Etsy vs. Shopify: When is it time to move?
"I have a successful Etsy shop... do I really need a website?"
It’s the question I get asked most by makers and crafters. While Etsy is fantastic for getting discovered, relying on it 100% means you are renting your business on land you don't own and therefore are subject to algorithm changes, fee hikes, and competitors advertising right on your listings.
In this video, I break down the Etsy vs Shopify dilemma. We’ll look at why Etsy is the perfect starting line, but why Shopify is the necessary upgrade for long-term growth. I’ll cover how Shopify acts as your "extra employee" with built-in automation, better SEO, and wholesale management. Plus, I share my favorite strategy for using BOTH platforms together to get the best of both worlds.
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Transcript below!
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Descrip0:00 I have a successful Etsy shop. Do I really need a website? This is something I get asked a lot by especially e-commerce type businesses, crafters, makers, and I work with a lot of those really cool businesses.
0:13 But the thing is, is that relying 100% on Etsy, putting all of your eggs in one basket, is risky. It's important to know that you will be successful.
0:23 You will forever to their algorithm changes, fee hikes, and lots of other factors like that. You, today we're breaking down the pros and cons so you know exactly if and when it's time to upgrade to your own website.
0:42 Etsy has a lot of really good pros. They have a built-in audience, people. People go directly to Etsy searching for made giftable items.
0:52 I do it all the time. Got my grandfather some really good gardening gloves on there recently, but so they have a built-in audience And if you're pretty good at search engine optimization, you can rank pretty high inside their own platform and they are Googleable, right?
1:10 So all those products also show up down the Google rabbit hole when somebody is looking for that type of product on Google as well.
1:17 Um, Another thing is it's pretty darn user-friendly.
1:20 Etsy makes it really easy to get started up and guides you through the process of learning how to sell, right?
1:27 And that is such a key piece. Um, and probably one of the most important things, but probably not the reason most people go to with Etsy is that it helps really ease the tax headache.
1:37 Um, they handle tax collection, but also tax remittance. So when you take sales tax, um, for any state, they're going on and paying that back to the state for you.
1:49 So you're not having to manage, okay, I've taken sales tax to this amount in the state of Texas and need to set up and pay, pay state Texas for that sales tax.
1:58 There's also a really big trust factor. You know that when you go into Etsy and you go to buy something, that you can see the reviews for both the shop or overall, but also for that specific product.
2:12 There's likely going to be product images, so you can see how they turn out. And, you know that there's kind of the Etsy guarantee behind things, that things are very, very threaded, and that they should arrive on time, and all these things, that there's customer support behind the Etsy platform if something
2:30 goes wrong. So, that is, those are the big, big pros for Etsy and getting started with Etsy. The cons for Etsy is that there is, are pretty high fees, um, there's a lot of competition, so you have a lot of people, you have might be creating similar products to you, and so you might have to worry about
2:49 price a lot more, or, um, there's just a lot to think about around that area. You don't own your customer list, so there's a lot of limitations about how you can market to them directly, um, to get them to come back.
3:02 you are, have limited branding options for what your buttons say, the colors throughout, the shapes of things, like, it's just, you have very limited control over how Etsy looks and feels like your business, because you're shopping, people are shopping through their business, and they want things to
3:17 look and feel like their business. probably the biggest one I hear a lot is people being upset because there's competitor ads on your listing, so some, it'll say, like, similar products, and it'll be a product that looks a lot like yours, made by a competitor.
3:31 Or, and they've paid for that placement so that they will, you will hopefully, well, so that your customers hopefully buy from them instead of you, which is a little difficult for small businesses.
3:43 and then should you want to run ads of your own outside of Etsy, there's nowhere to put pixels for being able to, um, do targeted marketing.
3:52 Retargeted ads on Google, or Facebook, or Meta, or any of those kinds of places. Okay, so let's pivot to talking about Shopify.
4:02 We know the good and the bad of Etsy, but let's talk about what Shopify can really do to help you level up.
