Etsy has officially taken over my life. I make decorative paper clips and stickers with my cricut explore. I am not sponsored by them. I had a cricut create previously and did not want to learn a new system like silhouette. Plus I don't feel the need to design my own images since they cricut came with access to 25,000 images for 3 months. Then it is about 10.00 a month. What is great is the premade projects. The search box is awesome too. You can type in almost anything and they have an image that is free with your subscription.
I digress...So etsy. I opened my shop about a month ago. I have made some money. Etsy charges .20 to post and item. When that item is purchased you are charged another .20 to re-post the listing and they take about 3% of the profit from the sale. And if someone pays with pay-pal then pay-pal takes a cut. I just thought I would tell it like it is for those of you interested in starting a shop. You can also add a daily budget for promoting. You only get charged if someone clicks so that is a nice feature. I also love being able to sell world wide. The shipping is easy since etsy allows you to print your own label at a discounted rate. I recommend that you take it to the post office and stand in line and get a receipt in case someone says their package never arrived to prove you sent the item. I do a lot of the shop's advertising myself using social media like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I find if I post something on those and then check my stats on the etsy site I see a spike in my page views. I love the map feature of seeing where people come from that have clicked on your store or items.
Custom orders are also really nice. Some people may see them as a hassle, but the point of etsy is to get and give something original. So I get why people would want a custom order. So far the few I have done turned out great and really didn't take that much extra time.
So I encourage you to check out etsy to either buy or sell. And when it comes to picking out your next machine you can ask me anything about my cricut explore.
