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I've thought of doing this for a long time as a means of hopefully developing a full time career. I'm a hobby resin artist and also do digital art, but have always dreamt of being a full time florist. I'm hoping to expand into that in the future, but don't feel my skills in that area are up to par yet.
Does anyone here have experience with this? Is it better to just start my own website rather than giving a corporation its cut? Thoughts?
You should definitely at least try it out to start with! It can be a rewarding experience.
If you end up doing it, you should stealth-advertise on Tumblr and Pinterest too, along with Instagram. I have spent hundreds of dollars this year on Tumblr impulse buys alone.... "Why yes, why DON'T I have a cloak??" 🤦♀️
If you don't know / don't care to learn how to set up your own shop website, then use Etsy. But don't rely on its search function, use other platforms as your "search engine". Depending on what you sell exactly and to whom, you might be easily found through Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. Look at the wordings people use on those platforms and tailor your teaser posts accordingly, then herd them to your Etsy. I think many popular sellers are known through their content on another platform, aka content marketing. They post things that are funny, relatable or educational, are active in niche forums / hobby groups,and buid trust that way. Trying to sell without context rarely works these days. ETA: also be prepared for very slow growth in the beginning. It seems to take most social media accounts at least 1,5 to 2 years to take off (if they ever do). It takes a while to create a large enough surface area. And even if you can make a decent living from shop sales, most creative business owners I've seen still diversify their income streams just to be safe. Depending on one platform is a huge risk.
My parents have their own Etsy shop and do that and Instagram (12k followers) for about 10 years now.
As a shop owner, you are kind of a slave to the Etsy "algorithm". They are always messing with settings and one day your shop will be front and center and you have a bunch of sales, and the next it is like you are completely removed from the search pages! They really like their business and they haven't really found another site they would like to utilize but they do have frustrations because of the different policies the company rolls out, experimental changes and other grievances they have no control over.
They have been able to do it full time but a lot of traffic to their page is from Instagram!
I wish you the best of luck 💙🌻
it takes a lot of bandwidth to manage, but i did the best selling art when i had a Squarespace site, was in a gallery/galleries AND sold on society6.com. try picking a few platforms and blast the world with your images!