If you're looking to start selling online, you'll want to consider whether setting up a website of your own or selling on Etsy will be the best option for you. Take a closer look at what each offers and how they differ so that you can make the most informed decision on selling on your own website vs Etsy.
Pros and Cons of Selling on Etsy.
There are pros and cons to any platform and Etsy is no exception. Let's talk about both the pros and cons of starting an Etsy shop.
Pros of selling on Etsy
Ease of use: You can upload some photos and open an Etsy shop within an hour. Nothing beats Etsy as far as how easy it is to set up and start selling.
The volume of traffic: Etsy had over 95 million buyers in 2023 and is growing every year. And unlike social media platforms, the people that come to Etsy are ready to purchase a product when they log in.
No monthly fees: Etsy sellers currently pay no required monthly fees. Instead, you pay to list your products and pay Etsy fees when you make a sale. These include transaction fees and payment processing fees. Click here to learn more about Etsy fees.
Because Etsy is mostly for handmade products, buyers come to the platform expecting to purchase something special. That often means they'll pay more per transaction.
The potential marketing partnerships on Etsy are a lot larger, especially for established sellers who can get featured by Etsy often.
Etsy Offers: Etsy makes it easy to run sales and offer coupons that help you get in front of more buyers
Cons of selling on Etsy
Lack of customization: You are limited to what you can customize as far as your shop and listing pages go on Etsy. You aren't able to change the home page or listing design or formatting for example.
Higher fees per transaction: Etsy charges around 10% per sale in transaction and processing fees.
High competition: One of the largest cons of selling on Etsy is that you have thousands and thousands of sellers competing for each search done by potential buyers.
Final Verdict: Etsy
So after all of that, is Etsy worth it? Starting an Etsy shop is very easy to do. And while there is a lot of competition on the Etsy marketplace, it's not any more competition than your own website has when you're trying to get organic traffic on search engines like Google.
Etsy search engine optimization is easy to learn and can help you get buyers more quickly than you could through a robust SEO strategy for your own ecommerce site.
Plus you don't have to buy your own domain, purchase web hosting, or hire any web designers making start-up costs very low.
Etsy customers browse the marketplace easily in addition to searching for products which doesn't happen on your own site.
Pros and Cons of Selling on Your own Website.
Pros of selling on your own website
Can sell any products: To sell on Etsy, your listings must be handmade, vintage, or a supply. You can't sell products that don't fit these categories including gift boxes that contain items that don't fit these descriptions. On your website, however, you can sell whatever you'd like.
More branding opportunities: When you sell on your own website, you have a lot of chances to brand your website and listing pages with your logo and brand colors.
Cons of selling on your own website
Can take a very long time to set up: Sometimes having too many options is a bad thing. Setting up your own website can take days or weeks depending on the platform.
Lower conversion rates are possible: Little things on a website can tank your conversion rate. I've seen sellers who had a website with the cart button on the wrong side of the page. This seller had their website done by a professional developer who changed this one button, and their conversion rate skyrocketed. But it's hard to test these small design changes when you don't have any experience designing websites.
Higher monthly fees: While the transaction fees are lower on your own website, the monthly fees are significantly higher.
Need to rely more on your own marketing efforts: Without a built-in buyer base coming to your platform, you will need to rely on your social media marketing and/or paid ads to drive all of your traffic as search engine optimization for your own website takes significantly longer than it does on Etsy.
Final Verdict: Your own website
While most handmade businesses have a goal of selling on your own website, most business owners find a a lot more difficult to set up and to get traffic. Compared to ecommerce platforms like Amazon or Etsy, this can make business growth a lot more difficult.
Buyers love a trusted third-party platform and business owners can easily take advantage of that buy selling on Etsy.
Etsy Alternatives
The Etsy platform has the highest amount of buyers for the lowest fees. The best alternative to Etsy is Amazon. Amazon fees, however, are significantly higher than Etsy fees making an Etsy shop a great choice when you are first starting your handmade business.
How to Decide
In the end, there are pros and cons to every selling platform. You want to weigh what pros are most important to you and what cons you can overcome the most. For me, the ease of use of Etsy and the high amounts of traffic (and therefore sales) you can get from the platform fairly quickly are more important to me than the lack of customization and the competition on the platform. It can be very difficult to get the type of traffic you need to make consistent sales from your own site no matter what platform you run it on, especially if you don't have experience as a website designer.
In the end, most handmade business will want both an Etsy shop and their own website. I suggest starting and growing your Etsy store first as it's much easier to help potential customers find you through your SEO efforts. Click here to learn more about Etsy SEO.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Are Etsy fees high?
Etsy fees end up being around 10% of your total transaction price. This is significantly lower than most marketplaces with high amounts of traffic.
How do I get sales on Etsy?
To get sales on Etsy, focus on organic traffic from Etsy search. You will want a niche strategy for your business, a keyword research process, and to learn how to format your listings for the platform.
Click here to learn more about this process.
How do I build my own website?
Shopify is the gold standard for product business development when it comes to hosting your own ecommerce site. They have a variety of template store designs to choose from, but plan to spend a lot of time on your shop set up even with a template.
Alternatively, you can pay a website designer to set your own site up for you. This can cost anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars and take a week or longer to complete.
Can I use both Etsy and my own website?
Yes, you can use both Etsy and your own website. You will want to focus on one at a time to start making sales quickly, though.
Is Etsy too saturated?
Yes, there are a lot of Etsy sellers, but Etsy isn't any more saturated than the rest of the internet. In fact, it's much easier to get traffic on Etsy even for new sellers than it is to try to rank your new ecommerce website on Google. Etsy store owners will find it's easier to get consistent sales because of the way the Etsy algorithm rewards you for making sales and getting good reviews.
Can I still grow my email list with Etsy?
Yes, you can grow an email list while you're selling on Etsy.
Make sure to follow Etsy's terms of service by letting buyers opt into your list and not adding them without permission.
Conclusion
Need more help making Etsy work for you? Make sure to sign up for my free Etsy framework here or join me in my free Etsy seller Facebook group.
