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So what we're talking about today is how to build a business beyond Etsy because far too many handmade business owners They start up, get their shop on Etsy, and think, that's it, I have a business.

But we're here to tell you why you need to expand beyond Etsy, why you should do it, how you should do it, and we're going to start launching a series of episodes all around how you can do this and how each part works together to build you a kind of sustainable ecosystem, shall we call it,

Mm-hmm

that supports you and all kind of drives each other.

And that doesn't mean you have to leave Etsy.

Use it, turn it from your, from like your home to a topic source is kind of a little bit about.

So I know it seems like a great platform, but it's really not built for your long term success.

I know far too many business owners who relied on Etsy and then for whatever reason, whether legitimate or not, Etsy decides to shut them down.

And if you don't have somewhere else to sell that you've been sending your customers to, that's it.

Your business is essentially gone.

So, we don't want you to take that risk.

We want to kind of give you a nice strategy that will help you.

Yeah, let's say it's a net.

They make sure that no matter what happens, you have a business, you have somewhere to sell, and you have your kind of customers collected somewhere that you can tell them where to go.

net.

Let's get to it.

So, why are we telling you not to rely too much on Etsy?

What are like the hidden downsides?

That if you're new to business or you haven't considered going somewhere else like Shopify, why are we telling you to do this?

The real main one is that you don't own your audience.

Etsy owns your customer list.

When people tell someone else about an item and say, where do you get it from?

I got it from Etsy.

They don't say I got it from name of business, they say I got it from Etsy, and if you want to contact them, Etsy will not like that, they will shut you down.

I know one of the biggest shops in Etsy got shut down because they were contacting customers when they shouldn't have been.

So Etsy like, Etsy owns that.

They're Etsy's customers.

They just give it, they let you borrow them, essentially.

Like we'll, we'll give you some customers and you pay us a lot of fees.

And you don't want that.

You want to own your own customer list.

You want to have a strategy to collect those people.

Normally on an email list is what we're going to recommend.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a future episode.

But you want to start owning your audience.

The other biggest one that is just gets worse and worse over time is everything's supposed to change on Etsy when it comes to fees and their policies.

And if you don't keep up, you'll get cut out.

It's getting harder and harder to make a profit on Etsy.

Sometimes I'm like, Ooh, I really need to increase my prices because look at how much Etsy fees take.

But when I get the same order on Shopify, I'm like, Oh, is that it?

Is that the fees?

I'm like, I'm always like shocked.

I'm so used to Etsy that when I get this order.

And it's like, it's not for this much and this is how much we're paying you.

I'm like, Whoa, that is so much less than Etsy.

And and they keep changing their policies.

Also people who are selling it was like digital downloads.

It's around like AI and, and I can't remember exactly what they changed, but a whole bunch of listings had to come down.

Because they have to change their policies, they change policies, well, what should I say?

Like around what you're allowed to sell.

I know for me in the handmade personalized embroidery world, I used to have gift sets and Like, there were, it was when I first launched, and my first collection was like, it shouldn't be this stuff.

There was aprons, there was on gloves, there was tea towels and stuff.

And I would pair it with some other items in a gift set, and those items weren't handmade, which adult acceptance policies was totally fine at the time.

There was like I have, like a baking tray, a wooden spoon, measuring spoon, like I had all this extra stuff and there were nice little gift sets and they sold, especially at Christmas.

And then Antsy one day decided, you know what, every part of the thing has to be handmade and I had to start doing that apart from on my own.

website.

That collection's retired now.

still get through.

oh yeah, that's a whole minefield

That's

the,

a vent for another day.

yeah, it's a chain of policies.

I'm following the policies, they aren't.

And it's the people who are handmade and they're just trying to follow the policies who end up getting banned and the Aliexpress people, dropshippers, manage to slip through.

Disposals are changing.

They had around, like, in the past couple of years, they had this thing where if you get what Etsy deems as too many orders, they'll put your shop on a break.

And you know, I totally have the ability to manage all these orders.

I'm fine.

You can't do anything about it.

When you clear those orders, there's a time before they let you sell again.

And, like, who wants someone else to tell them they can't make any more orders?

we think you're too busy.

I'm fine.

Yeah, and the other one that I thought of was, oh, there's a new thing with holding money.

