In this post we will explore what it’s like managing an Etsy shop vs. your own website as a small art and stationery business based in Denmark. We will explore the pros and cons of each option and will end by answering some commonly asked questions on the matter. I hope that the information I’m sharing will help you decide what is the right move for you. There are of course a lot more platforms to chose from, but I’ll only write about the ones I have experience with.
Disclaimer: All information shared is from the perspective of a small seller of physical paper products based in Denmark. It is also important to point out that this overview is based entirely on my own experience, it is specific to my situation and is affected by my own biases. Please use the information shared as just one facet of your own research and never base your decisions just on one source. Take every advice and view shared with a hefty pinch of salt and always consider the nuances of your own situation before jumping into anything!
I’ve been wanting to try selling on Etsy for about as long as I’ve been aware of its existence. I’ve long fantasised of owning a shop where I sell my own goods, there’s something very cosy and satisfying about selling my own work. Of course nothing is quite as romantic in real life as it is in dreams, but that’s besides the scope of this post.
One day I accidentally stumbled upon the idea for my Denmark themed postcards (it’s a story that I’ll skip over for now). I made a couple of mock ups and shared them in a Facebook group. Based on the reactions and engagement I got, I decided that it is worth pursuing the idea, so I ordered a small amount of postcards from a printer. I had the chance to go to a small local art market where my cards got a good amount of attention, so I was persuaded I’m ready to open my shop!
I started googling and reading everything I could find about opening a shop on Etsy. It was quite a rabbit hole, but I don’t regret any of it as it prepared me quite well for what lay ahead and I’d strongly recommend any beginner to start this way.
I opened my Etsy shop at the end of September 2019 and have been working on growing it ever since. It has been three years since and today I have my own insides to share.
My favourite part of Etsy is that it is very well suited for beginners. When you are new to online commerce it’s quite hard to know where to start. Etsy holds your hand through the whole process. There’s a ton of technical questions you absolutely don’t need to worry about. There’s also a vast pool of helpful information on YouTube and the web in general on how to set up and maintain an Etsy shop. Etsy itself has a quite comprehensive forum and a beginner’s guide as well. I’d also recommend keeping an eye on forums and FB groups where you can learn from others by directly asking questions or just scrolling through. It can be quite comforting to be part of a worldwide community that has the same challenges and struggles.
Having your own shop is great, but it is of little use if no one knows about it or ever visits. In order to make sales a shop needs a steady stream of interested visitors. Most of them will just drop by, browse casually and leave, but some of them will get interested enough to actually become customers. Sometimes right away, but more often than not it will probably take them some time and multiple visits to get a sale. Unless you already have a large following to send to your shop through your social media channels this may be challenging. This is where Etsy could help!
Etsy is a marketplace. It’s like a large digital mall where your shop is just one of many. It is already established and well known, so it has plenty of visitors even if you have none of your own. Some of the many wandering around will eventually stumble upon your shop and may become customers without any work on your part. Well, to be fair, you’d need to put quite a bit of work upfront to improve your chances. In order to be found you need to use your titles, descriptions and tags well. In addition, make sure you have good quality pictures of your products. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer and think about what would make YOU buy your own product. Luckily there’s a lot of helpful information out there on how to take advantage of Etsy’s seller tools.
As an already established name Etsy immediately lends some credibility to your shop. Even if you are new, the customer knows they can trust Etsy to mediate if anything goes wrong in the relationship. This can sometimes be to the detriment of the seller as customers are always favoured, but we’ll address that in the cons section. For now let’s think like a potential customer. Shopping online can be risky, you never know what really is on the other side, scammers lurk everywhere. Of course they can exist on Etsy as well, but not for long. As far as I am aware if a customer’s complains are deemed serious enough, they are guaranteed refunds and that can be very reassuring.
Being present on Etsy makes you as a brand overall more visible. There aren’t only individual shoppers on Etsy, it is possible to get noticed by potential partners for bigger collaborations and jobs. There are also shoppers looking for custom made products for special occasions, such as weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and so on, which can lead to bigger commissions, if that is something you’d like to offer. This type of opportunities can come from many places, like for example Instagram, but the more present and visible you are around the web, the bigger your chances to reach a wider audience.
