Handmade Business ❌ GET OFF OF ETSY ❌ Here’s Why!

Etsy is a great place for crafters to get started selling their products online everyone has heard about it so it's an obvious choice and it's known for being handmade or so we think but it is easy to get set up and Etsy gives you a lot of tools for getting your products in front of potential customers let's see some marketplace it's like eBay or Amazon there are thousands of different shops on the platform and it's powered by a search engine so what that means is you get the benefit of a built-in audience who are looking for stuff to buy you don't have to worry so much about how to get customers because Etsy's already got them for you I love using Etsy I've been on there for over a decade since they first came out and it's nice because I get to make somewhat passive income sales from there which means I can make sales without any active effort on my part there are a lot of benefits for being on Etsy lots of beginners start there and now that I've made someone Etsy sounds so great I'm going to tell you all the reasons why you should get off of Etsy as soon as possible and here's why hi there my name is me and I help makers artists and designers make a consistent income selling their handmade products online firstly I like to joke about this but I don't think it's even that far off as these kind of like an abusive relationship I really hope you've never had the bad luck of being in a really relationship like that before whether it's with a parent or a family member or a friend or a partner or maybe you've seen this on TV ok Hollywood loves to showcase the drama of abusive relationships like this I'm talking about a relationship where you have no control you have no say nothing you say will actually matter or change anything it's completely dysfunctional you're forced to play by their rules one day they might be in a good mood and the next day the total opposite and there terrible mood doesn't all sound like I'm describing Betsy they change their algorithms all the time with their most recent one that's hurt a lot of sellers is they force people to give free shipping and if you don't your products will get lower priority in search you have no choice but to play their game and if you don't you just lose out you have no idea how many times people have come to me to say they've had a great year with FZ last year but this year their sales totally tanked and they're barely making anything anymore it's so unstable and it's not because of anything you did and it's hard to leave Etsy because you've invested all this time to get your shop set up and maybe in the beginning it even treated you well it is so uncanny and ironic but there are so many similarities between Etsy and a terrible boyfriend I could keep going on and on about this but we're going to move on otherwise this is gonna turn into the some kind of soap opera drama okay so with Etsy you also can't really control your brand I was asked the other day when I was joining a Facebook group it was one of those questions that pop up when you request to join it asks what is your definition of a brand and that was like hmm this is a good question I thought about it for a 30 seconds and it came to me because for a long time I had trouble defining what a brand was I thought about it first 30 seconds and it came to me because for a long time I had trouble defining what a brand is and here's what it is a brand is the experience of your shop that you give to your customers so it's the feelings and thoughts your customers have after they've been to your website Etsy is sterile it's static you can't make it your own besides changing on your shop banner and making your product fold stand out and shot in a different way or a different background it's so easy to accidentally click over to someone else's shop and the customer wouldn't different because everything is using the Etsy brand and you know how under your own product listings there are links to other people's products in your own shop there are so many levels of unfairness happening around Etsy and just think about it how does Etsy make money listing fees and their transaction fees when you've made a sale right so it's an FCS best interest to push as many sales as possible and that means they're going to keep favoring those sellers who are already doing well and making a lot of sales because Etsy knows they're proven if you're a shop with 50 sales and you have a competitor with 1,000 sales and you sell a similar product that one customers shopping for who do you think XE will promote more on Etsy the rich get richer it's really difficult to break through or to make a consistent income on Etsy these days you used to be able to but not with all the competition that's happening on there today okay so Etsy fees are about 15 to 20 percent of your sales honestly I think the fees are justified considering they do give you the tools to make sales and you wouldn't have made those sales other ones so it's all take a moment and be grateful for that but joking aside what makes Etsy actually more expensive than the other great alternatives out there is there 5% transaction fee that's not the credit card fee because to sell online no matter what platform you're on you have to pay credit card fees Etsy has a transaction fee which is different from the credit card fee you can look at that as being a commission for helping you make the sale and having a place online to host your products in your shop so the more sales you start to make the more fees you may have to pay and it doesn't take long before selling on Etsy actually becomes more expensive than other places but it doesn't stop there s DS 5% transaction if he takes out of your shipping fee I don't know about you but I don't profit from what I charge with shipping all the money goes straight to shipping supplies and USPS for postage so that's a direct hit on my bottom line when you're just starting out that 15 to 20 percent cut of sales that you have to give them may not seem like a lot but once you start making 200-300 dollars in sales it ends up being the same cost as being on something like Shopify and if you sell a more expensive product it doesn't take very long until you reach that threshold which brings me to my next point because there's an added hidden cost that you'll never find unless these pricing or health pages and that's the cost on your sanity Etsy shoppers are notorious for being impatient unkind and very hard to work with you can have all the details of your product in the description of your listing but I guarantee you'll come across many customers who haven't read them am I making a blanket statement yes of course you'll find nightmare customers everywhere no matter where you're selling but Etsy in particular is a hotspot for terrible customers that take up a lot of your time that make you unhappy and stressed and there comes a point where you have to ask if it's all worth it anymore everyone at some point we'll go through feedback Ransome when your