CONTENT OWNERSHIP – You don’t own your content on Etsy! What?!? No, really; you do not own your content on Etsy. They have full rights to your products, your verbiage, your life and your first born child (ok, maybe that last one is a stretch, but basically).

THE RULES – Oh, that rules. Didn’t you go into business for yourself to get out from underneath other people’s rules? Well, with Etsy, you are completely subject to their rules and regulations.

GROWTH & MARKETING – We won’t argue that you can’t market your etsy store, you can. We also won’t argue that there’s not a certain appealing factor to the fact that Etsy does it’s own marketing. What will we argue? That you’re marketing for other stores too when you market your Etsy store and that your growth is stunted in so many ways. Word-of-mouth is a HUGE piece of marketing a handmade business but, when your shop is on Etsy, the word of mouth is given to Etsy NOT your shop specifically.

SEO – You can increase your ETSY search engine results but they don’t care about your actual search engine results, they only care that ETSY is found, not your shop. SEO is hard enough to get a handle on outside of etsy, and it’s almost impossible to control with your shop on etsy.

PROFESSIONALISM – You know it’s true; People perceive your business as a hobby or something “small” when it’s only on etsy. Your professionalism is increased greatly when you have your own eCommerce website.

FAKE IT ‘TIL YOU MAKE IT DOESN’T WORK – We’ve all heard this saying, right? Fake it until you make it. Well, that works a lot of the times in business but Etsy squashes the possibilities of using it within their platform since they broadcast your shop’s opening date and number of sales.

SUBSCRIBER LISTS – A subscriber, or newsletter, list is huge for your business. We have a free ebook outlaying why it’s so powerful here, but it is essential to the success of your business, really! Etsy prohibits the collection of the email addresses of your customers for this use, so you’re dead in the water on Etsy in this department. thankfully, there are ways around this as you’re thinking strategically about getting off of Etsy!