I created an Honey Love Handmade Etsy store back in 2020 when Covid hit selling face masks, like a lot of home sewers. I had always had an Etsy store but when people I worked with started requesting for face masks, I decided to really speed up my sewing a get a lot more online.

During the pandemic, especially when it was mandatory to wear face masks I was selling quite a lot on my Etsy store. There was even a point where my local post office knew me by name as I was seeing them daily.

However, as the years have gone on and I have added different items to my store, such as pencil cases, makeup cases, keyrings a more. Some items do sell occasionally with very minimal advertising effort. However, some never sell… at all.

I also question the worth of selling these handmade items for $15 each when it takes about 20 minutes to make and could cost $2-5 in materials alone. Then you add the Etsy and shipping fees, you are really walking away with peanuts.

If I was sitting at home sewing, while watching a few of my favourite movies, then I don’t mind the time that I spend making these items but if this was my full or part time business I would really question the worth of having an Etsy store.

I will admit that I have spend little to no time marketing my Etsy store. Therefore, there has been very little traffic to my page. If I ramped up advertising on Instagram, Twitter or other platforms then maybe more people would find my Store and purchase my items. However, with so many people creating Etsy stores these days there is just so much competition.

My Etsy store is classified as my ‘Hobby’ because I do have a full time job in a completely different industry. I enjoy adding items to my store when I can but it definitely falls to the back of my mind between my job, life and other commitments.

How to make this more enjoyable?

I have always kept my Etsy store and my fashion sewing projects separate. I have a @honeylovehandmade and a @honeylovesewing instagram. Both get neglected, but I think if I just combined them it would make it a lot easier to manage and I might be more inspired to post.

Does the Fashion Sewing community also want to see the products that Home Sewers create? Are they a different community eg. Crafty Hobbiest vs Fashion Sewers?

I am finding the algorith for instagram getting worse so my engagement is so low I just don’t really see the worth in that either. It’s all about sponsored posts, hits and follows. I feel like the community aspect has really disappeared and I rarely see the people’s posts that I actually follow.

What product on Etsy is a good value items such as sewing pattern, embroidery design etc where you only have to make it once but then it can sell multiple times? Is that also extremely competitive?

So many questions! Something I’m keen to pick up this year, but if anyone has any comments or experience I would love to hear 🙂