IS ETSY WORTH IT IN 2021? WHAT ARE THE PROS AND CONS OF STARTING AN ETSY SHOP IN 2021?

is etsy worth it is it worth starting an etsy shop in 2021 and what are the pros and cons of starting an etsy shop anyway hi everyone i'm kim from the ecotree and i've been in etsy seller for coming up to 14 years now and today i thought i'd share with you what i believe to be the pros and cons of running an etsy shop or even starting an etsy shop right now all right then we'll start with the pros one etsy is so easy to use and i mean so easy um i mean you could finish watching this video go on to etsy and you could have a shop up and running within a few minutes it's that simple i mean etsy understand the importance of aesthetics and looking good and simplicity and being easy to navigate so they've made it very very easy and it's a great website for that reason not just for sellers but also for buyers and that's key so yeah first pro it's easy to use okay and pro number two it's got the lowest overheads and fees that i've found so far on the internet and this is a big attraction to people who want to start selling their stuff i mean we will get into it a bit more later because what i am including it sees lois ish fees as a pro they also crop up again in the cons section um i'll talk about why when i get to that bit so keep watching but the reason why it's pro as well is simply because when you compare the fees to other platforms etsy's fees are the lowest making it the cheapest way for sellers to get started and sell their products if you're watching this video then i'm guessing that you already know a little bit about etsy um so you'll probably already know that it only costs 20 cents to list an item and when you sell something etsy take a cut of five percent of the overall price of the transaction which includes postage i will get into that later as opposed to other platforms which will charge you higher fees and take a larger cut i believe amazon takes about 15 percent and if you have your own website you will often pay the platform a monthly amount and that can be more than your cumulative fees for etsy so buy and buy it does tend to be the cheapest platform out there to sell your handmade goods which is why it is such a pull for sellers number three it has a lot of traffic etsy has a lot of traffic and i believe the figure for 2020 was something like 2 million buyers or something like that anyway it's a huge number and they put a lot of money into advertising the platform so if you ask most people if they've ever heard of etsy chances are they will have done even if they've never actually bought from the platform and that's a huge pro for you as a seller because people trust the platform they trust to buy things on the platform and they know of it and they're likely to go there pro 4 um they're analytics they provide free analytics and it gives you all sorts of insights as to how many people have viewed your shop your items the things that they've searched for the phrases that they've searched for that's helped them stumble upon your shop obviously there's how much you've made and a breakdown of your revenue your conversion rate so you don't even have to work that out it tells you what your conversion rates are and all of this is really helpful to figure out if you're on track with things like seo they help you tell if people are actually finding your shop and how they're finding your shop and so it really does help you steer your shop in the right direction so for me the analytics are a definite pro number five wow got to there quickly um the free promotional tools that etsy offer are brilliant so i'm not um talking about etsy paid ads although that is a service that etsy offers as well i'm talking about the free promotional tools that they offer you can run sales which is pretty standard and you can also offer coupon codes and this is where i think it gets a little cool you see with coupon codes you can send these codes as a thank you to customers who have already bought from you so that it's it's basically to entice them to come back again as a returning customer which is pretty cool if anybody's um you can heart items on etsy and if anyone's hearted your item you can send them a code but also if someone has stuck one of your items in their cart and has forgotten about it you can send them a coupon code to this money off to try and entice them to finish the sales process off a little word of warning about that one though some buyers are savvy to this and they will purposefully put things in their cart and just wait and see if sellers send them a discount code which is fair enough let's be honest we all like a deal just be aware of it and if you want to send discount codes to people who have got things set in their cart then etsy allows you to do that so i think having that option there to use when you need it is great number six um etsy deals with vat for you now i trained as a as an accountant year back in the day and i stopped and created my business because it turns out i don't like accountancy not to offend any accountants watching but i found it so boring which is why the thought of having to deal with vat in multiple countries sends me into a bit of a spin thankfully etsy does it for you right so if you're not sure what i'm talking about many countries charge attacks called vat or value added tax although it can be known as other things too in other countries so for example it's known as gsd in new zealand australia and india i believe while in canada it's known as qst but here in the uk we know it as vat and this is tax that is paid by the buyer when they make a purchase not the seller and what etsy does is that it adds the vat amount to your listing price and when somebody buys your item they will pay that v80 and etsy will collect up that v80 like a little financial squirrel and then pay it to the relevant authorities for you let's be honest taxes and finances it's never going to be a fun topic again sorry accountants so the fact that etsy does this for you is for me at least another huge pro well done etsy hello that got your attention if you're enjoying this video please think about giving it a thumbs up because it really does help spread it out there to the masses on youtube and if you would like to see more videos like this where i do talk more about business and i don't just offend accountants then hit subscribe and you can join me back to the video okay now for the not so good stuff and strap yourselves in because it's about to get salty number one etsy is saturated there's no sugar coating this and i don't care what people say etsy is packed it's crowded as heck and getting noticed has never been as challenging as it is now however it isn't impossible i just had to make it sound really really bad because i think a lot of people go into this with rose tinted spectacles on and it's it's good just to curb your enthusiasm that sounds really mean i don't want to curb your enthusiasm i want you to be enthusiastic but i just want you to go in armed with the reality of it so that you don't get a nasty you don't land on your bum basically because nobody likes that it's embarrassing and it hurts anyway the days of being able to list your item and add some search tags and then sit back and watch the views roll in unfortunately have all gone these days we really have to work for it and there isn't any one thing that i found that works perfectly you have to use like two or three or four different things that all work together and it's a constant job to find the things that work together and you keep having to tweak them and it's good