A Look At Etsy

By Denise McLachlan
of Designs By Denise

Are you looking for a place to sell your handmade items online? Confused about where to start? In this article I'm going to cover one of the marketplaces that you can use. Etsy is a growing website for handmade products, vintage items, art and supplies. According to Answers.com, Etsy has grown to a community of more than one million members and 200,000 sellers. There are about 2.5 million items currently listed on Etsy. Their main competitors are Amazon, eBay and Craigslist.

About two years ago I heard about Etsy while watching "The Martha Stewart Show." She had a woman on who makes dolls, and this woman ended up quitting her day job because she couldn't keep up with the sales she was making on Etsy while working full time. Now, before you quit your day job to open an Etsy store, read on.

It is very easy to set up a store with Etsy and the fees are low. The listing fee is 20 cents per item, and the item, if not sold, is in your store for 4 months before you have to re-list. Included in your listing fee is a place to put a description, 14 tags for customers to search, and you can put up to 5 pictures of the item for customers to see what your item looks like. When sold, the fee is 3.5% of the selling price. Unlike eBay, this is not a site where buyers bid for your product. The item sells for the listed price.

When you start to create your store, choose a good user name that relates to your store, because your user name becomes your store name. After you create your store, the interface takes you step by step to easily add an item to your store. Even adding a picture is easy. You can personalize your store with your own banner and avatar too.

Etsy has a "heart" system where buyers can mark your store and items with a heart, in other words mark it as a favorite so they can come back to it at a later date. This is, in my opinion, a good thing because you can get lost in the millions of items on the site. I marked several items so I could buy them at a later date, and when I went to my favorites area it showed the ones that had been sold, so I could go back to the items still for sale and buy them. As a seller I like this idea; I think people tend to go back to an item if it's easy for them to find it.

As for selling anything, you have to market your store; it doesn't sell itself. From the numbers that you read in the first paragraph, you can see that there are a lot of sellers and items on Etsy, and you can get lost in the crowd. I was very hopeful that I could quit my day job, but found that it takes more than just listing your store and letting it sell itself. As I said before, don't quit your day job yet. You need to have a smart marketing plan, good descriptions of your product, good pictures and a lot of patience.

The good news is that Etsy is inexpensive, easy to use, and a great way to showcase your handmade items online.



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An Introduction to: SOMA Artisan's Guild

Artists Katie Clayton of CraftyKatie (CraftyKatie6.etsy.com) and Ann Vollum of BeastlyBeasties (BeastlyBeasties.etsy.com) are starting up a group to help local artisans promote and sell their work both locally and on Etsy.

We are inviting artists and crafters who either have or are planning to start a small business selling their work. The group is a local group for South Orange and Maplewood artisans, we are also extending the invitation to our neighboring towns. There will be a sub group called SOMA Etsy for those of us who have Etsy stores. This group will be registered as an official Etsy team.

Our goals are:
• networking
• self and cross promoting
• sales and marketing
local exposure through newspaper and magazine and on-line articles
increased exposure through Maplewood on line and SouthOrangePatch
• local shows and selling opportunities
• facebook
• blogging
• local craft shows

For Etsians:
• shop critiques
• how to shoot better images of our items for sale
• how to increase sales

These are some initial ideas. There will be no membership fee to join the group, however we do expect all members to share their expertise with the group. For certain events we may need to collect a fee to cover any expenses for the group.

If you are interested please e mail us at with the following information:
somaartisansguild@gmail.com

• name
• name of business
• type of business
• e-mail address
• do you want to be an Etsy team member
• telephone number
• an expertise that you are willing to share with the group. (don’t worry if you can’t think of one now)

The first meeting will be held on Thursday September 10th, at 10 am and there after the meetings will most likely be on the first Thursday of the month. If you can’t attend the meetings do not worry, we will be able to communicate on line too. At the first meeting we would like in put from you all as to what you would like to contribute to and what you would like to get out of this group.

We look forward to hearing from you all. Please pass this information on to anyone whom you think might be interested.

Best wishes,
Ann and Katie