Like, they won't always give you all of the money straight away.

They'll suddenly go, okay, we're going to need most of the money of this order, for however many days before we pay it out.

And again, if you're not expecting that, and your business is kind of running on the, like, I sell stuff, I order stuff, I pay my bills.

It's suddenly decided we're going to keep most of your money.

Is, can be, like, catastrophic.

We don't like Etsy for those reasons.

It's hard to believe I'm telling you don't leave Etsy,

Nevermind on all of that, there's high competition on Etsy.

It's a low barrier to entry marketplace.

Which, when you're just starting out, and you need to get something online, you have a shopping cart, you have a product, you just need to give people a way to give you money, then Etsy is great.

But, since there's such a low barrier to entry, That's what everyone does.

And when you're looking in the marketplace for something specific, it becomes very often on Etsy, a question of who's going to give it to me for the cheapest and get it to me the fastest.

So you have very high competition.

You're competing on price, not necessarily the value.

And in reality, you're competing on pictures.

So whoever can have the best photos up there is probably going to get the most sales, unless they're the most expensive.

But even then, they might still get it.

Yeah.

when you go to a shop, what do you do?

You search for an item, you go up to the corner, and you push from low to high.

Like, and then you look, and you go, okay, what is, like, the cheapest one that doesn't look awful?

Because.

there's some people who are not, who shouldn't be selling their stuff on Etsy who are on there, but it's, it's what you do.

You don't let go, like, well, let's look high to low.

So it really does become about price and moving away from that is like, you're not competing yourself.

Your listings are competing against each other, not against the 10, 000 other people making candles or so for jewelry on Etsy totally changes the game.

The next one, the skittist is.

You can be shut down overnight.

And see it time and time again.

There, like, there are people, I've been in a bunch of Facebook groups, there are people who are like, I sell exclusively stolen Disney products and for some reason Etsy shut me down.

I'm like, yeah, they should have.

But there's the other business owners who are, who have done nothing wrong and Etsy suddenly decide for whatever reason, we're suspicious of you, we're going to shut your shop down.

And like, if you're relying on that business and that income and you don't have anywhere else.

You've lost your livelihood in a second because of some weird snap judgment of Etsy and they're really horrible to contact.

Yeah, it's an AI algorithm that shut you down, not a person, and trying to get a person to review your case or review your products is hell.

I had that several years ago when the Amber thing happened, All of a sudden, because a lot of people were selling, like, the amber the baby teething necklaces.

I forget if there was a lawsuit or what ha I forget the surrounding circumstances, but basically shut down anything amber in jewelry.

So I had a listing that had an amber colored pearl.

And that listing got shut down just because amber was in the title and done the deal.

Couldn't and even if you go to, like, just relist that item, they shut you down.

Heh.

Yeah, and that's one thing that's one lesson when it's your whole shop,

Mm hmm.

I

what do you do?

A lot of the times, yeah, I've seen people who their whole shop shut down, they contact Etsy and they're like, oh yeah, we shut down your shop.

Do not contact us again.

This is a closed case.

Mm

it's like What do you do without being able to like hire a lawyer or something that goes through like it's illegal is like the way you're supposed to get around that, which is expensive.

And people are like I make jewelry from my bedroom.

I don't have money for lawyers.

Like that's a really scary thing to happen.

And you don't want to rely on a platform that's going to do that.

And, and we, one of our clients had their listing stolen.

It was listed on another site.

With their images, and Etsy said, Oh, you stole this item.

And it's like, no, no, this item was stole from me.

But Etsy was like, no, yeah.

Etsy's like, no, we think this item was stolen.

We're going to shut down this list.

And I think it was one of our best hours.

And it's like, what, what do you do when Etsy just won't listen to you?

And the other big one is algorithm changes.

And that's happened a bunch over Etsy over the years.

And like, there's some people who are really great and who really studied Etsy SEO.

And like, well, my strategy has never changed.

The majority of people are not that focused on the Etsy SEO strategies and stuff.

And just saw over time my sales have dropped.

It can be algorithms.

I know when Etsy introduced this gift mode thing, it really shook things up and people are like, I just don't get the same sales anymore.

