your own online store?

[KristianJessie]

Who of you own am online store (e-commerce website ) apart from etsy?

Which website hosting are you paying to? weebly? I really need your advice and experience sharing.

[Former_Member]

I self host mine through WordPress.org and (currently) the Cart66 plugin. I use Bluehost for my host, though I hear host gator is pretty good too.

My website has gotten a lot of sales since I attached it to my blog--which I started back regularly posting on in January. Starting a website is a lot of work, but I like the fact that it's mine and when Etsy shuts down for a while, it doesn't really affect me as much.

[Former_Member]

I'm actually in the process of putting my store on my website, using volusion.ca.

A lot of people that want to shop with me don't use etsy, so I want to have another option. Plus, I have to be honest and say that I feel like i'm using up a lot of energy in advertising a website that doesn't technically belong to me. When I put links up on facebook for my products, people end up getting redirected to the etsy facebook by misclicking.

I also tend to lose quite a bit of my profits on here through auto-renews, renewing to get noticed, or paying for minimal advertising and service charges. In 30 days, my bills have equalled to $50 on here, and my sales are at $299.

I don't like those numbers. They don't make financial sense to me when my products are priced so low so they can reach the max amount of people with affordability. I don't want to increase my prices.

[MReneeArtAndDesign]

Is it less costly to host your own site? I'm sure there is a hosting fee?

[Former_Member]

It's $35/mo - flat fee. My actual domain I pay $60/yr. Plus, it has great flexibility with coupons, you can offer daily deals on the front page. Etsy needs to get the ball rolling on coupons, imo.

[MyDistinctDesigns]

Zuzia- $50 fees on $299 sales seems quite out of balance. Are you renewing that much or do these fees include postage for the items you have shipped by purchasing labels through etsy. If it does include shipping, unless you offer free shipping, then you would have to figure how much you have collected to cover it.
Or does the 299.00 include shipping charges. Just trying to figure out why it is so high for you.

[Former_Member]

No, I have a venture one card that I use at the post office so I don't pay for shipping online.

I just whipped out the calculater - it's $47.22 exactly. I was doing between 1 and 3 renewals a day up until about 3 or 4 days ago.

[Former_Member]

wow you guys pay a lot! my hosting is about $7 a month--domain included. I use WordPress, so my shopping cart and listings are free. There are plenty of free templates you can download as well.

[Former_Member]

Having a shopping cart unrelated to your etsy shop is a great idea! I forget who, but someone on this team a few months ago posted about the importance of this. What if Etsy has to shut down for the day to fix some sort of bug, etc. etc.... It's a great idea to have a standalone shop so that your business does not JUST depend on Etsy to survive.

That being said, I need to set one up on my website. I set my site up a few months ago with Weebly (for just a smidgen under what Brittany uses for WordPress) and there is a shopping cart available. Lots of good options are out there. The standalone shopping cart is on my to-do list!

Good luck!

[AttentionGetting]

I wrote an article on my marketing blog about Storenvy, which allows you to have a separate online store as well as a store in their marketplace, and they charge no fees.

We are not really allowed to put links in here so my blog url is on my shop and profile page.

[KristianJessie]

Many thanks, Oliver!
I am really headache about the online shop server... gotta check it out now.! thanks,!

[Former_Member]

So glad I stumbled across the tread. I am in the middle of setting up my web site for my store and this really helped. Thank you.

[KristianJessie]

yeah... love to share knowledge and experience while we all are in the middle of tracing our dreams...

[Former_Member]

Hey there :) I have my own website that costs £10 a month, from create.net. Its http://www.bowsjewellery.com/ and it is the best decision I have ever made!

[Former_Member]

I'm working on my own dot.com website using Volution.

There are lots on threads on this issue and presently a hot one now at http://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/business-topics/discuss/11819124/page/10/

[BrushStrokeOrnaments]

I do echo Kelly's comments about the importance of using another website in addition to etsy...unfortunately I've not yet done so myself, but hopefully one of these days! I experienced, first hand, the problem if you only sell on etsy. I've been a GREAT etsy seller for years now (always paid my bills on time and generated lots of revenue for etsy!), but recently I forgot to pay my monthly bill. And etsy IMMEDIATELY closed me down - no warning, no reminder about payment, nothing! And although I paid up within 2 hours of being notified it took etsy 2 days to get me back up and running. And when they FINALLY got me up and running, the only response to my frantic inquiries was a note about considering signing up for automatic bill pay. Thank goodness it was my slow season. Had it been during the Christmas holidays, my blunder (and etsy's rather slow response) would have cost me HUNDREDS of dollars in lost business/revenue. Don'l let it happen to you. Pay your bills on time and have a backup plan!

[Former_Member]

I've read so many threads on nightmare stories about shops being closed. The worst part is the amount of time it takes to get it resolved. And this always makes me sad to know that a company like Etsy can't or won't provide better service in such matters.

[MorningHeirloom]

I am working on my own website, still under construction, alot of effort and energy to build a website but it may worth for long term. Hope bring more sales in the future. I am agree that we should advertise our own website, not etsy.

Good Luck everyone.

Dia Szabo

[ArteOfTheBooke]

I've got my own site, www.nancyhulan.com, but it doesn't have listings or shopping cart. WordPress gives you that for free? I'll have to check that out.

[Designawreath]

I have my own online store and sell on Ebay. I have found that if one site is slow another one is busy, which is good for me because I always seem to have orders.

I pay $20.00 a month for hosting, and also my yearly domain fee. I tried to create my own website on my own and I even took classes to learn, but then I realized I was spending all of my time creating a website instead of being creative and making wreaths. $20.00 a month is well worth having someone else deal with all the hosting needs and helping me when I need help on my site.

[KristianJessie]

hey... I have been struggling with taking free trials, researching work etc these 2 days... almost exhausted...

Lenore, you are very right... all of my design and silver making work stay behind now... LOL

Have to work hard... everybody, can't wait to visit your own website!

[Former_Member]

I do mine free, so it obviously isn't as easy to set up as if you were paying for a host, etc. I just use my Blog with different pages per type of product and have PayPal shopping carts. It's good if you can't afford any website startup costs.

[PrairiePrimitives]

I had a web site of my own for about 10 years. Gave it up about 4 or 5 years ago because it wasn't worth the time it took to keep it updated. Granted, I was doing the coding myself because I couldn't find a database-driven site that I liked AND could afford. So when I sold something at a craft fair or here on Etsy, I had to remember to go to the web site and delete it (or mark it as sold). It was just a lot of work for not much in the way of sales.

Zuzia, what do you get for $60/year for your domain name? I use Hover.com for my domain name. They're based in TO, so you'd be supporting a local business if you used them! (I'm *not* in TO, though I love your city!), and charge $15/year for domain names.

I would suggest folks check out Picturetrail.com. You can build a web site "photo album style" there for free. And if you want to make the ads go away, that costs just $20/year. I believe you can hook your domain name up to your Picturetrail site, though I've not looked into that yet. I've had a PT site (w/o ads) for about 5 years now and am very happy with it! I still have to remember to delete sold items though. LOL!

[WallCakes]

I'm moving over from Big Cartel to Shopify.

They have features that BC doesn't have that I need. They offered me an incentive for custom pricing that I just can't pass up.

I hope to have it up and running in the next few weeks.

Here's my BC site http://wallcakes.com

[CurlicueCreations]

Wow. What a great thread. I haven't thought about this much lately, but I sure did when I first started my Etsy shop. I'm going to check out Picturetrail and some of the other sites mentioned. Thanks everyone!