Should I Sell on Etsy or My Own Website?

When you start a small business, you have to make about a thousand and one decisions. Logo options, colors, what you should name it, and (many, many) more. If you are a maker, you will likely find yourself asking this question… should I sell my products on Etsy or on my own website? After having done both, I have a few tidbits to share, that might be helpful!

First things first, make sure you are eligible to sell on Etsy. Etsy is a marketplace for handmade items, vintage finds, and craft supplies. If your products fall into one of those categories, then you are in! After that, weigh the pros and cons of each platform to make your decision.

PROS OF SELLING ON ETSY

It's Easy

From opening your shop, to listing items, to shipping orders they’ve got you covered. Even communication with your customers happens through Etsy. Everything you need to run your shop effectively is all in one place.

Starting is Cheap

Etsy gets a bad rep for it’s high selling fees. Numbers don’t lie: the percentage fee on each sale is higher than most of their competitors, but there is no monthly fee. When you are starting out, this is huge. All it costs to get started on Etsy is 20 cents for the listing fee. You don’t pay any more until your item sells.

Built-In Customer Base

Etsy is a pretty well known platform. Because of this, they offer the potential to get your items in front of a lot of customers. If you sell an item that people already go to Etsy to find, then it is just a matter of playing the SEO game.

CONS OF SELLING ON ETSY

Not Customizable

With the ease and the inexpensiveness of Etsy’s platform, comes limitations. You have very little say in how your shop is laid out, which makes having a branded experience much more difficult.

You are at the mercy of Etsy!

This is by far the biggest downside to selling exclusively on Etsy. The Etsy algorithm is ever changing, most the time with no warning. This is obviously frustrating as a seller, especially because this is your income we are talking about! Furthermore, if Etsy decides to audit your shop for any reason, you can be down for up to 2 months. Now, that rarely happens, but it could be detrimental if the audit came at the wrong time!

PROS OF SELLING ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE

It's all yours!

The biggest downside to Etsy is the biggest benefit to having your own website. On your own website there are no sudden changes to algorithms or unfair cases or audits! You are the boss and you have the final say when you are selling on your own site!

Brand, Brand, Brand

Unlike Etsy, on your own website, you get to call all the shots for design. This means you can double down on your brand through your layout, fonts, the copy, your photos… everything.

CONS OF SELLING ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE

Starting is Costly

Unlike Etsy, the start up costs for a website can be pretty high! Depending on who you host with, you could have monthly fees, hosting fees, you may have to pay for a theme, and more. This is why I often recommend starting with Etsy.

Harder to Market

Because your website is all yours, the customers are all yours too. But it’s your job to go find them. Without Etsy’s built-in customer base, getting people to your site can be difficult. You will find yourself needing to really double down on marketing your products.

SO WHAT DO I RECOMMEND DOING?

Like most things, I think it depends on your business. But my overall recommendation is this: if you are just beginning, I would sell on Etsy first, with the goal of adding your own site later on. Because Etsy is cheap and easy to open, you can start selling items while you save up for and build a website. If you are established, I recommend selling on both platforms, but marketing your website. Depending on your niche, Etsy’s customer base could be huge; you wouldn’t want to turn that away! However, because Etsy fees are high and your site is more on brand, I recommend sending everyone from social media to your site. This is what we currently do and we are really happy with it!

That’s all for today folks! If you are selling products (on Etsy or your own site), I would love to hear from you! Give me a shout in the comments and let me know what you are selling! :)

[EEMSDIARY]

Thank you for explaining. I have a Etsy shop and finally got to sell some items but now the ad fees has me messed up 😩. I already have a website because of my blog. I really like your idea to have both. So I will keep my Etsy account to grow and make a separate webshop site

[MM-csyz]

Thanks a bunch, Andrea. I am getting ready to start selling on one of the many website platforms. Here is what I think is monumentally important in regard to having your own website, just like you mentioned. Simply put, in my view, when you own your own website, no one is going to come along and shut your website down. You own it. My guess is, at least for me, paying a little more to be the owner of your very own website, is kind of like insurance, just in case you are shut down or an algorithm works against you. With that said, I am excited to give Etsy a try, while at the same time, pay to own a website and slowly but surely build on it while working with Etsy. Thanks again, and actually, a VERY important and comprehensive video by you.

