Etsy and Paypal - and their associated fees! - Etsy Part 2

Fees, fees, fees - These are unavoidable of course. Knowing all of the associated costs ahead of time however will insure that when you do sell something, you are in fact making a profit.

Etsy has two fees, one is a listing fee - which buys you a listing for one item for 4 months. Every time you relist your item, you are charged again.

The listing fee is currently .20 cents US. for every item you list. If you list an item, and set the quantity on hand to 5, you will be charged $1.00 US.

This is the only fee Etsy charges you unless your item sells. In which case, you will also be charged a sales fee. The sales fee is currently 3.5% of the total sales price, not including your shipping charges.

Unfortunately, the fee's don't end there. If you use paypal to accept your payments - Paypal will also take it's cut. You'll pay paypal 2.9% on the total value (including shipping), plus .30 cents.

As you can see these fee's can really add up. You need to make sure you're charging enough for your product to take into account all of these fees.

A really handy tool is the Etsy Fee Calculator writen by an etsy user. It helps you figure out what your total profit is, and how much you need to sell an item for to actually get what you want from it.

http://www.rolbe.com/etsy.htm

For example: Just say you list a bracelet for $45.00 US, and you charge $5.00 US shipping. You've valued your materials cost at $10.00 CDN, plus a half hour of your time @ $20.00 per hour = $10.00

Your costs are now $20.00 CDN, plus the fee calculator shows associated fees of :

You'll see I've included your time in the materials cost. It is a cost, and you need to insure that you're paying yourself for your time.

Next week, we'll talk about how to make your etsy shop look nice, and be sure to go back and look at Dwyn's photography tutorials. Excellent photo's are EVERYTHING on etsy. No one is going to buy something with a lousy photo!