Etsy vs. BigCartel

While researching ways for independent artists and makers to sell their products online, I decided to compare two of the industry standards. Etsy is far and away the online darling for artists and crafters, but BigCartel is also a front runner for indie art sales. Here are some of my thoughts.

Etsy is a marketplace.You post your item for a fee and it’s added to the robust Etsy search engines for browsers and hunters to find. This is a great resource for getting started and building a following.

Etsy supplies numerous resources to help make your store more profitable and because their community is so large you can buy a handmade scarf from Sweden and sell your latest screen print to a collector in Budapest. They have hired an impressive roster of product developers to improve ways to collaborate with other artists, share ideas, and even bid on a chance to make a specifically requested product for a customer.

Etsy has always been impressive, and over the past few years its only gotten better. And bigger. Which is where a few of the negative aspects come into play.

With such a large market it’s hard to make a splash. You have to make sure your products are the right prices to sell and you need to promote yourself outside of the site. It costs 20 cents to list an item for four months and 3.5% of the sale goes to the site as well, a fee for hosting and processing payment. Etsy has created a clean, user-friendly environment for browsers but this also leaves very little room for shop customization and expression. Which is where Big Cartel comes in.

BigCartel is a platform to create a webshop. Much like you create a WordPress or Tumblr account and customize how it looks, BigCartel lets you create an individualized e-commerce site. Popular with the art crowd, it makes setting up a site to hock your wares pretty straight forward. You pick a theme (or code your own) and list your items. Payments go through PayPal or your bank account and you collect every last penny. You can list up to 5 items for free and then BigCartel becomes a paid service of $10-30 bucks a month. The perks of the paid service include using your own URL (not ***.bigcartel.com URL) and inventory tracking, among others.

BigCartel would be great for artists who already have a following. Print up some business cards with your site and point people directly to your web shop. It’s a safe way to keep track of your earning and customize your site to suite your clients tastes, while making sure you’re collecting all the money.

If you had a product to sell which would you choose?