Etsy vs Shopify - Is Shopify the Future?

if you're looking to start a side hustle selling products online, one of the two biggest platforms you can use right now is Etsy and Shopify. I started my stiker shop two years ago and I've used both platforms pretty extensively. so today I'm going to be going through six different criteria. I'm just going to be giving my thoughts, based off of my experience, in hopes that'll help you make the right decision on what's best for your shop. Okay, so let's start off with everybody's favorite topic, and it might be the most important one, depending on your budget, which is cost. so, as of today, if you're based in the US or Canada, this is how the fees break down: Etsy charges 20 cents per listing which lasts four months, and they have a transaction fee of 6.5 percent. they also have a three percent plus 25 cent payment processing fee, as well as a 12 off-site ad fee. so let's just tok about this off-site ad fee for a little bit. this is a fee that Etsy will take when they're advertising your products in your store to the outside world of the internet. so they'll take your product and advertise them on places like Google and Facebook, and if somebody clicks on that ad and buys your item, that's the only time you get charged at 12. so you only get charges fee when you make a sale in this specific way. but toking to a lot of people, a lot of you guys really have an issue with this partikular fee because there's no way to opt out and it is a really high percentage, like 12 in addition to all the other fees that SC is charging is pretty high. but for me, and my source specifically, it's really been a non-factor. I looked into my Etsy stats and it turns out that out of the 5 000 sales that I've had on Etsy, only four of them have come through this method. so I've only been charged 12 these four times. so yeah, I don't know if that's typical, I don't know if that's high or low, I don't know if there's a reason etsy's not advertising my shop as aggressively as others. but I'm actually curious now, like maybe you can do me a favor and check your own stats and let me know down in the comments, like what percentage of them are coming from off-site sales. but getting into shopify's fees now, you can see that they have a different payment structure completely. they're charging monthly plans and the cheapest one starts at 29 a month. they also have a payment processing fee, which is 2.9 percent plus 25 cents per order, and there may be some other charges as well. if you're use using a paid theme or paid plugins. those are usually charged on a monthly basis as well and will add to this cost. so which one wins here really depends on your volume of sales. if you're selling a thousand dollars a month or tens of thousand dollars a month, Shopify is going to win here because you're paying a flat monthly fee versus the 6.5 that Etsy is charging. but if you're just starting out, which most of you are, and you're not sure if you're going to get many sales yet, I'd actually recommend Etsy, because that 6.5 extra fee on Etsy isn't going to cut into your profits as much as shopify's flat fee. and when you're just starting out and you're starting from zero customers and zero sales, it just doesn't feel the best to be having 29 taken from your account every month, regardless of whether you're making sales or not. like on Etsy, you can start with a really small investment, like just ten dollars, and that'll get you 50 listings that you can post and they'll last for four months and you're not going to be charged anything extra until you make a sale. so for the winner- for cause I'm actually going to give this one to Etsy- just because it has a lower upfront cost. I feel like it's better for the majority of people who are just starting out a business online. I think when you're you're first starting a business, it's really important to keep your upfront costs as low as possible, because you don't know if you're going to get sales right away. you don't know if you're going to get customers, and starting a business is already really risky, and having a high upfront cost and investing a lot of your money into it, in my opinion, is just not a good idea. so, moving on into the next category, which is easy to get started. so starting with Etsy again, Etsy has really streamlined the process of making a shop. it's really as easy as signing up for any online account, like if you're signing up for an email address or a social media or something like that. you're going to be very familiar with the process. so after filling in all the basic information, like your name, address, and I guess the only extra thing is your bank account- the only thing left you have to do is to update your banner on your store Page and your profile picture, which they're really simple and really easy to do. I think for me, when I was first starting up my Etsy shop, getting everything set up and having a listing ready for sale, it only took me like an afternoon to do it, like it's not hard at all. it's not very complicated and I think anyone can do it in a very short amount of time. which Shopify is a little more involved, because you really have to worry about how everything in your store is going to look and even if you're using themes, you're still going to have to dial those themes in. like you're going to have to choose the colors, the fonts, the pictures that go on every page. it's a lot more work than it is on Etsy. not only that, a lot of