I have been selling successfully on Etsy for some time now preffering it over eBay as the charges are lower and do not apply to the ever increasing postage charges, but that has now changed since Etsy announce their new fees structure.

The commission fee is rising from 3.5% to 5% and this will now apply to both the item value and the postage costs, the listing fee of 20p remains the same. If you use the Etsy payments system you also pay an additional 4% of the total  value plus 20p per transaction. So for every £10 of sale (inc postage) you will pay Etsy £1.30 in future, that's 13%.

With eBay charging 10% on the item and postage costs and Paypal charging 3.4% on the final value plus a 20p per transaction fee, you will be paying £1.54 on the same £10 - that is provided you avoid listing charges. That's 15.4%

On both platforms, these percentages look even worse when you are selling items for less than £10 as the transction fees and listing fees have a greater impact.

Added to this we can no longer sell any product containing tobacco on eBay or Etsy for fear of being blacklisted, I for one have had listings taken down and received a warning from eBay.

So now I think the time is right to try and open an alternative platform for Collectors of Tobacciana where it is Free to advertise and where there are no limitations other than that you can only sell Tobacciana, and you must be a UK resident. Of course you may have to pay transaction charges if you use the likes of Paypal to receive payments, but there are ways around this and of course you can accept cash, cheques or FPS bank transfers which do not normally incur charges.

I have started the ball rolling by closing My Etsy shop and placing over 400 items for sale on the new Tobacco Collectibles Classified Ads platform. I hope others will follow by adding some of their items for sale and help to build the initial momentum, after all it costs nothing to try and if this works it could become a great place for collectors to meet and trade in future

CLICK HERE TO VISIT TOBACCO COLLECTIBLES CLASSIFIED ADS