There are all kinds of taxes and fees that may be required by different countries. I’ve done my best to be informed on what the rules are within Denmark and the EU, but I have no desire to study each and every country out there. Thankfully Etsy deals with some of that. Many customers come from the US where taxes are quite different from what they are in Denmark. Etsy collects those local taxes (which vary between states) and pays them for you. After Brexit, they do the same with UK VAT.
It’s of course not impossible to figure these things out and do on your own, there probably even are plenty of plug-ins doing the job, but when it comes to taxes I prefer to keep it as simple and risk- free as possible.
All that being said this does not apply to Danish taxes. These are entirely up to you. Before getting started definitely make sure to get familiar with the rules and requirements within Denmark and the EU. Please remember to seek information from reputable and reliable sources, such as practising local accountants, SKAT themselves or official helping institutions, such as International house.
Some things to look into when it comes to the legal stuff: GDPR rules and regulations, online sale within the EU, online sale outside of the EU, return obligations for EU based customers and so on. Also bear in mind that all products sent outside the EU are a subject to customs. This may mean extra charges for the buyer. Make sure to inform your potential customers that they may get extra charges and delays due to customs.
In my personal (biased) opinion, platforms (in this case marketplaces) suck. They are good in a sense that they make it easier for you to set up and get your first customers, but don’t be fooled, they are not your friends! All they care about is their profits (understandably, but still…) and you are just a cog in the machine, not a very important cog. Based on my research, Etsy used to be great for sellers 10 years ago, but things are very different now.
Etsy was initially built to be a place for small handmade businesses to share their crafts with the world. It was supposed to be particularly focused on small businesses and their needs. As it has grown and continues growing it has abandoned its original purpose and is now going against Amazon, Ebay, Alibaba, etc. The number one goal for big businesses (and small) is to grow and consistently make more and more money. Unfortunately, growth is often prioritised over ethics and humanity. These influential marketplaces set the rules for the entire industry and what they require is speed, efficiency and low prices. These are a recipe for burnout and frustration for those of us who want to create with passion, attention to detail and care for the environment. Platforms set up highly exploitative expectations on the people who provide the products and services they re-sell. These sites promise freedom and flexibility, but in reality you end up in a situation where you have all the downsides of having a boss (authoritative power over you) and none of the securities of a regular job. This is true not just for marketplaces, but all other “gig work” platforms, like Uber, Airbnb, Fiver, Wolt and so on. Unfortunately there is currently no escape. The big players set the rules and whether you sell on Etsy or not, you still exist in a market ruled by unethical practices, where often you lose if you refuse to conform.
I find this reality the darkest side of my work as a whole and I struggle with these thoughts daily. I do not wish to succumb to the pressures, but resisting is exhausting, so I have no good solutions here. For now I strive to stay as true to myself and my values as possible and to do the best I can with what I have, but that also means accepting that it may not be enough to succeed in the long run.
Another issue you will likely face on Etsy is unfair and unregulated competition. Depending on your views however this may not be a problem. If you are just an individual, looking to offer unique handmade products that you create yourself, it can be hard to stay competitive against cheaply drop shipped products made in sweatshops. These used to be banned from Etsy, but are now welcomed.
You may think that your products are of superior quality and they may well be, but that doesn’t really matter. Not for most anyway. Many people care about price over all and if a product falls apart soon after they bought it they will just replace it with another. Your best chance to combat this is to share your story and process, so potential buyers may develop a more personal relationship with your work. Help them understand how you are different and why you need to charge what you do and how you are different from the rest. However bear in mind that doing this on top of the actual creative work is exhausting.
When you set up your shop on Etsy, you are building on a shaky ground. You don’t own the platform and if at any point Etsy decides that they don’t want to have you anymore, it is all gone in the blink of an eye. You can protest of course, but it is unlikely you’d be heard. I’d like to think that this won’t happen if you play by the rules, but there’s no guarantee. Like any big company their help service is mostly automated and not really there to actually take the time and hear out your concerns. I once had trouble logging in due to a bug most likely and the customer service help went as far as suggesting I try a different browser, which of course I’ve already tried (and stated so in my initial message to them). If in the meantime I made any sales and was unable to fulfil them, it would have been my fault. Thankfully it resolved itself in a few days and all was well, but not a good feeling!
