Anyone have experience using Etsy? Or should I just make my own website?

Minimal and vicariously (i.e. I haven't done it but I know people who have, I also have an ex-coworker who worked there for a while). Its pretty low overhead to setup so if you're looking for a soft entrance it seems like a decent avenue. A lot of folks once they really get rolling find some of the limitations on item count, and (moreso) inventory management to be overly burdensome and so branch out afterwards to do their own site later.
 
I'd probably go Etsy to start. Setting up and managing your own site can quickly become a time soak.

I have a neighbor that runs a volusion site. Costs some bucks and takes some time.

Plus with Etsy you already have an audience looking for hand crafted items. Less marketing for you to do.
 
Minimal and vicariously (i.e. I haven't done it but I know people who have, I also have an ex-coworker who worked there for a while). Its pretty low overhead to setup so if you're looking for a soft entrance it seems like a decent avenue. A lot of folks once they really get rolling find some of the limitations on item count, and (moreso) inventory management to be overly burdensome and so branch out afterwards to do their own site later.
Ryan,
That's about how I see it... 'soft' entrance (I like that...)... and if I get busy enough that 'item count' matters, I'll be making some $. lol.
I'd probably go Etsy to start. Setting up and managing your own site can quickly become a time soak.

I have a neighbor that runs a volusion site. Costs some bucks and takes some time.

Plus with Etsy you already have an audience looking for hand crafted items. Less marketing for you to do.

Brent, sounds good to me. And the target audience was why I thought of Etsy.
 
i looked etsy over when i first set up, then i went ahead and created my own site through microsoft. the only time i really devote to the site is to set up the next month's newsletter (gotta get that done in the next few days), and for that, i have everything done up for the next year, so it's just copy, paste, and publish. it's rigged up with google analytics, which gives me quite a bit of information about the number of visits, first time and return visits, what countries i have visits from too. it can get down to say, for the united states, go from country level, state level, then down to city level. with countries, it tells me what region, and city too. i think at times i've had visitors from 45 states here, and i think 37 different countries have stopped by. other than adding new items, or adjusting price, or quantity on hand, it's pretty much hands off.
 
I'd probably go Etsy to start. Setting up and managing your own site can quickly become a time soak.

I have a neighbor that runs a volusion site. Costs some bucks and takes some time.

Plus with Etsy you already have an audience looking for hand crafted items. Less marketing for you to do.

Brent (indirectly) makes another good point. If I was doing this today I'd use a hosted solution either way. Basically I'd be looking for a service that (at least) handled running the backend and did the credit card processing and some minimal inventory management. If this was 10 years ago you'd be getting very different advice form me :D Fact is that enough other folks are doing a good enough of a job I'd be hard pressed to do a better job, especially given the time required to do it.
 
Ned, My wife has two ETSY stores and I have spent the last two weeks running back and forth to the post office to keep her stuff moving. It's a low cost way to reach a large audience. If you have a unique product and it catches on, sales will snowball. Take a look at your competition on ETSY, check and see how many sales they have had and gauge your potential success from that. You're not risking a lot to set up a shop anyway.
 
I'd probably go Etsy to start. Setting up and managing your own site can quickly become a time soak...

This.

I've set up a couple of Etsy stores, but never got around to adding any products. (Had too much other stuff going on.) It was easy to set up, and for the volume I suspect you'd be looking at, easy to manage and a good deal price-wise. Etsy is a good deal for relatively low-volume crafters like you because they do all of the heavy lifting behind the scenes, and they also pull in a well-targeted public.

I've also set up a higher-volume full commercial site with secure credit card processing, and unless you're looking to put in a lot of hours researching and setting it up (plus a few hundred bucks just to get started), I'd recommend against it unless/until your volume is quite a bit more than 10 cutting boards per week. And even then, as Ryan pointed out, I'd go with a hosted retail package. Let someone else set it all up. There are people who already know how to do it, make a living doing it, and will be able to do it much faster and more easily than you. And the end result will very likely look more professional than a homemade commercial website.
 
Do both eventually, but do the etsy page first. It will help with driving ratings up on your website to make it show up higher in searches if you decide to go that route.

I believe you're allowed to put links in product pages, as long as they are links to the same product on your website's product page. These links will not be clickable, but a customer can copy paste them. You can put links in your etsy about page back to your website, which are clickable.

