Anyone searching online for a special gift for a family member or friend will certainly have come across something handmade and offered for sale on Etsy, a special platform for selling handicrafts or vintage items.
Etsy, in fact, is an online community that connects artists, craftspeople and customers from all over the world, and allows you to sell unique items globally, and in this article we will explain how you can put your items up for sale on this portal and send them to customers all over the world.
What is Etsy and how it works
Etsy is a platform that allows you to sell mainly three types of items, namely handmade items, vintage items, and DIY materials, such as fabrics, buttons and much more. Selling on Etsy is very simple, all you need to do is register on the portal by creating your own account and shop, and then start offering the products for sale. It will then be necessary specify the place from which the items will be shipped, the currency for payments, the time required to create the item, and the payment and invoicing methods.
To upload items for sale on Etsy, you will need to create a advertisement for each of them, containing images, the product price and a title, a category, tags and a description, where you will define all the characteristics of the item. In addition, once you have opened your own store on Etsy, you can choose whether to remain subscribed to the free standard plan or subscribe to Etsy Plus, which for a monthly fee of EUR 8.40 allows you to customise the template of your page, insert a redirect to your website, send a notification to customers once a product becomes available again, and receive credits to create advertisements.
It should also be remembered that selling on Etsy is not free, but there are commissions to be paid to the platform, particularly on listings and sales of items. The fee for creating an advertisement is 0.17€., and allows you to have an advertisement active for 4 months or until the item is sold, while for each product you sell Etsy will ask for a commission which consists of a basic fee of 0.30€, to which must be added 5% of the item price as transaction fee and 4% of the item price as payment handling fee.
How to send items with Etsy
Having explained how the Etsy platform works, we now come to the heart of the topic of our article, namely the international shipments of the products sold on this portal. In fact, in addition to the price of the item and the lead time, the seller must also indicate in the ad the shipping cost, which is calculated on the weight and dimensions of the object itself, clearly also taking into account the packaging and the package in which the item will arrive at its destination.
In addition to creating their own Etsy shop and promoting the items they offer, users of this platform will also have to create its own strategy with regard to the parcel shipments, then analysing the availability and prices of the various express couriers, create a workflow that can be fulfilled in a short time, and constantly devote time to making the items sold, packaging them in the correct way for dispatch parcels. Particular care must therefore be taken when setting both the processing times for the articles and the different shipping profiles, so as not to run into unforeseen problems and leave customers satisfied.
In your shop on Etsy, you can set the shipping conditions of the items being sold, specifying in particular which couriers you rely on and what their rates, times and delivery options are. In addition, it is also recommended to be transparent on returns, again specifying whether returns are accepted and whether the shipping costs of the returned item will be borne by the customer or not.
When shipping an item abroad, it is also good to find out about the regulations governing importation into other countries, as there may be some customs duties which entail additional costs, which in any case are borne by the buyer. It is also good to share with Etsy the tracking code of the shipment, so that the customer can always remain up-to-date on the delivery status of the item.
However, Etsy also allows the option of the free shipping, with which the buyer does not have to pay anything for shipping, but only the price of the item they are buying. For sellers using the platform, this is a recommended choice, as it allows them to move up in the ranking of internal search results on Etsy, and thus receive more traffic that can lead to increased sales.
If you have any doubts about managing your Etsy shop and shipping items, the platform itself provides information pages where you can read everything you need to set up your shipping strategy in the right way, which not only include guides on how to start selling on this site, but also offer courses in the portal Etsy U where experienced salespeople offer their expertise to help beginners take their first steps and grow on the platform.
