Choosing a Storefront as a Maker
If you are an artist selling wares and goods - tshirts, portraits, spoon art, custom yard gnomes, whatever - chances are you’re on Etsy. Etsy has a built-in customer base and it can be a good way to reach people. But it’s not the only option. Oftentimes, fee models look appealing on the outside and then you get into the nitty gritty of what’s actually going on and how it relates to your specific situation and everything changes.
For the sake of narrowing our conversation, let’s say we have a vendor right now who does about 15 orders per month at an average listed price of $35/item. This brings in $525/month ($6,300/year). Selling online isn’t their main income, it’s a side hustle that probably brings them joy and helps pursue a dream.
Now let’s talk about online retail options for our successful side hustle and some key trade offs as this endeavor scales.
Etsy
Etsy is the artisanal online marketplace. There’s a built in audience and the foundational effort to get to the point where you can start selling is really low. You don’t have to build a website, you don’t need to buy a domain, and as long as you’re categorizing and filling out your item pages with details you’ll be searchable by a wide audience within Etsy as well as in search engines like Google.
| Fee | Per Item (on $35 sale) | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | — | $0 | $0 |
| Listing fee ($0.20/item, renews every 4 months) | $0.20 | ~$2.50 | ~$30 |
| Transaction fee (6.5%) | $2.28 | ~$34.13 | ~$410 |
| Payment processing (3% + $0.25) | $1.30 | ~$19.50 | ~$234 |
| Total fees | $3.78 | ~$56 | ~$674 |
| Revenue after fees | $31.22/item | ~$469/mo | ~$5,626/yr |
Once our vendor’s shop scales past the point of 10k/year, they’ll have to pay 12% for any sale that comes in from an ad - shrinking our profit from a $35 item to $27.42.
Key Pros: Built in audience and search traffic. Really easy setup.
Key Cons: No customization, very little consumer data, no email list for retention. When Etsy updates their algorithm or policies you have to adapt quickly to keep getting found.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel is the "indie" Etsy alternative. Here’s your answer if you just want a simple place to directly send people to. It’s fairly straightforward to set up, they’ve got some good demos here: https://www.hurferhandpainted.com/ and https://ryanrussell.bigcartel.com/ if you want to check them out.
| Fee | Per Item (on $35 sale) | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee (100+ items plan) | — | $24 | $288 |
| Custom domain | — | ~$1.25 | ~$15 |
| Listing fee | — | $0 | $0 |
| Transaction fee | — | $0 | $0 |
| Payment processing (2.9% + $0.30) | $1.315 | ~$19.73 | ~$237 |
| Total fees | $1.315/item | ~$45 | ~$540 |
| Revenue after fees | $33.69/item | ~$480/mo | ~$5,760/yr |
Once our vendor’s shop scales to more than 100 different items, they’ll have to move up in plans to a more expensive tier ($288).
Key Pros: Clean standalone shopfront to sell on without extra transaction fees and easy inventory management that can link to from anywhere - instagram page, website, blog, etc.
Key Cons: No email campaigns available to send to your audience, no blog capabilities, very little SEO abilities. Not a website, just a shop.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a friendly starting place if you want to have more control over your brand’s website, send customer-facing marketing email campaigns, and have a blog - with a straightforward way to manage your inventory and shipping.
| Fee | Per Item (on $35 sale) | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform (Basic Commerce) | — | $16 | $192 |
| Custom domain | — | Included | Included |
| Transaction fee (2%) | $0.70 | ~$10.50 | ~$126 |
| Payment processing (2.9% + $0.30) | $1.315 | ~$19.73 | ~$237 |
| Total fees | $2.015/item | ~$46 | ~$555 |
| Revenue after fees | $32.99/item | ~$479/mo | ~$5,745/yr |
Worth noting on scaling: upgrading to the Core plan at $279/year eliminates the 2% transaction fee. On our baseline that's $126/year saved — meaning the upgrade actually nets our maker $39 ahead, plus they get better sales analytics.
Key Pros: Storefront AND a website that can also be a blog - all good SEO foundations. Custom domain is included - no extra fee.
Key Cons: You have to make the website (or hire someone like me) and the inventory structure is a little clunky. If you’re building your own audience you’ll have to stay engaged with your blog to keep building up better SEO, which is either an exciting part of the job or a chore, depending on who you are.
