Friday, November 19, 2010

ArtFire vs. Etsy

I just got done visiting ArtFire for the first time in a long time and I have to say, the site seems to have grown up a bit since I last looked (so many great features for sellers!) and best of all, it even worked without crashing my browser.

I have to say, I love the name: ArtFire. Seriously. It's perfect, right? It seems to give me lots of ways to communicate with my buyers, a built in blog... links to FaceBook, etc. And even at the current price of $9.95 a month, that's a better deal than what I'm paying at Etsy.

But then, there is the matter of my 400+ feedback on Etsy. I hate to walk away from that - that took some time to build up! And Etsy has been pretty good to me all these years, I've kept out of trouble there and it's worked out just fine. I am hearing horror stories about people trying to buy things and other buyers stealing the item right out of their carts though, seems like that's always been a danger for people who wait to pay - I don't know why it seems to be a new issue. And I don't even want to think about all the non-handmade things on there. Does Art Fire have them too? I didn't look that close.

Anyway... What to do, what to do?

3 comments:

  1. hey pam ;) . . . you give the choise to your self, stay at etsy when you are lucky with it, thats the easy way ;))))
    hugs and greets from switzerland
    guido

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  2. Guido, you are right of course! The only thing... artfire is cheaper. I'm going to dip my toes in over there while keeping my etsy store up and running and see what I think :)

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  3. I think keeping both shops is probably smart for now, especially since Etsy is "free" until you actually list or sell something. (It is--right? They didn't change that did they? I'm so out of the loop on Etsy...) I nosed around on ArtFire, too, and there were things I liked and things I didn't like. I guess no service will probably be perfect :|

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