Etsy vs. Amazon Handmade: The Ultimate Guide for Artisanal Sellers (2024)

Marketplaces are as old as human commerce. From the bazaar to the bodega, they exist in every culture. Today, additionally they exist online, as ecommerce has globalized and democratized the selling and consumption of wares. For small businesses, it is a particularly impactful change: It’s not needed to have a warehouse, a logistics coordinator, or perhaps a physical storefront to have a globally recognized brand.

Although dozens of online marketplaces exist, two of the preferred and established options are Amazon Handmade and Etsy.

What’s Etsy?

Etsy is a web-based marketplace for vintage and handmade goods from across the globe. Founded as a small Brooklyn shop in 2005, Etsy has grown into a world ecommerce hub with over 100 million items on the market. As of 2024, it counted 9 million sellers and over 96 million lively buyers worldwide.

Even with its growth, Etsy has remained committed to its alternative, community-embedded identity. The corporate goals for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and its Etsy Uplift Fund provides support to economically disadvantaged makers and promotes products made by historically marginalized communities.

Pros and cons of selling on Etsy

Like most things, evaluating the merits of selling on Etsy is made easier by taking an in depth take a look at the professionals and cons.

Pros of selling on Etsy 

• Low startup fees. Etsy fees are low. It costs $15 to establish an Etsy shop. For every item you would like to sell, there may be a $0.20 listing fee. The listings expire after 4 months and shall be robotically renewed unless you choose out of the feature. Total selling fees also include transaction fees, which are available at 6.5% of the overall cost of the product. Chances are you’ll even be charged a shipping and payment processing fee.
• Analytics and custom options. Etsy’s standard plan also comes with a Stats page that displays traffic volume to your shop in addition to details about how visitors arrived there. Etsy also offers a further paid plan—Etsy Plus—that means that you can customize the look of your Etsy store with banners and featured listings, offers, restock requests, and more.
• Flexible promoting plans. Etsy allows sellers to buy each on-site and off-site ads through the Etsy platform. Etsy’s internal ads space is placed using an auto-bidding system. Etsy sellers set a every day ad budget, and Etsy uses these numbers to “auction off” ad space for particular product categories and search terms. Etsy’s off-site ads operate on modified a pay-per-click (PPC) model, where sellers pay provided that an ad is clicked and the user who clicked the ad orders from the vendor’s shop inside 30 days. The fee for these ads is 15% of the overall transaction amount in case your etsy shop made lower than $10,000 within the last 12 months. In case your shop made more, the fee is 12%.

Cons of selling on Etsy

• Recurring fees. Although Etsy has low initial startup costs, listing fees, which recur every 4 months, generally is a drawback for some Etsy sellers. For instance, the price to a seller with 100 listings is $20. If none of those listings have sold inside 4 months, the user would owe one other $20 on the identical listings. This could make the location expensive for users whose product types require a high variety of individual listings. It is definitely possible to lose money running an Etsy store if sales proceeds don’t exceed listing costs.
• Not all sorts of things might be sold. Etsy sellers offer vintage and handmade goods. In case your items don’t fit either of those categories, you is not going to be allowed to sell on Etsy, and listings that don’t fit into these categories might be flagged and removed.
• Etsy doesn’t offer achievement services.Etsy shop owners are in command of their very own shipping logistics. While Etsy provides printable labels at a reduced rate, that also means a number of printing, boxing, and taping—or finding and managing your personal third-party distribution vendor.

What’s Amazon Handmade?

Amazon is currently the leading online retailer within the US, with annual net sales of over $574 billion in 2023. Amazon averages over 2.5 billion visitors per thirty days.

In 2015, Amazon launched a smaller market, Amazon Handmade, designed for small businesses that concentrate on handcrafted goods. Although Amazon doesn’t publicize the overall sales or the variety of sellers participating in Amazon Handmade, in September 2020, the corporate reported that over 100 of the market’s makers had surpassed $1 million in annual sales.

Pros and cons of selling on Amazon Handmade

Listed below are a number of the advantages and disadvantages of selling on Amazon Handmade.

Pros of selling on Handmade

• Massive potential reach. Amazon is some of the visited sites within the US. Because Amazon Handmade products are integrated into the larger Amazon ecommerce site, selling on Amazon Handmade can get you in front of a bigger global audience than some other platform.
• Complimentary skilled plan. Amazon Marketplace offers each a person and an expert plan, with skilled plan sellers paying a flat subscription fee of $39.99 per thirty days, plus selling fees on individual orders. Sellers who’re approved for Amazon Handmade receive the skilled plan perks totally free and are charged a flat 15% transaction fee on all sales.
• No listing fees. Amazon doesn’t charge product listing fees, so you simply pay if you happen to make a sale.

