Selling items: Etsy vs. Amazon Handmade vs. Shopify

Gang, has anyone sold items on more than one platform? I am on Etsy and wondering if Amazon Handmade, Shopify or another route might be best. (I have a Facebook and Instagram account too, and word of mouth is still the best method so far).

If you are on a couple of different platforms, I’d love to chat or hear your experiences.

Thanks!

Why would you not go to as many platforms as makes sense?

I am aware some platforms don’t make sense, maybe costs, listing fees, commission etc.

For example: etsy, ebay and my own online store makes sense for me. But Amazon handmade and shopify don’t.

But of those that do, why would you not be on all of them?

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In fact, I would argue that once you’ve done the work to list on one platform, you’ve done 95% of the work needed to list on any other. After all you’ve got the pictures, texts, tags, pricing etc all sorted by that point.

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I was accepted into Amazon Handmade when it first launched but after reading the terms and conditions I never pursued it. They enforce white backgrounds, no watermarks which I could live with since the audience is much larger. But you can never have the product on another platform priced more then Amazon. The fees are alot higher. The expected service turn around was too short so it worked only if an item is ready to ship at least for me.

I tried others but Etsy, word of mouth and social media works best for how I like to manage

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I’m in the process of moving from Etsy to Shopify. The fees is one of the main reasons for my move. I don’t want to raise my prices but if I continued to stay there that’s what I would’ve had to do. I’m also going to be selling on social media and I will be attending a few craft fairs. There’s really no wrong answers here, you’ve got to do whatever works best for your business.

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Great points and feedback. Thank you!

Great information and thank you!

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Thanks so much!

Yes Handmade didn’t work for me either, way out of step with other similar shops.

@ritadian - your comment about keeping pricing consistent is interesting. I don’t. Pricing is higher on etsy and ebay to take into account their fees vs my online store where prices are lower.

I don’t think it is necessary to be consistent on price across all platforms.

Major brands don’t bother - the same item on amazon vs ebay vs brand shop are often very different

They are just now starting to enforce white backgrounds (giving a grace period until December, I believe).

I didn’t know you couldn’t list for higher elsewhere, but that seems to correspond with higher fees. I put all my Amazon handmade products higher than Shopify ($24.95 on website, $29.95 on amazon, plus shipping).

You can also list a production time for each item. Right now, with the puzzle demand of late, I have everything pushed 30 days or so out.

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Not sure about Amazon Handmade, for Kindle books they are really strict that you cannot offer it cheaper than on Amazon.

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It’s buried in the terms and conditions somewhere. I read the whole thing. Which is dumb as I think we should price point based on costs. Ebay is higher then Etsy, so I price higher. Amazon is at least 3 to 5% more. The advantage is the wider audience but if the buyer wants to return, you have to and you take a hit if it’s a item thats has alot of time but low demand. I could have made it work if I had more freedom. I knew they weren’t enforcing before but it will hurt when they decide to enforce which they are starting to do

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I keep my prices consistent across the board because I just want to avoid what could potentially be a customer service nightmare. A while back I remember reading on the Etsy forums (tried to find the post but the Etsy forum is a veritable swampland) there was a shop owner who priced in the same manner-one price on Etsy, and a lower price on her website. She sold an item to a customer through Etsy, but then her customer found the exact same item on her website at the lower price. This didn’t sit well with the customer, so she got in touch with the seller and wanted the difference refunded to her. I just don’t need that kind of headache so all my listings are priced the same - plus I don’t want to have to remember which site gets what price. :smiley:

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FYI, I looked this up. They eliminated the price parity clause sometime in 2019.

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Oh that’s good! I’ll have to read it again to see if this sells platform works for me now

I’m on Etsy and Amazon Handmade and have used Shopify in the past. The advantage of Etsy and AH is that they come with built in traffic. A Shopify site will require you driving your own traffic either through ads or good SEO.

I only offer a portion of my offerings in AH as compared to Etsy. Anything that would require a lot of contact with the buyer is hard to do on AH.

Personally I think AH is a harder place to start because the format and policies are more challenging to get the hang of.

I liked the Shopify platform but dropped my site a while back because I struggled to maintain stock on 3 different platforms. I also didn’t have the traffic I needed to make the site viable.

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In my experience Instagram and my website actually have worked best. Amazon Handmade is powerful and the free signup for makers is attractive, however you will spend a lot on marketing and setting up fulfilled by Amazon, which is what they try to push constantly. The SEO and the product descriptions can also be expensive if you hire an expert, which is recommended to be competitive.
My website is WIX, which is very cost effective and easy to use. No coding required and you can pay small amounts to add features like data analytics.
Additional research has shown that YouTube is effective at driving traffic to your online portals. However you’ll have to spend between $100 and $500 in ads a month for your channel to get its first 10,000 views - note these metrics change whenever YouTube changes it’s algorithm. Whatever you decide, it’s always a patience game, and then at some point, opportunities just come.

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I’ve sold on Etsy for years and looked into the other options but they had less appeal. FWIW, 50% of my traffic comes directly from Etsy with the rest being ads they manage on search engines. I like it because people go to Etsy knowing to expect handmade things and most other products on there have that feel.

That said, the money Etsy takes on sales these days is ridiculous and if I thought I could live without their traffic I would leave. You have to give yourself pretty large margins when you price things to make up for a potential 23% being taken (transactions from ads are 15% additional fee + 5% base fee + 3% transaction fee for credit cards everyone uses), and even the low end is 8% in fees. The 23% occurs maybe 1 in 10 transactions, but its still crazy.

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