Building Community to Drive Traffic to Your Handmade Retail Store

When you take the leap into becoming your own retailer for your handmade goods, you do so with the knowledge that the sales won’t appear overnight. You can spread the word to your existing followers online and add QR codes to your business cards when you table at fairs, but that audience is finite. If you’re looking to grow, how will new shoppers discover you?

Etsy Angst 

Though Etsy may have been a grand discovery engine for many makers in its early years, those days are long gone. Both handmade sellers and savvy shoppers know that Etsy is no longer an easy gateway to beautiful handmade goods. Since Etsy went public in 2015, its obligations to shareholders to deliver revenue and growth have shifted its priorities away from maintaining a purely handmade and vintage marketplace. Craftspeople are still on Etsy, but they’re much harder to find. Even applying the “handmade” search filter does not get rid of mass-manufactured items likely drop-shipped from warehouses. 

Etsy sellers are also frustrated by fees, now at 6.5% plus transaction fees (typically 3.0%). Other marketplace options offer similarly unappealing terms. Amazon Handmade applies a 15% fee (even including transaction costs, that’s still high). Michaels MakerPlace charges a lower 4% fee (plus translation costs), which is attractive, but the platform is still small and unproven.

It’s enough to make you want to open your own store. While plenty of user-friendly online shop platforms exist (Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix, to name just a few), the prospect of leaving Etsy is still daunting. Once you strike out on your own, how will shoppers find you?

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