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Poll! How should the shop be set up?

October 21, 2013

Hey everyone. As you know, I'm planning on opening a real Tipsy Sheep shop in November for those who didn't or couldn't subscribe to the monthly mailings for round one.  Originally I was going to set it up on Etsy, but I've been looking around at other options and suddenly am presented with too many choices. So I'm going to leave it up to you.  Here are the shop types with their pros and cons:

Keep it on the blog - I would set up a shop post where each yarn would be listed, and allow PayPal to handle the shopping cart end of things
Pros: No outside linking, minimal fees per transaction, no listing or hosting fees, easiest thing in the world to set up, PayPal is amazing, great seller protection
Cons: Don't know how shipping would work for multiple items, some people find a blog shop less trustworthy, not too much client communication, anyone who doesn't know about the blog would probably never see the shop

Etsy
Pros: Pretty easy to set up, well known, decent seller protection, easy client communication, shipping calculations are super easy, could reach people outside the blog
Cons: Lots and lots of fees - monthly listing fee for each item plus they take a percentage from each sale, practically zero visibility in the Etsy marketplace due to the sheer number of fiber artists, very little customization or control

Big Cartel (website for artists to build free shops)
Pros: Gosh they look pretty, site doesn't take percentage fee per sale, no listing fees per item, they calculate shipping
Cons: Monthly hosting fee for more than 5 products, PayPal would still take a cut of each sale, I've never used it before so it might take longer to set up

A real tipsysheep.com website with shop - it would be nearly the same thing as having a shop on the blog, but with a real domain name
Pros: Lots of room for expansion, complete customization, trustworthy domain, could integrate the blog, no listing fees
Cons: Monthly hosting fees, additional fees for PayPal or whoever we use to handle transactions, harder to reach non-blog customers, will take a while to build as I would design/code it myself

So. There are the options.  If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the comments - otherwise, use this poll:


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