Second be sure to setup google analytics on each, below is a link to setup google analytics on the etsy site. Will help you with learning where customers are coming from, how often, what search words they are using (which you want to replicate on pages in your website).

http://www.etsy.com/help/article/230
 
Thanks guys,
I'm not looking for my shop to be full time (though after the hollydaze it will effectively be so again...), so 'low volume' and 'turn key' (ie Etsy) fits better than a more intense site for now. Lori wants to do the craft show circuit in the spring (let's face it... it is Winter in central NY... shop time is going to be limited over the next couple of months...). I've got 'some' stock built up now, friends on FB keep expressing interest in buying boards, and a couple have (sold 7 just yesterday... 6 'cheese boards' and another just a bit larger to a friend from high school and a buddy of his), but that's not the best venue. I'm going to wait until after the 1st of the year and get it going.
 
Thanks guys,
I'm not looking for my shop to be full time (though after the hollydaze it will effectively be so again...), so 'low volume' and 'turn key' (ie Etsy) fits better than a more intense site for now. Lori wants to do the craft show circuit in the spring (let's face it... it is Winter in central NY... shop time is going to be limited over the next couple of months...). I've got 'some' stock built up now, friends on FB keep expressing interest in buying boards, and a couple have (sold 7 just yesterday... 6 'cheese boards' and another just a bit larger to a friend from high school and a buddy of his), but that's not the best venue. I'm going to wait until after the 1st of the year and get it going.

For the craft show circuit, I would invest in one of the mobile phone->credit card readers if you haven't already. I know a few people using square who are pretty happy, but there are a lot of options and they might not be the cheapest depending on your volume. A reasonable comparison of them is here:
http://credit-card-processing-review.toptenreviews.com/mobile-credit-card-processing/?cmpid=ttr-bnd
 
For the craft show circuit, I would invest in one of the mobile phone->credit card readers if you haven't already. I know a few people using square who are pretty happy, but there are a lot of options and they might not be the cheapest depending on your volume. A reasonable comparison of them is here:
http://credit-card-processing-review.toptenreviews.com/mobile-credit-card-processing/?cmpid=ttr-bnd

That's definitely on my list for the craft shows... as is one of the mobile credit readers that have a dedicated wifi... (wife used to use one for a job she had)
 
A friend of mine on IAP sold $23k pens on Etsy, but he markets like a mutha! I did about $8K and did a bit of marketing. My card have the site address on the back so it's easy to find. FB helps...I put a pic of almost everything on there first.
 
That's definitely on my list for the craft shows... as is one of the mobile credit readers that have a dedicated wifi... (wife used to use one for a job she had)

If you have a decent phone it can do both. You can tether any computer(s) you need from it and the newer credit card readers attach directly to the phone (and are generally free from most of the providers linked to from above) so you don't have a lot of junk to drag around.

For instance see the square faq: https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/3869-accepting-payments-with-square-register#swiped-payments

Flagship ROAMPay looks about the same: http://www.flagshipmerchantservices.com/ROAMpay/
 
For the craft show circuit, I would invest in one of the mobile phone->credit card readers if you haven't already. I know a few people using square who are pretty happy, but there are a lot of options and they might not be the cheapest depending on your volume. A reasonable comparison of them is here:
http://credit-card-processing-review.toptenreviews.com/mobile-credit-card-processing/?cmpid=ttr-bnd

Ryan, that "reasonable comparison" is nothing more than an ad for one of the companies listed (Flagship). They make no mention at all on the first page of their $7.95 monthly fee, but they'll be glad to give you a quote. :rolleyes: That's $95 per year just for the privilege of having an account...even if you don't use it. Sure, they have low "per transaction" fees (although only on certain transactions, other times it's higher), but since you're paying hidden monthly fees, it still costs you more. (Especially if you're a small volume vendor.)

Square, on the other hand, has no monthly or yearly fees, and the per transaction cost is competitive, especially for a low volume vendor. Of course, Square is shown near the bottom of the comparison chart, because THAT'S who Flagship sees as their biggest threat. Unfortunately, Flagship can't even offer a real apples to apples comparison (since they have hidden fees they're not talking about) so they have to rely on bogus websites with names like credit-card-processing-review.toptenreviews.com.

Credit card processing companies are very similar to companies that make software to improve computer performance...they're not at all reluctant to present slanted data disguised as "independent research", just to make their product look better than the competition. (I worked in the computer performance software business for nearly 20 years, I not only saw it done, I helped do it.) ;)

Ned, beware of the dedicated WiFi card readers. They either cost you a good chunk of money at the get-go, or they incur a monthly charge, regardless of whether you use them. And you're out of luck if you're at a craft show that doesn't have WiFi handy. If you crunch the actual numbers, and if you own a smart phone, I doubt you'll find a better overall price than with Square. I know I didn't find anyone better when I last researched it.
 
Ryan, that "reasonable comparison" is nothing more than an ad for one of the companies listed (Flagship).

