Etsy fees eating my profit - should I switch to Shopify?

I'm doing about $8,000/month on Etsy selling handmade jewelry. When I calculate all the fees, I'm paying over 20% to Etsy:

• Transaction fee: 6.5%
• Payment processing: 3% + $0.25
• Listing fees: $0.20 each
• Offsite Ads: 12-15% when triggered

That's $1,600-1,800/month in fees alone! Shopify is $29/month plus payment processing. Is that actually cheaper?

Let me break down the math for $8K monthly revenue:

Etsy total costs:

• 6.5% transaction: $520
• 3% + $0.25 processing: ~$240
• Listing fees: ~$20
• Offsite Ads (assume 30% of sales): $288-360
• Total: $1,068-1,140 (13-14% without Offsite Ads, 20%+ with)

Shopify total costs:

• $29 monthly plan
• 2.9% + $0.30 payment processing: ~$232
• Total: $261 (3.3% of revenue)

Shopify saves you $800-900/month BUT you lose Etsy's built-in traffic. You'll need to drive your own traffic via ads/SEO.

Use an Etsy fee calculator to model your exact costs including Offsite Ads impact.

So Shopify is WAY cheaper on fees but I'd need to spend money on ads to get traffic? How much should I budget for ads?

Typical e-commerce ad spend is 10-15% of revenue for customer acquisition. On $8K/month, that's $800-1,200 in ad spend.

But here's the key: those are YOUR customers. On Etsy, you don't own the customer relationship. On Shopify, you build an email list and can remarket forever.

Hybrid approach many sellers use:

• Keep Etsy for discovery and new customers
• Move repeat customers to Shopify (offer discount for direct purchase)
• Best of both worlds

I switched from Etsy to Shopify at $10K/month. First 3 months were rough - sales dropped 40% because I underestimated how much traffic Etsy drove.

Built it back up over 6 months through:

• Google Ads
• Instagram/Facebook ads
• SEO optimization
• Email marketing to old Etsy customers

Now doing $15K/month on Shopify with way better margins. But it took work and ad spend to get there.

DECISION: Going with the hybrid approach. Keeping Etsy for new customer acquisition but launching Shopify for repeat customers with a "VIP discount" (really just removing Etsy's fees).

Will track which channel is more profitable over next quarter. Thanks for all the advice!