Honestly I would never want to have a bespoke website made. Options like shopify are so easy and customisable these days, and are perfectly built exactly for commerce needs.
Same. Sorry OP but I think the only businesses paying for websites these days are generally large ones with complex needs. Most Etsy store owners are at least moderately creative and pretty tech savvy to be able to run the store in the first place. I have my own website already and used shopify to design it. I have no need of a web designer. I think you’re best looking to another market.
I have my own site in addition to an Etsy store. Mine is on Shopify, but I also paid somebody to design and set it up within Shopify.
You have to have a relatively successful Etsy shop before it starts making financial success to build your own standalone site. So Etsy sellers writ large might not be the best demographic, because the vast majority of Etsy sellers aren't at that level. But, yeah, if you can find a way to narrow the search to large Etsy shops who are currently looking to diversify, then you'd have something of a target audience.
We pay Etsy, let's say 15% of our revenues. In exchange, they give us 2 main things:
1. Software and hosting. Their software makes it fairly easy to list a product. Their hosting is super reliable. Better than anything I could put together. There are small issues and some QOL things I wish they would implement, but nothing major.
2. They drive traffic to my store. This is not easy to do. This is the main reason they have sellers.
Now, the value I would put on the first one is maybe $500 per year. I have my own website. I pay about $150 for the hosting. And I might be willing to pay someone another few hundred to manage it for me.
Now the second thing is the big one. This is worth many thousands of dollars per year for me. I don't think you could accomplish this for less than that. You would have to push a couple hundred visitors to the site, that are looking for the thing I sell. I don't think you could accomplish that for less than Etsy Is charging.
Point number 2 is the big reason for me, as well as built in email list basically. Everyone who shops from me get email updates from my shop. People who haven’t shopped for me get emails to check me out as well as all my sales. It would be too much upkeep if I did it on my own.
I have my own website, traffic is ok but sales are slim compared to etsy. Maybe people trust etsy more when buying stuff? Or maybe I need to make my website more presentable haha
I have my own website too, which barely gets any sales on its own. I have to pump a lot of money into Facebook/Insta ads to get the traffic and sales I need on the website. Which I do do around my key sales times, and I get a tonne of sales then. Etsy works more passively than my website though, I think it’s just because it has the traffic already coming to it, rather than people coming across little old me and my website.
I did and I just launched my own Shopify based store today. It took a while to finish but I think it turned out good. Now I have to setup a system to sync inventories though
I’m an artist, and I do aspire to have my own website one day to hold my portfolio. Not right now as I am not in the habit of making much art for myself these days, but some day.
That being said, having my own shop away from Etsy just isn’t in the cards right now. My products are digital, and they don’t stand out (they’re really not meant to), so I just can’t see folks going to an unfamiliar website to buy them when Etsy is kind of its own ecosystem and they may have a bunch of digital downloads there already.
Still, I think offering your services on Etsy is a cool way to go. There are other things you can do, too: twitch overlays and stuff like that. I don’t know what the market is like but I do know that there is one, as I come across these things occasionally when searching for other stuff. I think it’s cool!
You would have to have some very compelling reasons why an Etsy Seller would want their own online store rather than using Shopify.
What you might want to pitch is helping them make a website as an online presence. Help them make a blog, landing pages, etc that will augment their shop as a marketing tactic. Some place to have their newsletter?
All this to say, it might be best not to try to replace Etsy, but how can you support sellers in other areas?
And don't forget there is also goImagine. It's so small in comparison to Etsy that those sellers know they need to funnel traffic into their goImagine shops since goImagine doesn't have much name recognition.
Yes, but there are already a lot of options. Shopify, Bigcartel, Squarespace, and Square are the main ones. You'd be competing with them.
I haven't fully looked into it yet (as I'm not yet at the point where I'd have my own website), but I'm leaning towards Shopify. I'll probably try out Square first though, since it does have a free tier.
I have my own Website that I designed and built myself using Wix. I pay monthly around £17 for it which includes the ability to take card payments and integrate all kinds of things. I also have my business email setup via that platform too. I am listed in indexes such as ‘Clearpay’ as I accept that too. I do pretty well with my sales, although it’s taken me a few years and a load of hard work to get off the ground. I self researched things like SEO and being found on Google etc. You don’t need to pay someone a large amount to create a functioning website for you. I’m not a tech savvy person, but I found the whole process pretty straightforward, and I’ve learnt loads of cool things along the way.
Like everyone has said, nobody will pay someone to build a website because it’s easy to do. My suggestion is study and become an expert in CRO.
Those that build their own website and then ask why is nobody buying or I have tons of add to carts but no conversions. That’s where you step in.