customer buys something from you they can mean any kind of feedback they want on your shop they can be total jerks about it and hold your shop rating hostage when you don't do what they want they might even make totally out of scope demands or it may have been a problem that was their fault and not yours at all and guess what if someone leaves you one-star feedback because they didn't read your product description there's very little you can do about it and that really hurts your shop sure you can appeal that feedback with Etsy but I wouldn't count on it and let's not forget all the competition from other Etsy shops I don't think having competition from other makers is in itself a bad thing I do think that there's enough room for everyone to play but I think Etsy made a terrible mistake a few years ago when they allowed manufacturer products from being sold on there and she used to be a really beautiful marketplace where you could find unique beautiful products that you couldn't find anywhere else and now that you can sell china-made mass-market produce products on on Etsy it's really deluded the quality of the site I used to shop on Etsy myself and recently when we moved into our new home we had sold all our furniture and I was looking for a new stuff to decorate her really empty house I went on Etsy and I was really frustrated at how difficult it was to find products that didn't all look the same and Etsy in general has a huge problem of price competition if you sell anything that's remotely a higher price point than the next shop good luck because it's just the nature of Etsy the customer can see your product right next to the competition's all things equal they're almost always going to choose the cheaper option not to mention because it's so easy to start selling your hammock products on Etsy there are a lot of new shop owners who don't really know a lot about how to run a business so many of them don't know how to price a products correctly most are pricing it just based off their material costs so they're not making any money you have to compete with that that's impossible you can't compete with that while making a living that's sustainable and not burn yourself out so just being on Etsy really pressures you to compete on price and that's not exactly a recipe for success not to mention as we're talking about branding before you've heard so many times about how like people have shopped on Etsy for something and when you say like where did you get this cool necklace they're wearing they're not gonna say I bought it from tiny hands jewelry they're gonna say I bought it on Etsy there's just almost zero branding awareness for your brand if you're on Etsy if you're watching this video you've probably experienced some of what I've just said yourself and you're probably thinking about an exit strategy now before I talk about that I don't necessarily think that anyone needs to quit Etsy just set up your shop the way you would without any of the Etsy pressures I just talked about get your listings search engine optimized and once that work is done just set it up and forget about it if you target the right keywords you can make a few sales here and there on autopilot just because of that huge built-in audience of customers that Etsy already has but if FC is the only shop that you have you need to transition your focus away from Etsy we're not going to abandon Etsy completely we're just going to shift your focus but where or what do you focus on now remember I said Etsy some market place just like eBay or Amazon so I believe the wrong answer is to move over to another of Marketplace site because you're going to suffer from similar problems as Etsy I mean I encourage everyone to have an Amazon shop but it's not the answer for all the problems we just talked about instead what you need to do is create your own platform understand that your own platform is not a marketplace anymore it's a standalone website and it doesn't have its own built-in audience like Etsy because of this you will need to be prepared to drive your own traffic to make sales I have a ton of other videos on my channel that talk about how to do that so I'm not going to cover that here now but instead walk you through the transition there are a lot of platforms you can choose from I highly recommend Shopify I have a video coming out soon that talks about the different sites you can sell on so if you want a more in-depth comparison go check that out when you're on Shopify there are apps you can use to import your Etsy listings over to your Shopify store so setting them up will be super easy to do for your Shopify theme which is how your website looks if you don't have the budget for it I recommend using the minimum that's free to use it's simple and clean and converts customers to sales very well so don't feel like you need to spend 100 bucks on a painting in order to do well that's absolutely not true building your Shopify store is going to take time so it's important that whatever you are doing with Etsy that you try to maintain that so you're not completely stopping sales from there all together as you're building your store you can set up a coming soon page for your Shopify site where you collect email addresses from people who are on your wait list to check out your site if you have your own custom domain like tiny hands online.com but you were directing that to your Etsy shop now is the time to change that redirect to point to your new Shopify store instead we want to put every effort we can into growing that email list so that when your shop is ready to go live hopefully in one or two weeks you'll have several dozen people who are just waiting for your new shop to open when you're ready to launch I do recommend doing some sort of online party or event like a treasure hunt a giveaway sales or you could even maybe do or coincide your store opening with a launch of a new limited edition collection give people a reason to go to your shop when it's launched I've had a lot of students do it exactly like this and get some really amazing results even with a completely new Shopify store so I know it definitely works so give it a shot and if you found this video helpful you'll want to check out this next video on here that I know will help your handmade business - and you have any questions just leave me a comment down below and I'll get back to you don't forget to like this video and subscribe see you in that next video [Music]

Channel: Creative Hive

Views: 269,211

Keywords: sell your handmade items online, where to sell your handmade products online, why I quit selling on Etsy, handmade product tips, handmade products, handmade shop tips, selling handmade, Mei Pak, Creative Hive, why you should stop selling your handmade products on etsy, etsy, etsy offsite ads, etsy shop, etsy review, creative hive, mei pak, handmade business, craft business, etsy seller, selling on etsy, etsy tips, etsy marketing, etsy 2021, etsy sales

Id: g9X0fsya7wY

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019