overpriced etsy

I know right?!

its sad, huh.

and yeah I can understand silk being expensive, but cotton or linen...not so much

I try to keep my prices low, I use sterling silver and 14 kt gold, but keep my prices under $20 with low shipping costs too. Its about giving good quality, service and making it easy for people to get custom peices

I know what you mean. I don't like etsy much anyway. They charge to list each item which niggles me so I use dawanda - they charge a commission on sales over 10 Euros which I think is a much fairer system.

I agree, some people on Etsy seem to charge a lot more than I'd be willing to pay for something - though I guess its personal preference? Maybe they do sell items at that price, who knows? Besides, as long as they keep their prices high... the rest of us can sneak in with our fair prices and offer people alternatives!

I've heard that Dawanda is good, but also that they have a lot of buyers from the EU and overseas. I'm in the states, and the prices for overseas shipping are kind of high. (And there's always the fact that accidents seem to happen more the further you ship things, unfortunately...)
I use Etsy at the moment just because while I don't like paying for EACH item instead of EACH listing, at least the .20 fee is reasonable (or so I think.) And they're pretty well known, with a sort of built-in customer base. Some buyers don't seem to like buying from lesser-known or unfamiliar sites, they're afraid of being ripped off. =/
Is there a site for the US and Canada like Dawanda, maybe? I haven't been able to find a good, totally fair one yet.

i agree with lola that etsy kinda has a built in costumer base. as i crafter and a buyer of handmade- i haven't even visited the similar sites. anyway...

yea some things are pretty ridiculous price wise. but they don't bug me as much as when people under price things. i'm sorry but a lot of time goes into a handmade item and I am going to pay myself for that time. when people under price it kind of ruins it for us who are trying to supplement income. just my two cents

I have seen some ridiculously priced items on etsy too, but a pair of shorts costing that much is really outrageous. Maybe, and hopefully they put too many numbers, I had that happen to me where someone brought it to my attention or asked me if i meant to price whatever it was so high, I didn't so I promptly changed it. Then again, they may have priced it that high on purpose, and if so I bet they will probably be listed there for a long time unless they change the price.

Lola, Dawanda is pretty good as I have a shop there but moved mostly everything to another site because they were at one time saying that they were planning to add a listing charge, but that's been over a year ago, so I don't know what Dawanda is going to do. Artfrire is good for handmade things, lov.li.com is another one, where they only charge a small commission fee for every sale, but you don't have to pay that until it reaches 10 bucks. I've sold a lot of stuff there and still haven't reached that mark. You can also just list things there to show off, so you don't have to have everything you list available for sale. And ecrater.com is where I have a shop now too, which is also good with no charges or fees, but there you can sell anything, not just handmade stuff. I plan to open a shop on artfire to try it out, with no limited listing and no charges or fees unless you upgrade. Shop handmade is another one as well with no listing fees or limits on listing. The good things I like about ecrater and artfire as that customers don't have to be a member to buy.

glad to see its not just me.im thinking of opening a shop and have been looking at prices and products trying to get an idea of how to charge and what kinds of things sell well and i was just shocked. i guess i wouldn't be a very good department store shopper i buy second hand and recycle my old stuff as im sure a lot of crafty people do and i think this person in particular had intended to list that high because everything there was ridiculous they only had 36 sales. thanx for all those places to list Creative I'll be checking those out.

I'm glad this thread is here. I feel the same about etsy and it's kind of sad! Like lola was saying, people know etsy. People shop etsy. But I feel like you have to wade through ridiculously over priced things until you find something worth buying. But I checked out the sites creative was talking about and I totally got sucked into artfire! They have awesome vintage stuff on there! I'm going back to that one!

lol--all this time i thought i was the only one. ;)

i think as long as we advertise well enough, it wont matter where the shop is located online, hopefully. thats what im banking on.

Many Etsy shops are overpriced. A lot of times i go there to get ideas. I can make the same things i find on etsy for very little. Some people are just crazy with their prices

Yeah I do see a lot of overpriced items on etsy, and I know that they're handmade, but a lot of time the skill level required and the materials used are waaaaaay below the price....it bothers me :/

oh good................somebody besides me thinks that
some of the the things are ridiculously high priced & what is surprising is ppl buy them still!!!!!!!

I was looking at a girls stuff and she made felt things, bags and stuff, and they were cute of course, but I read the prices, and a bag with a felt tree on it would be costing me $30 or an hour of my time. It really is unfortunate because it's nice to say I'm helping people out buying their stuff, but i won't buy it if they're doing it just to get money for it, which was obvious at that point.

I completely agree. I fell in love with etsy because it supports crafters; however, I feel that some people take advantage of that by charging wayyyy too much for their items. I haven't had a bad experience so far with buying off of etsy but I do have to sift through a lot of overpriced items to find something I can afford. I don't want people to underprice their items but $30.00 for a single handcrafted bead is a little too much even though it happens to be a lovely bead.