I occasionally get some rather wild questions from buyers that have lead me to realize that buyers on Etsy have a lot of misconceptions about Etsy sellers. So I blog today to enlighten- not to sell my readers vintage jewelry or sock monkeys.
I do not make a living doing this and I think over half the people selling on Etsy work a day job. I make just enough on a sock monkey sale to go out and buy more stuffing, thread, socks, buttons, felt, or whatever else I need to make them. A sock monkey purchase is simply financial support of a hobby. I don't make anything on jewelry sales- I give all of that if there is any left to my friend who owns the jewelry.
Let me break down costs for you on the jewelry first.
If I am charging $30 for a necklace + $8 for shipping: once PayPal takes their cut I'll have about $37 in there. I ship with insurance in the $5.35 flat rate box. I ship in a box because I have had jewelry stolen out of envelopes and the buyer had to be reimbursed, so I insist on insurance. USPS does not insure envelopes- only boxes. With insurance, the shipping is $7.95. So now there is $29.05 in the PayPal account. Then of course there's the Etsy bill which is always between $7 - $18. I sell- if I am lucky- one item a month. So at the end of it all my store has made a whopping $22 for a necklace I wanted $30 for, IF I don't list too many things. I'd make a little more on it if I didn't do the one week promotional runs- but those usually help draw in buyers. (Since publishing this blog, USPS has made insurance included on flat rate boxes, up to $50, so this math is a bit irrelevant now)
Why not raise my prices? Well lately I have been asked by more then one person to lower my shipping costs! It is completely inappropriate to suggest someone ship something in easy to open packaging without insuring it and then expect to get your money back when the item is stolen and fails to arrive. Not only does the seller loose their money, but also the opportunity to sell the item ever again. Both parties deserve to have reimbursement in the event of theft- so buyers need to be respectful of sellers that use insurance. That being said- it is affordable in my own mind- to insure the pricey jewelry- especially since it doesn't belong to me. I do not however insure the monkeys because they are so big- no one would pay the shipping costs! (I can always make more monkeys- the jewelry is more irreplaceable)
I also get the impression that buyers do not realize that once an item is relinquished to USPS- they consider the ownership of the package to be the recipient. In other words- its not my property anymore- its the buyer's property. It is really the responsibility of the buyer to make inquires about missing packages. But they make it my problem, so I make my own inquires to please my unhappy buyers when something fails to be delivered. People need to remember that the seller is not flying personally on a plane and delivering this package by their own hand (can you just imagine paying for that?) The package is entrusted to strangers- untrustworthy strangers as I have learned. Strangers that will steal or accidentally route an item to the wrong zip code where it will be delayed for three weeks (when the buyer could just drive to their post office or to the nearby town it ended up in and demand it from that post office)- but instead asks me to look into it from clear across the country- so I do because I aim to please when I can do so.
I want people to buy and I- as a consumer- understand that what people expect to have to pay for something differs greatly from the value a seller places on the item. An item priced to high greatly limits your clientele. At that point the seller is using the online shop simply to show off merchandise they are proud to have aquired and they don't really want to part with unless its for the "right" price.
In a perfect world (or in the past where I often wish I could live) everyone would have an artistic craftsman hobby/occupation and understand the costs of buying supplies and the time spent crafting the item. Then everyone would be more willing to support each other and willing to pay what an item is reasonably worth.
So heres a breakdown of production costs on the sock monkeys:
What does it cost to make said monkey? First of all that depends on the socks. Most pairs I get for about $2.50. For Tie-dyed socks I have to buy a dye kit, but it will dye 4 pairs of socks. For designer socks I have to spend about $7, but one designer demanded Etsy pull those monkeys on the basis I didn't have permission to use their logo (which is a the print on the socks and hard to avoid photographing)- so I can't sell those online. I have seen some really great socks out there for $10- but I won't use them because the cost of the monkey would increase significantly. The stuffing I prefer (after trying a few brands) is $10 a bag and will stuff about 3 large monkeys. I use embroidery floss and one roll of it will sew up one monkey. I often use a second color on the face but thats a small amount of thread. Buttons are about $5 a bag, with multiple colors and I don't really count this cost because after the first three bags or so, I haven't had to buy more yet. So a monkey costs roughly $7 or $8.
It takes me 3 hours to make one. And that is if I don't make wings or costuming for it (another hour of work and about $2 worth of felt for wings because THAT has gotten expensive to buy since I started making them in 2011) What should I pay myself per hour to sew the monkey? I have to hand sew them since I use embroidery floss. Should I get minimum wage? That's $22 for 3 hours of work. Plus supplies: a sock monkey SHOULD cost $30!?! I sell a basic monkey for $15 plus shipping- AND that would bring us back to the first half of this blog about PayPal and Etsy fees. Why sell them for so little? Because that's what Target sells them for and while mine are so much cooler and more unique then Target's- how can I expect anyone to find mine affordable and buy them with the cheap crap coming here from Asia? (Ironically Target is where I buy most of my socks)
This guy sold for $50 and is the only monkey to fetch such a high price.
This guy is an example of a simpler "decorated" monkey.
When I began making the sock monkeys and it was suggested I sell them (probably because its weird to have 12 monkeys sitting around your house) a friend that was completing high school asked me to make her one and I was only too happy to make one for her as a graduation gift. She wanted to pay and I said "no" because I always intended to make a gift of it. But I did ask her what she'd pay for one. "$10" she said. When I brought them to a store for consignment, I asked the shop owner what seemed reasonable to charge. "$40, but no one would pay that. What do YOU want for them?" I wanted to make between $15 and $25 on a monkey. We priced them there at that- plus the additional cost of the cut she'd take- which made them cost between $5 and $10 more then I normally charge. For about a year that is where most of my sales came from. Now I don't sell there, and that is a long story about the woes of shop consignment I could blog about later. Most monkey sales lately come from random people I meet that see them and just have to have them. This circumvents the shipping issues I've already mentioned.
And once again- this isn't how I earn a living. I am an idle housewife and the purchase only helps me buy more supplies to fuel my crafty hobbies. To make a living I would have to sell two monkeys a day, 5 days a week- and they just don't sell that fast even priced as low as I have them.
An item is really only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, but hopefully I've raised a small amount of awareness about what it costs to make and sell things online, and about shipping woes. And if you've read this hopefully you will consider more carefully before you try to haggle with us simple online artisans about our "extreme" prices.