stores on Shopify use plugins as well and you're gonna have to go through different plugins and get them set up and make sure they're compatible with your theme and other plugins that are on your store. so you might run into some issues getting all that sorted out as well. for me- and this might be because I'm such a perfectionist- it took me about a month to get my store set up in a way that I was happy with and ready to launch. so, yeah, that's definitely a big difference in the afternoon that it took me to set up my Etsy. so for that reason, Etsy wins this one too. next up is customizability, and you'll see that this category is really a trade-off of the last one. what makes Etsy really easy to get started on also makes it very limited. if you're browsing through your Etsy settings and looking for ways to make your shop stand out, you'll see that there's not really that many ways to do it. like I said before, the only things that you can really change are your shop banner and your profile picture. you really don't have any control over how your shop looks, other than those two things. with Shopify, the sky is really the limit. you can have as many pages as you want, and every page can look different and specific to how you want it to go like. you can add different pictures, use different fonts, you can adjust the headings, the menus, the Footers- anything you really want to change you can do it. another great thing about Shopify is that they have tons of themes to choose from. they have both freed and paid themes available which you can go and choose, and you can tweak them as much as you want or, if you know how to code, you can actually start completely from scratch and code your own theme, so you really have full control over how your shop is going to feel and how it's going to look. another feature Shopify has is the ability to customize your messaging. when someone signs up for an account on your store or they make an order, you can actually customize what notifications they'll receive through email and SMS. you can add pictures to the emails and you can really customize exactly how you're communicating with your customers, which is something that Essie just doesn't allow at all. if you've been following the channel, you know how important I think think branding is when starting a business, and changing the way your shop looks and the way you communicate with customers is a really great way to show who you are as a company, as a great way to build a strong brand. so the winner for this one is clearly Shopify. the next category is customer support. customer support is something that you don't deal with every day, like

Shopify vs Etsy Which To Sell On This Year?? THE FEES! PROS & CONS

hello everyone. welcome back to my channel. i am katrina and today i'm going to be toking to you about the pros and cons of etsy and shopify, two of the largest platforms for e-commerce today. so i'm gonna be giving you my honest opinion on both, because i do sell them both. i have my clothing brand on shopify and i do have my craft store on etsy. so i'm going to be giving you the major differences, why you might consider one over the other or you might want to consider changing platforms. so i'm just gonna dive right in and give you all the different pros and cons and give you some tips to help you decide. make sure you watch all the way into the end so that way you can make a sound decision for you and your business. and don't forget to like and subscribe, because i'll bring you weekly videos to help you start and grow your business. now we're going to jump right into it now. shopify and etsy are two completely different platforms. one is more for handmade goods, one is more for branding, but you can intermingle them both. it's all about how you use the platforms. i'm going to start off with etsy now. etsy is a world known. pretty much everybody named mama know, etsy is the go-to for handmade goods, one-of-a-kind goods. it's where you go when you want to buy unique gifts, when you want to buy something special with an extra touch or when you want to buy something that is customizable, that you can't really get in the store. etsy is the go-to. etsy is pretty much already the marketplace. it's set up, it's already been established. thousands and thousands, if not millions, shop on etsy and they go to it without having to be told to go to it. so when you create your page or your landing page on etsy, just know that etsy is not your own. etsy is not your own website. you can't have your own domain. you have to really follow all the policies and the guidelines that etsy has put forth. that's probably the biggest con- well, not the biggest, we'll get to the biggest soon. but etsy is a place where you only think you can really customize are the photos you put out, um, and the banner at the top. of course you have your shop name, but there's no actual domain name. if etsy shuts down tomorrow, your shop is gone. don't want to scare you, but just want to be realistik. so with etsy, it's a platform, of course, where you have already people coming to shop, but you're competing with other shop owners. so with etsy, people can be selling the similar listings to you. you're competing for that number one spot. it's almost like you know you're winning the race and you're trying to see who's going to get to the finish line first. now i don't want to scare you from etsy at all. etsy is a great marketplace and it's great for beginners. why? because you