Etsy Listing Fees–Do They Hold You Back?

Do you hold back from listing your items as often as you should because of the listing fees? If the products you offer happen to be somewhat inexpensive, it can seem counterproductive to spend so much to relist them. For example, those who sell items in the $2-$3 range, just naturally flinch at paying 20 cents every time they list. Both Etsy and PayPal take a percentage from the product price already, and all those little 20 cent listing costs can eat away at profit. It especially gets frustrating when you are repeatedly listing items, but not selling as much as you’d hoped.

How can we Etsians balance our approach? Well, let’s imagine we are setting up a storefront in our city’s downtown area. What would our expenses be? One large expense (possibly second only to staff costs) would be our store rent.

On Etsy we pay no store rent. We’re free to set up our whole shop with no actual payment required just to be there. That is certainly a plus! Etsy is a giant marketplace, spanning the globe, and we can be accessed by anyone at any time!

But how will they find us, amid the maze of shops? That’s where listing each item becomes so very important! The default search is “Most Recently Listed,” so the only way to make sure our products show up near the top is to list them often. We just have to “bite the bullet” and pay frequent listing fees! However, if we think of those fees as our shop “rent,” then perhaps they won’t seem so unpalatable. All stores pay rent—ours just happens to be paid as listing fees.

But what if our products are inexpensive? How can we justify paying such a high percentage of the price just to list them? We have to think volume. If we ran a brick-and-mortar bead shop downtown, we’d have to sell quantities of beads in order to make the venture pay. So, it would take a little longer at first to turn a profit, until we get well known and have repeat customers, which contributes to volume. Also, would we likely sell one bead at a time? No, we’d create groups or packages of beads, so that each sale would have a higher dollar value.

So on Etsy, we can devise ways to group our more inexpensive items. Could we sell 2 of the same color or size together? Several of a particular theme together? It’s true each item would be sold slightly cheaper than if bought separately, but because they are listed together, there’s only one listing fee. So the cost per sale has gone down.

Another strategy is to sell a how-to template along with the original item. Especially in the world of crafts, people like guidance. Even if they already know how to make an item, they are still curious if someone has found a different/better way.

Yet another approach is to sell an upscale version of the first, inexpensive item. Customers like choices and some will be tickled to purchase a classier version of the same item. For that item our listing fee turns out to be a smaller percentage of our selling price.

So, don’t be unduly irritated by having to pay Etsy listing fees. Renew your items often and think of that cost as your store rent. Take steps to group items or otherwise increase the amount of each sale. Be a prudent shopkeeper!

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