Etsy.... Good/Bad?

princesspoppypop

I`ve just opened an Etsy shop as a way to make extra money and was just wondering if anyone else did this?

Yoga_Girl

I've also recently just opened an Etsy shop (about a month ago) and have sold 2 things - not loads I know but its a start!

misspixierocktastic

I registered for etsy in feb but have only really been actively selling for about 3 weeks and i made my first two sales yesterday :-)
So its really slow going but worth it when the fees to list are cheap

UK007BullDog

What is the website address of etsy?

lil_miss_sunshine

www.esty.com i guess..

i signed up last week and am going to start next week hopefully..

looks good though

ryandj

lil_miss_sunshine wrote: »

www.esty.com i guess..

https://www.etsy.com

Yoga_Girl

Be warned it becomes addictive! I'm checking Etsy every 5 minutes to see if Ive got a sale or any hearts (if people like your shop they can give you a "heart").

Once you sign up as a seller you get your own URL which takes people direct to your "shop", the main etsy site is www.etsy.com, when you pick your username your URL will be www. (your username).etsy.com

purplepixi

I opened an etsy store last year and didn't use it as it didn't seem to have much interest. However earlier this year, I put one of my custom made dresses on it just to see how it went, I was quite happy to loose 10p if it didn't sell, just as an experiment.

The listings are for 4 months unless sold. And cost 10p (20 cents) no matter what the cost of the item. (For those who don't use etsy).

I did sell it, but it took 2 months to sell.

Now, the interesting thing is I sold it for £15 more than I do for my dresses on ebay (I thought I'd see if I could get a little more money as etsy is especially for hand crafted items).

So it took 8 weeks to sell 1 dress on etsy at £15 extra profit, but on ebay for £15 less I sell 2 a week using the "buy it now" auction format (normal auctions I generally get £20 - £30 higher price for).

So inconclusion I can sell 16 dresses on ebay in the time it took to sell one on etsy.

That being said, this is my experience, and hand made gowns sell very well. However, for smaller hand crafted items, jewellery, cards, kitted items etc, they probably wouldn't be appreciated on ebay, and for things like that etsy is the place to sell, plus you can charge for your labour, rather than selling to those expecting to get a bargain.

The most important thing is to charge correctly for your item. A good way to work out a price is to say how much you are going to pay yourself per hour.
(This example could be for anything)

e.g. Minimum wage over 22 £5.52

Take a note of cost of materials, say it cost you £5 for materials.

Then work out your labour - say 5 hours.

So 5 hours @ £5.52 = £27.60

This £27.60 is how much it has cost you.

For wholesale you should double this figue giving you: £55.20

You can use the wholesale figure if you are going to sell on to someone on ebay or etsy. This would be for something that is standard (by standard I mean is one size that will be ready to use or wear with no personalisation etc)

For retail you should double the wholesale figure giving you: £110.40

Retail probably wouldn't matter for selling on etsy or ebay, but if you are offing a custom service this is really the "hastle" factor. You can really only guess how long you spend on something, as if you love doing something you may find you spend much longer than you thought you would.


Don't worry about the high looking wholesale price - what you have to remember is people will buy hand made items because that are better quality than mass produced shop brought items. You have put your time, and in most cased blood, sweat and tears into that item, and that item will be treasured and last for years because you made it so professionally with attention to detail that you just wouldn't get in a factory.

Don't under charge for your item, think carefully about your pricing, as something that is priced very low, will be deemed to be of low quality.

Just a few things from my experience.