When deciding to set up a small business working out where to sell your products online can be really daunting!

Many people will tell you what you should or shouldn’t do without having any experience themselves. Others will delight in recounting their horror stories with one platform or another. It can all be very overwhelming and difficult to know where to start!

Today I’m gong to take you through the two platforms where I sell my products and my experiences with both of them. I’ll try and give you a balanced view on each platform and a few details on some particular differences I’ve noticed

When I started with each platform

I started selling on Etsy briefly in 2017 but only had around 5 sales after 6 months (that I drove to the site myself) so shut down again . I reopened last year and find etsy to be useful now as it does drive its own traffic to my listings and having those extra sales is helpful. However it wouldn’t be enough to support my business on its own

I set up Squarespace also back in 2017 before a large in person show I was selling at. You can read more about that here. Although initially I though it was a gamble due to the website fee I quickly realised that it was right for my business. In that first year on Squarespace I had almost 200 orders. This was staggering compared to just 5 through Etsy

Etsy

Etsy make it fairly simple to set up a shop. You need to pick a name, describe what you are going to sell, list a few products, set shipping prices and returns policies and that’s about it!

Heres my experience with Etsy

Etsy Pros:

Its a large platform so drives its own traffic to your shop (if you follow its ‘rules’ and play how it wants you too)
Etsy customers can have a login to the website so checkout is fast and easy, potentially meaning more sales
You can buy labels to ship your items directly from Etsy with very little hassle
Etsy handles import fees for you so for countries within the EU at least that means no hidden fees when the item arrives
Etsy allows you to have variations of your product within one listing and they can be differently priced
Etsy allows you to upload multiple files for digital products

Etsy Cons:

Listing fees, each time you list a product (or if it sells and auto renews the listing) there is a small fee $0.20
Etsy uses offsite ads that you can’t opt out of. If your product sell because of one of these ads Etsy takes a large cut which can mean you make no profit for that sale 12%
High transaction fees at 6.5%
Traffic on Etsy is pushed to larger shops selling many products that dispatch fast
Etsy prioritises shops who offer free shipping
There is a 25MB limit on files for digital listings
Etsy are very difficult to contact if there is ever a dispute

Squarespace

An alternative to platforms like Etsy is to have your own website. Mine (this one you’re on now!) is powered by Squarespace

The templates on Squarespace make it relatively easy to set up but it is definitely a learning curve at first!

Of course when you have your own website you can have lots of other great stuff on it like this blog, tutorial videos, other informational pages etc but for a fair comparison im just going to be talking about the commerce side of things

Squarespace Pros:

Low transaction fees just 3% and free for some plans
No listing fee per product
No MB limit for digital products
Allows you to have variations of your product within one listing and they can be differently priced
Products can be digital, physical, service based and subscription based depending on your plan
You can link other products pages within your listings
Customer logins for faster checkout, again depending on your plan
Newsletter sign up at checkout

Squarepace Cons:

Limit of 1 file per digital product (can be solved by simply compressing multiple files into a zip file)
You have to drive your own traffic to your site
International post may be subject to a small import fee on arrival
Monthly or yearly website fee
Payment processing platform fees

So that’s quite a lot of points. Let’s look at a few areas of note in more detail

Selling Digital Products

Selling digital products, in my case PDF embroidery patterns, can be a great way to increase sales without increasing your workload. Both Etsy and Squarespace have automated systems that send the digital product to the customer for you, so when you get an order it is fulfilled without you having to lift a finger! I’ve personally found digital products to be a huge seller and an integral part of Purple Rose Embroidery

One of the benefits of selling digital products on Etsy is that you can upload more than one file to a single listing. Unfortunately this is not the case with Squarespace where there is a single file limit. However by simply compressing multiple files into a single zip file to upload that problem is solved.