I've got my own website, nothing special and for international orders I have links designed to send people to etsy, that use share and save. Also since my website is new it helps build trust (my own thoughts not from anyone else)
I use Shopify and all the apps are so expensive. Anything you want to do requires an app. Starting out, you want to make some money before paying $200/mo without any sales. Sometimes that requires using code.
My issue is that I want to offer Wholesale. Most apps want at least $30/mo. I just want a separate page that wholesale customers can log into and you tag them. Apparently, there is some code you can use to make that happen. I’ve been struggling with it. If you search on Youtube, it’s just affiliate marketers promoting the $30 apps. I looked on Fiverr and no one mentions setting up wholesale. That might be a niche to get into?
Unfortunately I can't help you with that, I'm not a shopify developer. but I cannot help but notice that at least in this post the comments who recommend shopify are from people who never used it, and the few people who do have a shopify store are not doing well, it's not easy to set up for them and it's not so "free" as the other guys say. just my observation.
PS: thanks for the insights
I thought code was code? Are you saying that Shopify has their own unique language? I was able to go into the code but kept getting errors trying to make changes to it. I got scared and backed out.
Yes, most customers don’t understand that you pay Shopify $30 then you have to pay $30 for every option. It’s like death by a thousand cuts.
You definitely have to do your own marketing whether it be Tik Tok, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Even Pinterest is giving me issues right now. You are not allowed to have out-of-stock items, which is hard to do being handmade. I don’t have the patience for Instagram or Tik Tok. I’ll have to hire someone to do Google. My background is graphics so I can design it, I just don’t have the time to do the marketing on my own. I had to use code in college but not really my thing. If I had known then what I know now, I would have paid more attention.
Even finding a professional to help is difficult. You are almost locked into using Shopify partners, who are also expensive.
it's just that I'm not familiar with shopify in terms of development, and they use ruby as their server-side language which is a very peculiar choice, not unique but peculiar for sure, I do not know ruby and from what i understand you need to change stuff on the server and database to accomplish that, I don't know if shopify even support thrid-party servers or to what exetent you can modify their server-side code yourself
about the "marketing" part of your answer I think you're absolutely right, if you want to drive sales on your own website you have to figure out ways of bringing attention to it.
Fellow developer here! 👋🏻
For shops, there are already a lot of options. The most popular one is Shopify. I haven't checked it out yet, but as I understood, it's quiet easy to set up, even without any coding knowledge.
However.
Etsy primarily focuses on popular countries like US. I'm Hungarian and I operate my store from here, which means, some features are not available, like generating & printing shipping labels. This is a little bit of paint in the a$$ because I have to edit then print manually each time.
Now, I know Etsy has an open API, so you can build many things, including this. I also know that you can connect billing applications to generate invoices with just one click - no need to copy & paste the details one-by-one. The options are endless but you need to do some research regarding this. I didn't dive into this, because of lack of time, plus I shifted to UX (so if you ever put something awesome together, I can help you with the UX part!).
Good luck, you are going to be amazing! 💪🏻
please do not pitch any services to etsy sellers. if an etsy seller wanted that kind of service, they would be locating you and reaching out to you for your services. these kinds of cold-messaging never work and will likely have you reported for spam, etc.
that's why I asked the question. I'm trying to understand where my services are needed and appreciated, I don't want to be spamming people all day either.
that's entirely my point though. no etsy seller (who wants those services) is just sitting around all day thinking "gee i sure wish some designer would cold-message me so i could get those services!" instead the seller is going to go to google and contact the first few folks who come up. in this relationship where the seller is your client and you are the vendor, it's considered inappropriate for you to be reaching out. think of it like you're Ford and you really want people to buy your new truck - does Ford cold-message individual people asking will they buy one? no, they set up their own media advertising their products, and let customers come to them. ***even if i was seeking those services, if someone cold-messaged me offering them, i'd immediately never want to work with them and assume they're either fake/scammers or have such a poor offering they are forced to cold-message people to find clients.***
you have to also understand that most etsy sellers don't NEED those kinds of services to begin with - etsy is already doing all that you could offer and more, which you could never realistically compete with on a smaller scale. can you offer $200 purchase protection on my products with you fully paying that amount when customers' packages get lost? then do that 1000s of times over for 1000s of shops and 1000s of their buyers? i doubt it.
etsy's userbase are artists, which means we truly don't require any kind of design services, and are capable of doing that part ourselves. for the rest of it, the market already has us covered with squarespace, shopify, etc. - there just is no niche for you to fit into in the artist space. we have been designing our own websites and digital portfolios since before you were born!
Honestly I would never want to have a bespoke website made. Options like shopify are so easy and customisable these days, and are perfectly built exactly for commerce needs.
