Looking for pros and cons of Etsy

My Etsy shop is mostly handmade jewelry. I do pretty good on Etsy, but jewlery is a very tough category. There is alot of competition on the site and to do well, you nned to be priced right and have time to promote your items on the Etsy forums. The pros of Etsy is to have a 24/7 online presence. They have a nice site (okay, searching the site leaves much to be desired) and if you promote your shop to craft show customers, you have an impressive site that will show those customers that you are professional. Another big positive, is Etsy often receives a lot of media attention, especially as it gets closer to the holidays Etsy was recently mentioned on Good Morning America (this past week), they have had several write-ups in the NY Times, including a magazine feature. Martha Stewart has had several Etsy members on her show and quite often she'll drop a "I love Etsy" when she's talking about handmade. Etsy has over 1,000,000 registered users, more than 80% are strictly buyers who prefer to buy handmade items. It's much better than selling on eBay, but it's not a site where you can add items and just go away and wait for a sale. You'll need to promote, promote, promote and just when you think you've promoted enough, you really need to promote some more. In short...there's lots of talented sellers looking to make sales. The one's that are priced right and can promote often, give themselves a decent chance of making consistent sales. (there's actually so much more to Etsy, but there is a lot of support from both other members and administration) I'm so happy I gave Etsy a shot a year ago. My crafting has improved because of needing to "raise the bar" with my creations. I say go for it, but understand tht it isn't as easy as it may appear. Feel free to ask any questions you may have. I'm more than happy to share the info that older members shared with me.

Hi there... to tell you the truth its not easy to sell on etsy, i myself got my first sale after 1 month (some seller even have to wait for 6 months or a year!) but i guess it depends on what you sell and how you promote it in the end... i sell supplies for jewelry such as beads,caps,finding,etc and after 5 months i got 10 sales and 404 hearts (fiuuh i should promote more) there is high competition on etsy especially for jewelry, i see so many jeweler maker with same style and my advice would be create something unique because we need to stand out. after read so many post on etsy forum , my conclusion or tips from other etsian would be: - relist more - promote outside etsy more - be active on forum - join flickr - join other networking such myspace,etc - indiepublic - we love etsy - add more items in shop i am not doing all above, but i found some of it pretty usefull. at least i got more views :)

I think its a great site and saw it mentioned on Good Morning America. I couldn't sleep or would not have been up that early. Promotion is always the key to great sales. Good luck with making money.

I think Etsy is a good site over all. They have a good plan and are very reasonable. The problem I had, and you and your daughter will probably have is getting my items found and seen. They will never get sold if they aren't viewed a lot. Plus there are thousands of people trying to sell hand crafted jewelry on there and it is hard to compete. I would definitely suggesting being patient and doing the craft market route. However, make sure you invest in good displays or you will be wasting your time.

One thing I will say is that you have to do a lot of your own promotion on etsy, because the word still isn't out about the site. Jewelery is also a highly saturated market on etsy, and there are probably several thousands of sellers trying to make a go of their jewelery business. From what I've seen, it's pretty cut-throat and there are a lot of people dropping their prices extremely low just to get a sale. It can be done, but it probably isn't a good site if you're looking to make the money NOW. That said, I love Etsy, despite it's crappy search and would recommend starting up a shop. Listing fees are inexpensive and it could be a good longterm time investment for your daughter. Then, she'd have a great outlet to sell her jewelery when craft shows are in the off season, and she'd get a lot of experience running her own business. Good luck!

I feel that Etsy is a great resource, but it takes work. You get out of it what you put into it. It takes lots of marketing, listing, posting, etc.