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Since I only have 30 items currently listed on Etsy, I will change my listings to “free shipping” at some point before July 30th. I dislike that this is just another thing I have to do to make sure my listings are visible. Such a waste of time.
Unlike Ebay, Etsy sellers do not seem to care about items that have additional shipping. I have had no problem having additional shipping for all of my Etsy listings.
“Shoppers come to Etsy because they want something special, something they can’t find at a big-box retailer. But these days, online shoppers expect free delivery everywhere they go. Etsy is no exception. Of course, postage still costs something, and that cost should be factored into the item price. That way your shoppers will never be surprised at checkout and they’re more likely to complete the transaction.
Buyers tell us time and again that paying additional postage costs often keeps them from making a purchase and coming back to Etsy. in fact, we know that shoppers on Etsy are 20% more likely to complete their purchase when the item is marked as delivered for free.
So, we’re making changes to the shopping experience to make it easier for US buyers to find shops that deliver free. When we meet buyer expectations, shopping on Etsy becomes more competitive with the rest of e-commerce — and that could mean more sales for you.
Starting on 30th July 2019, items that are delivered free and shops that guarantee free delivery to buyers in the US on orders of 35 USD and above will get priority placement in US search results. Shoppers in the US will primarily see items that are delivered for free and shops that offer free delivery on orders of $35 in the top, most visible rows of search. We’ll also begin to prioritise these items wherever Etsy advertises in the US—in email marketing, social media, and television ads.
We did testing and research over the past few months to determine the right order minimum for a free delivery guarantee. Back in May, we ran a limited-time promotion, for a small percentage of shoppers in the US. We offered free domestic delivery to buyers when they spent a certain amount, either 25 USD or 35 USD or more, in the same shop. During the promotion, we learned that buyers who were shopping for items below the 35 USD minimum order spend were more likely to add on items to their purchase to qualify for free delivery, meaning they were willing to spend more to have their order delivered free of charge. We also found that buyers shopping for items above the order minimum were more likely to complete their purchase.”
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Yep, I got an Etsy update and read this same article about an hour ago.
It was posted in an older Seller Update but that was end of last year if I remember. In any case Etsy is going to request Sellers to go with free shipping on items over $35 and offer it on smaller dollar items if the total purchase reaches or goes over $35. Their incentive for Buyers to add a few more items to their shopping carts to get Free Shipping.
Here is the link to the email from the Etsy President for those who want to read his complete statement. We got this in our email box yesterday.
https://view.e.etsy.com/?qs=02f05644376c956cda4a7f7cb97b313f076e268d7166876dd71b09786574bccc109f06142d2052ae83aa291164d2f62d5f3a4097d400d592c8f238d44063273b78727a7a1a30195cAnd here is the link to the Etsy suggestions and help on how to go about doing and implementing the Free Shipping Program. It even has videos.
https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/get-priority-placement-in-us-search-with/540244125961Etsy right out front states to add the cost into the pricing of your item and even has a few tutorials on their suggestions of how best to handle all of this. And to offer Sellers their incentives to do this they come right and say, up front, you offer free shipping and you will be listed in all searches, advertising, sponsor pages and online and even television advertising up top and in front of those who don’t.
At least they are open about it. Ebay for years has kept whether they do or don’t do special things for those who offer free shipping. One of the conspiracy theory topics.
We have almost 600 items on Etsy and about 1,200 on Ebay. The goal, using SixBit will be to try to get almost all of our items cross listed since most will qualify.
So, simply put, Offer Free Shipping, build it into your prices and we will give you preferential treatment. Don’t offer Free Shipping and we will handle you differently and with less attention than those who do. “DROP the MIKE!”.
So if I am going to have to do this for the Etsy listings and they are cross posted then we will have to think about just going ahead and doing it on Ebay since they will be the same item.
But as we have discussed before here on SL the only way to get your butt covered is to take the furthest zone and build the highest shipping cost into your items OR to build in the mid-point of the United States and build that in and make money on the shorter shipments and loose a little on the longer shipments.
BTW, Kinsley, KS or Lebanon, KS and approx. zip:67547 is considered the middle of the United States.
The USA is 2,680 miles across from New York City to Los Angeles, so 1,340 miles would be a mid point across. So build in 1,340++ miles or about 5 USPS zones into your item’s price by taking the estimated SHIPPING weight [object+box+packing-dunnage] and that would give you the averaged out scenario. Any buyer you ship to closer will pay more and any buyer further away will pay less. When the buyer pays more, you make more, when the buyer pays less you make less.Then of course the extreme of this is to build in zone 8 prices into all your items and you will make more on everything you ship except for the buyers located in zone 8 itself.
The whole philosophy to all of this hoopla, and Etsy is publically saying it for once and for all, is that buyers are lazy, they don’t want to or can’t do the math, they will pay more for something if they “think” they are getting free shipping, even though it is not. The other thing is with the shipping built in, the buyer has no way to separate the cost of the item from the cost of the shipping. So it makes it tough to comparison shop. Is the $50 they just spent a $25 item with a $25 shipping cost OR a $40 item with a $10 shipping cost OR a $10 item with a $40 dollar shipping costs. They don’t know and seem not to care. As long as it says FREE SHIPPING.
