Etsy Review: Is Selling on Etsy Worth It?

Etsy is an online platform for selling and buying unique finds and handmade creations. Millions of people visit the site every year—and spend billions of dollars in the process. The platform allows you to build out an online store with minimal tech skills, giving you the power to craft an entire business on Etsy.

Founded all the way back in 2005, Etsy has built a reputation as the best online selling platform for artisans, crafters, and other artists. Today, Etsy’s “house of brands” also includes the e-commerce platforms Depop (fashion) and Reverb (musical instruments).

Below, we’ll outline how running an Etsy shop works and what key features you’ll get from choosing an Etsy website to sell your crafts.

How to run an Etsy shop

Here’s a breakdown of how to open an Etsy shop and what to expect as a seller:

1. Create an account: First, you need to sign up for Etsy on the Etsy website. To create an account, go to the Etsy sell page and click “Get started.”
2. Provide details for your online store: You’ll be prompted to answer a few questions about your business name and location.
3. List and sell products: List products on your Etsy store, and then arrange to have them shipped to customers who make a purchase request.
4. Get paid: The buyer pays for an order, and then Etsy processes the payment within 1 business day and sends you the money according to your preferred deposit schedule.
5. Get reviews from buyers: After someone purchases one of your products, they have 100 days to leave you a review. Reviews affect your Etsy review score, but you have the freedom to respond to reviews or report inappropriate reviews.

Once your Etsy shop is live, you can customize it to show off your personal brand, add product listings, and promote and market your shop. You can even manage your Etsy shop on the go using the Etsy Seller mobile app.

Where to download the Etsy Seller app

App Store Google Play

What you can sell on Etsy

You can list a ton of different items on Etsy. However, you can’t resell handmade items—you can only list handmade items that you created yourself. Additionally, vintage items must be at least 20 years old, and you can’t sell anything that might infringe on someone else’s intellectual property.

Etsy Permitted Products

Many people associate Etsy with physical products, but you can also sell printables on Etsy. These are digital products that customers buy and download. Because of the lower material costs and time/effort saved on shipping, digital designs are popular choices for Etsy sellers who want a low-maintenance side hustle.

Seller requirements

All Etsy account owners must be at least 18 years old. However, you can still sell on Etsy as a teen aged 13 or older—you just need an adult’s approval and supervision. Apart from this age requirement, anyone in a supported country can become an Etsy seller.

Etsy does not require sellers to undergo background checks. However, as of February 2024, you will need to double-verify your identity with a photo ID and selfie when signing up.

Locations

To open an Etsy shop, you need to be in a supported location included in Etsy’s list of approved countries. This won’t be an issue if you’re based in the US—you can operate your Etsy shop from any town or city nationwide.

Etsy Payments

To get paid, you need to enroll in Etsy Payments, Etsy’s relatively new payment platform that allows buyers to make purchases through a range of payment methods. After you make a sale, you’ll have access to your earnings the next business day (or within 3 days during your first 90 days).

You can choose your own Etsy deposit schedule for when you want Etsy to transfer your earnings to your bank account. You have a choice of daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly deposits. The only catch is that you need at least $25 in earnings for daily deposits in the US.

Etsy Purchase Protection

As a protection measure for sellers and buyers, Etsy offers automatic purchase protection on qualifying orders up to $250. Under this coverage, if a customer requests a refund, they’ll be able to get their money back while you keep your earnings.

For purchase protection to apply, the product must meet one of these conditions:

• Never reached the buyer due to shipment issues (e.g., it was lost in transit)
• Arrived after its estimated delivery date window
• Arrived damaged (for the first instance per calendar year)
• Matched the listing description and photos, but the buyer claimed it did not

In 2023, sellers made an average of $1,236 on the Etsy platform. 1 This equates to earnings of $103 per month. However, this figure doesn’t capture the variations in how much more some sellers earn than others.

One of the biggest factors influencing your earning potential is what you’re selling. You’ll find Etsy most profitable if you’re creating attractive products in one of the top-selling Etsy categories. Other factors, like the cost of creating your goods and competition in your niche, will also affect how profitable Etsy is for you.

With millions of sellers on the platform, the competition alone can make it difficult to sell on Etsy. For this reason, top sellers on Etsy often say that the hardest part of running a profitable Etsy shop isn’t making your product or even using the platform—it’s the marketing.

How much does it cost to run an Etsy shop?

Unfortunately, it isn’t free to sell on Etsy. You may need to pay a one-time fee of $15 to open your Etsy shop. After that, you’ll pay a small listing fee of $0.20 each time you post a new product or renew an expired listing.

