For the Handmade Community-Experiment with various selling platforms

I had recently gotten advice to "get my product everywhere". My product is on Storenvy. What I like about Storenvy, is that, for free, you get a separate website with NO promos from other stores. There are two ways to get to your site in Storenvy. You drive your own traffic to your "own" storenvy site. All sales that way are free. Or, someone logs into the main storenvy site, finds your product, and buys it, in that case, storenvy gets a 10% commission. What I don't like, my sales are around...zero...

Since Amazon was on top of the list, I checked that out first.  I was impressed! You had to submit photos of your products, and more importantly, your work area. Then, you had to be approved...by a person, not an algorithm.   They sent an email out right away saying that it will take several weeks to a month for approval.

While I was waiting, I decided to list at etsy (many of the sites had very nice "import from etsy" buttons).  I picked five of my products to try. It was easy enough to set up. No approval process. What I like about etsy is it's cheap to try, and easy to use. What I don't like, there was immediate promotional material in my inbox for etsy stuff, and there can be other people's stuff promoted on your page. You can read volumes on pros and cons of etsy. If you are already on, and selling, even small volumes, I say keep it. If you are thinking of it as a secondary source of online sales, probably not worth the upkeep,

I then imported it to AFTCRA. Before it was live, I had to go into each product and put in categories. That would have been a huge chore, but it was just five products. What I like about AFTCRA is the hometown, USA thing they have going on. What I don't like, the import wasn't seamless (NONE of the imports were seamless though), I haven't spent enough time over there to really comment. It's free to list.

Then I imported it to Bonanza. The only plus is good customer service. They were more suited for importing from Ebay, so there were many things I had to fill out on each product to make it live. It was also a confusing site, and it pushes a paid account. I'm not sure I'm even live there after all that.

By this time the whole processes was getting cumbersome. One of the five products was a pair of earrings that I ended up selling in person at a craft show. Luckily, I had the materials to make another pair. Otherwise, I'd have to go into each website to delete the product.

Meanwhile, I got approval from Amazon Handmade. There was an import button, but it didn't work for me. Right now I only have two products listed, but my feeling is that the popularity of amazon is worth the effort. I'm guessing the down sides will be similar to etsy. Other people's advertising on your page and getting found among a hundred thousand other artists. Well, here are my two listings.

Infinity Earrings

Collar Necklace

I certainly haven't figured anything out yet. I thought it was worth experimenting with other selling platforms that didn't require money investments. I just wanted to share my experience with other handmade sellers. The only way I see using more than one or two selling platforms, is if you make a bunch of the same thing. Otherwise, the maintenance is SO not worth it. Now have some fun and make a new thing!