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Online market for handmade items

By Becky McCray

If your small biz includes your handmade creations, check into Etsy, an online market for handmade items.

You can sell anything that is handmade or, a bit more loosely put, hand-assembled or hand-altered. … If human hands put some love into the object, odds are you can sell it on Etsy.

It is a marketplace only; Etsy does not handle any part of the buy/sell transaction. You can set up a free “shop” with your own username. Sellers can be located anywhere globally. It includes a simple feedback system.

The fee structure is also pretty simple:

It costs $0.10 per quantity to list an item on Etsy, regardless of the selling price.

When you sell an item, there is a flat 3.5% commission fee assessed by Etsy.

Most Intriguing Searches

The ability to search by color, place, time and material has got to be unique! That seems to suit a marketplace for unique and handmade items. I think this will contribute to better browsing and, hopefully, more purchases.

Etsy could be another way for crafty rural biz people to reach a world-wide market.

small biz rural entrepreneurship Etsy crafts handmade marketing

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Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.

www.beckymccray.com
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April 27, 2006 Filed Under: marketing, rural

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  1. Anonymous says

    July 13, 2008 at 5:53 am

    It’s $.20 per quantity to list an item on Etsy.

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  2. Becky McCray says

    July 13, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Thanks for the update! Not surprising that it has changed in the two years since I first wrote about Etsy. I’d love to hear feedback from anyone who uses the service, too.

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