If a customer has a complaint, for example they claim they never received their order, but you can see through tracking that it has been successfully delivered, you may be asked to issue a refund (based on stories shared in Etsy groups). If this happens often enough your shop may be closed and you would be banned. Sure that’s fair in order to keep away scammers, but sometimes the seller is not to blame. There are circumstances outside anyone’s control, like issues with the post. It doesn’t matter, you will be held responsible. This can of course happen even if you have your own shop, but at least no one can forcefully close your shop in this case, unless you really do break the law.
On that note it’s a good idea to prepare yourself from the start that situations like that may arise one day. Nothing runs smoothly forever, sooner or later something will go wrong and you better be prepared to take responsibility, even if the issue is really not up to you. It’s part of the risks you take as a business owner.
These are extreme cases, I just think it is a good idea to keep in mind that if at any point Etsy decides that you have somehow broken their rules, you may lose all your hard work.
As Etsy evolves, it constantly tries new things and brings up new rules that you are required to abide by like it or not. In their attempts to stay competitive they will continue to impose new rules that may or may not make sense for your business, but you will bear the burden all the same. You can of course refuse some of those and risk to be left behind in the algorithms.
Back in August 2019 when I was setting up my store, Etsy came up with a new “suggestion”. They started pressuring sellers to offer free shipping over $35, which is only around 230 DKK. This is quite low for Danish standards (most Danish web shops offer free shipping over 500 DKK or somewhere in that area… ok it’s 499 DKK ). Back then I made all kinds of calculations and mental gymnastics to try and make that work for me, but I decided that it just doesn’t, so I refused to do it. It was said that shops that don’t offer free shipping will be pushed back in search results. As I was just starting it is hard to tell whether I was punished for it, because I had no previous period to compare with.
Then a year or so later they changed their advertising system. I personally never used paid Etsy ads and was mostly unaffected by this change, but many more established sellers were forcefully opt in the new system (and it’s impossible to opt out if you qualify based on your sales), so they are now obligated to pay Etsy for ads even if they don’t want to be part of the program. Bear in mind that if a potential customer clicks on your ad, but ends up purchasing from a different shop, you still pay for that click! Just great isn’t it!
Last spring Etsy increased the prices they charge sellers for each sale, because “they really care and want to improve their platform and service for you”. Personally I haven’t noticed any positive changes, aside from paying more fees.
After that (or maybe it was before, it’s hard to keep a straight timeline) they introduced something they call “Star seller”. It is a badge they add to your shop if your shop qualifies based on a whole lot of arbitrary metrics. If you “win” the badge, you get a boost in search and you are re-evaluated every month, so the pressure never stops. In my personal experience you always seem to be just one-two steps behind and it feels like an endless hamster wheel. I mostly ignore it for the sake of my sanity, if I one day qualify, that’s great, if not, oh well!
In case you are interested, here’s what’s expected to make it (these are tracked up to 3 months back):
Most recently, Etsy really made it personal for me, which was my initial motivation to write this post 😅 Due to the fact that I don’t track my orders they have judged that my shop is “risky” (even if I fulfil all other criteria, never had a complaint in 3 years and raising prices for the sake of tracking really makes zero sense for my shop and products, they have now put my funds on hold. This means that 75% of my earnings are put on hold for 45 days. So every time I make a sale I’m only paid 15% of it at the end of the month and the rest is only paid after 45 DAYS! So yeah, I’m pretty pissed off about that as you can imagine.
EDIT: The writing of this post has taken ages and as of the time of editing the limitations on my account have been lifted. I’m not entirely sure why, which makes it extra concerning, because sometimes you just don’t know what they want from you 🤷♀️
After all this my motivation to work on and build my Etsy shop has dropped significantly. I still add new products as they come and ship orders as normal, but I no longer promote it myself. Whatever sales come organically through the platform are welcome, but I have now shifted all active efforts towards my own shop. It seems to me though they have noticed that, because I now get subtle passive aggressive reminders to share my shop link on social media.
So as you can see I have very little love left for Etsy and I’m really really happy that a year ago I took the decision to build my own shop as well. I started in January 2022 and it took me about 6 months to officially launch my new web shop.
From the start I knew I wanted to keep my new shop as much under my control as possible and to build it as cheap as possible, so I was pretty sure I was going to end up using WordPress. I still did a bit of research on Shopify, Wix and Squarespace, but their prices were just too high for my liking, even if building the site itself is probably a lot easier over there. I have no experience with these other platforms, so I won’t be commenting on them, however if you sell a lot it may be worth it to pay more in order to make the switch quicker.
