Over the last year I spent a lot of time reviewing different selling platforms, different methods of running a store, and considering how to optimise my own time commitment to successfully set up The ChemScrapes Shop. I decided on Esty with Printful. Printful because they consistently give better quality compared to others based on in-depth research I did, and my own ordering of products compared to previous print on demand (POD) platforms I used. Etsy because it handles all the tax stuff globally.

But Etsy for ChemScrapes is not working out. In the almost one year the shop has been set up, I have made 34 sales, and got seven 5-star reviews. The revenue was fine – more than the previous 8 years combined on other platforms – but overall I did not quite break even ($7 short) for all the fees, charges, registration, software etc.

I tried having a fun way to interact with the shop by using cartoons to sell the products, I got ranked down for bad quality mockups. I removed them and replaced them with my own mockups that involved chemistry lab backgrounds and benches (AI generated). This part was cool – I got Gemini to write some code for me so I could combine images to generate the mockups, as well as generate slide shows. This saved me a bunch of time and I will actually write a full post on this to share the code once it is fully optimised.

Most of what I sold on Etsy was directly from my socials, with only a couple of items originating from Etsy’s marketplace. When I did some research on keyword searches it became very clear that chemistry and science keywords are not so common on Etsy. Also, reading more in the general public forums – a lot of people associate Etsy with handmade, and there are quite a few people who don’t like the platform.

Even when I got rave reviews, if there was a glitch in the tracking and delivery system, Etsy support would write to me and tell me I was not meeting customer service standards. This was perhaps the most frustrating. I got ranked down until “customer service standards improve”. There was one time delivery was late, but I managed it with the recipent and they still left a 5-star review. Whan I raised this to Etsy, there was no response.

So I went down a rabbit hole looking at more and more videos, listening to the gurus on how to rank-up on Etsy. A lot of the advice for POD sellers is to just use AI to number up designs. The more listings you have, the more likely you are to make money. This is not ChemScrapes. AI for mockups is fine – but the creative step is mine. I will never fall into the trap of making multiple crappy AI variations and pay for an app to autolist them to play this numbers game.

To be honest, the whole Etsy thing is a bit scary to me. Some of these Etsy “influencers” are obviously predatory, and give advice that pushed you to their platforms, courses, communities, software solutions etc.

So I reconsidered my options. I’m clearly not getting any benefit from the Etsy marketplace and the listing fees and transaction fees mean that I have to charge higher than I want to not even break even. I applied for an Amazon Merch account in order to access a higher volume marketplace. I was rejected. Shopify doesn’t handle the taxes for me from Singapore (seems only UK and US sellers). So I was considering just letting the Etsy store stay there, but I have to renew listings every four months and this eats away at the revenue. I was seriously thinking about closing it up.

Then I stumbled on fourthwall.

Fourthwall is essentially like Shopify, but doesn’t charge a monthly fee. They can handle all the taxes, listing is free, and the best bonus – their printer partnership is with Printful, who I think are superior on quality. Sure, their design feautres are not as good as Printful, so I have to change the way I design, but this is manageable and is the only downside in my opinion. In addition to tax requirements, they handle all customer service, GPSR requirements, and returns. I get to have a dedicated website that I can drive traffic to, so I can have consistent branding. It is just so much better than Etsy for my situation.

Given that I only make sales from traffic I drive anyway, if I am only going to make 34 sales a year, I can make that $7 back and at least break even. This is a much better position to be in.

So, from here on I will be pushing all traffic to the fourthwall site instead of Etsy. I’ll leave Etsy operational and just delete the designs as they are ported over to make sure people are getting the best price I can offer with this operating model.

Maybe in a years time I have a kind of update.