why i decided to close my halthegal etsy shoppe.

i started my “etsy journey” more than a dozen years ago.

(i mean, how fancy was my filter? and that black border. idk why pursies didn’t sell like hotcakes.) ;)

the very first thing i tried selling on etsy were fabric creature purses with mix-matched patterns and unique felt faces i sewed myself (golly, how my neighbors must have hated my sewing machine at 2am!) and YES my photos were terrible. i added shrink-a-dink bracelets i’d drawn, colored, and baked (never sold). i listed acrylic paintings (sold a surfing rubber ducky once)…. and FINALLY when i started the faerie tale feet series, i actually got a more cohesive theme going on there.

sales were still bleak, and i attended a indie small business conference and got advice from a successful toy designer (who i’d later work for as social media manager for a couple of years!) who suggested that i needed “starter items” before people would collect a $50 piece of artwork.

so the $6 faerie tale feet bookmarks were born… and that was great. ish. i at least got my artwork into the hands of more booknerds like me. :)

in late 2019, i started adding fan art like disney princesses and baby yoda (before lucasfilm/disney made me take him down)… i had instagram reps every quarter (who i showered with freebies every month) and while i felt REALLY smart for saving time taking my own pics because they gave me great photos to repost on instagram… i’m sad to say no one ever used their rep coupon codes in my etsy shoppe. like, ever. :/ (no fault of theirs; it didn’t work when i sent free art to influencer/blogger moms, either.)

i still figured etsy was easier than running my OWN shop on my website with whatever “plug-ins” i’d need to calculate shipping costs and labels and file sales tax individually by every state every month or quarter… so etsy felt like a win of platform convenience.

and thousands of people shop on etsy everyday— so maybe someone who didn’t follow me on instagram or who hadn’t met me at an art festival would randomly buy my stuff! (spoiler alert: this was also very rare for reasons we’ll mention below.)

my etsy sales in 2020 when the pandemic hit were flying. so i had journals made. i made more stickers.  i ordered more journals. i had booksleeves with my red riding hood fabric made. everyone wanted the happy mail, and i was happy to send it! people were supporting small businesses online! it was great! (obviously, minus the pandemic, and because i never did the math. more on that later, too….)

i persevered although 2021’s sales were less than half of 2020’s. then some things—and then more things—kept changing at etsy…

so here’s what i learned and WHAT CHANGED at etsy to make me close the halthegal shoppe:

in 2019, two bookish business women were kind enough to offer me a phone call to share some small business advice. the biggest takeaway from that conversation that i should have listened to earlier:  “do you WANT to be a gift shop?”

uh, no.  but i thought i needed the side hustle. i thought if i kept plugging away, and added more stuff the people were asking for, i’d eventually “break through” and make it.

in early 2020 i worked with a business coach.  she asked me the same thing: do you WANT to be a gift shop?

she helped me do the math. to make what i needed to live on for the year, i would have to sell tens and tens of thousands (like, tennnnnssss of thousands) of stickers every year on etsy.  i didn’t WANT to do that, and packing and shipping that many would have been completely unfeasible by myself anyway.

but i persevered because… well, i dunno why.

i was buying eco-friendly packaging instead of the bargain stuff. i was having everything printed at small businesses in the USA because my audience wasn’t big enough to have 10,000 of something made at a factory in china. (not that i would have wanted to do that, anyway.) so at best, i was making 20-30% of the customer’s price back in “profit.” (before coupons. before shipping. not counting my endless hours at my drafting table painting, or the hours of social media marketing, scanning and graphic design, etsy shoppe maintenance, photography, and post offices runs. oh, and the fact self-employment tax is 30%… you get it.)

things at etsy had changed, too.

you now had to offer FREE shipping for orders over $35. (to compete with the website-that-must-not-be-named, i suppose.)

then you had to add TRACKING to every order over $10. (so if someone bought three stickers, MY shipping cost was going to be at LEAST $4 of that sale.)

etsy was now making us add videos to every listing.

and having us join a new tik-tok-like app for makers to show their process.

and etsy was running tv adds for expensive home items…

all of the costs which they seemed to pass to us, the sellers.

