or something like that so it's not quite as legitimate or unique to you um but it's still better than the Etsy one but yeah if you want a proper domain you will have to pay about 14 or 15 pounds for that per year but I do that and I think it's completely worth it and it's just so easy for people to find your website and your little Hub of your brand so people just search Prince by Millie on Google my website will come up on that first page the next two points I've got written down kind of linked to my first one about having complete control over your store so I've written here that it's really easy to design your own website and to make it look how you want it I know I had a question from someone who said they were really worried about starting their Shopify store because they thought they might get overwhelmed and then it might be just too techy for them and they won't know what to do but honestly Shopify walk you through it so well and they make it so clear as to how you can change things to suit your brand and you literally just pick a theme and then you edit the parts of that theme so you'll edit the header you can put a picture to their edit the sections you want to appear on your home page add menu so people can navigate your store really easily that's another perk as well it's really easy to navigate and create different collections with products across those Collections and things like that or multiple collections um yeah it's just a great space and it's really easy to design your website there's loads of tutorials as well on YouTube and things I'm pretty sure I followed a couple I can't remember who it was who put that question on I think it was one of my patreons um but yeah just pop me a message if you are thinking of making your Shopify store and I'll happily help you out then the other one I put was you can design your store from scratch yet which links to what I've just said there so it's completely your own and you can just do it however you want to and the last Pro that I've got there are loads of Pros for Shopify but I just wanted to touch on the main ones that kind of cross over with the Etsy ones as well is that customers can enter their email addresses on that order at the checkout and then you can create a mailing list using those email addresses so it's completely fine within the terms and conditions to use your customers email address if they opt in for email marketing then they will be added to your mailing list and you can then send them emails about updates new products discounts and things like that which makes it so much easier to get in contact with your customers and to keep the excitement going and to get them coming back to your website as well so that's a massive perk okay I'm now going to move on to the Shopify comms I actually only have four comms written down for Shopify because I really struggled to think of any to be honest um but the first one is that I'm just going to read it off my screen you have to pay extra to add certain things to your website such as reviews personalization boxes pop-up boxes and things like that so yeah I touched on this earlier on in the video but there are certain apps that you have to add on to access certain things so you can get some free ones so like some free review apps where customers can leave reviews on your products but often they're not as good as the ones that you just have to pay a small fee for per month so yeah usually the ones that are most useful or beneficial are the ones where you have to pay a small monthly fee and my app fees a month come to around 10 pounds a month and I have quite a few on there actually I'll try and put something on screen to show you the different apps that I use um summer threesome you have to pay for but yeah it comes to around 10 pounds a month but I think that's completely worth it for the benefits that I get from that and that my customers get as well the second con is something that I touched on earlier as well sorry if I keep repeating myself there's a lot of crossing over in this video as is expected but it's much more difficult to drive traffic to your own website because it's literally all down to you and I spoke about this quite a lot earlier on in the video so I'm not going to repeat myself too much um but basically you have to make sure that your titles product descriptions and things like that are using really well researched keywords if you want to search up high in the ranks and to search high in the ranks on Google you have to have quite a lot of backlinks as well so that's where other websites link to your website and things like that it's really difficult to rank high on Google so don't get your hopes up high but yeah basically it's much more difficult to drive traffic to your Shopify site than it is to Etsy like I mentioned earlier it's basically all down to you and that's why social media plays such a huge part in driving traffic to your actual website to your Shopify site um and I'm gonna just touch on that for this next part of the video so I was looking through my website stats so when I referred to my website I mean my Shopify website so we're not talking about Etsy at the minute I was looking back at my website it starts in January got my morning was oh no December 2022 so how many months ago was that so about eight months ago before I properly started filming my YouTube videos and my stats were as shows so I'm gonna put them on screen now in December 2022 my total sales came to 45 pounds 45 so when you consider that I'm paying 35 pounds to have my website I've only made a profit there of 10 pounds like that's my Revenue 10 pounds um my online store sessions so this is how many like sessions people have on your website how many times people are visiting your website basically I had a 587 online store sessions I had 11 orders in total and you can see here as well that my sessions were mostly from Facebook so I had 21 sessions from Facebook then I looked at my stats for June 2023 so the month just gone I chose June because we're just coming up to the end of July I've still got a couple of days left of July so I chose June and my total sales for June were 664 pounds and eight Pence so that is a 1 361 compared to December 2022 my online store sessions were 1449 so that's pretty much a thousand more sessions than December 