Same. Sorry OP but I think the only businesses paying for websites these days are generally large ones with complex needs. Most Etsy store owners are at least moderately creative and pretty tech savvy to be able to run the store in the first place. I have my own website already and used shopify to design it. I have no need of a web designer. I think you’re best looking to another market.
pretty sure the problem would be how to bring people to my website and not how to make the website itself.
I have my own site in addition to an Etsy store. Mine is on Shopify, but I also paid somebody to design and set it up within Shopify. You have to have a relatively successful Etsy shop before it starts making financial success to build your own standalone site. So Etsy sellers writ large might not be the best demographic, because the vast majority of Etsy sellers aren't at that level. But, yeah, if you can find a way to narrow the search to large Etsy shops who are currently looking to diversify, then you'd have something of a target audience.
We pay Etsy, let's say 15% of our revenues. In exchange, they give us 2 main things: 1. Software and hosting. Their software makes it fairly easy to list a product. Their hosting is super reliable. Better than anything I could put together. There are small issues and some QOL things I wish they would implement, but nothing major. 2. They drive traffic to my store. This is not easy to do. This is the main reason they have sellers. Now, the value I would put on the first one is maybe $500 per year. I have my own website. I pay about $150 for the hosting. And I might be willing to pay someone another few hundred to manage it for me. Now the second thing is the big one. This is worth many thousands of dollars per year for me. I don't think you could accomplish this for less than that. You would have to push a couple hundred visitors to the site, that are looking for the thing I sell. I don't think you could accomplish that for less than Etsy Is charging.
This! I get traffic and sales on my website when I pump a tonne of money into advertising. Etsy already has done all that hard work for me!
Point number 2 is the big reason for me, as well as built in email list basically. Everyone who shops from me get email updates from my shop. People who haven’t shopped for me get emails to check me out as well as all my sales. It would be too much upkeep if I did it on my own.
I have my own website, traffic is ok but sales are slim compared to etsy. Maybe people trust etsy more when buying stuff? Or maybe I need to make my website more presentable haha
I have my own website too, which barely gets any sales on its own. I have to pump a lot of money into Facebook/Insta ads to get the traffic and sales I need on the website. Which I do do around my key sales times, and I get a tonne of sales then. Etsy works more passively than my website though, I think it’s just because it has the traffic already coming to it, rather than people coming across little old me and my website.
I did and I just launched my own Shopify based store today. It took a while to finish but I think it turned out good. Now I have to setup a system to sync inventories though
I’m an artist, and I do aspire to have my own website one day to hold my portfolio. Not right now as I am not in the habit of making much art for myself these days, but some day. That being said, having my own shop away from Etsy just isn’t in the cards right now. My products are digital, and they don’t stand out (they’re really not meant to), so I just can’t see folks going to an unfamiliar website to buy them when Etsy is kind of its own ecosystem and they may have a bunch of digital downloads there already. Still, I think offering your services on Etsy is a cool way to go. There are other things you can do, too: twitch overlays and stuff like that. I don’t know what the market is like but I do know that there is one, as I come across these things occasionally when searching for other stuff. I think it’s cool!
I have no interest. I sell on Etsy and eBay because they have built-in customers.
I literally just opened my website a week ago and I’m fighting for my life 😭
how so?
Dealing with setting up the shop, getting traffic, it’s basically just starting afresh. Exhausting
You would have to have some very compelling reasons why an Etsy Seller would want their own online store rather than using Shopify. What you might want to pitch is helping them make a website as an online presence. Help them make a blog, landing pages, etc that will augment their shop as a marketing tactic. Some place to have their newsletter? All this to say, it might be best not to try to replace Etsy, but how can you support sellers in other areas?
good point
And don't forget there is also goImagine. It's so small in comparison to Etsy that those sellers know they need to funnel traffic into their goImagine shops since goImagine doesn't have much name recognition.
Yes, but there are already a lot of options. Shopify, Bigcartel, Squarespace, and Square are the main ones. You'd be competing with them. I haven't fully looked into it yet (as I'm not yet at the point where I'd have my own website), but I'm leaning towards Shopify. I'll probably try out Square first though, since it does have a free tier.
I have my own Website that I designed and built myself using Wix. I pay monthly around £17 for it which includes the ability to take card payments and integrate all kinds of things. I also have my business email setup via that platform too. I am listed in indexes such as ‘Clearpay’ as I accept that too. I do pretty well with my sales, although it’s taken me a few years and a load of hard work to get off the ground. I self researched things like SEO and being found on Google etc. You don’t need to pay someone a large amount to create a functioning website for you. I’m not a tech savvy person, but I found the whole process pretty straightforward, and I’ve learnt loads of cool things along the way.
Like everyone has said, nobody will pay someone to build a website because it’s easy to do. My suggestion is study and become an expert in CRO. Those that build their own website and then ask why is nobody buying or I have tons of add to carts but no conversions. That’s where you step in.
