Etsy alternatives?

If seller has a website I would go there. If not then I guess you can always ask them how else to reach them to buy from. That is awful as Etsy is also selling recasts like Ebay so I don't feel sorry for those people.

 

not quite an alternative, but clearing cookies before making a purchase can help because it removes one of the fees that clicking on an ad can generate.

etsys fees suck, but keep in mind, some people use it for their only source of income (both in hobby and off) so, much as participating in the strike is good on principle, there isnt a union to help make the strike be effective and more likely than not, it'll do more harm than good for the independents. contacting etsy to let them know you think their fees are bs will help more than avoiding shopping there.

that said, there is also this once second hand site called bjdcollectors.com ive heard good things about. never used it past making an account tho

 

I ask Etsy sellers for their social media accounts and look to see if they sell direct. There are a lot of things that show up on Etsy as a last resort and through Facebook or Instagram you get a chance to buy before everything is picked over. I also buy from dealers and private websites. After all a few sellers I buy from still insist on selling only on Etsy so I’m still going to support those sellers if they won’t sell outside of Etsy.

 

I have tried using bjdcollectors and personally wasn't able to generate sales. It may improve as more people try it out but it's very early days right now and almost no traffic.
I have a friend using big cartel and says she likes it.
The thing is, yeah, of course the easiest thing for everyone is just to lay down and let Etsy steamroll them. But if anyone wants change we do have to actually start moving away from using Etsy at a pace that's reasonable for everyone. As Etsy has gotten more out of control it's become near impossible for people to actually make any substantial income through their site. I quit selling there a few years ago and would never go back.
If there is someone you want go support and they will not sell any place else, it seems fine to shop on their Etsy, but if there are alternatives for other sellers, use them. Etsy was most valuable because it was a place that was easily searchable where the shoppers were the right market (roughly) so there was traffic. But places like that are created, and they are created by people choosing to use them . So if you want an alternative to Etsy you do have to start taking some of that business elsewhere and hope it sticks.

 

Oh man, I didn't know it was this bad. I definitely prefer using it to do searches (social media takes FOREVER to find anything you want even after you learn what hashtags people actually use), but I guess I'll try to buy direct if they have their own website or whatnot... Still sucks to hear. I planned to start selling at some point, and posting to like 17 different locations is gonna take more time and spoons than producing product to sell!

 

There's no real alternative from a seller perspective, unless you're a popular enough crafter to branch out to your own web store, which is the crux of the issue.

As for the buyer... I'd hate to tell you, but AliExpress is not the rebel option you might think it is, having been largely controlled by the CCP for over a decade now, with profits siphoned straight into the government's coffers. Taobao is okay, but that doesn't help for artists outside of China, of which there are infinitely more of.

Unfortunately, this is one of those times where every scenario is effectively a lose/lose, and considering corporate greed's lack of boundaries, I'm not exactly confident the strike will make much of any real impact, either.

 

Honestly, and I hate this, ebay is a viable sales platform. I didn't know etsy fees were getting that high currently but I sell on ebay pretty consistently and their fees are 12.9%* (including a 12.9%* fee on ship price to combat those who were using shipping to avoid paying fees). If you pay for a shipping label online with the ebay USPS service, they give you that fee back as a discount though so that way they can be sure your shipping price is the price you claim it to be as well.

*I am based in the US and other countries might have different fee amounts, YMMV.

Yes, ebay is awful for recasts, but you can sort your searches by within your own country only. I set my searches for North America only, and you can lock that as your default search (I think you have to turn that option on manually though). Sellers can set it so that you will only ship items within your country as well so those outside of your country cannot purchase since it won't give them a shipping amount. When I sell on ebay, I price my prices 20% more than what I would list the item on say the DOA MP here or IG (which would only have the paypal or other such service fee if sold through those platforms). Then ebay allows you to send offers to those who watch your items. The least you can offer them is about 5% discount, but even if you offer the seller 5% off and they accept, after paying the ebay fees you'll get the amount you initially wanted.

You cannot advertise your items are for sale elsewhere on ebay, even if in the description. They'll ding your account for that. But what you can do is put something along the lines of "I have feedback on X website under X username". That way you can have the item listed for the 20% lower price on the other location and if a potential buyer wants they can go looking for it, but to ebay they only see that as you are showing that you have more feedback for potential buyers.