4:08 Um, there are a lot of extra tools that tools embedded into Shopify natively. So like newsletters, a lot of automation, both in the admin side of your business, but also in the marketing side of your business, being able to send someone an automatic email when they haven't bought in six months or on
4:23 their birthday or on their anniversary, send them a text message at certain points. There's a lot you can do around those things.
4:29 Um, it's very professional looking and so much easier to make on-brand. than Etsy. and they've made it easier than ever recently to actually design in Shopify yourself.
4:41 So if you are DIYing it and not hiring a website designer, it is easier than ever. they also allow you to do cross-selling.
4:49 So once you've set up in Shopify, you can sell across Etsy, TikTok shop, Facebook, pretty much any other platform. Um, commerce platform that you can think of, you can sell your products through.
5:01 The other really great feature is that you are able to be in other people's Shopify shops So other people can find your products if you want them to and add them to their shop to help round out their inventory and their offerings.
5:16 And you can do the same. Um, so that's really, really cool. So if you run a shop filled with dog products and you have really cool, cool bow ties and harnesses and leashes, but you're looking for some bandanas, you can find somebody who makes those and add them into your shop and they will make the profit
5:34 . You can decide what you want to add it on top. It just makes it, makes it so easy. another good pro for Shopify is that it can handle in-person retail.
5:42 So there's touch to pay or you can get the whole barcode system if you have a shop. So if you're doing anything from markets to pop-ups to physical shops, there is a feature and a product for you that you can take advantage take payments and keep up with the inventory and everything like that.
5:59 So, so easily along those lines, there's also wholesale management. If you're looking to sell your products wholesale, there are some really amazing features for that, where you can sell to bigger shops or to shops in person.
6:15 And it helps you manage all of that. The invoicing, the inventory, those retailers. Requests makes it super streamlined and so easy to manage.
6:25 I think this is probably my favorite Shopify feature and that it's so customizable. And what I mean by that is on top of all the internal tools, they also have a lot of really great third-party developed apps that they've vetted.
6:38 And so if you need to add a specific feature to your website that maybe doesn't isn't common, there's probably an app for that.
6:46 For example, I had a client who creates baby bibs and they're custom and they're reversible and they, a lot of people will get one fabric on one side and one on another.
6:55 And she had the most kind of complicated system for people picking each fabric and then like popping up in the order.
7:03 And we found a really great third-party app. Third-party tool where she was able to, people can pick fabric one, fabric two, it's, everything is in one product listing.
7:11 She can update the fabric swatches. People can preview their product. And it's just made things so much easier for her on the admin side, on the inventory side.
7:19 It makes things a lot easier on the client side, most importantly, probably. So people have a lot easier time buying from her.
7:25 Um, there are. Our finance options, which allow you some room to grow. And if you're looking for things like that, and a lot of the websites are kind of coming up with these, this days, obviously when you're looking at finance for your small business, always tread carefully, but sometimes we just need
7:42 to be able to buy a bunch of inventory, right? So there's options around that. And then for SEO, Etsy obviously allows for SEO that is for your product.
7:53 Products, but this gives you the option to do blogging and more pages on your website and have more SEO optimization across the web and get people to come to you for lots of reasons.
8:04 So you can do a lot more for search engine optimization as well. All right. So here's the thing though. That's kind of all the things you can grow into with Shopify.
8:16 But it doesn't have to be a breakup. You can use Etsy for discoverability for people finding you. And then when you ship them off their package, have a little card in there that says get X percent off your next purchase when buying through my website.
8:32 So you can use, um, Etsy for discoverability and use Shopify for retention and move slowly but surely move your customers over to the lower fee, more control platform.
8:46 And then you're paying less in fees overall because you're only paying for the people who are discovering you on Etsy on Etsy.
8:56 your products from Etsy into Shopify. And then of course, manage both inventories through your Shopify. It's so, so good. So if you're ready to stop paying fees and advertising to your competitors through Etsy, start a free Shopify trial.
9:12 I've got the link in the description. And if you're looking to just get overall more visibility for your small business online.
9:20 You can check out my hometown health check and there's a link to that in the description. I'll see you in the next video.tion text goes here
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