Multiple Streams of Income
Selling What You Make Online
Etsy, Amazon Handmade, your own store and local groups, with the fees and shipping math that decide whether online is worth it for your product.
By Dan Whelan, founder of New World Survival
Researched from government agencies, university extension services, and other published sources. See our sources
Contents
What this page covers
Online venues reach buyers your town will never send you. The trade is fees on every sale, photography that has to do the work your hands would do at a market table, and shipping risk that can quietly eat the margin.
This page covers the major online routes for goods made at home: the two big handmade marketplaces, your own storefront, and the local online channels that keep pickup in the deal. Fees below carry the date they were checked, and platforms change them, so confirm before listing.
The short version: online rewards products that are small, durable, light for their price, and photographed honestly.
Start here
What changes online
Online trades booth days for fees, photographs and shipping risk. Nobody handles the work before buying, so your photographs and your description carry the whole sale, and the honest-listing discipline from the earning pages matters even more at a distance.
Every platform takes a cut, and the cuts stack: listing fees, transaction or referral fees, payment processing, and optional advertising. Price so the stack is inside the number before you list, not subtracted after.
Returns happen by mail, which means breakage, disputes and postage both ways. A platform's terms decide most disagreements, so read them before the first listing and stay inside them, including where conversations and payments are allowed to happen.
Etsy
Selling on Etsy
Etsy is the default marketplace for handmade goods and qualifying vintage, and its buyers arrive already looking for both. It is also crowded, which makes exact titles, honest photographs and a distinct product matter more than on any other channel.
What fits here: small shippable craft of nearly every kind: textile and fiber work, paper arts, prints, candles and soap, jewelry-scale making, small woodenware. Vintage items qualify only when they are at least 20 years old, and Etsy's policy says buying something at an estate or yard sale is not, by itself, proof of age.[1] Keep the mark photographs and dated references that establish it.
Current fees: Etsy states a $0.20 listing fee and a 6.5 percent transaction fee, with payment processing and optional advertising charges in addition.[2] The transaction fee applies to the total including shipping, so a price that ignores the stack loses twice.
What to expect: search inside Etsy behaves like search anywhere, so the first weeks are slow while listings earn their place. Renewals, photography and message time are real recurring costs. Count them the way the earning pages count selling time.
Amazon Handmade
Selling on Amazon Handmade
Amazon Handmade is a juried corner of the largest buyer pool online. Amazon reviews each maker's application, products and process before approving entry, and only approved makers and collaborative groups may sell there.[3]
What fits here: handmade goods in Amazon's listed Handmade categories, which cover accessories, artwork, beauty, clothing, home and kitchen, jewelry, pet supplies, stationery, sporting goods and toys.[3] Vintage and resold goods do not belong here.
Current fees: a 15 percent referral fee or $0.30 per item, whichever is greater. The Professional selling plan normally costs $39.99 per month, and Amazon waives it for approved Handmade sellers after the first month.[3]
The honest math: fifteen percent is the largest single cut described on this page, bought against the largest audience. It has to live inside your price before you list, on top of materials, labor and shipping. For a maker whose labor-inclusive price already strains buyers, the referral fee is often the deciding number.
Your own store
Your own store
A storefront you own, on Shopify or a personal site, gives you the customer relationship, the mailing list and freedom from marketplace rules. It also gives you the traffic problem: a store nobody visits sells nothing, and nobody sends you visitors for free.
Current costs: Shopify's Basic plan runs $39 per month billed monthly, or $29 per month billed annually, plus card processing that starts at 2.9 percent and 30 cents for a standard online payment.[4] A self-hosted site swaps the subscription for hosting costs and your own maintenance time.
When it fits: after a marketplace or market table has proven repeat buyers exist, or when you already have an audience from teaching, writing or a community. A store works as the home your existing buyers return to. It rarely works as the place strangers discover you.
The platform trade in one line: marketplaces rent you their buyers and charge for each one; your own store makes every buyer yours and makes you earn every single one.
The real math
The shipping math
Shipping decides whether online works for your product, more often than fees do.
Carriers price by weight and by box size, so a heavy or bulky item can cost more to ship than to make. Add the box, the padding, and the twenty minutes of careful packing per order, because all three are real and recurring. Fragile work needs a breakage allowance on top: some percentage of shipments will arrive broken, and the replacement plus return postage comes out of margin.
Free shipping is a pricing choice, not a discount. The postage is inside the price or it is coming out of your labor; there is no third place for it to go.
The products that win online are small, tough and light for their price. A product that fails that test is not a failure, it is a local product. The local guide covers its venues.
Keep exploring
Keep exploring
Platforms change fees and rules without asking, so recheck the linked pages before each season. For the full cost picture of a specific craft, from materials to a bounded first test, use its earning page, and when shipping math turns against you, the local venues are one guide away.
Multiple Streams of Income
The hub: how the section works, live earning pages, and honest answers to the common questions.
Selling What You Make Locally
Farmers' markets, craft fairs, pop-ups, consignment and community spaces, venue by venue.
Earning Money with Cast-Iron Cookware
A live example of the shipping decision: heavy, brittle goods selling by local pickup.
Sources
Where this page’s evidence comes from
These sources govern the factual statements on this page. Fees, vendor rules and platform terms change often, so confirm them on the linked pages before committing money.
- Etsy. "Vintage Items on Etsy" (20-year rule; purchase location is not proof of age). Accessed October 21, 2026. etsy.com etsy.com
- Etsy Help. "Etsy Fee Basics" ($0.20 listing fee, 6.5 percent transaction fee). Accessed October 21, 2026. etsy.com help.etsy.com
- Amazon. "Amazon Handmade" (application, categories, 15 percent or $0.30 referral fee, Professional plan waiver). Accessed October 21, 2026. sell.amazon.com sell.amazon.com
- Shopify. "Pricing" (Basic plan $39 monthly or $29 on annual billing; online card rate 2.9 percent plus 30 cents). Accessed October 21, 2026. shopify.com shopify.com
- Federal Trade Commission. "Advertising and Marketing Basics." Accessed October 21, 2026. ftc.gov ftc.gov
Local online
Social media and local groups
Facebook Marketplace, local buy-and-sell groups and Instagram vendor calls sit between venues: online discovery with local handoff. For heavy, bulky or fragile goods, they are often the only online channel that makes sense, because pickup keeps shipping out of the math entirely.
What fits here: furniture-scale woodwork, restored and vintage pieces, plants and produce where rules allow, seasonal goods, and anything whose weight would sink a shipped sale.
Costs and rules: posting a local listing is typically free, and fees arrive when a platform processes the payment or the shipping, so check the platform's current fee page before assuming either. Platform terms also govern where conversations and payments may happen; moving a deal off-platform where the terms prohibit it risks the account that found you the buyer.
Safe exchange habits: meet in daylight at a public spot or a police-station exchange zone, bring a second person for high-value handoffs, and take payment in a form that cannot be yanked back after the buyer leaves. The same honest-listing rules apply here as anywhere: actual photographs, disclosed flaws, truthful claims.[5]