Ebay can be dangerous for even secondhand sales due to recasts as well but for handmade/artist made items, I've found many artists who sell primarily through there. (I don't currently sell handmade items via eBay though, only secondhand. I have purchased handmade items via ebay.) And eBay has a very large platform so your items are more likely to be seen.

Damn it's crazy that here I am saying how ebay is actually a better selling platform than etsy, but etsy really shot themselves in the foot with this one. Ebay isn't perfect and you kind of have to do a work around, but unless they raise their fees like etsy just did, I'll stick with them (for now).

Edit to add: Also forgot to add that on ebay you can search for a word AND remove other words from the search. Like say you want to search "doll" but don't want to see the word "recast" or "barbie". You would search [doll -recast -barbie] with a ' -' before every word you want to remove from the search after your term. Etsy search function has been messed up for a long time and half the time would show me items that don't even fit with my search criteria.

 

This has actually been on my mind as well, though from a seller's angle rather than a buyer's, and I have a lot of thoughts.

I used to sell handmade doll clothing on Etsy quite a few years ago (for a different kind of doll, this was before I got into BJD). The overall experience then was great, but since then (almost ten years since, now!) I know Etsy has changed a lot, and not for the better.

From a seller's point of view, though, I don't know what the alternatives are, especially for selling within a small niche hobby like ours.

There's Etsy, where the fees are not cheap at best and have the potential to get crazy and there are collectors now who don't want to/won't shop there because of the company's practices.

Or there's Facebook groups, apparently...at least that's something I hear mentioned a lot. Except that's not an option for me, because I refuse to use that site, out of my own stances on that company/website.

People also mention Instagram a lot, but:
1) again, now owned by Facebook so something I'd prefer not to use,
2) from my previous experience using Instagram years ago just as a social media, it seems like a horribly haphazard and disorganized way to try and conduct regular sales of handcrafting,
3) it seems that selling thru Instagram would enact a sort of "hidden fee" on a seller-- instead of having chunks of my money taken from my sales, I'd have to invest a lot more time into constantly maintaining a very active social media presence so that the items I'd be trying to sell would show up on people's feeds and not be lost in the algorithmic stew-- a fee of time/effort/stress rather than a monetary fee, but still, an added cost.

I think one of the main question for individual crafters/sellers in this hobby is, where are our fellow hobbyists most likely to be shopping for doll stuff? Not everyone uses the same social media or forums; I think that's why Etsy was a good venue that made sense as a place for people to sell and shop within the hobby regardless of what social media they chose to use or not use. A real viable alternative to Etsy would need to have that same sort of central aspect, where everyone in the hobby could shop there without needing to be part of any particular social media network. As @AlisonVonderland pointed out, places like that are made by people choosing to use them, so it seems to me that any venue that would become a solid Etsy alternative would only become so if enough BJD artists/crafters started selling there.

 

Storenvy seems to be a viable, useable platform, though I saw very few BJD products listed there when I searched! There are a great deal of independent visual artists in general on the site, though.

 

Happy Easter - have fizzled out
Etsy has been the place where I've felt most comfortable. I didn't know they charged that kind of fee. That's probably why they introduced TV advertising in Germany...
Now it's getting hard because I'm avoiding China - I've only had trouble so far.
Where have my old good shops in Europe gone?

 

So I checked out Storenvy, and to get the same type of function that Etsy offers, sellers will pay MORE fees than Etsy, not less. There are no listing fees and a store front is free as long as you stay under 20 listings. More than 20 items listed at a time, and monthly subscription fees kick in, at different levels depending on how many items you want to carry. However, if you want your storefront to be connected to the larger searchable Storenvy marketplace, which is what you'd need to do for Storenvy to duplicate what you'd be getting from Etsy, they get a 15% cut of every sale that people find thru browsing the Storenvy marketplace site. On top of that, you pay the same 3.9% payment processing fee per transaction that you'd pay on Etsy, and they have a similar setup with offsite ads where if someone finds your shop thru an offsite ad they get 25% of your sale.

This is a post from the woman who started the Etsy seller strike, I found it interesting and kind of in line with a lot of my own thoughts on this at the moment:
Please Don’t Lie to Yourself!

As well I'd say that I agree with what a few people have touched on in previous posts: it's better to find ways to communicate our disapproval of Etsy's corporate practices to those responsible rather than just blanket boycotting everyone who sells thru Etsy, whether for doll things or other non-hobby things. There are a lot of people for whom there aren't viable alternatives and who depend on creative work for their income, and we don't want to punish them in an effort to make a statement against a company, regardless of the worthiness of that statement.

