Etsy vs. Amazon Handmade: The Ultimate navigator for Artisanal Sellers

Marketplaces are as ancient as human commerce. From the bazaar to the bodega, they exist in every population. Today, they also exist online, as ecommerce has globalized and democratized the selling and consumption of wares. For tiny businesses, this is a particularly impactful transformation: It’s no longer essential to have a warehouse, a logistics coordinator, or even a physical storefront to have a globally recognized brand.

Although dozens of online marketplaces exist, two of the most popular and established options are Amazon Handmade and Etsy.

What is Etsy?

Etsy is an online marketplace for vintage and handmade goods from around the globe. Founded as a tiny Brooklyn shop in 2005, Etsy has grown into a global ecommerce hub with over 100 million items for sale. As of 2024, it counted 9 million sellers and over 96 million energetic buyers worldwide.

Even with its growth, Etsy has remained committed to its alternative, throng-embedded identity. The business aims for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and its Etsy Uplift pool provides back to economically disadvantaged makers and promotes products made by historically marginalized communities.

Pros and cons of selling on Etsy

Like most things, evaluating the merits of selling on Etsy is made easier by taking a close look at the pros and cons.

Pros of selling on Etsy 

• Low enterprise fees. Etsy fees are low. It costs $15 to set up an Etsy shop. For each item you desire to sell, there is a $0.20 listing fee. The listings expire after four months and will be automatically renewed unless you opt out of the characteristic. Total selling fees also include trade fees, which arrive in at 6.5% of the total expense of the product. You may also be charged a shipping and settlement processing fee.
• Analytics and custom options. Etsy’s standard schedule also comes with a Stats page that displays traffic volume to your shop as well as information about how visitors arrived there. Etsy also offers an additional paid schedule—Etsy Plus—that allows you to customize the look of your Etsy store with banners and featured listings, offers, restock requests, and more.
• Flexible advertising plans. Etsy allows sellers to purchase both on-site and off-site ads through the Etsy platform. Etsy’s internal ads space is placed using an auto-bidding structure. Etsy sellers set a daily ad budgetary schedule, and Etsy uses these numbers to “auction off” ad space for particular product categories and search terms. Etsy’s off-site ads operate on modified a pay-per-click (PPC) model, where sellers pay only if an ad is clicked and the user who clicked the ad orders from the seller’s shop within 30 days. The fee for these ads is 15% of the total trade amount if your etsy shop made less than $10,000 in the last year. If your shop made more, the fee is 12%.

Cons of selling on Etsy

• Recurring fees. Although Etsy has low initial enterprise costs, listing fees, which recur every four months, can be a drawback for some Etsy sellers. For example, the expense to a seller with 100 listings is $20. If none of these listings have sold within four months, the user would owe another $20 on the same listings. This can make the site expensive for users whose product types require a high number of person listings. It is actually feasible to misplace money running an Etsy store if sales proceeds don’t exceed listing costs.
• Not all types of items can be sold. Etsy sellers propose vintage and handmade goods. If your items don’t fit either of those categories, you will not be allowed to sell on Etsy, and listings that don’t fit into these categories can be flagged and removed.
• Etsy doesn’t propose fulfillment services.Etsy shop owners are in fee of their own shipping logistics. While Etsy provides printable labels at a discounted rate, that still means a lot of printing, boxing, and taping—or finding and managing your own third-event distribution vendor.

What is Amazon Handmade?

Amazon is currently the leading online retailer in the US, with annual net sales of over $574 billion in 2023. Amazon averages over 2.5 billion visitors per month.

In 2015, Amazon launched a smaller economy, Amazon Handmade, designed for tiny businesses that specialize in handcrafted goods. Although Amazon does not publicize the total sales or the number of sellers participating in Amazon Handmade, in September 2020, the business reported that over 100 of the economy’s makers had surpassed $1 million in annual sales.

Pros and cons of selling on Amazon Handmade

Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks of selling on Amazon Handmade.

Pros of selling on Handmade

• Massive potential reach. Amazon is one of the most visited sites in the US. Because Amazon Handmade products are integrated into the larger Amazon ecommerce site, selling on Amazon Handmade can get you in front of a larger global spectators than any other platform.
• Complimentary professional schedule. Amazon Marketplace offers both an person and a professional schedule, with professional schedule sellers paying a flat subscription fee of $39.99 per month, plus selling fees on person orders. Sellers who are approved for Amazon Handmade receive the professional schedule perks for free and are charged a flat 15% trade fee on all sales.
• No listing fees. Amazon doesn’t fee product listing fees, so you only pay if you make a sale.

