Thanks to the advice/encouragement from trinketsndreams the other day, I have been tempted into using Etsy as a possible outlet for my crafts, and have dipped my toe in the water by listing some tiny delicate polyclay leaf charms on etsy:
On the positive side, it’s only 20 cents to list an item – so with the current $/£ exchange rate that’s only 13 pence. But on the scary side, the exchange rate means that there is a fine line between my prices being set too high for people in the USA to want to buy my stuff, or for them to be too low for me to make a living (assuming that my theory is correct, and that far more people in the States know about polymer clay than in Britain (I think more craftspeople have heard of Etsy there, too, than here), so that’s where my main customer-base will be).
If I have time over the next few days, I think I’ll make a scientific experiment. I’m going to put three identical polyclay items for sale on Ebay.com, Ebay.co.uk, and Etsy. I’ll submit exactly the same photos and descriptions and prices for them, and then I’ll count how many hits I’ve had on each page.