 

Just a note-
You can (in a lot of cases) opt out of off site advertising. Sellers can also choose to only sell within their country, dodging most currency conversions. That wouldn’t be viable for a lot of non American/EU sellers, but it would cut fees for a few.
The fees increase is large and hurts sellers (I’m NOT trying to argue against that!) but some of it is reducible, depending on the situation, if moving off the platform isn’t currently a viable option for a seller.

(Disclaimer I don’t sell on Etsy. My mother does and she’s staying, since she already opted out of ads/out of country sales. She uses an Instagram account in place of the advertising Etsy offers, since her stuff is pretty niche anyway.)

 

@Azure Agape thanks for the info! Just to add to everything you've already said for anyone who might find it helpful, I looked it up on Etsy's site and the cutoff for being able to opt out of the offsite ads is $10,000 in sales in a 365-day period.

I'd imagine most BJD hobbyists who want to sell sewing or crafting to make side income or support their hobby will not sell more than that, so they would be eligible to opt out and that part of the fees would not affect them. If they chose to also only sell within their own country to avoid currency conversion fees, they would then be left with:
6.5% fee for each sale
.20 listing fee per item
3.9% +.25 payment processing fee per transaction

Still high, but no higher than fees from other sites such as EBay, Storenvy, etc. That doesn't mean it's great or that it doesn't harm people trying to make a living from their creative endeavors or that I agree with Etsy's decision to keep raising fees, but it does underscore that this isn't unique to Etsy and there aren't really tons of amazing options that don't want to siphon off as much money as possible from makers. And it does give a little more clarity as far as how a small side business within this particular hobby might be affected, which wouldn't be the same as the effect experienced by a full-time maker supporting themselves solely on their shop.

 

I just want to add that if a Etsy shop hits the $10 thousand mark and is forced into paying for off site adds, it becomes permanent and even if the next years sales fall below the $10 thousand, too bad.

I reached 10k and now am paying 12% for off site adds. It hurts as my items are just under $10. Yes, I worked my fingers off making enough items to earn 10k in one year. I’d quit altogether, and after 12 years, I really want to, but I also need money. It’s hard to change platforms and start all over with attracting customers. I honestly never thought I’d reach 10k in one year…

 

Yeah that's complete crap that they're doing that to you and a perfect example of why I 1000% agree with the Etsy Strike group that the offsite ads should be completely optional for ALL sellers at EVERY income level and no one should ever be forced to participate in them.

 

I've had fairly good luck getting secondhand BJD clothes/accessories on Mercari. Sometimes I also message a seller directly to see if I can buy from them off Etsy to help with the fees. I think it's a shame what Etsy is doing to its sellers...

 

I believe Mercari has the same fees as ebay for sellers (12.9% for the US at least). And same rules about being able to send 5% off offers to those who watch your items. Not sure how their shipping works though so maybe someone else would know. The only big issue I have with Mercari is that there's this one shop that FLOODS the "bjd" search term with mini food charms/figures(?) that aren't really even bjd scale (maybe for 1/6 or smaller) and it's a pain to have to go through that when browsing. Ebay has some shops that do that too but I've been able to find a specific word all those listings use and '-' that word to remove all those listinga from my search. That reminds me that I should text if the '-' thing works on Mercari too.

 

Yeah, Mercari is about the same as ebay, except it does all the work for you in terms of comparing items and creating shipping labels, which is nice. They also have very good buyer and seller protection. They do not operate through Paypal (at least in my experience as a seller) so I avoid that fee and instead move my balance from Mercari to my bank account directly. Shipping is easy in that they create labels for you, and as a seller, you can choose whether the buyer pays for shipping or not. I always have the buyer pay for shipping. I will say the tags are definitely cluttered though, so I understand that frustration.

 

Ebay no longer operates through PayPal (for payment to sellers at least). They send the money direct to bank accounts as well. You can still purchase items and pay with PayPal but sellers do not have to accept PayPal so it is not available for all purchases. Ebay also has a shipping label creation process like that too. You only need to provide the package dimensions and weight, then it calculates for you, and you can print the label off at home. (My only issue with this is some sellers immediately print off the label to make the item marked as shipped but don't actually take it to the post office for 1-2 weeks, but to Ebay they see the item as having been shipped with the label created.) Oh and you can include shipping cost or have buyer pay shipping on ebay as well. I've sold items using both systems before but usually have buyer pay shipping too.