Is Etsy Worth it? 🤔 | Pros and Cons of Selling on Etsy | Etsy Shop Tips

About this video

Kate Hayes, an Etsy seller since 2015, gives her top four pros and four cons for selling on Etsy in 2022. Pros: (1) tremendous growth — she cites 46.3 million shoppers in 2019 versus 96.3 million in 2021, giving sellers built-in organic traffic versus driving traffic to their own website; (2) Etsy is well-known and trusted, with loyal shoppers and a case system that backs shoppers, which builds purchase confidence; (3) more seller tools than ever, including Placeit, Canva, Creative Market, Creative Fabrica, Sales Samurai and EverBee for design and research, plus Taylor Brands for logo, domain, website and branding; (4) Etsy Ads, which she prefers over boosting on Facebook/Instagram because shoppers are already searching on Etsy, with adjustable budgets and detailed analytics. Cons: (1) higher competition in both number of shops and professionalism, requiring photos that can compete with bestseller listings; (2) you do not own the platform — Etsy can shut a shop down, often for policy, copyright, shipping or response failures sellers did not read about in the Seller Handbook; (3) the transaction fee rising from 5% to 6.5%, effective April 2022, which must be factored into pricing; (4) harder brand recognition, because buyers remember ‘Etsy’ instead of the shop, countered by branding banners, packing slips, packaging, pack-ins, social media and messages. Her conclusion is that benefits still outweigh cons for beginners.

Key takeaways

• Pro — built-in audience: she cites Etsy growing from 46.3 million shoppers in 2019 to 96.3 million in 2021, plus platform trust and shopper protection
• Pro — tools and Etsy Ads: research/design tools like Sales Samurai, EverBee and Canva, and on-platform ads to an already-searching audience, outperform off-platform boosting in her experience
• Con — saturation: competition is higher in shop count and professionalism, so listing photos must match the quality of bestseller-badge listings in your niche
• Con — platform risk and fees: Etsy can close a shop for policy violations, and the transaction fee rises from 5% to 6.5% in April 2022, so price it into margins
• Con — weak brand recall: buyers say ‘I got it on Etsy,’ so brand everything — banner, packaging, pack-ins, slips and messages — with your shop name and logo

Episode details: published March 23, 2022 · 14:36 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kate Hayes’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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