by Victoria Neely

Created on: June 21, 2007

Etsy describes itself as an online marketplace for buying and selling handmade goods. Although there are elements that will be familiar to anyone who uses eBay, Etsy is not an auction site. There's no bidding involved: The price you see is the price you get. Another difference is that while you can sell just about anything on eBay, Etsy only allows handmade items.

That might sound discouraging if your idea of "handmade items" are crummy little birdhouses that your artistically challenged neighbor made from sticky popsicle sticks. If that's the case, you might be surprised by the sheer diversity and quality of all the handmade items you can find on Etsy. Yes, you can certainly find cheesy things that looked like they were carelessly thrown together, but there are also a lot of high quality goods to be found. You can find beautiful glass pendants, pottery, and even furniture on Etsy. Other things you can find include:

Sculptures
Paintings
Clothing
Purses and handbags
Bookmarks
Greeting cards
Hats
Buttons
Dolls
Masks
Journals
Beads
Soap
Blankets
T oys

That's far from an exhaustive list of all the things you can buy on Etsy. With a little searching, you can find some pretty amazing stuff that you would have a hard time finding anywhere else.

Because Etsy takes a very small cut from the transactions, artists and crafters have the freedom to charge more competitive prices for their work. It's not uncommon for retailers to take as much as 50% from the sale price, which is part of why handmade items can cost so much; the retailer's cut has to be factored into the final price of the item. Fortunately, Etsy's fees are tiny by comparison.

One of the things Etsy does have in common with eBay is that it has its own feedback system. Feedback and seller ratings are taken just as seriously on Etsy as they are on eBay. Sellers depend on good feedback for their reputation, and bad feedback will leave an ugly black mark on their record. If you decide to buy something from a seller who has a lot of good feedbacks, you can be pretty confident that you'll have a good experience. That's why it's more than just good manners to leave feedback- it helps everyone.

There is a downside to Etsy, though. Since it's a fairly new site that's getting new members all the time, it's experiencing some growing pains. There have been brief times when the whole site went down for maintenance. Hopefully that will become less and less of an issue as Etsy matures.

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