Is there a commercial solution available similar to Etsy that I can host on my site?

December 20, 2009 9:34 PM

My website gets a lot of traffic from artists, many of whom would like to feature their unique pieces for sale on my site. Are there any cheap/free ecommerce solutions out there to let them sell through my site similar to how Etsy handles it?

I have a website focused on a certain niche that has a vibrant community of craftsmen (and women) and artists. The site gets about 3-4k visits a month and is currently monetized through the eBay Partner Network and makes a couple hundred a month just sitting there, however I'm becoming very unhappy with the changes being made to the program and my revenue has steadily dropped so I'm looking at other options.

I have received many emails from visitors who are interested in displaying their work on my site and have considered turning it into a full-blown ecommerce site in the past but I'm not really sure how that would work when I'd be dealing with many different artists all trying to sell what tend to be one-off pieces (no mass-production). I basically don't want to take on the responsibility of managing a huge and constantly changing product catalog, nor do I want the responsibility of fulfilling the orders given how many different artists there would be.

I like the Etsy system and think a model like that where I get paid a trivial listing fee (they charge $.20) and then some percentage of the sales (they charge 3%) and the seller is responsible for fulfillment and managing their listings would be perfect but I don't know of any commercial easy-to-setup systems like that.

Ideally I'd love something free but am willing to pay as long as its not several thousands of dollars. I also need something that is relatively easy to setup in terms of technical requirements since I know CSS and am learning PHP/MySQL but I am by no means a developer.

I'm not married to the idea of an Etsy like system and am open to other suggestions on how to work something like this. Basically I am trying to find ways to monetize the people looking to sell through my site in a manner that is relatively hands-off on my end, doesn't have me assuming a ton of risk, and is easy to setup. Does such a mythical solution exist?

Also, for those suggesting that I just charge for ad space to host Etsy listings I've considered that and I honestly don't want to be in the ad sales business. I want something that is an actual ecommerce solution so people can submit payments through the site and give the artist their cut and give me mine.

I'll be frequently monitoring this thread and am happy to answer any questions any of you might have.

posted by Elminster24 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

If you are referring to the site listed in your profile, then why not a 'buy now' option on Ebay? However that may not work if you want a cut. Depending on the dollars you want to spend, there is Shopify (stand alone, I use it and like it), Shopp (wordpress - one off purchase price and I'll be moving to it soon, I hope) and a range of others depending on your website cms.

From my research, free or cheap ecommerce sites/add-ons that don't cause a whole lot of hassle are not readily available. I wait, nay, urge someone to correct me.

"Oh give me a home
Where the e-commerce roam
And the fees are not blinding all dayyyyy....

Where never is heard
the 404 error word
and the money, she grows like hayyyyy"
posted by Kerasia at 11:31 PM on December 20, 2009

Response by poster: I appreciate the suggestions but they appear to be just cut and dry ecommerce stuff that doesn't really solve the issue of letting users manage their listings and having fulfillment be handled by them. Know of anything that might solve that?
posted by Elminster24 at 1:01 AM on December 21, 2009

How about installing a blogging platform that allows multiple users (I'm going to mention Wordpress since it's all I know) with a Paypal plugin (this is the first one I found; I'm sure there are many). Then when someone wants to sell something on your site, you give them a blog account (this could probably be automated); they write a post (or a page) with the item for sale and a Paypal button.

This takes care of letting your users manage their own listings. Then you just have to to take care of (1) making sure that the listings appear where you want them (Wordpress is written in php and there are tons of plugins so I'm sure you could find something) and (2) getting your cut from the sellers. Obviously 2 is the tricky bit.... I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions for that. Maybe, to keep things administratively simple, you could just charge your users a one-off/monthy/yearly fee to be allowed to sell stuff on your site? Then once it's bringing in the cash you can look around for a more elegant solution.
posted by primer_dimer at 2:23 AM on December 21, 2009

Response by poster: I considered something like that originally actually but I'm not sure how to get around the hurdle of preventing them from accessing other vendor's posts/stores.
posted by Elminster24 at 12:09 PM on December 21, 2009

I'm not sure how to get around the hurdle of preventing them from accessing other vendor's posts/stores.

I'm pretty sure in wordpress you can set it up so that each user only has access to the posts they authored. And also make yourself an admin so you have access to everything (definitely do this, for bugfixes if nothing else). You can even go so far as to needing your approval before something posts onto the site, if you want that level of control.
posted by shelleycat at 1:55 PM on December 21, 2009