I already had my own domain that I was using for the last 10+ years as a portfolio site for my graphic design and illustration work. So I decided to just use my old site and expand it. It was built on WordPress and I kept it here, just installed WooCommerce (a web shop plug-in) and Elementor Pro (a very user friendly website builder).
Now let’s look into all the things I love about having my own web shop.
It’s hard to describe the pride and joy I feel at owning my little internet corner that I can make into whatever I want it to be! The more time has passed since I started the process, the happier I am that I did it, especially with all the changes on Etsy over the past year.
As a graphic designer I love that I have 100% control over my vision, design and branding. On Etsy you get to customise very little about the way your shop looks. Some customers don’t even realise that what they see on Etsy are different shops. If asked they’d say they bought something from Etsy and will likely not remember the individual shop it was from. When you have your own shop there’s no confusion. This may not be super important if you find the process of figuring out the layout and design daunting and it may be a “pro” for Etsy.
Having your own webshop automatically gives some credibility and distinguishes you from all the hobbyists. I believe that especially if you want to extend your business over into wholesale and collaborations with physical stores having your own shop would show potential partners that you are taking your business seriously.
This may be tricky however, a sloppy poorly designed website may also take away from your credibility. In case you are not experienced in visual communication, I’d recommend you lean heavily on pre-designed templates or seek professional help. Avoid mixing together too many colours and fonts and always prioritise clarity, legibility and user experience over aesthetics and originality.
When a potential customer lands on your shop, they will either browse around and eventually leave or will end up purchasing something. But what won’t end up happening is, they won’t land on someone else’s shop who maybe sells a similar item cheaper than you. On your own website there’s only your products, so you get the customer’s undivided attention. For Etsy it’s important to keep shoppers on the platform, but not necessarily in your shop. If you scroll below your product’s listing you’ll find similar items being advertised from other people’s shops. It is very easy to hop from shop to shop and to be confused with other sellers, especially if your work isn’t well known.
It is hard to cite any hard numbers because this varies from month to month, but overall my shop is definitely cheaper for me to maintain. It is important to mention that it also requires more of my time to do that, but personally I enjoy it, so that’s not a downside to me. It may be different if you have to hire help or pay a higher fee for a beginner friendly site builder (like Shopify).
My own independent shop has now existed for about half a year and I thought it would be interesting to compare my first 6 months on Etsy to my webshop’s first 6 months (since opening). I expected that Etsy would far surpass my own shop’s earnings, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I had about the same earnings in my own shop as I did on Etsy in my first 6 months there. In fact I made a little more through my own site. I found that really encouraging! It probably took more work as well, but I didn’t really mind that.
This is probably my favourite thing about having my own site. I make the rules! It is all up to me. Sure I still have to abide by legal regulations, but no one can force me to offer free shipping or tracked orders if I don’t want to or if it doesn’t suit my business.. No one can hold my earrings back, because of some arbitrary rule. Noone can tell me how fast to ship, or whatever it is they come up with in the future. It is my own space to curate however I like!
That being said, pressures from big players like Amazon do exist, but you are still a bit more flexible.
It doesn’t matter what kind of shop you have, digital or physical, on Etsy or WordPress or somewhere else, one thing you’ll always need is traffic. In other words, you need visitors to your shop. Even if you have the best product ever if no one knows about it, if no one sees it, no one will buy it. Simple as that. The more visitors you can bring to your shop, the higher the likelihood that some of them will like your product enough to buy it. But the really hard part is bringing those visitors in.
On Etsy, you can expect to get some traffic even without doing anything. You still need to put some effort into your tags and make sure your product is searchable, but once that’s done you don’t have to be active every day. On your own website it is very unlikely that someone would just randomly show up. That doesn’t really happen in my experience. That’s where the work you put on social media and in SEO (search engine optimization) can really make a difference, but it is in fact a lot of work! SEO especially, takes not only a lot of work and knowledge, but also needs some time to start working for you.
The internet is big and it is very hard to get your tiny spec of a corner noticed. If you want to have your own shop, I’d recommend to you (and me) to dedicate a good chunk of time working on driving traffic. If you have a budget and are happy to try some paid ads, that can help too, but these days it’s not as easy as just paying for an ad, you still need to do some research and put effort into learning how to make effective ads. I personally don’t have much experience with ads at this time, but some find it very effective.