They started doing a localized thing so they would only show you sellers who were in your area instead of like nationwide or worldwide or whatever.

A lot of settings that like automatically turned on even if you didn't want them as a shopper.

Yeah, and the free shipping thing, they, I think they kind of went back on it a little bit but they were big for a while, like, we won't show your listings as high if you don't turn on free shipping.

And it's, it's someone asking about raises.

So like that, I feel like we're going a bit long on the hidden downsides, but those are the big downsides of being a NetSafe.

So What, how does having your own home change that?

Having your own website on a platform like Shopify is what we recommend, but there's a million different platforms all with their own benefits and drawbacks.

You own your audience.

If you're on your own website, you have eight billion ways to grow your email list there.

You can do pop ups, you can do landing pages, you can do sign up forums in the footer, you can do sign up forums on their own page, you can collect consent at checkout.

Like there's so many different ways to build your email list and keep that customer data.

You have that list of customers and even like you own that data, that data is in your account.

Even the people who you don't want to push into market to, like you still have their data.

It's a and like Amazon applies in most of these cases too.

And like they own the data and you like do not do anything with that.

You lose a ton of the fees.

I should have like taken the time and done some direct comparison, but.

Yes.

Etsy takes such a massive amount these days, it depends where you are, like in the UK there's like extra fees, there's VAT on all the fees, so like it's even worse than the US and like it adds up to a considerable chunk, especially if you've sold enough that you're automatically opted in to their offsite ads, which is like 30%, I think, if you get an 30 percent on top of all the other fees, and it really adds up, whereas it has.

When I get it on Shopify, it's like, it's tiny.

I, like, I should have looked up actual percentages, or actual numbers for you.

fee on Shopify and it's like 2%.

It's wonderful.

yeah, I just got a big order this week.

And how much was it for?

Oh yeah, here we go, okay.

I got 136, and the fees were 3.

22.

And like, that is nothing!

Whereas And I don't have an order that big to easily find out what it is on Etsy, but I can tell you it would not, it would not be that low.

No, you probably would have made what, like 50 pounds off at Etsy.

Something, something ridiculous like that.

I'm trying to do a little comparison.

Okay.

So that's, I'm trying to do,

Etsy

I'm doing some really basic math.

I'd like, I mean a month that has around.

triple the amount of sales of that order.

So I divided it by three.

That's, gotta get my calc later.

But Etsy is going to fee every step of the process, whereas like Shopify or some of the other platforms.

They're just going to feed the transaction because they have a payment processor.

So there's that fee.

Otherwise you pay a monthly fee to be on the platform, typically.

And then, or to use stuff on the platform.

And then they don't take anything else.

Etsy doesn't charge you to be on the platform, but they're gonna charge your transaction, they're gonna charge your listing, they're gonna charge your shipping, which drives me crazy that they take a fee on shipping.

how many others are there, Andrew?

There's a whole listing of them.

I'm like, I'm in the back of my shop.

If you're, if you're if you're in the UK, there is, okay, there is, let me look, there is the listing fee, VAT on the listing fee, processing fee, transaction fee, and There's both, processing fee and transaction fee, a regulatory operating fee, that and the transaction, that and the regulatory operating fee, that and the processing fee and then postage.

Like, it's, it's a lot.

I did the math.

So like, this is really quick basics, so don't take it as perfect, but on troubled sales, like the 3.

22 on Shopify, it's 59.

89 on.

Etsy.

So even if I made no other sales this month and I paid my Shopify fees, like the 30 a month or whatever, it's still less than Etsy for that one order.

So like it, it really does make a matter.

So if you're like, think if you're thinking well, I can't afford to be on Shopify.

If you're making a cut, like just a couple of hundred dollars a month, like you don't have to ask them, you're probably cheaper if you can get the same amount of sales on Shopify.

Like you can cover your fee, your monthly fee for that.

And I'm like, I'm not even that cheap for Shopify, because I also, I have an add on to be able to do all the personalization that's an extra 10 a month, like I'm paying a decent amount for Shopify.

Yep, me too.

Now,

significantly cheaper to make sales.

Even Amazon, which has a horrible reput See, Amazon has a really horrible reputation for being expensive, but I pay less fees on there as well.

Etsy has really gotten

Yeah.

for fees.