Cons of selling on Amazon Handmade

• Amazon competes with its own sellers. Amazon has a number of in-house brands that it sells alongside those offered by its vendors, so tiny businesses are effectively in direct competition with the globe’s largest ecommerce business. 
• Higher selling fees. Although Amazon Handmade sellers receive Amazon’s professional selling schedule at no expense, the 15% selling fee charged on each sale is still higher than those charged by many other marketplaces.

Etsy vs. Amazon Handmade

Amazon and Etsy both provide tiny business owners with a straightforward, secure platform for earning money from a large spectators—no business license or coding skills required. Their most significant differences involve fee structures, back services, and commence-up period.

General website and user interface

• How they’re similar: Amazon Handmade and Etsy are both designed to be intuitive and user-amiable for buyers and sellers alike. Both platforms make it straightforward to set up an online store without any web advancement knowledge, allowing you to make and customize a storefront page (your “store”) and to include your product listings in their search results. Both also provide a mobile app and a seller dashboard that tracks order and sale information.
• How they’re different: Amazon doesn’t fee a product listing fee, while Etsy does. These listing fees recur every four months. Additionally, Etsy and Amazon Handmade both deduct selling fees at a flat rate across categories and worth points—for Etsy, this comes in at 6.5% of the total sale worth plus a settlement processing fee. For Amazon Handmade, the selling fee is 15% of the total sale worth.

Custom products offered

• How they’re similar: Both Amazon Handmade and Etsy allow sellers to pay more in trade for preferred listing placement.
• How they’re different: Etsy offers integrated off-site advertising, which is discretionary for sellers whose annual sales total less than $10,000. Amazon does not propose off-site ads. 

Listing and selling fees 

• How they’re similar: Amazon Handmade and Etsy both fee selling fees that are calculated as a percentage of the total sale amount.

• How they’re different: Amazon doesn’t fee a product listing fee, while Etsy does. These listing fees recur every four months. Additionally, Etsy and Amazon Handmade both deduct selling fees at a flat rate across categories and worth points—for Etsy, this comes in at 6.5% of the total sale worth plus a 3.5% plus 25¢ settlement processing fee, and for Amazon Handmade, the selling fee is 15% of the total sale worth. 

Product category organization

• How they are similar: Both sellers sort items into top-level product categories and subcategories.

• How they’re different: Amazon Handmade and Etsy both characteristic top-level product categories designed to showcase handmade goods. “document and event Supplies” is a top-level category at Etsy, for example, as are “Weddings,” “Bath & Beauty,” and “Craft Supplies & Tools.” Amazon Handmade product categories are similarly craft- and lifestyle-concentrated, although categories like “Handmade Electronics Accessories” and “Handmade Sports and Outdoors” are distinctive to the Amazon platform.

Sign-up procedure

• How they’re similar: Both Amazon Handmade and Etsy require banking information and personal information to open a shop.
• How they are different: Amazon also requires levy information, an internationally chargeable financing card, a phone number, and a government-issued ID. Approval of an Amazon Marketplace shop can receive weeks, and selling on Amazon Handmade requires an additional application procedure. Etsy shop approval, on the other hand, is instantaneous.

settlement procedure

• How they are similar: Both sites propose user-amiable automated direct deposits as a settlement alternative.
• How they are different: Etsy pays sellers through their Etsy accounts. Amazon pays through direct investment into the seller’s financial institution account. settlement schedules also differ: Amazon pays sellers every two weeks, and Etsy defaults to a weekly settlement schedule but allows sellers to transformation this setting to daily, weekly, or monthly.

Fulfillment services

• How they are similar: Both propose free shipping options and provide sellers the alternative to select their own shipping rates and methods.
• How they are different: Amazon offers Fulfillment by Amazon services, in which sellers ship their products to an Amazon warehouse for storage. Once a purchase is made, Amazon handles the fulfillment logistics. Etsy provides shippers with discounted shipping labels but does not warehouse goods or handle shipping for sellers.

Your selection of online marketplaces for handmade goods

Although they differ in scale, buyer demographics, and fee structures, Amazon Handmade and Etsy are both powerful online marketplaces, capable of reaching millions of consumers around the globe. 

Where you choose to set up your shop will depend on your target spectators and operating schedule. If you sell a high volume of products at relatively low person worth points, Amazon Handmade, with its fulfillment assistance and free product listings, might be the correct selection for you. If, on the other hand, you require few listings and expect to bring in a larger dollar figure per sale, then Etsy’s lower percentage expense per person trade will likely compensate for the $0.20 per quarter that you pay for product listings.

If you’re still not sure whether selling on Amazon Handmade or selling on Etsy is correct for you, try running the math on a few scenarios to view which platform is best positioned to assist your shop achieve. After all, you’ve put your labor, innovation, and adore into your craft. It’s period to display the globe what that looks like.