anyway if you are prepared for that and you are prepared to do the work to make yourself stand out from your competitors and get seen in the crowd be like oi my shop is here come to me then it's not going to be too bad but yes a definite con of etsy is that it is a very crowded market these days number two the loss of shop identity oh man this can be a big one for etsy sellers and i have been through my own period of grieving over this okay so when someone buys something from your shop the chances are if they tell their friends about the thing that they've bought they're not going to say they got it from you they're going to say they got it from etsy just the way you or i might tell a friend that we bought something off of amazon chances are maybe we did buy it from amazon because they do sell things but also we may have got it from an amazon marketplace seller nevertheless we don't credit the shop with the sale we credit amazon and that's what it's like on etsy so there is an element of losing your business identity on there which links nicely to con number three yes that is three etsy suggests other people's shops on your shop which is so annoying as a seller sometimes it's annoying if you lose customers i will get to this in a minute let's just go back all right okay so you've done all of the work of getting your items to stand out in search and you've attracted some i can't say the word prospective buyers and that's great right um except that let's see make things harder now by suggesting similar items to yours at the bottom of your listing thanks etsy for that so it is quite likely that you will do all of the work of attracting someone to your shop and lose that customer to someone else whom they found on your shop now this is great if you're a buyer it's great because you just know you've got all of the choices everywhere not so great if you're a seller though or is it there is a bright side someone loses if someone can make a sale by having their item suggested on your shop the same goes for you the other way around you might make a sale from someone who saw your item on someone else's shop and i know i have done so it's swings and roundabouts you win some you lose some i suppose what you've got to pay attention to is if you are losing more than you are gaining if you're gaining a few then that's great because that means that that the buyer is seeing items from other people's shops that are similar to yours like what they're looking for and they have specifically chosen yours good going if however you're noticing that your item is attracting a lot of views but it's not converting into sales you might be losing people elsewhere or they might just be clicking off altogether that is something you will need to pay attention to okay number four why etsy really pushes you to offer free shipping whether you want to or not whether you can afford to or not they like their free shipping can you tell that this is a bugbear of mine okay so a few years ago etsy introduced a new policy there's lots of them and it stated that listings that offered free shipping would get a boost in search to listings that didn't and what this did was it forced sellers to push the cost of postage into their listing price which then obviously made it a lot higher otherwise they would be forced to pay postage by themselves which means they're making a loss but i really personally didn't like the way that etsy went about this they on the face of it gave every seller the choice it was up to us to opt in or opt out but boy did they make it they encouraged everyone with a cattle prod to offer free shipping they can see you etsy i can see you perhaps we should move on con number five fees are confusing okay so i know i put fees in the pros section because they were low and they are compared to everybody else i would just like to say something about this etsy's fees are low but etsy's fees are numerous and when you add them all up they they add up now i did mention earlier that they break these fees down and they do i personally don't think they break it down in a way that is extremely simple and i i must admit sometimes i go into the page and i see all these little um fees that have been charged on various aspects to a transaction and if you're selling multiple things you will they will all be mixed up and it's it's just a bit but one day i was a good little finance nerd and i sat down and i tallied up all of the miscellaneous fees for one transact transaction i'm getting cross again i was quite shocked at how much it came up to and how little i made after everything all right this is the last one i promised number six etsy off-site ads now this won't apply to the majority of you if you're especially if you're just starting out because this applies to um etsy sellers who hit the 10 000 a year or more mark basically once you started making 10 000 or more in a year etsy may take your items and use them in off-site ads which on the face of it sounds really really good they are advertising your items for you except you don't get a say you can't opt out of this you don't get to choose what items they select or how many and they take a sizable chunk as commission this has caused a lot of upset which i think is completely understandable if you are going to use sellers items to advertise etsy and you're going to make a fair amount of money from it you need to give those sellers more control so after all that is it worth starting an etsy shop in 2021 this might come as a bit of a surprise it's a business and it's making money and we are using etsy to make our own businesses and also to make money unfortunately that's that's it in a nutshell we the sellers are their customers they they make money from buyers but they also make money from us so there is an element of kind of like okay these are the pros these are the cons i'll learn to live with it if you're starting an etsy shop from scratch or you're in the early days etsy makes a lot of financial sense and they do so much so it makes sense to at least start on etsy so what i would suggest to you is to see etsy as a tool that you can use to build your business but it shouldn't be the only one that you focus on if you don't have a website work towards building one up start an email mailing list build an audience somewhere somewhere that that's kind of yours i'm not talking about social media here like instagram or facebook because again that's still building something on someone else's ground you have to try and think about building something away from etsy that's yours or to put it another way do not put all of your business eggs into the etsy basket and lastly and i cannot say this enough to succeed on etsy and you can you have to roll your sleeves up and do the work if you can accept that there's work to be done there's nothing stopping you let me know in the comments if this video was helpful to you hit subscribe and the like button that's the thumbs up button i'll see you next time bye not you etsy

Channel: The Eco Tree

Views: 63,218

Rating: 4.9709926 out of 5

Keywords: Is etsy worth it in 2021?, etsy pros and cons, should I open an etsy shop, etsy shop for beginners, is starting an etsy shop worth it, starting an etsy shop 2021, is etsy saturated, is etsy good to sell on, etsy business tips, starting an etsy shop, pros and cons of selling on etsy in 2021, etsy free shipping 2021, etsy offsite ads 2021, how to sell on etsy 2021, etsy tips for beginners 2021, selling on etsy 2021, is it worth selling on etsy, Is it worth starting an etsy shop

Id: JtjcEJqmAnE

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021