Selling Handicrafts on Etsy
I am not a big fan of eBay. Although it works for many people, I just haven´t had much luck. However, I recently stumbled across a website called Etsy, which is an online marketplace for handmade items. It seems promising and since it is more specialized than eBay, might be a good alternative for enterprising moms.
Basically, if you make something yourself, it is eligible to be sold on Etsy. You can set up your own shop with your username and .etsy.com at the end. There is a wide variety of items for sale already, I found everything from crocheted bookmarks and blouses to ceramic buttons and bookshelves, so it would seem that pretty much anything goes!
You sell your products for set prices, plus shipping and you are free to set up your own payment choices. Most people seem to be using PayPal and I saw some that had checks or money orders as options, too. There seems to be a way to bid on some products, but that section of the website was temporarily down for now.
You set your own prices, Etsy takes 20 cents per listing and if you sell an item through the site, you pay a fee of 3.5%. Each listing can have up to 5 photos, which is nice, and it is good for four months. So, twenty cents for 4 months . . . vs. rather more on eBay for a week.
I´m going to be trying Etsy out to try selling a few paintings and perhaps some Guatemalan fabric bags. If it goes well, you´ll be seeing an update later on in this blog! If anyone else has experience selling on this website, please feel free to share in the comments, or email me.
This is great advice. I just wrote a piece about selling craft items (candles) on my blog, but I forgot about Etsy. I will be interested in hearing what sort of success you have with them. They sound like a very good alternative!
It seems to be a pretty new website. I´m having difficulties with the credit card confirmation, however, since I don´t have a credit card! I´ll have to look into getting one, I suppose.