How Much Money Will I Make Selling on Etsy?

Call me materialistic (or perhaps practical), but whenever I start researching a new online venture, one of the first things I want to know is "How much money will I make?" It helps me determine whether the new site -- say istock photo -- is worth some of my interest and time. And if so, what are realistic goals to set for attention spent, income potential, and growth. And frankly, I can never find the answer.

So without further ado, here are some completely reliable and some completely guessed-at etsy stats.

If you are relatively new to etsy and have a nice, but somewhat common product (such as wire-wrapped earrings) with decent but not great photographs and spend 10-15 hours per week on your shop, you annual gross income from etsy will be:

$512.72

Yep, that's all. And that's before expenses. It's less than $1 per hour, and you'd make more money weatherizing your house or cutting out an extra latte here and there.

But wait, if you instead have a somewhat unique item, with great photographs and spend more than 20 hours per week, you could make up to:

$3618.13 per year

Which really isn't too bad, but again, there are much easier ways to make money. Like having a couple of great garage sales or clipping a whole lot of coupons.

Okay, okay, but what if you get really, really lucky, have a completely amazing product, work 80-100 hours per week and become one of the top etsy sellers? Can you really Quit Your Day Job and support your whole family?

Sort of.

Last year, the top three handmade sellers on etsy each grossed around $100,000. Several supply shops probably did even better. But after that, it drops off pretty quickly, with most other sellers in the top 100 making closer to $10,000. With about 90,000 active etsy sellers (according to a recent etsy talk), your odds of making $10,000 per year are better than winning $10,000 through the PowerBall, though not by a ton.

So if you're not in it for the money, why in the world would anyone want to sell on etsy? Quite frankly, it's fun. It's a community of other creative women. It's flexible--and can be done from home, as a second "job," or while little ones nap. People will pay you for your arts and crafts, which is greatly rewarding. And even a smallish amount of additional income can sometimes make a big difference. Plus, in addition to direct income, your etsy shop can help bring recognition to your goods outside of etsy, such as wholesale accounts and blog mentions.

There's been quite a bit of talk lately about whether etsy is a "female ghetto," or promoting a false sense of hope of the ability to make a living from crafts. I find that most of these articles are filled with inaccuracies and generalizations. At the same time, I think it's important to have realistic goals of what etsy specifically can do for you. Piddix is currently #6 in sales in the handmade category, and while honestly I could make significantly more money in less time at a "day job," I wouldn't trade it in. In no way is etsy a way to get rich quick, but with way too much work and hopefully an equal amount of fun, it can definitely be a way to supplement an income by doing something you find rewarding.

Going Up: Taking Your Craft Business to the Next Level

How to expand piddix is the main question that has been haunting me this past year. In other words, once you've reached a plateau, how can you take your business to the next level? In addition to taking a class for entrepreneurs through MercyCorpsNW and writing up a business plan, there were three main areas where I looked for my answer:

1. I asked just about anyone I could for advice (see my post on it here).

2. I read numerous books, articles, blogs, etc. about the major pitfalls and best practices for expansion. The book Profit from the Core, for example, really hammered home the idea that businesses who spread themselves too thin--who take on too many new ventures outside of their normal focus--most often fail. (Though the book, written in 2001, did question amazon's "new" strategy of selling more than just books. So obviously new ventures can definitely pay off if done well.)

3. And finally, I did a SWOT analysis, which proved to be very helpful in analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of myself and my competitors.

SWOT -- Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

My simplified version of the standard SWOT analysis essentially compared piddix to my competitors, look at my business assets, and tried to come up with a way to address my weak areas. It went something like this:

Strengths: My images are legal and a very high quality.
Action: When several competitors came on the market a while back with illegal, cheaper, and lower quality images, I wrote a blog post about how I research copyright. I also changed my shop announcement and item listings to reflect my research and restoration process. This seems to have worked well.

Weaknesses: I'm a slow designer. I take a very long time to research copyright and restore images. I'm also darn stubborn.
Action: I took several graphic design classes and learned a new software to be able to make the collage sheets more quickly (and be able to respond to custom requests). That's been mixed. I've learned a ton of great new techniques, but I'm still so much slower than others. For example (and this is where my stubbornness comes in), I know that I probably should just repeat more images in each collage sheet and not worry about lining everything up perfectly, since it's the quick little happy sheets that are selling well for my competitors right now. But I am stubbornly holding onto spending hours and hours making each new sheet--little tiny tweaks sometimes that may not even be noticed. I justify this to myself by saying that my customers appreciate the high quality and that's why they come back. At the same time, though, it's tough to see others' "quick sheets" selling three times as fast. Hmmmm.

Opportunities: Even though I sell mostly smaller images in the one- to two-inch range, I have thousands of larger scans just sitting on my computer. I also have many of the original colored plates that I have removed from books, vintage postcards that I've scanned, and vintage ephemera just sitting on my shelves.
Action: I put some of my original ephemera for sale on etsy with only limited success. And I don't think my assemblage sets have sold once. I have also started an area on my instant site for as-scanned larger images as well as a commercial section. With all of these ventures, I think I would need to put more energy and time into building up these new products, but it may also pull me too far away from my "core." We'll see how these develop.

Threats: This is the scary part. Collage sheets (which are my main product) are relatively easy to create poorly. You can grab a bunch of images off of websites and fill up a store quickly. Even shops that create legal, original designs can bring hundreds of items over from an ebay store or other venue and go from newbie to top seller within a couple of months. The very precarious nature of selling on etsy, and the fact that almost all of piddix's income is based on etsy sales, is worrisome.
Action: I am slowly diversifying where I sell, adding other online venues that may add some cushion. Again, I hope this won't spread piddix too thin. And since most folks who try piddix once become repeat customers, I am working to thank and further support my repeat customers through things like my newsletter and subscription.

Wow, in the end I've put way more personal and business information into this post than I had intended. It's obviously something on my mind quite a bit. Though I sometimes worry that I'm giving too much information away to my competitors, I figure it's what you do with the information that counts. Hopefully you can create your own SWOT and see which ventures may help build up your core.

La Vie Cherie :: Using Vintage French Postcards as Photo Backdrops

Taking amazing photographs is probably the single best way to showcase your products. In addition to good lighting and angles, "staging" the item can make a huge difference in its presentation. A lovely trend I've noticed lately is using vintage French postcards as backgrounds for small items--especially jewelry. It not only makes the jewelry "pop," but also adds a romantic, Victorian-era feeling.

Arete has some of the most lovely photographs featuring vintage postcards, a theme which carries through her entire site--including her banner and these great shots of her jewelry and packaging below:
Chinacherie's Eiffel Tower necklace goes well with this colorful, vintage Eiffel Tower postcard.
Another Eiffel Tower postcard from 1889 adds drama to these sweet earrings by Marolsha:
Another lovely French theme in earrings (on top), and a necklace below, from nostalgems.
For some helpful tricks on photographing small items, such as jewelry, check out either this storque article or one from my website. I've searched high and low for a simple, effective light box and this one by Sugar Panda is by far my favorite. And also check out my downloadable vintage French postcards on etsy.