don't really have to do too much to drive people to your site. people are already going there. so that's the one good thing about etsy. etsy is already a site that people go to to shop, so you already have a customer base pretty much. you do need to run a few ads, you know, to get yourself high on the rankings, because trying to get your products to list on the number one spot is key, is priority. so now, another big pro to etsy is, if you use someone like me, you can get your first 40 listings for free. so, depending upon how many items you want to list, your first 40 listings can be free if you use the link down below. not everyone gets that because every listing is typically 20 cents to list. there are a lot of fees with etsy. that's a major con and you do have to consider that when you're listing your prices. but if you use your first 40 listings, you get your first 40 listings free. everything after that is 20 cents every time you list an item. now let's tok about these fees. etsy got some fees, y'all. i'm just letting you know. beware, you have to consider that when you're listing your price, every time you list an item, it's 20 cents. every time you sell an item, it's 20 cents. every time you renew an item, it's 20 cents. that's not all, y'all. plus there's transaction fees. i think the transaction fees are about three percent. and then there's, you know, processing fees. i don't know why they have all these fees, but the processing fees is six and a half percent. i might be mixing up the percentage between the transaction fee and the processing fee, but just know it's about a good nine to ten percent off of every single thing you sell. so the more you sell, the bigger your shop is, the more fees you have to pay. just consider that. to give you an example, i had a sale recently that was well over a thousand dollars. they took out about two hundred dollars for me. your girl was hot, because you have to consider that. you have to fact that in into the price, especially if you're factoring in shipping. now when you're considering the fees that have to come out of every item that's being sold and you have to consider: do you want to hide the shipping and that makes the items go up. so it's really competitive, of course, when you're pricing your items compared to other people's listings as well. so those are the major cons with etsy: it's all the fees. that's a deterrent. so a lot of people build up their customer base on etsy and they drive them over to another site. once you start getting used to etsy and once you get that customer base- for those people who are starting out brand new and you do not have a custom base, you can use etsy's platform as a way to get new customers, to get people to trust you, because etsy is the trusted site. if you're brand new, they don't trust you. yet if i'm just starting out selling hand soaps or if i'm selling, you know, bath bombs or i'm selling jewelry, they don't know me from a hole in the wall. so why would they buy for me? but they'll buy off of etsy, even though etsy has so many different crafters, um, and entrepreneurs and boss people out there making all these things. they might not trust you per se, but they trust the site once people get to know you as the owner, as a shop owner, when you're sending out those personal touches, once you build up all those reviews and you get all those repeat customers, now you want to drive them over to another site. that way you don't have to have all those fees. so people normally link a website that they have off etsy on their page and people tend to buy from that site. that's how you can merge and transition from etsy to your own site. so now another con to etsy. some people don't see it as a con, but i don't really like it. so now you know, when you go on etsy and you shop and you know you click on a listing, at the bottom of the page there's ads or there's other similar products to yours. oh, i hate that because it could actually deter someone from your page. if they click on your listing and they don't really like it, at the bottom it'll show similar listings which might potentially take them from your store and take them to another store. so now if i'm on my shopify site, it's all my products, it's just me. i'm not competing against anyone versus etsy. i'm competing literally against everyone. so now on etsy they change the policy to where if you have free shipping, or if you spend 35 or more in the shop and you- yum, you get free shipping. those listings rank higher than someone who shop who does not offer free shipping. so it's not really fair to some people who might be, say, selling heavy items, that you have to pay for that shipping. i'm not going to pay for shipping because if i hide the shipping- and of course it's going to make it go high- there's some items like, let's say, um, huge signs or people who are making woodwork or different things, those items might be heavy to ship. so if i charge on an extra 20 or 30 in my actual listing, it might deter people from the sale because they see that the item costs too much when they're not realizing. oh, i'm actually it's, the shipping is in the course. so just some things to consider. so you are competing with other shop owners as well. you're competing for that number one landing page, because i might click on one or two pages, but but after that i'm tired of looking.

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Etsy vs Shopify: Which is the Better Ecommerce Platform?

