Andrea Locke wrote:I have still never heard of MavenFair outside of this thread! Certainly it is not popping up on any of my feeds.
I did set up an Etsy shop for the farm late in 2024 to sell seeds and dried herbs and eventually other things. Unfortunately two days later Canada Post went on strike and we had no other viable shipping options from our location. So after receiving one order and having to refund it, I put the shop into vacation mode. It’s still in vacation mode after a string of family injuries (both my co-farmers are not fully ambulatory at the moment) and then being snowed in for two weeks. Planning to get it up and running again soon, I hope, just a tad too busy for the added task just now. So with this very limited experience I can’t say much about Etsy at the moment from the perspective of a Canadian seller. What I can say is it can be set to only sell in Canada (which is what I had set up) and the communications I have been receiving from them are coming from Ireland.
What I am in search of just now is a good online venue for used book sales in Canada. Etsy is one option but I don’t know how good; the farm Etsy store was meant to be testing the waters. AbeBooks was at one time Canadian (Victoria BC) but unfortunately is now owned by Amazon.
sorry, I don’t know if this is how you answer to someone so pardon my forum manners if not..
I used to sell on Etsy during the pandemic and it was fun as a side hobby. I would get several sales per week. But then around 2023, the only way I could get any visibility was by paying ads. And they raised the fee to 6.5% plus 3% transaction fee and I think it was 15% fee if someone bought through an ad. It became very discouraging. There’s also sooo many dropshipping and sellers selling things from aliexpress with prices so low it’s hard to compete. With all the fees, you have to add at least 15% more to whatever markup you make to make sure you make your profit or else you end up making pennies on an order. I haven’t checked it out since then so maybe it has changed but I’ve been looking for an alternative that is 100% handmade shops.
I think marketing your seeds MADE IN CANADA will help you get sales from fellow Canadians as I see a lot more Canadians wanting to encourage locally with the whole tariff thing. And for small orders you can probably just ship with stamps so that could be profitable. What kind of seeds to you sell?