And, Etsy is saying they did the experiments and TEST [there you go Jay] and they say, more Sales Result from those with Free Shipping. And they believe it so much, they are now willing to promote it heavily and offer incentives to do it and disincentives to not do it and PUBLICLY saying so. In other words, NOTE to our Sellers, Beware, if you don’t do this then we are not going to help you much. You want some type of Promotions, then do it yourself, run a sale or pay for Special Promotions, but those Sellers with Free Shipping we are going to help them out.
Back to Ebay, it has long been tossed about if Ebay does this but no one really knows, thus still a conspiracy or mystery theory.
We have bounced back and forth on this for several years now and looks like time for us here at MDC Galleries to re-think it all again.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
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Does anyone around here sell on Etsy in a big way? I know there’s always talk of cross-posting, but I dont see anyone reflect a lot of Etsy listings in their numbers.
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I have book marked about 8 or 10 current or former SL posters / members who have Etsy stores. Some going back to Flim Flam and Omfug, and even earlier. I think. Troy does, totommyto, us and several others. I have approx. 25 Etsy stores bookmarked that I follow and think some of those I did get from SL members saying in their posts they had Etsy stores.
Some said years ago that they made more on Etsy than their Ebay stores. Etsy fees are still $.20 for a 3 month listing so $.07 per item per month. Etsy fees are lower and almost all of our Sales are for the full price. Every now and then someone will message us and offer a lower amount but not often.
So far this year we have had 58 Sales for a gross of $3,125 in Sales, about $53.88 avg. per item sold or about 10 items per month for about $520 per month. Items sell for more on Etsy and higher priced items seem to sell well on Etsy and almost no offers, which come primarily through a private message asking if we would take less and they mention an amount. If we agree, we just go and change the price to that number and tell them they have 24 hours to buy or we will change the price back. Etsy doesn’t have a formal “Make an Offer” process.
Our Ebay store grosses during good-strong months about $2,000 plus and on slower months [late spring and summer] about $1,300 to $1,500 per month.
We plan on eventually having all items cross posted on both platforms EXCEPT for those items that are not old enough to be classified as 20 year old vintage [pre-2000] on Etsy. A loop hole is on old stuff, some things can’t be dated so we list it even if unsure.
Currently we have 1,212 items on Ebay and 581 of those are also posted on Etsy. The only reason we don’t have all of our Ebay items on Etsy is because we are working on updating and re-formating several hundred of our very old items that we listed years ago and need to be updated within SixBit first before we send on over to Etsy.
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Feeling a bit fed up this morning about this!
We only sell on Etsy. Not a huge store (1293 items right now), but provides a good portion of our overall income.
We are UK based and 30-40% of our sales are to the USA.
I totally get why Etsy are doing this, and it’s good that they are open about it.
But, what should we do?
My partner is suggesting we offer ‘free shipping’ to our UK customers and use the Etsy tools to increase our prices to cover the costs. Then only offer those listings to UK customers (easy to do in Etsy).
Then, duplicate all the listings (again pretty easy to do) add in the USA shipping cost, then offer those items ‘free shipping’.
I wonder if this will work?
We’d be instantly doubling the size of our store!!
It would be a pain to set up and administer. We’d have to remember to delete the UK listing if something sold abroad, and vice versa.
PLUS, what about the rest of the world??
GRRR!
I’ll cheer up later.
Lesley
DigVintageStuff -
I just adjusted the shipping prices for 30 items manually in about 10 minutes. This is how I did it:
I use the “Sell on Etsy” app installed on my ipad.
I went into the “listings” section of the app and just edited each item individually in this section.
I went into the shipping section and created 2 new “free shipping” profiles for free shipping, since I only currently have 2 types of items that I have previously created shipping profiles for within Etsy.
I then just added the shipping price into the item price like I would normally do for “free shipping” on Ebay, adjusting the numbers so it wouldn’t be like “13.94” or something.I started to work on this yesterday on a computer, but I found the editing to be annoying. It went much quicker to just use the ipad app.
I just started selling on Etsy last year and have had 32 sales overall. 18 of the sales happened since January 1st for a total of $300, which is good for books and ephemera. I currently have 30 items active on the site. Current listed prices range from $8 f/s to $130 f/s. A lot of items have multiple favorites and “this item is in someone’s cart” notifications.
I do not cross-post items listed on Etsy. I also do not cross-post any items on both of my Ebay stores. The only items I cross-post are my Amazon listings.
While 32 sales in a year might not seem like a lot, that is an incredibly high turnover rate compared to my other sites. These numbers show me that if I was going to put effort into Etsy, I could potentially do very well with it. I just have 0 time, so I’m happy to make $300 over the course of 6 months from a site I put like 1% effort into, if even that much.
I have another 50-100+ fresh items ready to go on Etsy, plus I’m considering delisting another 10-15 items off of Ebay and transferring them to Etsy. Just need to find the time.
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