Etsy

Well, now that I've been trying the Etsy site off and on for a while, what do I think of it. It's nice, but not for me. My current store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/DougHoppesStudio contains my original paintings and prints. The cost to display an item is twenty cents (every time that you renew that item). On top of that, they take a small percentage of the sale.

The main reason that I used the Etsy site was so that I could expand my sales of prints/originals to people that I don't know. Since there are a lot of items on the site and a lot of people know about it, I thought that this would be a good place to start.

I was wrong.

The Etsy site works extremely well for jewelry, craft and clothing artists. It does not work that well for painters and other 2D artists. Part of the reason is that a lot of people are reluctant to purchase paintings in the first place and, more importantly, they come to Etsy to look for a bargain and get something hand-crafted for an extremely low price.

Although I've tried a number of the techniques that they mention, I've sold very very very little on my Etsy shop to people that I didn't know. Even then, the sales to people that I do know has been minimal. Part of the issue is that I don't have the extremely large inventory that is required to get noticed. Most of the people that I saw that was doing well, have more than 200 items to sell. In addition, since there are so many people on Etsy, it's extremely rare that you would ever get on their front page. There's been a number of times that I did a posting of a new item and would not see it on the front page because other listings came directly after mine.

So, as a site to help new people discover you, it's not worth it (for 2D artists). If you are only looking for a site to host your products, it's pretty easy. Although, I would recommend using the Paypal button on your site or using Artfire. As I'm rebuilding my website, I will be be adding Paypal buttons to my site so that people can purchase directly from me.

Note: someone was trying to find my store on Etsy and couldn't. Their store is not searchable by the Google engine and their search engine doesn't find the store unless you type in the exact name. Therefore, you could only find my store by typing in "DougHoppesStudio", not "Doug Hoppes" or "Hoppes", etc.