Hey everyone, welcome back to another video.
In today's video,
I'm going to be explaining kind of the deal breaker reason
as to why I don't use Etsy's platform
for print on demand.
Now, as many of you guys probably know,
I've been selling T-shirts online
through print on demand for over seven years now,
so I feel like I know this space.
I've tried all of the platforms,
and there's one reason that no one really talks about
that I don't use Etsy for print on demand.
So, without further ado,
let's just get right into this video.
So, there's three reasons why I don't use Etsy.
Now, the first two are really not big reasons
and I could get over them.
The third one's the deal breaker.
But with that said,
the first two, you really need to be aware of
as someone who's new to print on demand.
So, the first reason is that every listing
that you upload to Etsy's platform
comes with a 20 cent listing fee.
Now, this really isn't a deal breaker.
This isn't really a problem at all.
It's just something to be aware of.
The other print on demand platforms that I personally use,
they have no listing fees.
So you can upload as many designs as you want
and you don't have to pay a listing fee.
So, that's the first thing to be aware of.
It's really not a big problem.
Now, moving on to the second reason,
this one's slightly more of a problem,
but ultimately it's not the deal breaker.
What this one is,
is if you're using Etsy for print on demand,
you are going to be charged every time someone places
an order and then you'll receive the funds
from the customer, which has the cost of the order
plus the profit margin that you built in.
This is just something that you really need to be aware of
because it's going to charge your credit card on file
every time someone places an order,
and then afterwards, you are going to receive
the full amount of that charge plus the profit.
The other platforms that I use,
they don't charge you anything.
Simply, they just do it how I think they should do it,
which is just giving you your split of the profit.
They don't charge you anything,
so everything's ultimately free.
You don't even need to have a card on file
because they're not going to charge you for anything.
Now, with those two out of the way,
those are kind of reasons that I could get over
for using Etsy, but the third one here,
this is the one that nobody talks about.
This is the one that's a total deal breaker for me.
When you use Etsy for print on demand,
no matter how much you put in the description
of order information or frequently asked questions
or sizing charts or anything you put there,
people are still going to have questions for you
as a seller and Etsy puts this button there
where anyone can message the seller.
This is the big problem because essentially,
if you're a print on demand seller on Etsy,
you are now also a full-time customer service rep.
I know a lot of people don't realize this
and a lotta people don't talk about it
until they've sold a lot on Etsy,
but the more sales that you get on Etsy,
the more questions you're going to have to answer
on your account.
Now, if you just ignore these questions
and you don't answer them,
you could run into a lot of trouble.
The first thing is your average response time
is going to show as really bad on your account.
The second is, people are going to have bad reviews for you
as a seller because you didn't answer their questions.
And the third thing is,
some of them may be actual legitimate reasons
or accidents that someone made when ordering
that you need to manually take care of
before that order is fulfilled.
Now, some of these types of questions
that you wouldn't think that people would have are
last minute cancellations,
maybe they ordered the product and they wanted
a different one or slightly different
and they wanna cancel that order.
You have to do that before the order gets fulfilled.
Or they entered the wrong shipping address
and you have to change that or update it
before that order gets fulfilled and shipped out.
Also, it could be just general order questions.
"Hey, do you offer this slightly different?
Can you customize the design with my name in it?"
or something like that.
And then all of the slew of customer service questions,
which are basically exchanges, refunds, returns,
all of those things you are now responsible for.
Now, as I was talking about in one of the recent videos
on this channel with all the big print on demand changes,
there's kind of been a divide on print on demand
in the last couple of years.
Now, essentially what that split is,
is that there's passive print on demand
and there's active print on demand.
Essentially passive print on demand
are a couple different websites,
the ones that I personally use,
that are totally passive.
You upload the designs, every single thing is done for you.
These websites even take care of the customer service,
the exchanges, all of that for you.
And then the active side of print on demand,
this is the newer side.
This is basically more hands-on.
So you have to drive your own traffic.
You have to answer customer service.
It's more of a you are running that business,
not so passive as the other side.
Now, Etsy's platform for print on demand
falls somewhere in the middle.
Etsy's going to drive the traffic for you,
so you'll get sales basically passively.
However, you are going to have to do the customer service
and all of the messaging,
really the more active side.
This is a true deal breaker for me on their platform
because when I build my print on demand businesses,
I want them to be 100% passive.
A lot of people aren't thinking past 50 sales per month
or something to that effect,
but start thinking about 1,000 sales per month
or numbers in that scale.
If your print on demand business starts to grow
and you get into 1,000 sales per month,
that may easily translate into 300 questions per month
that you have to answer.
Now, since Etsy still has that passive nature to it,
it's going to be driving sales 24/7,
but the double-edged sword to that
is that you're going to be receiving questions 24/7.
And you now have to have your phone on you all the time,
respond to them as quickly as possible,
to make sure that your reviews stay high
and you get customers taken care of
if it's something that's time-sensitive.
I really recommend using one of the websites
that's fully passive.
That way, if you go on a cruise or you go on vacation
and you don't wanna be on your phone,
you can rest assured knowing that you don't have
to lift a finger because you're not responsible
for any of these things.
It's fully taken care of for you.
If you're using the Etsy platform,
then you'll have to either answer those questions yourself,
you're always going to be checking your phone,
or you're going to have to hire someone
to take care of those questions for you.
Hiring someone to answer these customer service questions
for you can be just as hard
because you're training them,
you're making sure that they're staying working for you,
you're making sure that they're keeping their quality up.
So, coming up in next week's video,
I'm really going to expand on this scaling issue
for print on demand and show you with real examples
what it's like when you grow a print on demand business
that's fully automated and scaled
versus one that you have to physically answer questions,
and you kind of having this ceiling of how big you can grow
before you start bringing on employees
to help you answer more questions.
Once that video is ready,
I'll link it up on the side and down in the description.
But in the meantime,
for those of you who want to learn more
about the passive print on demand
and what those websites are and how to use them,
I'll link a full tutorial for print on demand.
I'll also link it up down in the description.
For those of you who haven't seen it,
that's going to be a full step-by-step guide.
And hopefully that really helps you out
to build a fully passive print on demand business.
With all that being said,
I hope you guys really enjoyed this video.
Please give it a thumbs up if you did
and I will see you all in the next video.