My Tabletop Terrain Product Etsy Fail

I thought I was being smart. Etsy had other ideas.

For a while, I have been using my laser cutters and 3d printers to make things to make D&D and tabletop gaming things.

Templates, tools, and such.

These things started getting compliments so I thought I would test the market and see if anyone would like to buy my tools.

Fortunately, the one correct move I made was to test before having a big "open for business" announcement.

Etsy is meant to be easy

My wife has been selling on Etsy happily for a couple of years, and several of the folks I follow in the TTRPG space sell on there. Seemed like a no-brainer to test the waters first with a "turn-key" service that I see others using successfully, right?

Plus I have had an account on there since 2017 that I never really used, what would the harm be in trying?

If things worked out then my "Plan A" would be WooCommerce on my own website, but no point in setting up a whole thing only to see that work go to waste.

Or so I thought.

Gauging interest

I put the call out to see if anyone would like to test my templates. Around 20-30 people expressed interest.

The next step was to set up the product on Etsy so they could test shipping. Using my "Beta Testers" coupon they would get the product for free and just pay whatever the shipping was calculated as.

Yesterday I had 10 sales - yay!

This morning? All canceled.

With no explanation.

Yay for testing

I thought this "taking orders" part would be the easiest ... I didn't have a contingency for this bit.

My wife thinks somehow I tripped a fraud prevention system, due to the fact I had all these orders come in after no orders and very little traffic to the store.

This makes me worry that Shopify or another alternative would have a similar problem.

Build on your own land

This is the problem with the web today having such dominant players.

Etsy is great because they are a go-to place to buy handcrafted items, and because that is where people go to buy, that is where sellers go too.

Did you know also that Etsy likes to discourage you from creating a customer list? I guess they want to keep you in their walled garden, but it is a pain for situations like this because a couple of the folks checked out as guests.

At least with WooCommerce, even if the payment provider balked, at least all the data would be on my own WordPress website so I would be able to contact everyone directly to explain there was an issue.

I won't have the benefit of the Etsy search engine, and will have to compete with every other seller on Google, it will be mine, nobody else will have as much control over my store, and there will be less "rent" to pay.

A lesson for Hive?

This makes me think about Hive. We are building on borrowed land, but I think less so because of the distributed nature.

While the Hive blockchain is alive then our content lives on, but it might be still wise to take backups and ensure that we keep in touch with our networks outside of Hive as well as on it ...

The good news

Lessons learned. This is why we test, right?

Thankfully this mess gave me more time to work on the instructions for the product.

So while I cursed the air Etsy breathes, I set about crafting and taking out my aggression on innocent pink foam.

Product iteration

Taking that step back also got me thinking more about the product and how I should package it.

I realized as I was photographing techniques for the instructions that having a mixed "grab bag" of templates wouldn't be the best idea.

What I had assembled at that point was everything from stone pillars to country cottage doors. It didn't really gel or make intuitive sense.

In the future, after I deliver for these testing folks, I should put together themed packages, where the templates and instructions go together to enable the customer to make something cool.

Back to the drawing board (keyboard?)

I'll have to now get WooCommerce setup, and the product and coupon, try and integrate shipping, and see if my testers have the patience for yet another round.

If you would like to get in on the beta test let me know, just keep in mind I don't have the kinks figured out yet!