falcieridesigns posted: " I have become increasingly nervous at the lack of autonomy I have as an Etsy seller. Nothing is yours. Etsy owns you. And so, after much consideration, research and through following the experiences of my fellow Etsy sellers who are also finding ways to " Creative Process
I have become increasingly nervous at the lack of autonomy I have as an Etsy seller. Nothing is yours. Etsy owns you. And so, after much consideration, research and through following the experiences of my fellow Etsy sellers who are also finding ways to sell on the flipside, I've decided to go it alone with my own shop using Shopify.
It makes me anxious though. What if no one comes? I've owned a website and an online store before, back in the very early days of my business, when I really understood nothing about online selling, social media marketing or SEO. It was a failure. Which is why I moved to Etsy which, for a time, dealt with so much of the technical stuff my behalf and where, on and off, I have done well.
Etsy does have other plus points. It is an ecommerce store, which means it comes with an IOSS number for overseas sales, and it also collects worldwide taxes and VAT on my behalf for international customers. Shopify is unable to do any of this, and so I need to focus on my new shop as a re-shoring exercise. I will be tied to UK shores because not only is it impossible to acquire an IOSS number as a small business, I have no infrastructure for the collection of international taxes that then need to be remitted back to the country (or the State in the case of the US) who wants them.
For now, at least, I am keeping my Etsy store up and running. It covers the international aspect and, even now, overseas sales still account for about a third of my pre expenses profit. There are other small 'niggles' which Shopify doesn't do well, which Etsy seems to manage without a fuss, such as extending processing times on sales when you are away, but you don't want to shut down your store to browsers.
Running both stores in tandem is the ideal situation at the moment. But whether I can afford the fees on both sites, if sales remain slow, is another thing. Revenue is dwindling on Etsy, and I don't feel that I am getting my money's worth for all the fees I pay. I may be selective and I am considering removing the clothing and jewellery side of things from Etsy. I have also decided not to sell my haberdashery stock on Shopify.
Etsy Sales 2018 - March 2023
At the moment, and because I have 600 listings on my store, I pay Etsy about £35 a month to list and sell. Listings expire in 3 months and need to be relisted and those listings paid for again at a rate of 18p per item. The joy of Shopify is that once you have listed something, it stays there until someone buys it, and you don't have to pay to add new items. Shopify charges a flat £25 per month on the basic package, although there are charges on sales. But right now, most of the £35 per month I spend with Etsy is just on listings. I have very few sales and the charges on those feel rather high and excessively complicated.
The bewildering assortment of charges against a single sale of £74 to Italy which cost me £22.77 in charges.
To begin, I have three months on Shopify at an introductory rate of £1 a month before they start charging the £25 per month fee, so I have time to work on things. My shop has only been live for a week. I also now have my YouTube channel which is getting traffic and therefore also promoting my Shopify store. Analysing the shop through Google and Shopify also gives far more clarity than Etsy is willing to offer, and I suspect will become a key part of what I do. I need to drive traffic and, frankly, I'm not sure Etsy has been doing that for some time.
So let's see how this goes. I am quietly pessimistic. My previous experiences as an amateur haven't been great, and I am not sure whether I have learned enough since then to drive traffic and sales. But we shall see. At least I am now familiar and marginally more confident using YouTube, a valuable tool for any business.
Here's a link to my shop. See what you think. I like the simplicity of setting up my store using pre-defined themes which look professional. Of course, the process hasn't been entirely without frustration, as these things rarely are, and it has taken me 16 days to get this store up to launch, mostly because it takes a long time to edit 600 items. I just hope it's all been worth it.
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