If you’ve managed to bring potential customers to your shop and they like what they see, that still doesn’t mean they will buy anything. You need to win their trust. And this can be really hard to do. Would you be more likely to buy from a large trusted website that already has an established name and reputation where you have high certainty that you will receive exactly what you ordered and where you know that if anything goes wrong you can rely on some protections as a customer. Would you feel the same about a small obscure webshop that you’ve never heard of before.
I believe this may be the biggest challenge for small independent shops. On Etsy new shops would struggle with those same issues too, but as a part of a larger platform customers can feel a bit more at ease.
Your best tool to overcome this challenge is to gather as many reviews from real customers as possible. And this is no easy task! Most people have no interest in leaving reviews, especially when they are actually satisfied. It can be helpful to nicely ask customers for a review (I have an automated plug-in that sends a reminder a week or two after the purchase). To be honest I feel that this is an annoying and spammy practice, but at the same time I understand the need for it. My personal compromise is that I only ever ask for it once. How you set up reviews for your site is up to you, just try to always imagine yourself on the other side as well, think of what you yourself would be fine with receiving and what would be too much. And if you ever buy from a small business and especially if you had a good experience, please give them a positive review, you’d be making their day and helping more than you know!
Another way to reassure your potential customers is to make sure you appear approachable, don’t hide your contact information and make it as easy as possible for potential customers to contact you, always respond within 24 hours… well maybe except for weekends and holidays. Make sure to have your shop policies visible and accessible and try to answer any potential questions in advance.
In short, I believe that the more generic and “cold” your web shop feels the less likely it would be to trust it, which is why I strive to make mine look open and welcoming and to assure my visitors that I’m a real person that cares about their experience and not just making sales.
Something that isn’t immediately obvious when you first open an online store is that once a customer has made a purchase, they share with you a lot of sensitive information: their name, address, email. Keeping this data safe is a huge responsibility that should be taken very seriously. Furthermore, ensuring that your website is safe to be on is incredibly important as well as guaranteeing safe transactions.
I use a third party plugin to handle all transactions (I don’t even think there’s any other way to do this). The payment itself doesn’t happen on my website and I don’t get any of the payment information (such as credit/ debit card numbers) and I’m glad for it! Less to worry about!
I have also made sure to have a secure and up to date SSL certificate to ensure that browsing my website is safe (if you see a little closed padlock icon in front of your url, that means the site has valid SSL certificates). Without it some browsers might not even open your website and it might be pushed back in search results.
It is very important to keep your site up to date. Always have the latest version of your plugins and themes and back up your site regularly. This can get annoying, but it’s important to stay on top of things.
Lastly, I try to not keep any personal information longer than I need to. It is automatically erased within 6 months of the purchase, but I consider going even lower.
As you can imagine you don’t have to worry about any of this on Etsy. Well, you are still responsible for the handling of personal information from your customers, especially if you print your own labels and have a copy on your own devices.
Future integrations
As of now my business is still quite small and managing accounting and inventory across platforms is fairly easy even manually. But I’ve recently started considering how growing might affect this. I know there are plug ins that can handle all that, but I haven’t researched the matter too deep as it’s not too pressing right now. It is however good to try and anticipate how potential growth may affect your shop and to plan for it, so it can evolve seamlessly.
In conclusion, I don’t think I’d do anything differently if I had to start over today. I’d first open an Etsy shop and see how that goes for a year or so. I’d use it as a practice playground, would learn from it and would focus on developing my products and brand. I’d work on my packaging and customer service and whenever time allows would research alternatives.
If after 6 months to a year I still enjoy having a shop and can see a future for it, I’d then invest time and/ or money into developing my own website.
If my shop is slow and doesn’t bring much sales, but I still enjoy it, I’d stay on the platform. It might not be worth it to branch out (yet). Should things start to take off or if I’m ready to put more time and effort into my business where I believe I might be able to get more attention if I put more work towards marketing, I’d do that, while also considering branching out/ opening my own shop in addition to Etsy.
If the shop is more of a hobby, I think Etsy is a perfectly adequate option that doesn’t require all your attention while simultaneously bringing some extra cash.