then came etsy taking 18% of the sale if a customer clicked on a link from an ad they’d put online “for” you. 13% more than the 5% etsy takes of every sale all the time. (if you turned off the “free ads feature” they’d reduce your visibility in customer searches.) and of course, we the sellers were still responsible for shipping, the $15+/month store hosting fee (depending on your plan), and the listing fees for each item which needed to be renewed every three months to stay active in your store… and in 2022, the percent etsy took off of every sale increased to 6.5% instead of the baseline 5%. (that’s what kind of ignited the “seller strike” last month.)

etsy was also punishing me (not giving me “star seller” status) because i shipped my orders TOO FAST. too fast!! (i’d tried to evolve as a human and instead of a 24-hour turnaround time and an apology if i happened to be away at an art festival for the weekend, i put that i’d ship every order in 3-5 days. this helped reduce the number of trips i took to the post office each week— both eco-friendlier and more time efficient for batching tasks—but still not good enough for etsy. even if you, my dear, faithful, five-star review-leaving customers were always happy their items arrived so quickly.)

anyway, i FINALLY did the math for myself when i got two big sales for multiple faerie tale feet prints earlier this year. i was excited and rushed to the post office and mailed the customers their new artwork… and lo and behold, when i got home and looked at their receipts, i noticed that WITHOUT MY CONSENT etsy had emailed them 25% off coupons!!!!! so after i paid shipping on those orders, i had LOST MONEY.

LOST MONEY!  i was paying people— and etsy— to “buy” my work.

could i have raised my prices even MORE to cover costs?  could i have hired someone to take new photos for me every time etsy said “it’s time for a holiday refresh!” or sent a “trend report” for what we should make for the next season ahead… i guess i could’ve hired someone to update my keywords and make shiny videos and reels for me, too.  but at a certain point, i’m still not getting paid to CREATE the artwork that i’m then making print-ready (in the photoshop and illustrator subscriptions i pay for) and then sending to a printing company to put on a journal or bookmark or card… and then paying etsy to list… and then paying the post office, and the envelope company, and the logo sticker company, and the paper confetti company, and the glitter pen company, and and and…!

it just didn’t, and doesn’t, make sense for me.

so NO, thank you, i do NOT want to be a gift shop.

i DO, thank you, want to be an author and illustrator.

so now i’m (finally!) making decisions “as if i’m hallie five years from now.”

the hallie that’s already a published author and illustrator.

this is an illustration i did to help jenny howe celebrate her upcoming debut release, the make-up test! email me if you’d like some custom author pre*order swag, too. i even mail you the ORIGINAL watercolor paintings to hang in your office! :)

so i’m gonna focus on those goals instead of being a not-really-making-it gift shop.  :)

i loved sending you guys happy mail and am SO grateful for your support over the years. i just couldn’t make it work.

but dreams are allowed to change. or speak louder than what we’ve let ourselves settle for.

i’m currently writing my second middle grade novel. i’m in the midst of lots of GREAT freelance illustration projects. (logos! books! surprise author collabs!) i got a scholarship to attend the highlights foundation novel camp for a week this summer with other authors.

i’m doing more of what i love, and have more time to create paintings and stories.

if you’d like to support this NEW journey for less than you would have paid for a bookmark, you can join the crayon box. 

it’s my author-illustrator patreon page that you can join for $5, $10, or $20 a month.  each level has its own benefits (exclusive monthly art and process and videos and stories… and the occasional happy mail offerings to make up for me missing sending you glittering handwritten notes and paper confetti with your etsy orders!)

and if you missed the halthegal etsy closing announcement and still need a faerie tale feet print or few, just email me.  we can work out an invoice instead.  :)

much love, and more happy mail to you,

*hallie

also:  PLEASE continue to support the small shop owners who still use etsy as supplemental, and often their only, source of income. 

leaving was a personal decision for me as i’ve explained above. i’m not boycotting the platform. it just didn’t make sense for what i was trying to do or who i want to be.  :)

(today i supported BZCreations! stickers for my sketchbook, new quarterly planner, and some gift*giving, too!!)