Yeah, sell this like why would you be on Etsy because we're listening to all these horrible things about you don't own your audience all these crazy fees Everything else going on algorithm changes like Price competition all of that.

Why would you be there?

The one thing that Etsy does have is traffic versus your own website You then have to drive the traffic Etsy has done the job of bringing customers in whether they click on your products That's up in the air But does have people.

So if you can just shift that traffic or siphon off a little bit, go into your own website, you can make a lot more money.

Yeah, and it's, it's it has been falling recently.

They're not quite what they were and there's a lot more competition.

So it's so you have full brand control on your own site.

You don't have excess rules.

You have any policies.

Of your own website here.

You

introduced that.

Let's do that.

Yeah, you don't have to abide by excess rules, policy limitations.

Shopify does have some rules, but they aren't that strict.

AI and stuff you're totally free to do.

And I think Shopify, the, just the sound platform is really lax.

I think there are a few more rules for Shopify as a payment processor, like the, the CBD thing.

You can sell CBD on a Shopify shop, but you can't process the payment with Shopify payment.

No, this is just, I've read the terms and conditions like I had this question before, like they have a page on their website that says this.

person I know who reads the terms and conditions.

It's so wonderful.

It's a, it's a page on their website.

I said I didn't read the actual text, but like you can't but what it says, what Shopify stands, they stay on their website, or they did when I read it, could have changed, keep up with the latest shows.

It's like, they're fine with your, you having that on your shop and you're selling it.

But if you just have to not use Shopify payments to process the transaction, if you're using a different payment processor I don't know which ones let you do that, but say PayPal does, you can just set up.

I think you'd maybe need an app.

You can set up where if someone has that in their basket, then it removes the Shopify payment option and they have to pay with a different payment processor.

Like here's I think most of the rules come from Shopify as a payment processor, which also those rules end up coming from places like Visa, MasterCard, and througher.

strict on certain things.

You

touch that.

So Shopify as a platform, maybe don't use their payment processor.

If you're in a certain type of market, but like you can, you're pretty, you're pretty free there.

Keep up with the rules.

If you're in a, in a difficult market, but it's highly regulated, look into it, but you're,

rules of your market.

you have better customer relationships.

You have direct communication.

There's no restrictions.

No one to get angry.

If you send an email instead of doing it through Etsy messages.

Like if you say the wrong thing and I meant like Etsy has some rules on how you're supposed to communicate.

And you don't have that, it's like, my business, why am I stuck on Etsy?

I know like, if people, I don't know what you're supposed to do anymore, but like, if people did like a wrong address or something, you have to send something out again.

It's like, you were, you were allowed to invoice them through PayPal, not Etsy, and I don't know if that's still true, because that seems, like, there's also, like, there was a time when The delivery went wrong, and I was like, I don't want to refund you for this, but Etsy probably would.

I was like, trying to find a really subtle way of putting it in the message, like, you have that Etsy buyer protection thing, complain to them and you'll get your money back, but I'm not going to give it to you.

But I didn't know how to say that, because like, Etsy's not going to like, going to like it if I do that.

And like, sometimes people will message you by email, and you're like, oh, I don't want, like, if someone wants to change something, like, I want this in a different color, I'm like, oh, can you please send me the same message on Etsy, because.

I need proof that we had this conversation in case you.

Then put in a claim and say, I have this in black and you gave it to me in red.

If that message is in email, Etsy won't have your back.

If it's in the Etsy messages, then they will.

Also, the other thing that I don't really love is if you ever need to contact Etsy or something, they'll read all your messages.

Which, I don't know, I feel it's creepy.

I'm like, that's my private messages, go away.

You just had to contact Etsy about it.

It was a, it was a weird problem there.

Someone was trying to send me lots of money and Etsy was like, no, don't.

Do that.

And like, you nearly ruined my largest ever art.

I think still is my largest ever art to this day.

And it's just like, Nope, can't check out.

And they're like, Oh yeah, I read all your messages.

And this is why I'm like, how dare you?

That's a total random side.

And higher conversion rates.

A well optimized store converts better than an Etsy shop.

Because people are shopping around, or looking at a bunch of listings, like, your conversion rate tends to be lower on Etsy.

This is like an overall kind of thing.

