Do you have a web store outside of Etsy?

[MountainGoth]

I noticed during the Xmas season, back in the good old days when people were buying stuff, that almost all of my sales originated outside of Etsy. That they were brought in by some search engine, like google or bing.

Almost all of my sales were first time Etsy buyers.

So this has me wondering if I should set up a web store.

My husband thinks I should just set up a site for my merchandise that links into the item on Etsy.

I make the point, of, if I'm getting the hits on my own, why bring people into etsy where they can shop my competition.

Just curious, Do you have a web shop outside of Etsy? Do you link to your Etsy shop? Do you get much traffic there?

Thanks

[Former_Member]

I have my own site and I offer loads more on it then I do on here. like you said the customer stays with you instead of drifting around etsy comparing for hours! go for it!

[NiciLaskin]

i have my own website also , cool thing is you can set it up and sell whatever and however you want

[MountainGoth]

Do you use one of the web store services? Did you code your store from scratch, how did you set it up?

[Former_Member]

I have another shop on storenvy. I thought Etsy had better traffic, so I opened this shop here, but my storenvy shop definitely does better. Although its completely different items so who knows. I also have a website, but I rarely get inquiries through there because I dont have it set up as a store front, just a blogsite. There are definitely positives and negatives to having your own store front, I think when a good chunk of people are searching for (specifically) you in google- you should do just fine in your own storefront. But if no one knows you exist...it takes a lot of time to get a front page ranking and its hard for people to find you! But even if you open your own, I would start the process slowly, and let your etsy listings run out naturally so you still have money coming in while you start redirecting people to the new shop site! Goodluck either way!

[MountainGoth]

I was not planning on leaving Etsy, but rather doing both. Also I'd like to be able to resell some items, which you just can't do on Etsy.