Wise Words Wednesday: Should You Sell On Etsy Or Your Own Web Store?
May 28, 2008 by Michelle Waters
Artists, WAHMs and entrepreneurs who are new to ecommerce are often in a situation where they need to choose one website tool to spend their money on. So the question ends up being:
Should I sell my products on my own site with my own domain name, or just get an account at Etsy, or ebay or some other similar site?
Many people choose the Etsy or Ebay route first, and I can understand why.
Both sites have built in traffic (which can be hard to generate for brand new websites), and are very well known, either generally or in specific online communities.
The sites are easy to setup — you don’t have to worry about site design, ecommerce, a domain name, hosting, etc. You can have your site up and selling within about a day.
You don’t have to worry so much about customer fraud, since Etsy, Ebay and Paypal handle this for you (or at least will step in if you aren’t able to handle the situation satisfactorily yourself).
In my opinion, this is OK if you’re building a hobby.
However, if you’re building a business, you need to seriously consider the benefits of having your own website.
1. You will have your own domain name. I highly recommend you make absolutely certain is registered in your name with a company you trust. This way, if your hosting account goes belly up, you can move without losing all the backlinks you’ve earned.
With Etsy or Ebay, if your site is shut down or you just decide to move, you’ve lost all your marketing. You can’t take mywebsite.etsy.com with you when you go.
2. You will have control over your own fraud prevention. Now, at first it may like a good idea to have Etsy or Ebay helping you with this. But that doesn’t work out so well when one of these companies decides you’re the bad guy. Even if you aren’t.
If you are using a payment method such as authorize.net, you have access to the information you need to verify your customers yourself. And if one sets of your spidey-sense, you can always opt not to do business with them. (I mean really — when someone places an order from “Houstn, New York” and the IP address is out of Nigeria, it’s a pretty good bet that the order is bogus.
3. You can tailor your site to your target market. Etsy and Ebay both serve very specific target markets. Etsy buyers are after handcrafted items. Ebay buyers are after a great deal on everything. In Etsy’s case, you might not be able to branch out of the Etsy community without your own website. And in Ebay’s case, you are destined to sell your products at bargain basement prices — which is not conducive to profiting from your business — or even making enough to pay the bills.
4. With your own website, you can have the best of both worlds. Setup your own website (which can be easy and inexpensive with a $10 a month hosting account and Wordpress) and use the site to promote your Etsy shop and Ebay auctions. Once you have established a clientèle, you can guide them (within the rules of the other sites) to your main site, where you can sell without the fees and where you can be in charge.
Some of my baby sling clients sell the bulk of their products on their website — and then auction off their seconds and returns at Ebay.
Some crafters sell products on their main websites, but use Etsy and Ebay to expand their reach.
What has your experience been?
I’ve been looking at Etsy for selling some of my cards and things, but now I’m having second thoughts.
I’ve also heard that for non~US sellers, Etsy is virtually useless. Would you agree?
Also, there’s supposedly another craft sales website that works better for Aussies like me, but I can’t remember where I read about it.
Hi Jane!
Thank you for your comments.
The problem with Etsy for non-US sellers is that you pretty much have to charge international shipping since about 80 percent of the buyers are from the U.S. However, I don’t see why you can’t do this. You just need to be careful about your shipping charges. Here is an Etsy thread with more information. (Don’t just read the first post. You’ll need to read through most of it.)
I do know that a site called MadeIt.com.au that is based in Australia that I’ve heard good things about.
I started my craft business selling on eBay and now I sell on Etsy as well. I also have a website. Still, the majority of my orders come from eBay and Etsy and I wouldn’t give up those stores.
Starting out, I recommend getting your feet wet with Etsy and/or eBay and progress to the website when you have a customer base and a couple of dollars to spend so it can be done right. Etsy and eBay are great places to learn about selling online, and to find out what products or product lines sell well and that you’d want to pursue.
If you don’t want to or can’t afford to build the website right away, you can still get your domain name (use a service like http://godaddy.com) and point it to your etsy or ebay store.
Hi Diane!
Thank you very much for your comments. I absolutely agree with what you’ve said. As a matter of fact, my Mom and sister are wanting to sell handmade cards and other crafts, and they are starting out slow. I suggested they consider Etsy at the very least.
They are also looking to take their products to a church craft show in a few months and see how things go.
Starting small with Etsy, Ebay or a craft show is a good way to test your product and your market before you jump in with both feet.
Also, I’d like to mention that if you are considering Watersweb’s hosting services and would like to register your domain name (In your name!) in the same place, we also do domain registration. You can even just register the domain name now and purchase hosting later.