in this video, we'll compare etsy and shopify, arming you with the confidence and knowledge to make the best decision for your e-commerce business. and spoiler alert: even though we are shopify, there are absolutely situations where we would recommend you choose etsy over us. welcome to learn with shopify. in this video, we'll explore the differences, similarities and use cases you should consider when vetting etsy and shopify as your ecommerce platform of choice when you're just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. in order to give you the most value in this breakdown, i believe the best prism through which to examine shopify versus etsy is all about your desired outcomes as a new entrepreneur, whether you're currently just at the idea stage or you're in your first few months of selling. we'll be exploring, with a quick overview of each platform, the speed and ease to get started, customizability, features for sellers, customer acquisition, price versus cost- and yes, those are two wildly different things- limitations to items you can sell and, finally, the bottom line, which one you should choose depending on your products and goals. without further ado, let's jump right into part one, a quick overview of each platform. etsy is an incredible marketplace, launched primarily for artisanal makers, crafters and artists to sell their creations. in 2021, etsy saw over 90 million active buyers from across the world make purchases through their site. shopify, on the other hand, enables over a million regular folks just like us to have their very own website to sell online, and, in 2021, saw those websites sell well in excess of 150 billion dollars from every corner of the globe. from a straight up platform to platform comparison, the most major immediate difference is that etsy is a marketplace where every single seller competes directly with every other seller in the same environment, whereas shopify is, at its core, an enabler of independent ownership where your site is truly your site. but let's head on over to some head-to-head comparisons, beginning with the speed and ease of getting started with selling. with etsy, signing up for an account is quick and in fact they sort of forced you into it, since you can't even complete signing up until you have created at least one listing. if you have a few photos of what you want to sell, going from sign up to cell ready on etsy can take just 45 minutes or less with shopify. this is your site and even though there are boatloads of beautiful and effective templates to make creating your site efficiently, the very nature of it being your site means you're naturally going to dedicate more time and generosity of thought to represent you and your products exactly the way you want to. i liken this comparison of the speed and ease of getting started to the difference between renting an apartment and building your dream home. you see, with etsy you are essentially a unit in a wonderful apartment building, whereas with shopify, you are designing and building to your exacting specifications and standards, a dream home that you own. if we're just looking at the speed and ease of going from sign up to ready to sell, etsy definitely takes the point over here. next up, customizability. with etsy, there's unfortunately no real customization available to make your shop stand out again. etsy is a marketplace much like amazon or ebay, so your products all sit within the design, aesthetik and user interface set forth by etsy. you're basically limited to changing the structure of your collection and product pages. a pro tip, by the way: if you do decide to sell on etsy, a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors is to have a unique colored and textured background for the main photo of all your listings so they pop off the search results page compared to everyone else's listing. but, sliding back to the comparison, your products are essentially tenants in etsy's apartment building. on shopify, you can design your website any way you want. customization is nearly infinite. you can choose from dozens of themes, edit, code and brand your website your way, so fonts, images, image placement pages, categories, heck- everything down to the shape and color of your buttons is entirely up to you. you can start with one of the countless themes available to you and make it truly your own. and beyond that, the tremendous catalog of apps and plugins available to you enable not just a limitless aesthetik customization, but the customization of functional and value added features are limitless as well. when it comes to making your online selling presence unique, there's no contest here. point goes to shopify. moving on to features and value-added tools, when it comes to shopify, the list is so extensive. we could make an hour-long video and it would still just barely scratch the surface, but a few key standouts include built-in tools like abandoned cart recovery, where your site automatikally emails visitors who added items to their cart but never checked out, reminding them of what they were planning on buying. shopify also offers integrations to various social networks, including facebook and instagram, so social scrollers can buy directly in their favorite social media platforms without ever needing to leave those apps. shopify even offers a built-in blog to publish relevant content, marketing pieces that build traffic, greater brand loyalty, while simultaneously improving your seo rankings. you'll also get robust third-party calculated shipping rates for accuracy and offering options to your customers, just to name a few. with etsy, you're really being forced to play entirely by their rules. of course, they do have extra tools and features as well. like shopify, they have a mobile app that lets you manage your store on the go, and, like shopify, they offer you discounts on postage, albeit less of a discount than what shopify offers. etsy also has paid add-ons, like etsy plus and pattern by etsy. a few other features are added, like the ability for your customers to request stok alerts, but again, all of these and way more are already included with the most basic shopify plan. no contest here, when it comes to tools and features, point confidently goes to shopify. next on the list to compare discoverability and customer acquisition. etsy being a marketplace, means that their existing customer base of millions are already there searching for unique crafts and art to buy. although the competition can be fierce, the fact that your products are potentially discoverable by a large customer group that's already on a website with buying on their minds is really awesome. it's your job, however, to stand out from the crowd, but the crowd is already there and, although you'll reap the benefits of free traffic, keep in mind you don't actually own your audience. shopify gives you more control over your marketing as you are the owner of your website. for example, shopify has built-in marketing features and apps to help you drive traffic to your site so that you can build your audience. with shopify's built-in blog, you can help people find your store with seo tools to edit title tags, meta descriptions and product details. you can even create online marketing campaigns to promote your products, like email marketing, facebook ads and google smart shopping, so that the right people see your store i mean. shopify even has a marketing dashboard where you can pull actionable insights to improve your marketing efforts. the ability to own your marketing is one of the absolute best reasons for choosing shopify over etsy, and because of this, i'll have to get the point here to shopify. continuing on, though, let's compare the price versus the cost of both platforms. it's important to understand the difference between price and cost, and one of the easiest product categories to demonstrate this with are cars. you see, the price of a car might be 25 000, sure, but the cost is that 25 000 plus 200 a month for insurance, plus 150 a month for gas, plus 700 a year on average for scheduled maintenance and re.

