Stand alone website? Do you have one?

[Former_Member]

Question for you all... Do you also have a stand alone website?

I have been thinking for a while about creating one for myself to add to the sales base I currently have on Etsy. Not sure if it's worth the effort or if I am just nervous about having one.

[SpangGangDesigns]

I've tinkered with the idea too. Not sure if it is much work...what site to go with...monthly cost, etc. Curious to know.

[Former_Member]

Personally I have my own domain name on a wordpress blog. It's wordpress hosted (wordpress.com) so I just bought the domain and redirect which was about $15 for a year. I blog often, bring in people from google, and redirect them to etsy to shop. Plus I've already begun building up constant views to my own site, so someday when I start selling on there I wont be starting from scratch. You could do the self hosted (wordpress.org) for not much more though, and use a free template and plugin to set up selling your own items for super cheap.

[Former_Member]

I have one (www.abigailsatticaccessories.com). I don't do much with it at the moment. I redirect people to Etsy to actually place an order. I just used Blogger and bought my domain through godadddy (I know people hate them but they do okay by me). I spent about $6 for one year for my domain name.

I don't think I will ever blog for my shop though. I have a personal/frugal living blog (www.loggerswife.com) and don't really have time to blog anymore for something else.

[Former_Member]

I have my own domain

www.uniquelyyoujewellery.co.uk

[Former_Member]

i have my own at brandysink.com through squarespace! I don't use it as often as I should but its very user friendly! I like that it has lots of options and layouts!

[Millennialgirlboss]

personally i have my own www.missevolution.weebly.com i actually started selling on my own site for a year before i started etsy because its free. the website i have is weebly and you can create a professional looking site for free. and can upgrade if you want if you don't want the weebly part in your url and pay for own domain name at a cheaper price than if you was to create a site from scratch.

[MilkThreads]

I have one http://www.milkthreads.com/index.html and intend to add a shopping cart to it, but at the moment it just directs people here to etsy to purchase. I find that it does take a lot of time to keep up the website and I just have not had the time to work on it much.

[Former_Member]

Mine is similar to Ariana's. I started with just a free Blogger url (nutmeganblog.blogspot.com), then bought nutmegan.com and redirected my blogger to that url. My blogs do come up in Google searches (especially "diy" blogs) and end up bringing traffic to my Etsy site. They also give me something interesting to post on my Facebook page, which then redirects people to my shop also. Eventually I want to make my website more than just a blog, but I think even now it's worth having. Oh, and you can put "Etsy mini" on your blog website, which is great! It's, well, like it sounds, a mini version of your Etsy shop.

[OverTheMoonBridal]

I did it for about a year. It was a lot of work and didn't bring in more sales than usual.

[Former_Member]

I've been thinking about it as well. I've looked into some options - so far squarespace seems to be the easiest to set up and maintain. I have a blog but am really bad about blogging. I've decided to wait on the website as I'm toying with re-naming my shop to something more descriptive of the product I sell.