Cons of selling on Amazon Handmade

• Amazon competes with its own sellers. Amazon has quite a few in-house brands that it sells alongside those offered by its vendors, so small businesses are effectively in direct competition with the world’s largest ecommerce company. 
• Higher selling fees. Although Amazon Handmade sellers receive Amazon’s skilled selling plan without charge, the 15% selling fee charged on each sale remains to be higher than those charged by many other marketplaces.

Etsy vs. Amazon Handmade

Amazon and Etsy each provide small business owners with an easy, secure platform for earning money from a big audience—no business license or coding skills required. Their most important differences involve fee structures, support services, and start-up time.

General website and user interface

• How they’re similar: Amazon Handmade and Etsy are each designed to be intuitive and user-friendly for buyers and sellers alike. Each platforms make it easy to establish a web-based store with none web development knowledge, allowing you to create and customize a storefront page (your “store”) and to incorporate your product listings of their search results. Each also provide a mobile app and a seller dashboard that tracks order and sale information.
• How they’re different: Amazon doesn’t charge a product listing fee, while Etsy does. These listing fees recur every 4 months. Moreover, Etsy and Amazon Handmade each deduct selling fees at a flat rate across categories and price points—for Etsy, this is available in at 6.5% of the overall sale price plus a payment processing fee. For Amazon Handmade, the selling fee is 15% of the overall sale price.

Custom products offered

• How they’re similar: Each Amazon Handmade and Etsy allow sellers to pay more in exchange for preferred listing placement.
• How they’re different: Etsy offers integrated off-site promoting, which is optional for sellers whose annual sales total lower than $10,000. Amazon doesn’t offer off-site ads. 

Listing and selling fees 

• How they’re similar: Amazon Handmade and Etsy each charge selling fees which might be calculated as a percentage of the overall sale amount.

• How they’re different: Amazon doesn’t charge a product listing fee, while Etsy does. These listing fees recur every 4 months. Moreover, Etsy and Amazon Handmade each deduct selling fees at a flat rate across categories and price points—for Etsy, this is available in at 6.5% of the overall sale price plus a 3.5% plus 25¢ payment processing fee, and for Amazon Handmade, the selling fee is 15% of the overall sale price. 

Product category organization

• How they’re similar: Each sellers sort items into top-level product categories and subcategories.

• How they’re different: Amazon Handmade and Etsy each feature top-level product categories designed to showcase handmade goods. “Paper and Party Supplies” is a top-level category at Etsy, for instance, as are “Weddings,” “Bath & Beauty,” and “Craft Supplies & Tools.” Amazon Handmade product categories are similarly craft- and lifestyle-focused, although categories like “Handmade Electronics Accessories” and “Handmade Sports and Outdoors” are unique to the Amazon platform.

Sign-up process

• How they’re similar: Each Amazon Handmade and Etsy require banking information and private information to open a store.
• How they’re different: Amazon also requires tax information, an internationally chargeable bank card, a phone number, and a government-issued ID. Approval of an Amazon Marketplace shop can take weeks, and selling on Amazon Handmade requires a further application process. Etsy shop approval, then again, is instantaneous.

Payment process

• How they’re similar: Each sites offer user-friendly automated direct deposits as a payment option.
• How they’re different: Etsy pays sellers through their Etsy accounts. Amazon pays through direct deposit into the vendor’s checking account. Payment schedules also differ: Amazon pays sellers every two weeks, and Etsy defaults to a weekly payment schedule but allows sellers to alter this setting to every day, weekly, or monthly.

Achievement services

• How they’re similar: Each offer free shipping options and provides sellers the choice to pick out their very own shipping rates and methods.
• How they’re different: Amazon offers Achievement by Amazon services, during which sellers ship their products to an Amazon warehouse for storage. Once a purchase order is made, Amazon handles the achievement logistics. Etsy provides shippers with discounted shipping labels but doesn’t warehouse goods or handle shipping for sellers.

Your selection of online marketplaces for handmade goods

Although they differ in scale, buyer demographics, and fee structures, Amazon Handmade and Etsy are each powerful online marketplaces, able to reaching thousands and thousands of consumers all over the world. 

Where you select to establish your shop will rely upon your audience and business model. When you sell a high volume of products at relatively low individual price points, Amazon Handmade, with its achievement assistance and free product listings, is perhaps the precise selection for you. If, then again, you require few listings and expect to herald a bigger dollar figure per sale, then Etsy’s lower percentage cost per individual transaction will likely compensate for the $0.20 per quarter that you just pay for product listings.

When you’re still undecided whether selling on Amazon Handmade or selling on Etsy is true for you, try running the mathematics on a number of scenarios to see which platform is best positioned to assist your shop succeed. In spite of everything, you’ve put your labor, creativity, and love into your craft. It’s time to indicate the world what that appears like.