Etsy Stress (Stresstsy?)

I make teddy bears, jewelry and little seed bead animals. A lot f of my friends, family and extended family have shown interest and so therefore been tryin to find a way of selling online (other than ebay) I recently came across etsy and was wondering whether you could tell me if they charge to set an account up and how much if so, also how much they take from what you sell? I'm looking into setting a stall up at a few small festivals as me+my partner enjoy going them and I've heard that its free for you to go the festival if you have hired a stall out. The fetivals I have been, I've talked to the stall holders, and they all say its a good way of promoting your buisness and that they have had more interst from holding stalls there since. Me and a family friend are planning on having a stall on a christmas market near where we live selling crafts and cakes/biscuits. That could be a good idea for you if they hold any sort of christmas market/summer fair/farmers market/festival near you. Hope that helps x

you won't make alot of money on etsy

there is a 20 cent listing fee

yeah, 20 cents per item and they take 3.5% out of each sold item. It seems like if you sell a decent amount, you'll make something but you have to be kinda popular and find a way to promote your things...

Etsy = 20c listing fee per quantity ($1 for 5 of the same item, as an example) and 3.5% commission when an item is sold.

That, coupled with PayPal taking 30c and 2.9% per amount received, makes it harder to make the money you want to make unless you raise prices.

In person, I can sell a bar of soap for $4 and actually have all $4. On Etsy with PayPal, I would have to charge an extra 75c to make $4, or if I just charged $4, I'd only really be making $3.25.

But, when you're a college student having a hard time finding work, losing 75c on a $4 sale is better than not making a sale at all.

I never had any luck with etsy and I did have pay pal set up. Sure tons of people Favorited my items but I didn't get enough sales, and to me- making money is more important then people liking my stuff. lol. Im a stay at home mom with 2 kids and a shopping habit.
I made a bunch of money selling my stuff at a flea market ( I know it sounds desprit)but it only cost 10 bucks for a table for the whole day and I made a decent chunk of money. Hundreds of people of all ages go to my local flea market and I had tons of fun doing it.I even sat there and made stuff killing time. I love soap! Lol I just bought a bar off of etsy not to long ago. It was nag champa and patchouli scented fight club soap. Im totally agreeing with you though. Etsy = stress. Ive also sold stuff on craigslist as well as a local trendy consignment shop. If you make homemade baby soap people buy that stuff up like crazy. When I go to the gently used baby stores there is always a basket of homemade bars of baby soap. (unused of course) they usually buy the stuff from you and then jack up the priced and resell it.There is usually stickers on the backs with the ingrediance, the shop name, and an etsy website. I have also seen baskets of homemade soaps in gift shops and hotel gift shops. I guess for that you would have to go in and ask if they would be interested. I don't know....Just some ideas. I made more money at flea markets then I ever made at an art show.

I should try flea markets... but I don't think there are too many around where I live since neither town I spend time in has more than 12,000 people. So far I've only come across one consignment shop, and I've never gone in to see what it was like.

My mom's an assistant manager at CWC, and he friends are always giving her catalogues for Avon that their daughters are selling, so hopefully she'll be able to hand out my business cards to them.

My fiance's mom is thinking about making some things on her own, so maybe she and I can team up and get a booth at a craft festival this summer... That would help a ton.

I see a lot of people doing the facebook thing and the ones that seems to get a lot of people are the ones doing give aways every so often, those in my family seem to be addicted to getting on the give aways, and they buy a lot from those people to.

I always did better selling word of mouth, but I dont get out much any more so dont make any sales..smile..

Hm... give-aways are a good idea. I'm going to have to put something together for that.

maybe a mini version of another soap
like a sample pack?

anyway let me know when you are selling your soap, I really want to try it!!!

you should sell sample packs- I use mini moulds to create mine

I've actually been trying really hard to find small molds that would work well for my soap. Samples are one thing I've been wanting to do with my soaps for a long time, but the only molds I have right now are skulls from Halloween, lol.

I've found an apple mold online that would fit my shop perfectly, but it's not a good deal ($5 or so for the mold itself with $6 shipping, not happening right now). I might have to check the dollar store though to see if they have any--that's where I've found a lot of the other molds I've bought for my mom.

thats too much, I use mini cupcake paper moulds

Hm... that's a good idea. My only problem is that at my apartment, I don't have any kind of cupcake mold. lol

I'm probably going to go to the dollar store today to look for a suitable mold (I really love the silicone ice cube trays they have--they're awesome for mini soaps) and if it comes down to not being able to find one, I'll think of something.

I have a new soap recipe to work on tonight

I've tried lots of different avenues to sell my stuff, with varied results, and here is what I've found: I started out selling at a flea market, and couldn't get the price I needed to get to make a profit. People were rude and had terrible attitudes, wanting to buy my things for less than it cost me to make them. So then I went on the art show circuit, and there I actually made some money- but you want to talk about stressful!!! I had to generate big bucks just to keep running in place, and finally had to drop out because my health was being destroyed from working day and night to keep going.
I tried eBay, and it was the flea market mentality all over again- only worse, with people offering a buck for a piece of jewelry it cost me $50 in materials to make, and then getting nasty about it. I had a reserve on it, so there wasn't really any excuse, but that didn't stop them. I gave up on internet selling for a long time because of that. I then went to galleries and boutiques trying to wholesale. Sometimes that wasn't too bad, but they usually wanted to "keystone" which means they got 50% of the price. Let me tell you, the combined take to pay Etsy and PayPal is very small potatoes compared to that! So, I started an Etsy shop, but it was very difficult to get any real traffic. It's necessary to really promote like crazy with Facebook, Twitter, etc., and post to other selling sites like ArtFire, Craftster, etc. and connect it all together with blogging, Facebook, etc. It's as much work as doing the show circuit was, only you don't ever leave the house.
Sometimes I think I'll give it all up and become a ditch-digger. It would be less work, LOLOL!

I don't consider Crafster a selling site, in fact you aren't suppose to advertise on Craftster at all (though you may link to your shop in your signature).

Artfire is nice though and may be a good supplement to Etsy.