All that being said Etsy is not a “passive income” platform. Actual ongoing work is required to maintain your shop and if you just open it and then leave it to its own devices you will most likely not make much sales even if your products are great. If your work is visual (such as art or photography) and you are looking for a solution that takes as little time as possible, it might be best to look to POD sites (Print On Demand), such as Redbubble, Society 6, Inprint and so on. Do have in mind however that you get a very small percentage of the earnings and I’m not really sure it’s worth the time setting up the store. Personally I wanted the active experience of running a shop, which is why I went with Etsy. I have a Redbubble shop as well which sells very little and I mostly ignore it.
EDIT: As of May 2023 I’d no longer recommend the above mentioned POD sites, particularly Redbubble, due to changes in their structure and fees. As already mentioned they were never great, but the latest changes make them seem exceptionally greedy and predatory for artists and I suspect their business model isn’t especially ethical in other areas either.
In anticipation of writing this post I asked the members of some small local business groups on Facebook what they would like to know about selling on Etsy vs. your own webshop and I got many questions. There may be some overlap between my answers below and my general overview from earlier. Some answers go into a bit more detail on topics discussed above.
I started by doing as much research as I could. It’s a super boring answer I know!
There are times when blindly jumping into something works out great and maybe that’s the way for some to open a shop, but personally I’m glad I did my homework first.
Try to mentally go through the whole process and imagine all you’d need to know upfront, so that you can answer those questions and prepare before you open a shop. Write down all your questions and Google search those. For example, how much should I charge, how would I package my orders, how will I ship and so on.
If you prefer to jump into things and figure it out as you go along , you can just start by opening an account on Etsy. They guide you through the process step by step and technically you can open your shop in a day. It took me a couple of months, because I wanted to have as much clarity as possible and I also had other work I needed to do besides.
If/ when you are ready to start, you’re welcome to use my referral link:
It will give you (and me) 40 free listings, so you can start without spending anything at all!
Good marketing is no doubt very important to any business and it is unfortunately one of (if not) my biggest weaknesses. Not because I don’t know what or how to do (it was a big part of both my degrees), but because I find a lot of marketing practices to be conflicting with my personal values. I tend to cherry pick the least disruptive and annoying approaches I know of. So my marketing efforts consist of: mostly social media, some inconsistent attempts at content marketing, a bit of email marketing and good old word of mouth. For now I only rely on organic reach and do not run paid ad campaigns.
This varies through time, but it used to be between 40% – 60%. Now that I have my own shop and no longer promote Etsy it is more like 80%.
I’m not sure which functionalities are meant by this. I do not use paid Etsy ads, I only rely on tags for optimising searchability within Etsy. I rarely run sales or use coupons, but these can be a part of a strategy.
Not many if at all. Every now and then I’d come up with an idea and would get excited to try it out and even if it works I’d end up losing interest over time and losing momentum. You can say my ultimate marketing sin is a lack of consistency 😂 What has worked best for me so far is following my interests and sharing what I make with people who might find it interesting as well.
This is a very broad topic and I have a separate post on it. In a nutshell, I find it really challenging for me personally. This will most definitely not be the case for everyone, because everyone’s business and personality is different and even my own opinion on this has changed over time.
The reasons why I find it quite challenging is, two fold: firstly, due to the nature of my industry (the arts are tough to make a living from in general) and secondly, due to a number of personal reasons, I find that aspects of my personality and values don’t align well with what’s required for business success. Regardless, I’m quite stubborn and keep working on figuring out ways to build a business that’s well suited for me, as I am.
Unfortunately taxes are beyond the scope of this post. I may or may not try to explain what I know in the future, but I am quite reluctant. I feel that some topics are best left to the experts. Taxes are not a matter of personal opinion and getting it wrong can be damaging, so I don’t think it would be responsible for me to venture in this territory. However here are some places that know what they are talking about:
I don’t quite understand this question. As far as I’m aware you can’t use your Etsy shop to link outside of the platform, especially to your own shop. Besides using the same name there’s no link between the two shops.
The price of developing your own shop would differ wildly depending on how much you are willing (or able) to do yourself and which options you chose (there are many).
So far my website has costed me about 900 DKK for last year, meanwhile my Etsy fees are around 1300 DKK, however it’s important to mention that most of my website fees I need to pay whether I have sales or not, while most Etsy fees are deduced from my sales once there are sales.
In my research and for my products PostNord seems to be the cheapest option and it has worked out fine for me so far. In order to calculate the shipping cost I bought a small kitchen scale that I use to weigh my packaged orders and then I check the price for the weight on Postnord’s website where I also buy the labels, print them at home, stick them on my packages and drop them off at my nearest PostNord collection point.
