Etsy Vs Squarespace- Where should you sell Digital Planning templates and products!
Have you been thinking about starting a digital product business? If so, I encourage you to go for it! Selling digital products has been a life-changing business for me and it offers a lot of benefits. You get to put in the hard work to create a product and then after that, you can earn passive income off it. If you don’t want to have to work so hard and you want to have more time with your family and live the laptop lifestyle, selling digital products is for you!
Right now with the pandemic situation, there is a bigger market than ever for digital products with so many people shopping online. A lot of people are choosing not to go to physical stores and instead, putting their purchasing power into online businesses. For people selling digital planners, that means they can pick up the clients who aren’t willing to go to a shop to buy an old-fashioned paper planner.
You don’t need to have a full range of digital products to offer in order to get started. A digital product could be as simple as a PDF download or editable templates. It depends on what you like to design and what the market is looking for. But don’t think that you can’t start a digital product business just because you don’t have a bunch of products ready.
Once your digital products are ready, you need a place to sell your creations. If you’re not ready to take the leap into building your own business, there are alternatives for digital designers.
In this post, I’ll talk about the pros, cons, and differences between two amazing platforms that can support your digital sales business: Etsy and Squarespace.
The Design
Etsy
Etsy offers a standard design for all of its shops and leaves little room for customization. This can be a benefit if you just want to get started fast without all the bells and whistles. However, since all the product listings look the same, the customer might get confused about which products belong to which seller and you might miss out on sales because of that. Also, customers who are unfamiliar with Etsy might think it’s just one big shop and fail to understand that it’s a platform that contains multiple stores.
It’s easy to share digital products on Etsy, however, Etsy is more limited than Squarespace in that it only allows you to sell physical and digital products so if you wanted to expand to offer courses and other services, you wouldn’t be able to make those sales or promotions through Etsy.
Squarespace
Squarespace is well-known for its beautiful templates and unlike Etsy, it allows each seller to express their unique style. You can easily customize your own beautiful product page with a standalone page or a list of products on one page which Etsy doesn’t offer.
For unlimited paid templates, my favorites are from here. Squarespace lets you drag and drop templates with more features which allows you to build your shop with all the features you need to build your business.
Also, on Squarespace, you have more entrepreneurial power in terms of selling memberships, courses, and services as well as physical and digital products. On Squarespace can offer a whole range of services instead of just selling physical or digital products like on Etsy.
Traffic
Etsy
Etsy has its own really big community that you get access to when you join. That means it’s easier to build traffic and get sales in a short period of time through Etys. By optimizing your shop title and description, you can catch the attention of the right customers for your products. If you have a good handle on SEO, it’s helpful to drive more traffic to your shop.
It’s also much easier for people to find your shop on Etsy because Etsy will refer similar products, so you’ll get traffic driven to you by other sellers of products that are similar to yours. On the downside, there will be times that you will be the one to catch the eye of a customer and bring in traffic, but the sale will go to your competitors for the same reason.
Squarespace
With Squarespace, you have the benefit of being more customized and independent, but that means you’ll have to hustle more to bring in business. You’ll be responsible for bringing in your own traffic from day 1. If you have marketing experience, then you can do a lot with Squarespace’s extra features that will help you drive traffic. If this isn’t your strong point or you’re not even sure where to begin, check out my Digital Planner Academy to learn more about how to stand out and drive traffic to your digital product business.
Scale
Etsy
It’s much harder to scale on Etsy than it is on Squarespace. With Etsy, you need to make sure to bring in the right traffic through your shop title and product descriptions, but that doesn’t guarantee that the customers you bring in once will be loyal to your shop. Because all the shops have the same standard look, it’s hard to maintain exclusive leads/potential customers at your shop.
Squarespace
With Squarespace, it’s easier to capture leads and the lead capture rate is much higher because your shop is more customized. That also allows you to build funnels and upsell products as you nurture your leads. You also have more opportunities to build your own community based on your niche through Squarespace as you are an independent business. Leads who find you through Squarespace are more likely to look at your products and become loyal customers than those who would find you on Etsy.
On Squarespace, you have the potential to provide more value to you customer by creating a blog where customers can read about topics related to your niche and product. You can also share behind-the-scenes videos of your creative process so that customers can feel more connected to the product they are buying and the person who is selling it. Squarespace offers much more of an opportunity to capture and nurture leads than Etsy.
Final thoughts
Both Etsy and Squarespace are amazing platforms to sell digital products. Each one has its benefits and its downsides, depending on where you are in terms of building your digital product business.
With Etsy, you get the benefit of a ready-made clientele and don’t have to work to drive traffic to your shop. However, the downside of that is that you don’t get to customize your shop and since every shop looks pretty much the same, there’s little chance for lead capture. Also, sometimes you’ll be driving traffic to your own competitors.
With Squarespace, you get way more customization and can offer more than just digital and physical products- you can create a full-scale business selling courses and memberships, and more. You also have more of an opportunity to build a community and provide value with blogs and behind-the-scenes videos. However, you are 100% responsible for driving traffic to your site which means you need to have the skills to do so in order to make sales.
If you’re ready to start building a digital planner business but you’re not sure how to start, check out my Digital Planner Academy. The Digital Planner Academy helps you learn how to find your niche and how to build and scale your digital planner business with done-for-you templates, processes, and resources. You’ll be able to launch your business quickly and with confidence. Ready to make your first digital planner sale?
