❯❯ Understanding Etsy’s purpose and how Etsy makes money

      ❯❯ Signing up for (and making your way around) Etsy

      ❯❯ Setting up your Etsy shop

      ❯❯ Understanding the selling process on Etsy

      ❯❯ Running your Etsy business with ease

      ❯❯ Exploring the Etsy community

      ❯❯ Although Etsy is growing – as of this writing, the site boasts 1.7 million active sellers and 27.1 million active buyers, and in 2015 it facilitated more than $2.39 billion in transactions – it’s still the proverbial mouse to eBay’s proverbial elephant.

      ❯❯ Etsy, which launched in 2005, doesn’t use an auction format.

      ❯❯ Whereas (almost) anything goes on eBay, Etsy was created specifically to enable artists and craftspeople to sell their handmade wares online. (Over time, the site has evolved to cater to so-called creative entrepreneurs; find out more about what you can and can’t sell on Etsy in Chapter 7.) Etsy itself puts it this way:

      Our mission is to reimagine commerce in ways that build a more fulfilling and lasting world. We are building a human, authentic and community-centric global and local marketplace. We are committed to using the power of business to create a better world through our platform, our members, our employees and the communities we serve. As we grow, commitment to our mission remains at the core of our identity. It is woven into the decisions we make for the long-term health of our ecosystem, from the sourcing of our office supplies to our employee benefits to the items sold in our marketplace.

       So how does Etsy’s business model work? Etsy stays afloat by charging sellers a fee for each item listed on the site. At this time, the listing fee is 20¢ per item. Etsy also collects a commission from the seller for each item sold – currently 3.5 percent of the total price of the item, not counting shipping. In addition, Etsy collects fees (3 percent of the total price of the item plus an additional 20¢) from shopkeepers in the United States who use its handy-dandy Etsy Payments feature, which enables buyers to pay using a credit card or Etsy gift card. These fees, which you can pay using a credit card that you put on file with Etsy or using your PayPal account, are due monthly.

      The origins of Etsy’s name are as murky as a drifter’s past, but theories abound. Some say that the name Etsy is a play on the Latin phrase et si, meaning “and if.” Others suggest that the name comes from the Greek etsi, meaning “so,” “thus,” or “in this way.” Still others posit that Etsy derives from the Unix directory /etc, pronounced “et-C,” or that it’s meant to call to mind the word itsy, as in “itsy-bitsy,” or “cute,” which, of course, many items on Etsy are.

      Any attempts for clarification by Etsy are met with playful – but misleading – answers by Etsy’s staff, ranging from “Etsy is an acronym for Expanded Truncated Structural Y” to “It means ‘horny person’ in Japanese.’” And although Etsy founder Rob Kalin once insinuated that the answer to this riddle could be found in Fellini’s film 8½, no one has yet managed to solve it.

The Etsy home page, shown in Figure 1-1, features several important sections. These include the following. (Note that this section assumes that you’re not signed in to your Etsy account. The options change slightly if you are – and even more if you are a seller. For more information, see Chapters 3 and 8.)

      ❯❯ A standard search box, for when you know what you’re looking for

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