Obviously, it depends on who you are.

But there's also a whole bunch of links to your competitors at the bottom of your page.

You don't, you don't have that on your Shopify, unless you're trying to give your sales away.

That would be a

So even like,

right there.

yeah,

want mine, but you want them.

They're going to give me a kickback.

Okay.

Don't know anyone who does

but like, yeah, it says commercially, it might be fine, but your personal people come into your shop.

It's lower because people are shopping around, they're looking at 10 different listings or site on one.

They're.

They might originally come and click to your listing, and if that had been the listing they saw, they would have checked out.

But because it was like, oh wait, do you like this one better?

And you're like, oh yeah, me too.

that are just like it.

Yeah, so you have higher conversion rates on your own shop.

I know, personally, I have, I was really reliant on Etsy, and I Didn't want to be, but I'd like had a shop on WooCommerce, then Squarespace, then back to WooCommerce.

And like, it was always a nightmare and I hated them.

And when I finally moved to Shopify, like things changed.

It was easier for me to comfortably go out in like email and social and be like, shop on my shop, like.

I'm excited to get an order when I had to go into the back end of like if I got an order to work WooCommerce I'd be like oh I have to go into WooCommerce and Squarespace was worse but on Shopify I'm like I'm excited it's like low fees it's like easy to see everything I have all my stock like it's really exciting to get an order on Shopify and I have seen much like I have the full control I get people on my email list I have the higher profits people know that they're getting stuff from me I, like you can't like the whole thing with Shopify is, and actually with Etsy is SEO and you think, oh, I'm going to lose that.

I've like lately, I've been looking at my stats.

SEO with Google has been making a massive driver to my shop.

I'm actually as an email person, I'm like.

So that's sad, but like, Ooh, why, why are most of my sales new people coming in through Google?

I'm like, I'm supposed to be handling these repeat customers through email.

But like, no I really noticed an uptick in SEO traffic lately and, and they're, they're much bigger orders.

Like that order I was talking about, like the payout I got today, it was like 130.

I'm like, that's a nice big order.

My average cart is way higher on Shopify.

I find Etsy has the lowest cause I'm on Amazon as well.

Amazon is like the mid one and Shopify is And that just is kind of the customer basis on there.

So now that I've kind of laid the foundation of why, why do you want to do this?

We're really going to move into the how.

And that is what the next series of the next, it's a five episode series, so the next four series are all going to be about how we do this.

So in our next episode, we're going to be talking about setting up a high converting website.

We're going to be talking about Shopify because that's what both of us use.

And we've tried enough of their platforms to tell you don't waste your time thinking that you should be on a different one.

Then we're going to move on to how to drive traffic without relying on ads.

And most of that has.

So is it tickled?

That's not the word.

That says tinkered.

I think is the way I'd say tinkered

with

tickle anyone a little bit, but

tickle me, but.

Yeah, but for the most part most right most of our orders on top of your business has been through organic topics So we're gonna talk about how we do that and how we recommend that I just do it episode 4 We're gonna talk about how to use email marketing to boost your sales So that's often repeat customized and I'll give you a little bit about my techniques that I've used to get the vast majority of people who order on Etsy on my email list.

When they make repeat orders, it's through my Shopify website.

And then we're going to talk about scaling and expanding your handmade business so that you have a nice big home beyond Etsy.

Leaving Etsy doesn't have to mean abandoning sales, it means building a more sustainable, profitable business model.

You have your organic traffic, SEO and stuff.

Drive into your site instead of Etsy and you leverage Etsy as more of a traffic source.

That's what we're talking about in the email market one, is how I get those people on my email list and it's It's a traffic source.

If you want to talk more about this, be sure and join our free Facebook group that you'll find in the show notes for this episode.

Not, no matter what, you can always use the benefit of a flash sale to get some money going right now.

And we have, if you've never done it before, you're I don't know that I'm doing flash sales right.

We have a toolkit for you, the flash sale in a snap freebie.

So you can grab that by going to theproductgrowthlab.

com slash flash.

is such a tongue twister slash flash.

And grab that today.

Go to the product growth lab dot hit.

com slash flash.

That's it for today's episode.

Hope you join us in our next session here on the transferring off of Etsy or expanding your business safety net.

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