The crucial difference for me is Etsy’s 25MB file limit for digital products. Two of my most popular designs, my Paint by Numbers Sunset and Humphrey the Whale are too large to list on Etsy! Squarespace has no such file size limit so luckily they can be listed here but if I didn’t have that option I would definitely me missing out on that income. In fact I regularly get messages from Etsy customers asking if Humphrey the Whale is available as a PDF as they couldn’t find it on Etsy!

So if you’re selling digital products just be aware of that MB limit so you don’t get caught out

Fees!

Ok, this is the big thing people want have straight when setting up a shop, and for good reason. When selling anything you need to factor you fees into the price so you are still making enough profit to not only sustain your business but also pay your own wages

On Etsy there is no fee for simply having a shop open, so that nice. However there are quite a few other fees…

when you list an item there is a $0.20 fee per item. This may auto renew once an item is purchased depending on you item settings
transaction fees are 6.5%
payment processing fee is 3% plus $0.25 per transaction
potential the fee for offsite ads (which after a certain amount of sales you can’t opt out of) is 12%
currency conversion fee is 2.5%
you may also be subject to regulatory operating fees depending on where you are based

On Squarespace

there is a website maintenance fee which for me is £28.80 per month (this depends on which commerce plan you choose, there are cheaper ones)
no Squarespace transaction fee (there is a fee for some cheaper plans at 3%)
payment processor fee of 1.5% plus 20p in the UK and 2.9% plus 20p for international cards

Lets illustrate this with an example

Say I sold the same kit on both Etsy and Squarespace. The kit sold for £24.99 with an international shipping price of £6.10. So the total transaction value was £31.09

On Etsy:

£31.09 - fees including postage totalling £10.23 (assuming no offsite ads) leaves me £20.86

On Squarespace:

£31.09 - fees totalling £7.20 leaves me £23.89

It costs me £6.85 in materials to make the kit

So after factoring in those costs Etsy leaves me with £14.05

If there had been an offsite ads charge (£2.53) I would have been left with only £11.52

And Squarespace leaves me with £17.04

I haven’t even factored in my time/wages yet! Say it took me an hour to make the kit, pack it and ship it. If I’m paying myself a fair wage of £15 an hour my Etsy sale wouldn’t even pay for my time. But if it were a PDF I wouldn’t have to factor in those time costs

Getting people to see your products

Making sure enough people see your products is so important! And its not necessarily easy either

Etsy is a huge platform and drives its own customers to the site. However Etsy tends to push the shops and products that make it the most money. So if you have a big shop that has regular sales and a large array of products you are much more likely to be seen on the searches. They also like their sellers to jump through certain hoops like being a star seller, which is very difficult when you’re just starting out, and if you don’t your products are much less likely to be seen

I have been growing my social media following for 5 years now. It takes a lot of time and effort but its the best thing for driving traffic to my website, getting those sales and making this amazing job I have possible! I’m going to write a separate blog post all about my experiences with social media as a business soon where I’ll go into this in more detail

Another way to make sure your products are seen are good, clear, bright images. Product photography is so important and can make the world of difference

Your product description also needs to be engaging and tell people everything they need to know about what they are buying. If they are in doubt about something relating to your item cause its missing from your description they most likely won’t buy it

So where should you sell?

As with everything when you’re setting up business from scratch its up to you! I’m happy to talk about my experiences and what I have found works but it may not also work for you

Try things! Have a go and find what works, when you do it’ll be worth it, trust me

Personally at the moment I’m finding that having the two running side by side is working very well for me. Etsy brings it’s own traffic and sales and I drive traffic to my website from social media. Squarespace is by far my main selling platform still but I believe that if you can afford it then having both running simultaneously is very beneficial!

I also use Patreon to sell kits and PDFs on subscription. The more places you can sell your products the more audiences you are going to reach

I think I’ve definitely waffled on for long enough now so I’ll leave it there

I hope that you’ve found some of that helpful! Do let me know if there’s any other business related questions you’d like answered in a future blog post

Talk soon

Lottie xxx

Etsy Vs Squarespace - Where should you sell