First post for 2010: Etsy Comparisons

I'v been busy the last week or so with everything BUT sewing.   I do have a new design that I'm working on.  I hope to have that up soon.  My husband has been doing a little research.  He came across an Etsy forum thread on all the different selling venues by scarlettcat.  We both wish to thank her for finding these sites.  We thought it would be interesting to go through these and determine how they stack-up against Etsy.  The original post did not give any additional info like cost, locations, web traffic, or a review.
     While we have saved a few dollars by not relisting the last few weeks the time is coming where we need to start again.  These cost can really start to add up.  Is there something better out there?  It is hard to beat Etsy we think for the vibrant community and forums.,  To date we have not found anything similar.  We did open another shop at http://www.shophandmade.com/Store/Miladycreations in mid December.  Only a few items are there compared to our Etsy store.  The cost of listing is free and we thought perhaps a smaller venue might be interesting.  We have not sold anything there as of yet.
   Below is the beginning list of by scarlettcat up to the F's My husband plans on continuing this, but we decided to get at least this partial list out.   It would be interesting to find out if anyone else finds this helpful.  I think he plans to get this up on our website at sometime in the future.  Most of the sites we looked at appeared small with quite a few in Beta's.   The cost generally appeared to be higher than Etsy.   Two sites appeared somewhat interesting to us: the first is Artfire which is pretty well known in Etsy circles.  The second which we never heard of is ecrater.   This one is free (we think).   In some cases it is difficult to completely assess the cost.  Ecrater is not focused on handmade ( a negative) but does allow the uploading of 10 pictures.  The US traffic rank was 986.  This can be compared to Etsy which has a rank of 103.  Artfire, the only one we flagged below has a rank of 2976.  Thus Ecrater has a much higher volume of traffic than Artfire, but considerably lower than Etsy.   Craftmall, one of the ones we were not impressed with had a ranking of 410,000.   Shophandmade, where we put our second shop had a ranking of 51,000.  All of this is making Ecrater looking OK.   You can find the web traffic reports at www.alexa.com/siteinfo

	Cost	Variety	Comment
http://www.1000markets.com/	5.5% + 0.50	Wide Variety iincluding food including	Amazon pay
http://www.artfire.com/	0 to $12/month	Etsy-similar		*
http://www.artflock.com/	5%	Artwork Only
https://www.artfulhome.com/	$35 appply+ $25 /month	Art, Home, Jewelry
http://www.artbyus.com/		Artwork only
http://www.artsefest.com/home.php	$14-$18 /mo	Etsy-similar
http://www.blujay.com/	Free	Ebay -type
http://www.bouf.com/	5 to 20#/mo	Designer-goods	UK-based
http://bigcartel.com/	Free to $20 /month
http://www.buyitsellit.com/	$20 / month	General (Ebay)
http://www.craftmall.com/	$15 / month & up	General (Ebay)	Few items
http://en.dawanda.com/		Handmade and hard to find	European
http://www.ecrater.com/	Free	General (Ebay)		*
http://www.elsewares.com/commerce/index.php	Closed, item submission	Independent design shop
http://www.erayo.com/	0.35 /item	Wholesale only of designer goods
http://funkyfinds.us/theshops/	$2 to $8 /mo	Etsy-similar
http://www.folksy.com/	20p & 5%		UK-based