The Cost of Selling on Etsy ✽ 40 Free Etsy Listings!

This one is a post for those who would like to sell on Etsy, but haven't started yet! Maybe you have been reading my posts and decided that it doesn't sound as hard as you feared, or maybe it's something you have only just considered. Either way, before you start selling on Etsy, there is one thing that you will want to think about; the cost of owning a shop.

Since you will be the only one responsible for your shop, you want to be sure that you have enough resources to get you through the initial starting up period, before your items start to sell, so that you don't have to close down before you see any reward! Obviously, you want to count in the cost of your materials. That will vary depending on what you sell ;). Other costs you might pay are promoted listings; prices vary, as you can set your own budget. This is not a required feature, though, and one that so far I have not used. The same applies for any Facebook ads, etc. that you may want to run. You may also want to invest in a light box or photographer's paper for your pictures, and a letter scale. These are all variables that are up to you and your product, though. Here we'll only talk about the costs directly related to using Etsy's site...

Fortunately, the initial cost for listing the items is not that expensive; every time you publish a listing, you pay just 20 cents. That means that for 50 listings, which is the amount people usually suggest aiming for (a shop with 2 or more pages gets better attention, and each page holds 24 listings), only costs $10.00! These listings last for 4 months now before they need renewed, so it's really not bad. The 20 cent fee is applied even if the same item is bought two or more at a time; even if it comes out of your shop 2 at a time, without being renewed from one to another, they still get their initial 20 cents for both of the items. The listing is automatically set to auto-renew for another 20 cents after 4 months; if you forsee that being an issue, you can change it to require manually relisting :).

Material costs and listing fee are the only things you will pay until you actually make a sale! At the point that one of your item sells, Etsy will take 3.5% of your profit, the actual cost of the item (but not shipping or tax). There will also be a small fee for processing the payment from one bank to another. Depending on whether it is a credit card, debit card, paypal, or another method, it varies slightly; usually it is approximately 2.5-2.8%. If they have to change the funds from, say, GBP to USD, there will also be a fee of 2.5%. This means that at the most, using Paypal and needing your currency changed, you will be paying 8.8% of your profit. For a $10.00 item, after subtracting all fees from Etsy, you will make $8.92, not taking into account your material costs, which varies. And again, only the first 20 cents is paid before you have made money!

The final thing you will need to plan for is shipping price. There are two ways for you to charge shipping on Etsy. The first is to manually enter a price that is about the average mean of the cost of shipping it from multiple places. This is faulty and difficult, but can work in a pinch. The other option is to buy a scale, and add the weight and dimensions of your packaged item to Etsy. This allows them to calculate exactly the price from your house to the buyers, and there is even a handling fee you can add, so that you don't pay anything out of pocket for your boxes/bubble wrap/bubble mailers or other packaging requirements! We'll talk more about shipping soon :).

And finally, I have some good news for those of you who have not opened an Etsy shop yet, but would like to - I have a link you can use that will earn you 40 FREE listings!!! You could start up a shop with NO fees if you liked, by using this link: http://etsy.me/2xqiRJ6 to set it up! You must use that link (you can't navigate away from that page while setting up), and you'll be rewarded with 40 listings, no initial fee attached! I would be appreciative if you set up your shop through this link, because I would get these free listings, too :). To officially set up your shop, you will need an Etsy account, a shop name, and pictures and information for your first listing :)!And I'd love to help if you have any questions!

Do you have an Etsy shop? If so, drop your link in the comments so I could check it out :)! I'm doing some posts that will share shops later this month, and your's could be included :)! Are you considering the idea of starting an Etsy shop? Don't forget you could do so with 40 free listings using the link above!