Apart from these fees, you don’t need to pay anything to keep your Etsy page up and running. Etsy has no monthly fees or subscription fees. You’ll just pay certain costs each time you make a sale.

Etsy Seller Fee Chart

At the bare minimum, you need to pay $15.20 to get started on Etsy. After that, Etsy’s fees equate to 9.5% + $0.25 for every sale you make.

Optional Etsy expenses

In addition, Etsy offers other optional services that come at an extra fee:

• Etsy Plus: This is an optional premium subscription plan that costs $10 per month. It includes credits for listings and ads as well as access to various discounts and shop customization tools.
• Etsy advertising: You can enroll in offsite ads or the on-site Etsy Ads program. Fees vary according to the number of sales you make.
• In-person selling: Etsy offers you the option to sell your products at physical points of sale. For this service, you’ll be charged $0.20 per transaction + applicable Square transaction fees (ranging from 2.6% + $0.10 to 3.5% + $0.15).
• Pattern website creation: You have the option to use a website creation tool called Pattern to design your own custom site on Etsy. There are several fees for using Pattern, including a $15 monthly fee and $3 yearly fee.
• Shipping labels: Etsy offers the option to purchase shipping labels from major carriers (including FedEx and UPS) directly on their website. Costs vary depending on the order.
• International sales: If you’re selling internationally on Etsy, you may need to pay currency conversion fees or regulatory operating fees.

Bear in mind that running any online shop comes with several additional expenses, including labor, material, marketing, and shipping costs. All these expenses will affect your actual take-home earnings from your Etsy shop.

Becoming a successful Etsy seller is about more than just choosing the right products to sell. You also need to learn how the Etsy algorithm works and craft your listings to end up in front of as many eyes as possible. Here’s a deeper look at key considerations affecting your Etsy earning potential.

Etsy’s search algorithm

When a shopper searches for a product on Etsy, the Etsy search algorithm attempts to serve that shopper products they’ll be most interested in. Unfortunately, that means without the right strategy, it’s possible that shoppers will never find your Etsy store, even if you sell exactly what they’re looking for.

Etsy displays products to shoppers based on several factors:

• The words you use to describe your products (they must match the searcher’s query)
• Your listing quality score, which is calculated based on clicks, favorites, and purchases
• Your customer service record
• How recently the product was listed
• Your location relative to the shopper’s location

In order to be seen by a high number of shoppers, you need to carefully manage every aspect of your listings and store.

What products you’re selling

Certain items sell better on Etsy than others. In 2023, six sales categories represented nearly 90% of all Etsy sales: 1

• Homeware
• Jewelry and accessories
• Apparel
• Craft supplies
• Paper and party supplies
• Toys and games

Beyond selling items that fit into one of these most popular categories, it’s important to conduct market and customer research to see what’s most profitable and popular on the platform.

For example, will certain products cost more to make but turn a higher profit? Will some turn a very small profit but are trending enough to sell in large quantities? These are questions you should ask before you hone in on a particular product niche on Etsy.

How you compare to the competition

If you’re selling something that many other Etsy shops are selling, you’ll have to consider how you compare to the competition. Do they have a lot more reviews than you? Do they have stellar photos and videos for their products, and lengthy, in-depth product descriptions? Is there a big price difference between your products and theirs?

Positioning yourself as more attractive than the competition will help you appeal not only to shoppers but also the Etsy algorithm, allowing more shoppers to find you.

Whether or not it’s worth selling on Etsy depends on your product types and your ultimate goals. For some sellers, the extra exposure Etsy naturally provides is worth the work of starting and maintaining an Etsy shop. Starting an Etsy shop is also easier than building your own website and trying to organically find shoppers.

However, Etsy isn’t necessarily reliable. Some people earn next to nothing, while others make a steady income from selling on Etsy. Nevertheless, this is a risk you’re bound to face regardless of where you sell your crafts or artisan products.

You’ll find Etsy to be a great option if any of the following applies to you:

• You want to try out online selling, but you’re not ready to fully commit
• You create highly niche products that are difficult to advertise
• You’re looking for a low-commitment way to earn a small profit doing what you love
• You’re more focused on maximizing sale numbers than overall profits

It’s relatively easy to sell on Etsy. But if you already have a large online following, you may be better off simply selling your creations through your own website.

Pros and cons

Most Etsy sellers who’ve been on the platform for a while repeat the same pros and cons of selling on Etsy.