Shopify
Shopify is good at what it does and knows it. You get everything that Squarespace does well and some decent incentives to spend that extra $100/yr. One of the key things, in my opinion, going for Shopify is that big “Shop Pay” button option. You’ve been on a website, thinking about buying something, but you’re comfy and you don’t want to go get your wallet to enter your credit card details - well, with shopify sites, there’s a good chance you have your payment details already stored in shop pay so clicking that button streamlines the purchase process. Shopify has stats on this, it amounts to over 15% higher sales conversion on average.
| Fee | Per Item (on $35 sale) | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform (Basic plan) | — | $29 | $348 |
| Custom domain | — | ~$1.25 | ~$15 |
| Transaction fee | — | $0 | $0 |
| Payment processing (2.9% + $0.30) | $1.315 | ~$19.73 | ~$237 |
| Email campaigns (up to 1k/mo) | — | $0 | $0 |
| Total fees | $1.315/item | ~$50 | ~$600 |
| Revenue after fees | $33.69/item |
Once our vendor scales, they don’t have to change plans - they can stay on the basic plan or choose to pay more for some extras. Reasons to move up would be a lower processing rate (2.7% vs. 2.9%) and additional user logins which is useful if team members have joined.
Key pros: Fully customizable website with blogging capability and a well organized storefront with easy to manage inventory.
Key cons: You still have to build your own website, you’re paying the most of any option here at the baseline.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce comes up all the time because it’s marketed as a free option. It’s not. I’m here as a cautionary harbinger to warn you against this route - even though so many people use it.
To get to feature parity with Big Cartel, here’s what the real cost looks like:
| Fee | Per Item (on $35 sale) | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce plugin | — | $0 | $0 |
| WordPress hosting | — | $20 | $240 |
| Custom domain | — | ~$1.25 | ~$15 |
| Transaction fee | — | $0 | $0 |
| Payment processing (2.9% + $0.30) | $1.315 | ~$19.73 | ~$237 |
| Product variant options plugin | — | ~$6.58 | $79 |
| Upsell plugin | — | ~$8.25 | $99 |
| Buy Now button plugin | — | ~$3.25 | $39 |
| Total fees | $1.315/item | ~$59 | ~$709 |
| Revenue after fees | $33.69/item | ~$466/mo | ~$5,591/yr |
And that's before you account for the time you'll spend on updates, plugin conflicts, and the inevitable moment when three plugins stop playing nicely together after a WordPress core update. That's when you'll wish you'd just paid for Shopify.
Key pros: Most of the time, I’ve only ever untangled horror stories here. That said, it can be a good option if you’re tacking sales onto your site as a secondary goal of your web presence. For example, you’re a theater group selling a few pieces of merch but your main website purpose is ticket sales.
Key cons: You’re on the hook for the whole website, if you don’t keep current and aware of versions getting updated at different times you risk breaking your site.
At the end of the day
| Platform | Annual fees | Per item net | Setup effort | Includes website | Email included | Built-in audience |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | ~$674 | $31.22 | Sign up and go | No | No | Yes |
| Big Cartel | ~$540 | $33.68 | Some setup required | No | No | No |
| Squarespace | ~$555 | $32.98 | Build your own site | Yes | Add-on | No |
| Shopify | ~$600 | $33.68 | Build your own site | Yes | Yes | No |
| WooCommerce | ~$709+ | $33.68 | Build your own site + maintain it yourself | Yes (DIY) | Plugin required | No |
Your choice of storefront depends on you. How much of the behind-the-scenes work are you doing yourself? Are you comfortable building your own presence online - curating instagram, writing blogs, and finding ways to get featured to build traction with search algorithms? A lot of small makers are already doing this and just need a literal space to send people to buy. If that’s you, you can skip Etsy and go straight for Big Cartel.
You could always start with Etsy to learn about people’s buying habits, accepting the higher fees as a way to learn about a built-in audience, and then migrate over to another platform once you’ve got your footing.
Where do you see your shop in a year? Three years? How technical are you? Do you have time to manage content, not just inventory? Some people are genuinely excited about that part while others not so much. Where do you see yourself?
P.S. If you are looking to migrate or set up your shop but don’t want to do it yourself, let’s talk!