Most of all, ask yourself, do I care about this enough to put a lot of extra time in it. Is there enough demand/interest for my product to warrant the extra time, effort and funds required to open my own shop.
The answer to this would be very individual. For me personally, I’m very happy I have my own shop now and love the feeling of having some independence. So I don’t regret it (so far).
Etsy helps get some traffic. How much depends on how closely you follow all their various requirements and “suggestions”, how busy your product niche is, how well you are using your tags, how many products you have in your shop (more products = more chances to get noticed) and so on. It’s not a ton of traffic that they provide, but you do get some help. In your webshop you are on your own. Unless you have amazing SEO and a high Google rank you’ll have to be generating traffic yourself. I’m still figuring this out.
I don’t think the casual buyer cares that much about the branding especially when it comes to small businesses that are unknown anyway. Being on Etsy would help with trust, because Etsy guarantees that customers won’t get scammed. On your own webshop it’s up to you to earn the buyer’s trust. I think that having your own shop may make a difference if you aim to sell B2B (wholesale), but how much it would matter is quite individual.
Whatever you sell, wherever you sell it, it will always be easier to do if you already have an audience that is interested in you and what you have to offer. That being said, it is still possible to sell on Etsy without an existing community or with only a small one. If your shop is well optimised and your product is something that people search for (and the competition isn’t huge), people who don’t know about you or your product will still have the chance to find it and if they like it enough and are satisfied with the price, they would still buy it.
Personally, I had a tiny community when I first opened Etsy and I’m not very good at maintaining it, so it has probably become smaller now that organic reach is dead on social media. Even so I was still able to sell on Etsy since the day I announced my shop, because I talked a lot about it before I actually opened it, so people were able to follow my process (I shared a series of YouTube vlogs and Instagram updates). When I first opened my Etsy shop most of the traffic was coming from my own channels.
I honestly have no idea what people think about my shipping costs, because no one has told me 😂 I try not to worry about it too much as I can’t control it anyway.
I think that most of my customers are internationals who have a link with Denmark. They either live or have lived here. That’s also due to the nature of my product and may differ from other Denmark based sellers. Danes are probably the second biggest portion of my customers, especially Danes living abroad. Very roughly speaking about 50% of my orders come from Denmark, 49% from the US and 1% from other countries. This will depend a lot on what your product is, how and where you market it and where your community is based. I chose to focus mostly on the local market, because it makes the most sense for my product.
Etsy does of course charge you for selling on their platform. What I like is that there are no upfront costs, so you can start a shop for almost free and only pay once you’re actually making sales. The only upfront cost is the listing fee which is about 1,40 dkk per product. You pay this fee every time you list a new product, renew the listing (they expire after 4 months) or a product has been sold. If you are about to open your first shop you can ask around for a referral link that gives you 40 free listings and you are of course welcome to use mine:
Furthermore Etsy charges a percentage of each sale. From what I can see right now they charge 4% of the sale value + 2.50kr (I don’t get it either!) AND 6.5% of the shipping cost. They also charge a processing fee every time they send your earnings to your account, because why wouldn’t they?!
For my website I use WordPress (free) + WooCommerce plug in (free) + Elementor Pro ($49). You will also need to buy a domain name (about 100 – 150kr/ year) and there will be hosting expenses too (from around 500dkk/ year), but these are fairly cheap. For my payment system I use PensoPay.
This solution is very DIY, which is fine for me, but if you don’t consider yourself “tech savvy” other options (such as Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, etc) may work better (and cost more). Personally I’ve never tried those other options, so I can’t say much about them, but they are supposed to be incredibly user friendly.
I think just following the setup wizard takes you through all the basics you need. If you have questions you can always Google those or search the Etsy forums, just make sure to read the most recent information, it all changes quite often. In short:
Well this was the most epic blog post I ever thought I’d write! I hope that it has been useful to you, if it was, please let me know, I’d be glad to hear it! If you have any more questions on this topic or anything related, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.
Good luck with your future Etsy or web shop should you chose to open one. Just remember to be nice to yourself, because this is not easy and markets are tough, especially for us little fish. Do your best and be aware that it’s not always enough, but whether you succeed or not you are equally worthy ❤️