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SHOULD YOU SELL ON ETSY OR SHOPIFY, Pros & Cons of Etsy Vs. Shopify

have you been trying to make a decision between whether you should saw on Etsy or Shopify? well, today I'm gonna be sharing with you guys the pros and cons to both. hey guys, welcome back to my channel if you are new here. hey hi, hello, my name is Lauren. I'm really excited for today's video because this is something that I myself have been struggling with back and forth between for quite some time. if you guys don't know, I actually sell print-on-demand products on Etsy and on Shopify now. so I've kind of been on both sides of the spectrum and I'm here to share with you guys today the pros and cons of selling on both. so, without further adieu, guys, let's jump into it, because I know y'all are here for the important stuff. starting off, I'm gonna tok about Shopify first and I'm gonna share with you guys both the pros and cons to Shopify. this is going to be a clear indicator on whether or not Shopify might be right for you. one of the best reasons to be selling on Shopify is that there are no limits. Shopify is fully customizable. you can sell whatever it is that you'd like and paying your Shopify monthly bill, and that's about it. going off of that. one of the best things about Shopify is that you can pretty much customize anything you want. so, as people are coming to your shop, you can actually have a domain name. you can have your own website where you build it and structure it however you want for people to come and find your items. with Shopify, there is only a monthly fee that you pay in order to use the program to host your website and your store, whereas for Etsy, there are quite a few more fees, and we'll get into that a little bit later. overall, I found that Shopify is better if you are looking to scale your business to a larger size or if you're just wanting to have freedom in general. overall, it is cheaper to host on Shopify if you choose so, just due to the fact that if you are creating a larger number of orders and you're going to having a lot of items in your shop, then you're not having to pay those fines every single time you want to list a new item, we want to renew a new item, or every time that someone purchases something, and you're not getting all these transaction fees as well. so that is the big, big plus to Shopify as well. now, one not-so-good feature about choppa is that, unlike Etsy, you are going to be having to drive all of your traffic to your shop, so they're not going to push your shop out to their audience of people that they already have. they're not going to have a Shopify website where they can people can come and shop your stores. they are not going to do that. you are going to be completely responsible for bringing in your traffic. so if you're a brand new shop who is starting up, it can be extremely difficult to get that initial traffic boost and to get people to your shop, to trust your shop, to purchase from it and then eventually build your brand. however, I do think that if you already have a brand that's been built up, if you already have a following, then Shopify is definitely going to be the route you want to go because you already have traffic that can make its way to your website as an already established brand. you have that audience that's going to be willing to go to your website and check it out, which makes it different than Etsy because you do have more traffic that's already being pushed there that you're not having to go out and find. I do believe that Shopify can be a con as far as pricing goes if you are a newer shop- so, for instance, if you're selling handmade items and you do not have a very large variety in items and you're not looking to invest a lot of money up front in your business, then I do think that Shopify's price can outweigh what you would pay on Etsy. it honestly just depends, because if you are wanting to make sales overall, Shopify is gonna be your better bet money-wise and expenses. why so? just to recap, some of my positives for Shopify would be that you have the customizable ability for your website, for your landing page, for as many items as you want and what they look like, your descriptions, all that kind of good stuff. not only that, but it is actually cheaper for you to be hosting on Shopify because you don't have all of the fees and listing fees and different types of fees that Etsy likes to include. however, you are drawing most of the traffic to your site by yourself, so if you already have a great following, that's good, because you want to worry about that, whereas if you are building up your brand, it might take some time to see those sales, whereas otherwise, on FB, you might see more sales. so now let's tok a little bit about Etsy and tok about the pros vs cons of Etsy. starting with the pros of Etsy, the number one thing is traffic. Etsy is amazing because it is now a trusted website. it has been around for several years. people love it. people go there looking for specific items- gifts most specifically- and it's a great way for people to find unique things. so there is a very wide audience that's already on Etsy that's coming there to look for items. that is why this reason is the number one reason why I would use Etsy, because it does give you that traffic and that traffic is going to likely lead to more sales, whereas your Shopify page, if you don't get traffic, you don't get any sales. so if you are a new shop or a new store or a new brand or business and you are looking to just get started, Etsy might be your better option because you're going to be able to get your business in front of more people's faces. however, I will preface this by saying that you do have to be really invested in your SEO and your photos in order for the traffic to come to your shop. you cannot just upload a listing and then just it magically appear. I have a ton of videos on my channel all about doing well on Etsy and how to improve your listings, improve your shop and do great. so I will link that playlist up here for you guys if you want to go and check that