Drop Shipping is a convenient way to make money without much investment. As drop shipping evolves, new methods come out that are experimented with heavily. One of those methods, it’s drop shipping Etsy products on a Shopify store. You could of seen this on a trending YouTube video or social media post and thought, “It’s possible?!”
Although drop shipping Etsy products on Shopify is possible, it isn’t easy as people make it out to seem. There are many things you need to take into consideration before you try doing this, and in the rest of this blog post we will go over many different reasons it may not be wise to do so.
In order to get to the bottom of this question, we talked to retail expert Jeanel Alvarado of www.retailboss.co, and she gave us the down falls of drop shipping Etsy products on a Shopify store and what you should do instead.
What Is The Problem With Drop Shipping From Etsy To Shopify?
The question should be more so what are the problems with drop shipping from Etsy to Shopify. Luckily for us, Jeanel gave us a couple of great points on why it isn’t a good idea.
The Profit Margins Won’t Be There
There’s only so much you can mark up prices on Etsy products, otherwise they won’t sell. So there’s the first problem Jeanel brought up. Will it be worth pouring marketing dollars into a project where the margins are so small. You may not end up making a profit at all after paying for ads, staff, and all the other expenses you incur.
On top of that, since the products are made unique and are usually hand made, they are more expensive than most retailers. This lowers your ability to mark up the price even more so.
Copyright Issues With Selling Other Peoples Products
With every product you sell you will need to get permission. Otherwise, you could run into copyright issues with the seller who actually puts the hard work into making these products. So, if you thought it was ok to just take products and import them into Shopify without permission, you are very wrong. How would you like it if someone was selling a product you made and you didn’t even know?
Even if they do give you permission, they could potentially change their mind at any time, which will be a hassle, especially if you have a whole bunch of their products listed on your store.
Supply Issues
Let’s say you build up a huge audience for your store, and you’re getting a lot of orders. You don’t know how fast these creators could make the products you sell and ship them out. This could lead to a lot of different unhappy customers due to products not coming in for a long time. If they bought the product as a gift for someone, or for a special occasion, it could be very embarrassing.
What Is An Alternative Approach To This Method?
“It would be more advantageous to import products that are already being imported on a dropshipping store, and then adding the Etsy integration after uploading all the products. As a seller, you can easily import your products onto the Etsy Marketplace this way.”
Jeanel recommends getting your own products for your drop shipping store, and then listing them on your Etsy shop. This way, you could have the same exact profit margins on your Etsy shop as your Shopify store and also have full control over your products.
You Can Also Drop Ship Via Etsy
Another alternative approach is to use Printify or Printful to create your own Etsy store and sell products that way. With this method you don’t need to even have a Shopify store. These two options are some of the only drop shipping services that allow you to sell products from their store directly on Etsy.
What are the keys to drop shipping on Etsy?
The key to drop shipping on Etsy is to choose a specific niche. Then the second step is to find underserved topics to create products around. This will allow you to have an advantage over the competition as well as create products that are unique. You can do this by using sites like marmalead.com
Once your store starts gaining popularity from the underserved listing keywords, you could then start listing more popular search terms because people are looking at your store more often.
Conclusion
So although it’s definitely possible to use Shopify to sell other peoples Etsy products, it doesn’t make it right, or the way to go. It’s a much better idea to take the harder route, make supplier relationships yourself, and then sell them on both platforms. That way, you could make sure you don’t run into any copyright issues, and the stress of not doing things right isn’t in the back of your mind as you’re doing business.
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