Let me break this down with actual numbers:
Etsy charges the following fees on every single item sold (and they stack):
$0.20 listing fee per item (thatâs per individual item in a listing, so if I sell 10 stickers from the same listing, thatâs $2.00 in fees)
6.5% of total purchase price
6.5% of shipping (this is DEADLY on international purchases. Iâve had to stop shipping some items internationally because Etsyâs cut of shipping alone was more than the price of the item!)
2.9% + $0.30 of all transactions for credit card processing
15% of sale price and shipping for all sales to a shopper who clicked on an ad â this percentage only drops to 12% once you cross a threshold of $10K in sales in one year (which most sellers donât). THERE IS NO OPT-OUT for sellers, and no way to control what products Etsy chooses to feature in ads.
So how does that shake out in actual cost? Hereâs an example:
Letâs say I make a handcrafted item for $15 in materials, sell it on Etsy for $35, and it costs $8 to ship â not bad, right? On the surface, it looks like Iâm making $20 for the time and labor I put in to make the thing.
Except right off the top, Etsy skims $4.26 in base fees from that transaction. Etsyâs free shipping guarantee (which technically has an opt-out, but they penalize sellers heavily in search results for not offering it) kicks in at $35, so that makes me responsible for the shipping costs â now Iâm down another $8. If the buyer clicked on an ad, thatâs $6.45 on top of listing/processing/shipping fees. Now Iâm potentially paying up to $16.20 in fees and shipping for that sale.
That leaves me, the designer and craftsperson, making only $3.80 on a handmade item that sells for $35.
My time and labor should be worth more than a Starbucks drink, y'all.
And thatâs before you get to Etsyâs predatory sale structuring, or their paywall-locked âEtsy Plusâ features, or the way they take over your credit card processing once your account is linked (I canât use my Square account for point-of-sale card processing without Etsy charging all of these fees, even on sales I make in person at craft fairs)⊠Basically, Etsy hides fees at every level of the sale process and is essentially nickel-and-diming small businesses and hobbyists to death.
We all know Etsy is garbage â but the unfortunate truth is that a lot of people choose to shop there for handmade and niche goods, and buyers are often reluctant to purchase from an independent website without big-name purchase protection. Everyoneâs afraid of being scammed, so they flock to giants like Etsy and Amazon and eBay for their satisfaction guarantees (even when the price of customer dissatisfaction comes straight out of sellersâ bank accounts).
As sellers, our only recourse is to pass the exorbitant fees on to the buyer, which 1) prices us out of much of our target market, and 2) annoys shoppers (many of whom have come to expect mass-market Walmart prices rather than handmade boutique goods) into complaining about how expensive everything in our shop is. You wouldnât believe how many âI love this but youâre charging too muchâ comments Iâve gotten. My dude, I canât charge less. I have listings that literally only net me a profit of 54 cents per item, and I canât live on that.
All this to say: Please, PLEASE do not click on Etsy ads. If you want to look at an item you saw in an ad, search for it by name/description from the Etsy site (and you may find more things youâre interested in that way, anyway). If you do accidentally click on an ad, go to your address bar and remove everything after the first â?â in the URL and reload to turn off link tracking, and delete any Etsy browser cookies before making a purchase.
And if the seller youâre interested in has a storefront thatâs not on Etsy, consider buying items from there instead. It might turn out to be cheaper than buying the item on Etsy, and even if it isnât, you can feel better about the purchase knowing that more of the price is going to the person who made the item rather than into Etsyâs pockets.
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
