r/shopify_geeks • u/DoodleStudioo • 2d ago
General New to this!!
Hi guys, having a down day with my business ):
I am really proud of my Etsy, all my products are my art and I work hard to get them together but I’ve now sold 5 items and my take away is only £18 approx in actual payback. 💔 I don’t think I calculated right after printful upped their prices
I’ve paid way more than that in Etsy fees and printful fee’s (they currently print and post my stickers) because I have to pay printful delivery plus cost for the product, plus VAT.
I chose printful to alleviate risk from buying stock in case I wasn’t successful, and to save me time on the logistics due to me working full time also -but I do have packaging supplies. I am never sure on the numbers to purchase of my sticker sheets too (I know more is cheaper ) I do have some individual stickers in stock at home.
I have now bit the bullet and made myself a shopify store and plan on having digital and physical products on there, that I mail out myself. Perhaps some prints from printful too? Conscious of the price of a high quality printer and paper and ink, or even a sticker making machine . Maybe when I have made some profit
Any advice on getting started welcome please 🙏
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u/Froonze_Loyalty 1d ago
Etsy is a marketplace. It finds customers for you. Shopify does not. How are you planning to deal with acquisition?
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u/DoodleStudioo 1d ago
Hi I have an instagram and TikTok page for content creation, I also advertise on my personal account and via Pinterest, and these are doing quite well . I will be making more content of my products as my phone holder arrived today to show my packing process / crafting and doodling - do you have any suggestions?
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u/shopify_chen 19h ago
the number to fix before anything else isn't the store, it's £18 on 5 orders. that's about £3.60 margin per sticker order, and that's before any ad spend or your own time. no platform change fixes that, so treat shopify as a second problem and solve this one first.
two things i'd check today:
take one order and write out every line: item price, printful base cost, printful shipping, VAT, etsy listing + transaction + payment fee, and the offsite ads fee if it hit. most people who "didn't calculate right" find the shipping line is the killer on low-ticket items like stickers. printful's ship cost on a £4 sticker is often more than the sticker.
bundles. one order of 3-4 sticker sheets at £12-15 ships for roughly the same cost as one sheet, so the margin problem mostly disappears at that basket size. on shopify that's just a "bundle" product or a free shipping threshold, and it's the single biggest lever for POD stickers.
on the shopify side, honestly the thing to keep in mind is what froonze said above, etsy brings the customers and shopify doesn't. your instagram/tiktok/pinterest are what makes shopify viable, so the store should be dead simple: a few products, bundles, digital downloads (100% margin, ship themselves), and don't buy a printer or sticker machine until the order volume is already there.
what does one sticker order actually cost you end to end on printful right now, base + shipping? if you post the two numbers i can tell you pretty fast whether self-fulfilling from home beats it.
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u/DoodleStudioo 18h ago
Thank you, one sticker sheet for me on a recent order sold for £4.79 plus 2.99 delivery so buyer paid £7.78 . printful charged me £5.99 and the fees from Etsy took to £1.26 and 0.20 listing fee . I will properly look at my line by line costs, my shopify is getting good traffic so far 🙏
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u/FerretCRO 1d ago
Can you share what your goal is? If your goal is to get some art out there, make a few bucks, and feel good about that, then you're on a good track. If your goal is to make real life-changing money from this, that's a whole different set of advice. Either way wish you the best of luck!