Why we choose to make our own website to sell our designs instead of using Amazon Merch or Etsy
We get this question a lot: “Why did you choose to make your own website instead of using Amazon Merch or Etsy?”
Here are a few reasons why we decided to create our own website to sell our t-shirts:
• We wanted full control over our products and designs
• We didn’t want to follow trends on Amazon or Etsy
• We wanted to save money on fees charged by Amazon and Etsy
• We just wanted to design crazy stuff and don’t care about what “slogan” is trending and then copy it
• We can do whatever we want now, we don’t have to worry that Amazon or Etsy refuses our designs
Yes, we sold on Amazon and Etsy – before
A few years back we started both Amazon Merch and Etsy. But soon we found that these marketplaces only sell to the masses. We are a creative couple and we are bored easily. We did our best to fit into those marketplaces, but we felt that something was wrong.
Designing for print on demand platforms is boring
If you know about those marketplaces you know you can find 1000 or even 10000 t-shirts with one slogan. Even we made some money creating just text t-shirts writing good SEO optimized content and soon we were on page number one for that specific slogan.
But it was just plain boring. We had no creative freedom at all. Just copy and paste. What a life? Not for us…
With this online shop, we finally get our creative freedom back
We decided to do something completely different. Something that we enjoy doing, so we started this website where we can put every design we want and don’t need to care about trends or what other people are doing.
The downs- and upsides to selling T-Shirts and other print on demand on your own
Amazon and Etsy are big, we are small. And we don’t design for the masses. We design for people. People who appreciate our different approaches to designing. It won’t be easy to make money as quickly as on those platforms, but we will definitely have more fun doing our own thing and keeping the big cooperations out.
The Pros and cons of selling designs on Amazon or Etsy
• You can reach a larger audience
• There is more brand recognition
• They have more marketing resources than you do
• You don’t have to worry about logistics
• You can piggyback off of their audience
• You will have to compete with a lot of other sellers
• They take a commission on every sale
• Mostly no creative freedom
• Sell for the masses
• Look what people are buying and just copy it
Conclusion
Well, selling your designs on amazon or Etsy may be better if you want to save money on marketing resources and not have to worry about logistics. It also helps you when it comes to brand recognition.
More people will recognize your business because of those popular design platforms. But the cons of this decision are mainly that there is a lot of competition and the commission that Amazon and Etsy take can be quite large.
Also, if you have never made a website before, don’t know about SEO and Online Marketing it will be hard to make any sales… anyway, we choose this path and we will see if we’ll be succesful.
So, what do you think? Is it better to sell your designs on those platforms or create your own website as we did? Let us know in the comments below!