tales of a small-scale etsy shop owner
I have been busy making and (sometimes) selling items in my etsy shop over the past week and a half. This little gig has quite a learning curve, let me tell you! I am still very much trying to figure out the best ways to reach potential customers, to price items well, and to ship items without losing all of my profit.
Last Monday I offered a special on fabric keychains. The goal was not necessarily to make a huge profit, but to maybe get the attention of some new customers. In this way, it was successful. I had sales from seven new-to-the-shop people. This really made me excited.
In terms of making a profit, though, I pretty much gave away the keychains that were mailed out. When all was said and done- and after fifty cents for a bubble mailer and $2.38 in postage- I made about fifty cents off each mailed keychain. Since each took about thirty minutes to make, photograph, and post (not even factoring in the time to visit the post office with children in tow), my hourly wage for those particular shop items was one dollar per hour. This did not make me so excited.
Shipping has been one of the hardest things for me to figure out. I have to cover my costs, but if shipping is too high, customers will not pay it. I ended up paying one particular customer two dollars to make a custom sign for her. I had run out of the vinyl alphabet stickers I was using as stencils about midway through the project, so between all of the painting, the extra trip to Hobby Lobby, the correspondence with the buyer, the trip to the office store to buy shipping supplies, and the overly expensive shipping option I didn't yet know better not to choose… well, it was not a happy day for the shop to have spent money on that sign instead of being compensated for my time and money spent on supplies.
Last week I was contacted by one potential buyer who said that she wanted to order one of my signs, but that $12 for shipping on an $18 item was "outrageous" and that unless I would come down significantly in my price, she would not make the purchase. Although I found her to be rude, part of me agreed with her that spending almost as much on shipping as on the item was a little silly. I sent her an email back explaining that identical large signs I had mailed through UPS were $12 to ship and that I was not overcharging for shipping but covering my costs. I offered her a two dollar discount on the sign if she wanted to purchase it. Her response back was much nicer and she ended up buying the item.
I spent all of yesterday afternoon trying to tweak my Facebook page and the neglected website. One big time and money suck right now is that very few customers are buying off of the etsy site. Most are seeing the item on Facebook, telling me they would like to purchase it, and then being redirected by me to a private listing on etsy so they can make a payment. This makes more work for me, another step for them, and a loss of profit for me since I have to pay for each item I post as well as share a percentage of the sale with etsy. It would be nice to figure out a better solution. Learning curve once again.
Between shopping at the craft store for supplies, making items to sell, photographing the items, posting the items, shipping the items, and arranging pick up times with local customers, the shop has been a large expenditure of time and energy over the past ten days. For what I estimate to be about twenty hours of my work- and after about thirty dollars spent on supplies and another twenty dollars spent on shipping- I brought in about $80 profit, so about four dollars per hour of work. I am making less than minimum wage.
I don't regret starting the etsy shop at all, and truthfully, it has been a nice distraction for me from some other worries on my mind, but this whole $4 an hour thing is messing with me. I have started to get really frugal thinking of everything in terms of hours of work. A pull through at Starbucks for a $4 latte = one hour of work. A cute tee shirt I spot for Drew = three hours of work. Going out to lunch as a family = eleven hours of work. A tank of gas for Hank = twenty one hours of work. One month of preschool = sixty three hours of work. The new hot water heater we had to have installed yesterday = three and a half months of work. Paying for full-day kindergarten tuition for Drew for next year = 750 (!) hours of work.
As I said, it messes with my mind. And, since my husband would probably tell you all that he considers me far frugal enough (I think it drives him a little bonkers sometimes), he may not love this new way of thinking for me. :)
Overall. it's been a mostly positive experience for me, learning curve and all. If you have not seen the shop yet, it can be visited here:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/myhomeismyhappyplace
and here:
https://www.facebook.com/myhomeismyhappyplace
Last Monday I offered a special on fabric keychains. The goal was not necessarily to make a huge profit, but to maybe get the attention of some new customers. In this way, it was successful. I had sales from seven new-to-the-shop people. This really made me excited.
In terms of making a profit, though, I pretty much gave away the keychains that were mailed out. When all was said and done- and after fifty cents for a bubble mailer and $2.38 in postage- I made about fifty cents off each mailed keychain. Since each took about thirty minutes to make, photograph, and post (not even factoring in the time to visit the post office with children in tow), my hourly wage for those particular shop items was one dollar per hour. This did not make me so excited.
Shipping has been one of the hardest things for me to figure out. I have to cover my costs, but if shipping is too high, customers will not pay it. I ended up paying one particular customer two dollars to make a custom sign for her. I had run out of the vinyl alphabet stickers I was using as stencils about midway through the project, so between all of the painting, the extra trip to Hobby Lobby, the correspondence with the buyer, the trip to the office store to buy shipping supplies, and the overly expensive shipping option I didn't yet know better not to choose… well, it was not a happy day for the shop to have spent money on that sign instead of being compensated for my time and money spent on supplies.
Last week I was contacted by one potential buyer who said that she wanted to order one of my signs, but that $12 for shipping on an $18 item was "outrageous" and that unless I would come down significantly in my price, she would not make the purchase. Although I found her to be rude, part of me agreed with her that spending almost as much on shipping as on the item was a little silly. I sent her an email back explaining that identical large signs I had mailed through UPS were $12 to ship and that I was not overcharging for shipping but covering my costs. I offered her a two dollar discount on the sign if she wanted to purchase it. Her response back was much nicer and she ended up buying the item.
I spent all of yesterday afternoon trying to tweak my Facebook page and the neglected website. One big time and money suck right now is that very few customers are buying off of the etsy site. Most are seeing the item on Facebook, telling me they would like to purchase it, and then being redirected by me to a private listing on etsy so they can make a payment. This makes more work for me, another step for them, and a loss of profit for me since I have to pay for each item I post as well as share a percentage of the sale with etsy. It would be nice to figure out a better solution. Learning curve once again.
Between shopping at the craft store for supplies, making items to sell, photographing the items, posting the items, shipping the items, and arranging pick up times with local customers, the shop has been a large expenditure of time and energy over the past ten days. For what I estimate to be about twenty hours of my work- and after about thirty dollars spent on supplies and another twenty dollars spent on shipping- I brought in about $80 profit, so about four dollars per hour of work. I am making less than minimum wage.
I don't regret starting the etsy shop at all, and truthfully, it has been a nice distraction for me from some other worries on my mind, but this whole $4 an hour thing is messing with me. I have started to get really frugal thinking of everything in terms of hours of work. A pull through at Starbucks for a $4 latte = one hour of work. A cute tee shirt I spot for Drew = three hours of work. Going out to lunch as a family = eleven hours of work. A tank of gas for Hank = twenty one hours of work. One month of preschool = sixty three hours of work. The new hot water heater we had to have installed yesterday = three and a half months of work. Paying for full-day kindergarten tuition for Drew for next year = 750 (!) hours of work.
As I said, it messes with my mind. And, since my husband would probably tell you all that he considers me far frugal enough (I think it drives him a little bonkers sometimes), he may not love this new way of thinking for me. :)
Overall. it's been a mostly positive experience for me, learning curve and all. If you have not seen the shop yet, it can be visited here:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/myhomeismyhappyplace
and here:
https://www.facebook.com/myhomeismyhappyplace
Comments
Let me know if you'd like to talk through some ecommerce marketing and pricing strategies. It's what I spend every day doing so I'm happy to lend some advice.
Let me know,
Jason