Square, on the other hand, has no monthly or yearly fees, and the per transaction cost is competitive, especially for a low volume vendor.
Credit card processing companies are very similar to companies that make software to improve computer performance...they're not at all reluctant to present slanted data disguised as "independent research", just to make their product look better than the competition. (I worked in the computer performance software business for nearly 20 years, I not only saw it done, I helped do it.) ;).

They did a good enough of a job of link spamming other sites to make it look reasonable :( Comparing apples to apples with any of this is pretty bunkum because of jokesters like them.

Anyway - yeah I know of several other people using Square who are all very happy with it and haven't heard anyone I know who actually uses it who is unhappy so... I'd probably use them anyway just because they seem to be fairly easy to deal with compared to any other CC processing company I've ever worked with.
 
I have been on Etsy for a couple years, and haven't put much into it. I have done a few thousand dollars of business, and I again will emphasize "without trying whatsoever". It's definitely a nice surprise to get requests for wholesale orders topping $1000 out of the blue! That said, with more concerted effort, and the fact that Etsy has pretty good SEO (search engine optimization), you could easily make some significant sales. Also worth noting, there are ways to run Etsy listings through a Facebook page, as well as other types of sales listings. Check out one of my friend's FB site with non-Etsy items for sale. https://www.facebook.com/scottmeekwoodworks/app_251458316228?ref=ts

In any case, linking all of the above sites is likely to improve your visibility from the major search engines. And I certainly recommend looking into the Square merchant services, or something similar. I just got it this fall and have already done thousands of dollars of credit cards sales. For instance: I showed a piece at a 3 week city wide art exhibition earlier this year. Someone who lives on the other side of the state fell in love with it, and just this last week (three months later) contacted me and bought it over the phone. Having a smart phone merchant service was invaluable for this "not so small value" type of transaction.

- Hutch
 
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The single most important aspect i believe it takes to be succesful with a small business venture is consistent perseverance.

So many set up a presence and expect the world to beat a path to their door. When this does not turn out to be the miracle solution to their financial woes they give in and try to search for another. The result is hopping from pilar to post and each time it takes a little more loot to do it.

I like Darrens approach. Go for both. Cross link. But consider a few things that will determine your success.

Marketing. The more effort you put into this the more you will see results. You got to do this with zero dollars in small business. There are dozens of ways if you got the drive and are willing to put in the effort. Go to your local library and loan a copy of guerilla marketing. Dont worry about which version. If you do half of what is in the first few chapters of any edition and find you are prepared to keep doing then you can get picky and look for a specific version that hones in on specifics in a field.

I just dont understand it, America in my mind invented marketing yet so few small business guys realize its a cornerstone of their business. The best finest most well designed product is dead in the water without it. But meet a true marketing pro and you find an A type personality that is totally suited to Larry the Cable guys "get er done" motto.

I think sites like Etsy are perfect for what you want to do Ned for the very reason that you aint got the marketing dollars to get listed on the first page of a google search result.

Setting up your own site you need to see like putting an electronic brochure on the web. It will be a brochure under a pile of other material in a black hole if you do nothing to help get it visibility and this issue is something that takes a great deal of consistent effort.

You may wish to get a bit sneaky with this part. You take pics and post them I have no idea where other than the ones i have seen on our forum. But i like what Brent does on his pics. He kind of watermarks them with some words. You could if you set up a dual site config meaning etsy and your own, use your own URL as a signature if you make the name a clever non descript one or even just have a redirect and whereever you post a pic you have a posting of your url. Curiosity will do the rest. You got be prepared to use every avenue.

Another point to consider. Just a single sku in a store has little apeal in a retail sense. Its something many dont realise that store keepers often dont want to deal with a vendor that only has a single or few skus. Keep this in mind when you set up your etsy store. The consumer is looking and been trained to look for variety and they looking for "New" products rather than something that can be had everywhere. Factor these elements into your product offering.

Most important of all is stick with it continuously. Dont give up. It takes at least 18months in my view for a new business to gain traction provided the owner stuck at it consistently. Few are prepared to go this distance but many if they look back have spent years hoping from one thing to another hoping luck would get them a lucky break. Rather form a plan and strategy and execute it consistently. So set up a pace that you can sustain rather than being a skyrocket and fizzle out after a short while because the results did not match expectations and then the effort gets considered not worth it. Your famous Apple company has some lessons to be learnt here. When the Ipod was first launched it was not a one day wonder. It took years for this product to eventually drive Apples share price. After that they never looked back but it was not always like that and in this case we are talking about a huge company with loads of resouces. Its not the resources that count. Its effort. Thomas Edison said it all 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. All forgotten in the age of instant gratification.
 
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