out next. the next Pro for SC that I have is actually the messaging system that they provide. I believe that this is really important because it makes it really simple to get in contact with the people who are buying your items. so if you have an issue, or if you have an issue with the address or maybe a concern that has been brought up or you know that there is going to be a delay in your shipping or a change in pricing, you can speak with them directly through the messaging and it's very safe. it does not give any of their private information or yours, so it keeps that kind of confidentiality and allows for that messaging back and forth between you and the customer. Shopify does offer certain features like this and I'm sure you can download different apps and kind of plug-ins for your website to allow this as well, but I do think that Etsy's is very simple and simply stated, so it's very easy to work around. my last Pro for Etsy kind of goes back to the beginning, where I was, that Etsy is very good for driving traffic to your shop. Etsy is also great for bringing in trusted buyers. it is already a proven, successful website in business. people come to se daily for new things, for gifts, for ideas for presents, for take or whatever it is guys people are constant at. people are constantly shopping on Etsy and because of this, Ezio's truly built up their brand, which has allowed them to build a name for themselves in a trusted name. people trust the website so they're more willing to come on there and spend money. first is your own small personal brand, where people might not be so sure about it. people don't know you personally and so they feel like maybe they can't trust a website if it doesn't look secure or professional. do you really got to make sure those things are in line? if you're gonna be using Shopify now for my Etsy cons- and I'm sure you guys can kind of see where this is gonna go based off of our conversation we had about Shopify- the number one reason why I would not choose @ze over Shopify would be because of the fees. I quite honestly c

Etsy vs Shopify... Which is Better?

are you trying to decide between etsy or shopify for your online store? well, you're in luck because in this video, we're going to go over the pros and the cons of both the etsy and shopify platforms so you can decide what's best for your business. so a lot of times, people start off on etsy if they have a handmade business and then, after they are kind of more established with their online store, they then look at actually then transitioning to a platform like shopify to have a dedicated site. however, there are pros and cons of each which i wanted to go over in this video. so, first off, etsy is an online marketplace where you can sell a variety of items that are either handmade, vintage, print on demand or our materials. it's kind of like going to a craft fair and setting up all of your products in your own little booth, so you have the traffic from the craft fair that is coming in and they're going to be stopping at many different booths and hopefully yours as well. shopify is a dedicated online site so you can sell anything that you want because it's your specific site, and it's kind of like if you were to open a brick and mortar store downtown on your square and then you were responsible for actually driving the traffic to your store to actually get sales. so you can already see there a little bit of the pros and cons, but let's go into each individually and break it down. so let's start off first with etsy. so in terms of pros for etsy is that there's already a built-in customer base. people are used to actually going to the etsy platform when they're searching for products because they're looking for something that's unique or handmade, so you've got people that are already going to be shopping directly on the platform. also, etsy has a great search engine and search functionality. so if your product is something that is unique and something that people are looking for, you can guarantee that you're going to get some traffic. whenever you first opened up your etsy store just based off the search functionality. so it's really helpful to get some traffic to your site very quickly after you've launched because people are using that search engine and going through and finding your products. the final pro with etsy is that it is easy to set up. everything is all fitting within the etsy framework so it's really easy to quickly add in a couple images and add in your listings, to set up your products and start selling your products on the etsy platform. okay, so let's go ahead and go into the cons now. so a big con with etsy is that you are limited in terms of what products you can sell. again, the categories are handmade, vintage, print on demand or material. so if your product doesn't fall into any of those categories you're really not able to sell then on the etsy platform because you're not one of those categories. also, with etsy, you aren't going to have a lot of problems with your competition being right side by side with you. so, as i mentioned, as a pro of people actually being able to look in the search functionality to find your products, the con is that your products are going to show up directly, side by side, to your competitors, which means that sometimes people may just pick the cheaper option, and racing to the bottom on price is never a good idea. so it is a little bit of a con there that your competitors are right there beside you and can be directly compared to your products and your price. also, in terms of a con for etsy, it's that it's just harder to build a brand. people are coming to the etsy platform, so it's their branding throughout, not yours. you do have some branding elements that you can customize, like a header, banner and a logo, as well as your product images, but you're really limited overall in terms of your branding that you can use throughout to establish that customer base. and finally, and probably in my opinion, the biggest con is that you can't actually be beginning an email list. so you're getting people to hopefully purchase