2022 my online store conversion rate is higher as well at 2.69 my conversion rate in December 2022 was 1.87 total orders in June 40 which was up 264 my average order value was higher as well and you can see here that my online store sessions were pretty much all from YouTube so 236 of my sessions came from YouTube which just proves how much this YouTube channel has helped me and this business and I'm so grateful to each and every one of you who sit and watch this channel it means the absolute world to me my business would not be where it is today if I hadn't have decided to turn the camera on about a year ago now and start filming I filmed a couple of videos about a year ago and then I didn't upload any for ages because me and Lewis bought our Bungalow got a puppy Otis and we were just settling in and I really started posting the weekly Studio Vlogs around January February time I think it was so I've not been doing this very long at all and I'm just so incredibly grateful for each and every one of you um but yeah I just wanted to show you that because that kind of proves how important your social media presence will affect your Shopify traffic um obviously it's going to be different for everyone that's just my experience and my stats but I really hope you guys found that helpful to see and my last con for Shopify is that it's harder to set up in international shipping on a Shopify which I also touched on earlier on as well so you have to create markets is what they're called on Shopify for the countries that you would like to offer shipping to and then you separate these and pay rates accordingly according to the countries that you put into those different markets so another thing is that Shopify doesn't have its own iOS code as well like Etsy so you would either have to get one for yourself which I spoke about earlier or just let your customers know that they may have to pay some import and Customs tax when their order arrives to them so I just declare this really clearly on my website on my shipping section that although I do my very best to avoid these charges on import International orders and customers may be expected to pay a small amount of tax when they receive their order so just let them know that this is out of your control you've tried to avoid it and if it does happen you are sorry but there's not much you can really do about it and that is all my cons for Shopify so they probably gathered that my preference is leaning towards Shopify I have more Pros for Shopify and less cons for Shopify compared to Etsy but if you ask me which do I prefer I would say Shopify and if you told me right now that I could only keep either my Etsy or my Shopify I would use my Shopify but that's only because I just love the fact that you can completely brand your website to your branding and completely customize it but also because I'm now able to drive that traffic to my website my website sales have gone up a lot my customer base is growing and I finally feel really confident that I'm making consistent sales on my Shopify site whereas if you asked me a few months ago I would have definitely said Etsy because that is where my main source of income comes from and still does today I make more money on Etsy than I do on a Shopify but I would still choose my Shopify site because I just feel like the benefits are stronger for Shopify and if it keeps continuing to row and the right it is then it might change Shopify maybe my main source of income and Etsy is secondary who knows we will see but yeah now that I'm lucky enough to get consistent sales on both platforms I can't see myself moving to just one single platform I think I will always have both um but if you're a small business just starting out I definitely recommend starting with an Etsy shop to get your business started and to gain that credibility like I did and then you can make your own website whether it's Shopify Wix Squarespace there's loads of options when you feel the time is right so when you think that you'll be making more than your Shopify monthly fee um in terms of sales on your website then that's when I think you should start thinking about it you can obviously it's completely up to you start both at the same time if you want to have your own branded space your own website um but just don't expect to get those sales on your website straight away you will have to work your little socks off to get a good amount of sales on your Shopify site so I think I've covered everything I wanted to in this video I feel like I've been talking for absolutely ages it's going to take me so long to edit this video down but I really really hope you found this helpful and seeing some of my experiences and stats and things like that as well it's always so scary sharing stats on YouTube knowing that anyone can see it but I thought it was really important for you guys to see that and to see how especially YouTube has changed my Shopify traffic game so again thank you so much if you have any questions about anything I've spoken about or if you have any experiences you'd like to share with either Etsy or Shopify please leave them in the comments and let's get a little discussion going because I think it'll be really helpful for people scrolling through those comments to see other people's experiences as well as mine because obviously everyone's is different again I really hope you guys have found this useful and if you want to stick around and watch some of my recent Studio Vlogs please feel free to do that they're what I upload mostly to this Channel with the odd video like this as well sharing tips tricks experiences all small business related oh I'd love to have you over here so if you're not yet subscribed please do so that you can keep up to date with all my future videos also give this video a like if you enjoyed it so I know to upload some more of these experience videos like this in comparisons it really helps me out and helps push these videos to other people who like this kind of content as well thank you so much and hopefully I will see you guys very soon in another video bye [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Prints by Milly

Views: 15,761

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Id: _3HLz3M0u-0

Length: 46min 1sec (2761 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023