Before trying Indiemade, I had a shop on Etsy, but wanted to wean off Etsy. So I transferred all my Blogger content to a Wordpress.org site using my own URL. The WP site requires hosting, which was a reasonable yearly fee for my own website. I liked the flexibility, and my friend did the technical stuff I didn't know how to do. However, I was never happy with the shop portion of the site. And when we tried to update it to Woo Commerce so I could have more bells and whistles, all hell broke loose. It was too complex and looked terrible. I wanted to simplify.
Because I don't have a huge Etsy following, and because I am so irritated at the changes they are making to promote mega mass producers and making more money for Etsy (that could be its own blog post), I've decided I will not draw any more traffic to Etsy by having an active shop there.
While I like using Soldsie (see my review of Soldsie here), it doesn't have the same presence as a website. It feels....temporary for lack of a better word.
After some digging, I decided to give Indiemade a try (free one month trial!). Here is a list of pros and cons off the top of my head and is not meant to be comprehensive.
Pros:
*Shops are clean and professional looking.
Here's a screen shot of my Indiemade site:
It looks like a simple, clean and very professional website.
Here's my Etsy shop (it's very empty and only had one product in it for demo purposes to be explained later):
*Indiemade is very easy to use. No html knowledge? No problem. Changing the entire look of your site is as easy as a click.
*Customize to your heart's desire.
*Tech support is outstanding. They respond quickly and are tenacious in figuring out issues you might be having.
*Your site can have more than one page. You can have between 2 and 15 extra pages depending on which plan you sign up for.
*Everything is integrated onto your site. Including a blog. In fact, I moved several years worth of my blog content over to my Indiemade site.
*Free 1 month trial to try set up shop, see if you like it. Just make sure to cancel before the last day if you don't like it or don't want to be charged for it.
*You pay a flat monthly rate. There are no fees outside of the monthly rate and the regular Paypal fees.
*You can choose a plan based on your needs. Prices range between $4.95 and $19.95
*Use a custom domain name (except in the basic plan).
*You can list items in more than one category. (I love this feature!)
*Customers do not have to sign up for an account to purchase.
*Integrate your listings with Etsy if you want. Listings on both sites will sell out if someone buys the item. Listings you do on Indiemade will automatically generate a draft listing on Etsy (if you set it up to do that). Then you simply publish the listings you want to publish on Etsy.
*Your site isn't a storefront in a marketplace. You aren't drawing traffic to your competitors or earning money for the marketplace (ahem...Etsy). Remember the listing on Etsy in the screenshot above? Look what happens if I deactivate the item and someone clicks the link:
While all these options are lovely, Etsy is totally sending my customer to competitors. Not cool.
*SEO, stats, etc. All the stuff that helps you get seen and lets you know if you're getting seen.
*You can sell downloadable digital products.
Cons:
*There are only a few themes to choose from.
*Unlike Etsy, you cannot print shipping labels from Indiemade. Rather, you need to do it through Paypal.
*Paypal is the only payment option (customers can check out without a Paypal account)
*There is no Convo tool to easily message customers. They have to be emailed.
*You are in charge of getting people to your website. They will not accidentally stumble on it through a marketplace setting like Etsy.
If you're thinking about trying it, look at other artist websites using Indiemade:
Karen Totten:
Have a great week!
-Jen Cameron
Glass Addictions