[artandcreationsbyyvettecre]

I will take up Etsy after listening to you. Later adding a website. Thank you 😊🌻

[alyssamartinez]

This was extremely helpful! I just started a Enamel Pins & Prints business on Etsy and was debating to switching my own website! I think I’ll wait to get more of a following before I make the switch! Thanks again!

[gusofalltrades]

This was a FANTASTIC comparison, truly.

[Laly]

Thank you! Great information. I kept wondering about how much the difference in cost was between having an Etsy shop vs your own site.

[debspringchannel]

I asked this same question today as I decided to sell my wardrobe

[starchristmas]

Wow I just want to say thank you for this video, the way you talk is really easy to understand and you sound more like my friend explaining this stuff to me than some snooty person 😂 I really appreciate that you took the time to make this video.

[mikaylagrace]

This is so helpful, thank you! I am a teen and have been working really hard to start a business and I'm almost ready to launch, I just need a website, so this really helped, thank you! I also wanted to let you know that you're so beautiful!! <3

[XOAliciaMarie]

I’m actually trying to build a brand, not a big brand just a homemade brand where all of my products naturally go together) therefore I do feel that you should immediately have a website because that’s the only way you can communicate your brand with the images, the “message” that you get to put on your website and you can already start creating content. Plus creating a website upfront kind of forces you to already start thinking about those things such as the way that you want to be portrayed by people who see your product.

I also plan on utilizing my YouTube channel to help market my little homemade brand therefore again I think it looks more professional when they know that you have a website and then you can just let them know if they feel more comfortable purchasing through Etsy then you do have an Etsy shop. But honestly if you already blog and you already have a YouTube channel and you start telling people about what you’re selling and you have an impressive website put together they’re going to be impressed

I don’t mean to put anybody specific down but I can’t tell you how many small handmade businesses on YouTube I’ve come across where they do not have a website at all or… They have a website that looks so bad that it just doesn’t look professional enough for me to want to purchase a product from them.

Because website is going to usually be the first place that people get to see your product in detail… I feel if you have a real crappy looking website it’s not gonna make a good first impression. I personally have felt comfortable with using square space for years with personal websites and I really don’t wanna go into spending $40 a month with Shopify but if you pay for the full year upfront with square space it’s a lot cheaper.

And one last thing I’m gonna say… There’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there that say to create the hype for your product even before you launch it but the only way you can really do that successfully is if you have your own website! I’m so ready to create more products every week and create content I want to start putting that somewhere so that I can already start driving traffic to my website through Pinterest or my YouTube channel.

For a couple years I’ve been studying online marketing and blogging and making money from a blog and even a YouTube channel and everybody should go up front but that takes time for Google to recognize your website is legit to naturally start driving traffic to your site and that takes at least six months to a year just for organic traffic to come through on Google… So the longer you wait to purchase a URL and start driving traffic to our website the longer you’re going to essentially leave money on the table.

I personally love seeing amazing products on Pinterest and then clicking on it and it taking me to a very well done website, versus just Etsy. When something drives me to Etsy I naturally start looking at everything else… But when a photo and Pinterest drives me to a website I naturally will start looking at everything else but the only thing I’m looking at is that same website.

[danielorourke]

Ok, making your own site is not expensive, I just did it myself, set up my online store. Get cheap hosting, use Storefront as your theme, and build the whole thing yourself. The only major cost is your time. Yes it can be a steep learning curve but if you like learning new skills, it's fun

[versatileduplicity]

I have both. Just made an Etsy. Made my website two years ago

[jazminlugo]

Thank you, you answer all the questions I had.God bless you.

[torimarshall]

Really useful and to the point . Thank you

[keyos]

This is such a great, realistic, and unbiased advice. Thank you.

[MiloneMoneyMindset]

Nice share!! There's a lot of great content in this video! I don't have anything at the moment that I'm selling, but I really enjoy watching your videos! I'm the type of person who likes to keep my options open and this video is a great way to learn something new! Thanks for sharing!!

[fromthesecretplace]

how do you pricing when you are on both? Do you do same prices?

[samanthamagbag]

What if one of my item is sold out. Im soon going to be making business and i will be selling phones cases. What if on the checkered design the iphone x is sold out. How can i make it say that the item is sold out

[hello-wzgq]

Little did she know one hear later everyone would be watching this during quarantine to make money

[cryptodryp]

can you build the algos in your own site to push your content? could you use the same algos they use on Etsy?