The challenges of running an e-commerce store

Regardless of whether you sell on Etsy or another platform, running an e-commerce store comes with challenges. In addition to building and maintaining the e-commerce store, you also have to market your products effectively (even on Etsy), provide customer service, and handle shipping. This is all on top of actually creating the items you’re selling.

Before jumping into a side gig selling crafts online, consider every element that goes into running an e-commerce store and make sure you’re in a position to dedicate the amount of work required to be successful.

Selling on Etsy vs. Your Own Website

Even if you opt for selling on Etsy, it’s still a smart idea to have your own website for marketing purposes.

The consensus from Etsy seller reviews and online discussions seems to be that Etsy is a good website for selling handmade products and that it’s well worth it for newbies who want to test out the waters of online selling.

It’s one of the most popular craft selling platforms, giving you exposure to a huge customer base. On top of that, the platform takes care of all the hard work for you, allowing you to focus on your crafts.

With that said, many Etsy sellers say that to achieve the best results, you should take advantage of multiple sales channels and not rely on Etsy alone. Others warn about why Etsy is bad, pointing to the platform’s limited customer service and frequently changing algorithm, which can radically affect your earnings.

You can find plenty of Etsy success stories online, showing that the platform does offer a route to quit your job and start earning money selling crafts. However, you’ll also find some discussions of how Etsy’s popularity has dropped in recent years.

Case A: 

“An analogy I sometimes use, is that Etsy is like renting a fully furnished hotel room if you are travelling. It’s more expensive, but everything is already set up for you, and it’s right there where all the tourist ‘traffic’ is. Your own web site is like hand building your own tiny home from scratch. Cheaper in the long run, but harder to get started, and you have to ‘drive’ to where the tourist ‘traffic’ is.”

Case B: 

“My personal reasons for choosing Etsy over my own site:

1. Sales tax. I don’t want to have to figure out when I need to collect/pay it and when I don’t.
2. Traffic. With your own site you need to direct people to it. I don’t have the time, energy or knowhow to build a following that is specifically coming to my site. 90% of my Etsy traffic comes from within Etsy. Which means with my own site I would have approximately 10% of the traffic I have now.
3. Shipping profiles. I have a square website that I use to sell items I make for certain organizations (fire departments, dog rescues). Creating shipping profiles for different size items, combining items, and so on, is actually so much easier on Etsy.
4. For me the commissions I pay are well worth the resources I get. I do not use ads (offsite or Etsy ads), I do not pay for anything beyond the basic fees, which come out to right around 10%.”

Case C:

“I decided to stop selling on Etsy for several reasons including:

1. Etsy changes its algorithm every so often and you can go from making many sales to only making a handful of sales overnight.
2. There’s not much customization that you can do to your Etsy shop, including Etsy subscription platforms.
3. Etsy’s fees start to eat into your profits and their fees continue to increase.
4. You can’t really build a brand on Etsy. Most people who order on Etsy don’t remember the shop name, they just say ‘I got it on Etsy’.
5. Etsy shows the products of other shop owners at the bottom of your product listings, therefore Etsy doesn’t care who the customer buys from, they just want the customer to make a purchase on the platform.
6. I knew I wanted to work with businesses and nonprofits and wanted to present my business as being ‘professional’ but only having an Etsy shop and not a standalone website would make it look more like a hobby.
7. You can’t offer extensive customized forms to allow customers to easily enter their personalization for an order.
8. You can’t get rid of negative comments that have nothing to do with your product or service.
9. Etsy makes it hard for you to email your customers and build your own email list.”

Case D:

“I think it’s worth having an Etsy shop, but don’t put all your eggs in the Etsy basket. Work on getting really good at SEO and optimizing your shop, so that Etsy will drive traffic for you. Then you should also have your own mailing list and website, so that you can direct your previous Etsy customers to your website instead.”

Case E:

“I’ve been selling on it since 2015 and the positives have always outweighed any of the negatives. If you have good photos (and include some descriptions in your photos), don’t pay for ads, have a high profit margin on each item you sell compared to the time to create them, it’s totally worth it. The fees are not nearly as high as other sites and other ‘handmade’ selling platforms don’t get nearly as much traction.”

Case F:

“I started my etsy shop 11 years ago. I started selling 10 years ago. Got busy 9 years ago. Quit my job to focus on etsy exclusively 8 years ago. I’m always busy. I make more money than I ever did as an office executive, brokerage assistant, bartender, etc. I bought a house and I just paid it off in full. So etsy = the best choice I ever made.

“BUT there are a LOT of headaches. Much to complain about. And I do sell wholesale and at craft fairs on the side. I’d still rather run my business than do anything else, and etsy is a LARGE portion of my business.”