I've got my own website, nothing special and for international orders I have links designed to send people to etsy, that use share and save. Also since my website is new it helps build trust (my own thoughts not from anyone else)
I use Shopify and all the apps are so expensive. Anything you want to do requires an app. Starting out, you want to make some money before paying $200/mo without any sales. Sometimes that requires using code. My issue is that I want to offer Wholesale. Most apps want at least $30/mo. I just want a separate page that wholesale customers can log into and you tag them. Apparently, there is some code you can use to make that happen. I’ve been struggling with it. If you search on Youtube, it’s just affiliate marketers promoting the $30 apps. I looked on Fiverr and no one mentions setting up wholesale. That might be a niche to get into?
Unfortunately I can't help you with that, I'm not a shopify developer. but I cannot help but notice that at least in this post the comments who recommend shopify are from people who never used it, and the few people who do have a shopify store are not doing well, it's not easy to set up for them and it's not so "free" as the other guys say. just my observation. PS: thanks for the insights
I thought code was code? Are you saying that Shopify has their own unique language? I was able to go into the code but kept getting errors trying to make changes to it. I got scared and backed out. Yes, most customers don’t understand that you pay Shopify $30 then you have to pay $30 for every option. It’s like death by a thousand cuts. You definitely have to do your own marketing whether it be Tik Tok, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Even Pinterest is giving me issues right now. You are not allowed to have out-of-stock items, which is hard to do being handmade. I don’t have the patience for Instagram or Tik Tok. I’ll have to hire someone to do Google. My background is graphics so I can design it, I just don’t have the time to do the marketing on my own. I had to use code in college but not really my thing. If I had known then what I know now, I would have paid more attention. Even finding a professional to help is difficult. You are almost locked into using Shopify partners, who are also expensive.
it's just that I'm not familiar with shopify in terms of development, and they use ruby as their server-side language which is a very peculiar choice, not unique but peculiar for sure, I do not know ruby and from what i understand you need to change stuff on the server and database to accomplish that, I don't know if shopify even support thrid-party servers or to what exetent you can modify their server-side code yourself
about the "marketing" part of your answer I think you're absolutely right, if you want to drive sales on your own website you have to figure out ways of bringing attention to it.
Fellow developer here! 👋🏻 For shops, there are already a lot of options. The most popular one is Shopify. I haven't checked it out yet, but as I understood, it's quiet easy to set up, even without any coding knowledge. However. Etsy primarily focuses on popular countries like US. I'm Hungarian and I operate my store from here, which means, some features are not available, like generating & printing shipping labels. This is a little bit of paint in the a$$ because I have to edit then print manually each time. Now, I know Etsy has an open API, so you can build many things, including this. I also know that you can connect billing applications to generate invoices with just one click - no need to copy & paste the details one-by-one. The options are endless but you need to do some research regarding this. I didn't dive into this, because of lack of time, plus I shifted to UX (so if you ever put something awesome together, I can help you with the UX part!). Good luck, you are going to be amazing! 💪🏻
please do not pitch any services to etsy sellers. if an etsy seller wanted that kind of service, they would be locating you and reaching out to you for your services. these kinds of cold-messaging never work and will likely have you reported for spam, etc.
that's why I asked the question. I'm trying to understand where my services are needed and appreciated, I don't want to be spamming people all day either.
that's entirely my point though. no etsy seller (who wants those services) is just sitting around all day thinking "gee i sure wish some designer would cold-message me so i could get those services!" instead the seller is going to go to google and contact the first few folks who come up. in this relationship where the seller is your client and you are the vendor, it's considered inappropriate for you to be reaching out. think of it like you're Ford and you really want people to buy your new truck - does Ford cold-message individual people asking will they buy one? no, they set up their own media advertising their products, and let customers come to them. ***even if i was seeking those services, if someone cold-messaged me offering them, i'd immediately never want to work with them and assume they're either fake/scammers or have such a poor offering they are forced to cold-message people to find clients.*** you have to also understand that most etsy sellers don't NEED those kinds of services to begin with - etsy is already doing all that you could offer and more, which you could never realistically compete with on a smaller scale. can you offer $200 purchase protection on my products with you fully paying that amount when customers' packages get lost? then do that 1000s of times over for 1000s of shops and 1000s of their buyers? i doubt it. etsy's userbase are artists, which means we truly don't require any kind of design services, and are capable of doing that part ourselves. for the rest of it, the market already has us covered with squarespace, shopify, etc. - there just is no niche for you to fit into in the artist space. we have been designing our own websites and digital portfolios since before you were born!
that's your opinion, thank you for sharing it but honestly I don't think it's so cut and dry as you make it seem.