from your store, but you're not able to actually do anything with that customer information. you can't collect email addresses and then market to them later on to hopefully get repeat purchases and you're kind of just stagnant. you're hoping that they come back to your store or leave your review, but you don't really have any information based on the customer that you can then reach out to them and go and try and build that brand with them. so it's really limiting there for actually growing your store and scaling up. okay, so now let's go ahead and pivot and tok about the shopify pros and cons. so one of the big pros with shopify is that it is your own site. you control all of the messaging and the branding for it, so you're really able to build that brand with your customers or any potential customers that come to your site. also, there's no competition because it is just your site. so there's no other products being displayed on the site that people can compare side by side of one competitor versus another. it is just your products. you also have the functionality to actually build an email list. so, again, the importance then of getting that email address, of people saying hey, yeah, i want to hear more from you, so collecting that information and then being able to reach out with them again and again to hopefully get repeat orders from them, and that's what makes it really scalable. so, as your store grows and you're changing out different products or maybe you have a large inventory, it really is going to work best whenever you have your own dedicated site so that it really grows with you as your store grows and expands. also, in terms of a big pro for shopify is that there are additional apps so that you can add in additional functionality, like site reviews. you can add in a loyalty program, wish list pop-ups to grab those email addresses. there are so many different options in the shopify app store of different ways where you can build in additional functionality for your shopify store that you just can't do with other platforms like etsy. okay, so now let's go ahead and tok about the cons. so a pro is that it's your own dedicated site. however, con is that it does take longer to set up than etsy does, because there's just a lot more to set up. the benefit is that you have a lot more to customize, but the downside is that it's going to take a little longer to do that. another big con is that you are not going to be featured through a search functionality like etsy has, and you solely are responsible for sending all of the traffic to your site. so if you're not getting sales or traffic to your site, well that's because you're not sending it correctly. so it is a lot additional work then to make sure that you are marketing your store and sending that traffic and sales to your site. so now that i've gone over the pros and cons, i have three questions for you to try and figure out which platform might be best for you. first off, how much time do you have to spend on your business? if you don't have a lot of time to actually spend on your business right now, i would actually think of doing a platform like etsy, because it's going to be faster to set up. you can really test out products and see which ones are working best for people, and you don't have to worry about all the time spent in terms of actually sending people to your site because, again, you have that online search functionality through the etsy marketplace. if you have a little bit more time, you may want to actually consider setting up your shopify store and then focusing on then having it from one dedicated site from the very beginning and then scaling it up from there, and again you have that additional time of the setup and sending people to your site. my second question for you is: how much money do you actually have to spend to promote your business? so, again, etsy does have some promotion capabilities of you can run ads on the etsy platform. however, a lot of that traffic can be coming through their search functionality. so if you don't have a

Shopify vs Etsy in 2022 | Getting Started With Selling T-shirts For Beginners

so i want to ask you a question: would you rather sell your t-shirts on a site where customers can just show up and shop and everything is easy peasy and you don't have to control the website, logistiks and all the ins and outs when it comes to that? or would you rather have customers come to a very brand stamped website that you design, that you have total control over and that you can change any time you want what is up? defying squad. welcome and welcome back to another video. it's your girl, alex, and defined by alex. here in this channel, we tok all things: t-shirts with some lifestyle content on the side. thank you, guys for tuning in again. so i post a question in the beginning of this video because i truly want to know what would you rather have when it comes to selling t-shirts. be sure you guys stay to the end of this video to find out what platform is going to be the best for you when it comes to selling t-shirts in 2022. okay, so, without further ado, let's go. okay, so let me go ahead and start with etsy. so, if you guys don't know, etsy is like this world-renowned marketplace. okay, like everybody know about it. see everybody selling something, or they have bought something, or they know someone who has bought something on etsy. here's what i want you to really understand when it comes to selling anything but, more specifically, t-shirts. when it comes to etsy. so etsy is free to sign up, which is going to be great for anyone to get started. so it's free to sign up. you just create an account, you figure out how to just make your page or your shop page that people are going to find to buy your product, but then you have to worry about those fees that etsy will charge you to list your products and all the other fees that comes with it when it comes to your monthly fees and taxes and stuff like that. so that is etsy. it is free to join. you can add all of the listings that you want, but you do not own the platform, so it does not give you that control to