Pros and Cons of Selling on Etsy

Pros of Selling on Etsy: Inexpensive listing fees are an advantage of selling on Etsy compared to other online merchant sites and even auction websites. The website takes a small upfront fee that does not cost more than one bag of potato chips. Each listing includes five photos, giving artists selling on Etsy more opportunities to attract online buyers to their merchandise. This website charged one additional fee only when I made a sale. The fees are always a percentage based on the final sale of merchandise.

After participating on the website for a few months, I learned that Etsy is a good place for designers to sell their artwork without investing tons of upfront money in the process. The staff members are always helpful and provide tips on marketing and creating new merchandise, which is another benefit of selling on Etsy. It can be difficult to get the same type of dedicated service when selling on larger commercial websites. I also found the interface easy to navigate when organizing my shop, making it another upside to selling on Etsy.

Cons of Selling on Etsy: The storefront has limitations on how much each seller can customize for his or her Etsy shop. An opportunity to begin selling on Etsy allows crafters and artist to upload a custom header for their shop. Each seller profile also has room for a small avatar, which Etsy store owners can use to extend their branding. Every store on Etsy has the same appearance with the exception of shop banner headers, avatars and their available merchandise. As a result, passive online buyers are usually not aware that they are viewing and shopping at individual stores.

The limited customization opportunities can reduce sales opportunities, as buyers have the impression that Etsy is just one large online store instead of an online mall of smaller shops. This online craft and art market also provides forums which have been described as a good marketing tool. While the forums are great for meeting other shop owners, they do not bring significant revenue when selling on Etsy. The forums on Etsy are pretty useless unless you have a lot of time to spend promoting your store in this section. Unlike other forums and message boards online, the Etsy threads are updated within seconds. That leaves little chance that your last posts will be read by someone who recently visited the Etsy website two minutes before you posted on a thread.

There are no recommendation links to promote additional sales, which is one disadvantage of selling on Etsy. Many popular retail websites provide some form of recommendations for their customers based on what they either viewed or purchased in these online stores. Selling on Etsy would be more valuable to artists if there were more tools that promoted a variety of merchandise from the entire website to customers interested in specific items. Customer recommendations helps to promote everything offered on the website, giving smaller and newbie store owners a chance to make their first batch of sales. An artist who wants additional promotion would have to pay $15 or more to showcase their merchandise on Etsy. These fees can sometimes cost more than the price of a shop owner's merchandise and it then selling on Etsy becomes counterproductive.