handmade internet sites by Tina Harknett

July 28, 2012 in Pertinent Articles

I’ve lived on the Isle of Wight in St. Lawrence for nearly 13 years and love it. I’m “mum” to two beautiful Burmese cats and live with my partner of 15 years, Alan. I’ve always been fairly creative and love handmade items, but went through a period of several years where I lost my way a bit, but am now unleashing my creative side again.

Starting up a small business to sell your crafty makes is no easy feat. Sure, you can have your own website, but unless you sell something that’s quite individual and unique, your site can get lost amongst the thousands, sometimes millions, of other sites out there. This is where online handmade websites such as Etsy, Folksy etc. come in very useful.

Unlike ebay, there are no auctions, just a fixed price for anything you want to buy/sell. And, unlike ebay, the fees are pretty reasonable – in fact, some sites are completely free!

So first I introduce you to…..

ETSY www.etsy.com

When I first started my business, my niece (a young, trendy thing with a degree in Art History) suggested I try my hand at selling on Etsy. Me being not quite as young, not quite as trendy with no degrees at all, had never heard of Etsy. So I googled it. What I found was a feast of handmade delights ranging from works of Art to Knitting and Needlecraft and to Woodworking. The quality of the products looked to be a very high standard too.

Mostly an American site, Etsy started in 2005 and has grown very popular since that time. It currently has 39 million monthly unique visitors!! To get started selling on Etsy you must have a credit card which links to your PayPal account as this will be used for Etsy fees and when people buy your items. Listing fees per item are $0.20 (USD), which is roughly 13p, for a quantity of one which lasts four months. So if you were to list, say, a card and you put the quantity as two then you would be charged $0.40. If you sell an item you get charged 3.5% of the total sales (excl. shipping). I would much prefer it if they charged a one off fee for the listings, so if you were listing four items of the same product (so in the same listing) you would just get charged a set amount, because you don’t know how many you’re likely to sell. I always just list one item per product and then if I sell something, just list another one.

You have a shop front where you can add a banner and profile and if you sell various products then you can create sections within your shop.

Listing items is fairly straightforward, you just click on Add an Item in the top toolbar and it takes you through an easy step by step form where you can add categories to list your item, add photos and description and things like shipping details. At the end you just click on Preview Listing so you can check it all looks okay, then click Publish and your item is then listed. There’s a really neat feature that you can use if you have similar items to list – you can just copy a listing and then alter it accordingly which I’ve found very useful.

Etsy is also quite big on creating a Community. It has a feature called Circles which allows you to connect with other members of the Etsy community. This could be friends, family or someone whose work you admire. You just have to click Add to Circle on their profile page and then you’ll be able to see all their activity and stories within your own Activity Feed, so a little bit like a Twitter or Facebook timeline. You can also add listings or shops to your Favourites list and there is a forum where you can share your ideas and stories to other Etsy members.

In summary, Etsy is a really good way of buying and selling individual handcrafted items and connecting with other like minded crafters if you so wish. It is easy to use, looks good and is very popular. However, I don’t like the fact that they charge for every quantity of product you list and it’s mostly American based, so I would rate it;

3.5 / 5

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

FOLKSY www.folksy.com

Once I’d got used to Etsy, I then heard about Folksy. What really attracted me to it was the fact it is UK based. It started a few years after Etsy, and has a very similar look and feel to it, which was quite handy as I more or less knew what I was doing! Fees for listing are 20p (excl. VAT) but you can have up to a quantity of five per product for that, which is a much better system that Etsy. The listing lasts for approximately six months or until the item has sold out. Commission is slightly higher than Etsy, but still not too bad at 5% (excl. VAT) on all sales which is just on the listing price, and not on postage.

The listing process is very similar to Etsy, you have a form where you put item description, photos and what category to list in etc. Also you can view your listing before it goes live. Editing is easy – all listings show up in your dashboard where against each product are edit, delete and list similar buttons. The list similar button is pretty much like Etsy’s copy button – very handy.

There are also features such as Favourite Items and Favourite Shops that you can use if you see someone else’s work you like and wish to view again and like Etsy, you can have a shop front with a banner and profile. There are also various forums, such as Craft Talk, Shop Talk and Announcements which you can join in if you wish.

I actually really like Folksy and do prefer it to Etsy. It looks quite funky with lots of bright colours on its homepage and is set out nicely. It’s easy to use and navigate around and I like the fact that you can list up to five quantities of any one product for a set fee and it’s also UK based. I rate Folksy

4.5 / 5

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

TOSOUK www.tosouk.com

ToSouk (which means to take your goods to market – Souk being a marketplace in Arab or Muslim city), is the new kid on the block. Started just last year by Jennifer and David Dickinson in Cheshire, ToSouk is completely free to list and sell – so no fees whatsoever. I think this really shows how passionate they both are about what they are providing. Not in it for the money, they realised the difficulties and expense that unrecognised artists and crafts people experienced in selling their products and felt that there must be a better way – and so the idea of ToSouk was born.

At first glance, it looks quite similar to Folksy and Etsy – a nicely themed selection of goodies is displayed on the homepage with categories on the left hand side. Because it’s quite new, there are still a few teething problems and things that I found slightly annoying, although once you use it a few times you just get used to it. One of the main things is that your photos have to be square, which meant that I had to resize all my photos in Photoshop but because a lot of them don’t suit being square, there was a big space left underneath them which I had to fill with my logo to stop them looking odd. I did email them about this, and they said that currently they have to be that size, but hopefully in the future that will get sorted out.

There’s a forum although at the moment there’s not many posts, but it is all fairly new so will probably take time to get established.

I really like ToSouk and think it’s a great site. Listing items is easy, the site looks good and the big bonus is it’s all free. I really hope this site continues to grow in popularity as it’s a great idea. I rate Tosouk