really be able to change up your website, add new features and things like that. that will increase your sales and things like that. so etsy is a good place to start. it is a platform that people are very, very successful in it. my best friend sells on etsy and she is doing a phenomenal job. however, when it comes to ownership and just having more control on the website nuances and how things are set up. you do not have that when it comes to etsy. moving on to shopify now, shopify is the platform where a lot of online entrepreneurs, e-commerce sellers, are selling their merch. okay, they're selling their products like. there's a special place in my heart with shopify, because i am a seller of shopify and that's where my business is. let me tell you about some things about shopify to really help you understand the dynamic and hopefully, by the end of this video, you know which one you're going to go with when it comes to selling your products. so with shopify, you do have to have a like a membership or some type of subscription that is monthly. so, depending on where you are in your business or how much you want to get out of the shopify features, you want to make sure that you sign up, make sure that you have the funds to pay this monthly subscription fee, but then you have total control over how this website is going to look, how to get your customers to stay on this website and, of course, shop with you more, how to personalize it with your brand and really brand stamp this website to where customers recognize that this is your site and it's no one else's, you know, so you're really adding that special sauce when it comes to being very individual and creative for your website. there are a few things that's different when it comes to shopify versus etsy. okay, so, like etsy, where i toked about, you're going to be charged to list your products, so that's called a listing fee. shopify does not have that, but you do still end up spending money, just because that's just how it goes when wanting to own a website and things like that. so you do have to pay their monthly fee, but you're not charged on a monthly basis. or you're not charged a listing fee when it comes to shopify- okay, so, like shopify, you pay your monthly fee. you can still add as many products as you want. but the sweet spot with shopify when it comes to, like i said, being creative, being individual and things like that. but one hidden gem about shopify is that you have an app store and with that app store, you can pretty much add and integrate all of the apps that are going to be suitable to help you build and sustain your business. you have apps that have increased up sales, so increases your order value. you have apps that can send people text messages and alerts when they leave your site- y'all the list is endless. okay, so when it comes to the platform that i feel is going to give you the more bang for your buck, then i highly recommend that you choose shopify, especially if you're someone who likes to be all hands on deck when it comes to designing the website, when it comes to figuring out every little detail, i mean to the fonts, to the colors, to everything that you know that you will have fun in when creating a website. one thing about shopify 2 is that, even if you do not want to do all of that, but you still want to have the shopify experience for your customers, then they actually have experts for you to build your website, especially if that's in your budget. so you may still want your shopify store, but you don't want to put it together yourself, so that way you can outsource it. this would be a good opportunity for those of you who really just want to post your products and get to sell it and get the marketing okay, so you don't want to put all that work in on the back end, you know, by yourself. so you hire someone or get an expert and they can go ahead and help you out with that. now let's tok about some shared similarities when it comes to both platforms. both platforms are conducive to print on demand, so they both allow print-on-demand services. so if you're someone who does not want to fulfill in your home and you don't want to do all of that, you can integrate principle with both etsy and shopify and be very successful at it. a lot of people do that, charles, so trust me, it's highly possible that you can do that too. but even on the flip side, if you are someone who has the team or if you just want to do it yourself to fulfill everything in your home, then you can also still do those, both on etsy and on shopify. another thing with etsy, when it comes to customers finding you. with etsy, you're kind of in this competitive pool, i should say to, where your shirt or your product may not be the first item that pops up. when it comes to customers, you know really seeing what you sell, and when that happens, then you have to start putting together how you're going to be on the first page of etsy, how you're going to make sure that customers see you, because when it comes to etsy. honey, getting on that first page is like being valedictorian. you want to make sure that people see you and they don't want to keep scrolling or looking through nothing else to find your product, whereas shopify it is your website, so all of your products are on there. okay, everything that you want to sell, everything that you want to tok about, everything that you want to showcase is on shopify, so it eliminates that competitive pool like on etsy when it comes to your products, because once customers type in your domain, everything that you sell is at their fingertips. okay, good people. so that's it for today's video when it comes to toking about etsy versus shopify, and what platform should you use when starting your t-shirt business for 2022.. to be quite honest, there's nothing wrong with either platform. it all depends on what you want out of it and how much time do you have to really sit down and either build a website or, if you just want to be someone who designs a product, puts up a listing and call it a day, okay, so both of them are highly, highly successful for a lot of people, but agai.