Made Freshly Alternative to Etsy For All

Lookout Etsy: MadeFreshly is here!

Sellers are getting panicky about doing one teensy thing wrong and having their Etsy shop suspended according to this article on Handmadeology. For years, they have been looking for viable alternatives to sell their products. In the past having a shopping cart site to promote your product or wares has been very expensive and so people are forced to use other sites. We've seen the likes of Ebay whose overflooded market and highway robbery prices for listing and selling fees (about 20% if you use paypal). The response ? Etsy's marketplace became flooded with sellers making it hard for new sellers to sell anything. Other sites like Artfire were a viable alternative but I don't hear rave rviews.  Zibbet was surely a failure for most of us. Newer cropping up is ISupportAmerican a viable site for American Sellers or Handmade and Vintage, but there is a small monthly fee and you must sell American products. 

Find out why Big Fat Daddy's BBQ guru is moving his store from Etsy to Made Freshly.

So what if: 

•  You don't want any fees?

• You want a site you can customize yourself (unlike Etsy where everything is the same)

• You want to try something where free means free? 

• You want to find a way to integrate this site into your existing blog or site without having customers get stuck in a store and not be able to find their way back? 

• You can link your Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Tumblr Blog into for easy links?

Now you can do that. All thanks to Made Freshly.  Their free plans give you an online store/cart free, and take no commissions or monthly charges!  They let you pick from some free themes and you can customize fonts, backgrounds and text.  Why would they do this? Because they want you to succeed. They want you to do better and sell like crazy, because then you can upgrade to a fancier package which holds more products then you do have a small monthly fee, which is still a great deal considering no monthly commissions or listing fees.  You win, they win.  Everyone wins.

This is what you get with the free store package as of today, March 25, 2012.

In a Nusthell: MadeFreshly is a quick and simple way to create an online store. Essentially, it's a free online cart. Its perfect if your selling products on in a market place like Etsy and you want to expand by creating your own online store. You don't have to be all tekkie, they take care of that for you.  There's no coding required and its simple to get up and running.  In other words, you can have a made freshly store, but you can also direct people back to your website or blog. But don't take my word for it, take someone who is trying it out now.

Wayne Schafer of Big Fat Daddy's sells bbq for a living and wanted a way to sell his tshirts and hand blended spices in small quantities. He says, "I opened an Etsy shop, but views were low. I couldn't change the look.  I originally wanted something where I could integrate into my blog, have people shop the store and return back to my blog and continue reading my recipes and things. On Etsy, there is no way to return to my blog, and you must sign up to buy my products. Then I read the horror stories about people's sites being taken down. My t-shirts are printed with a local printer in small batch quantities and designed by me, but I can't wait til Etsy kicks me off thinking they are mass produced. So, I couldn't afford that risk because summer is my busy season.  I wanted something I could make my own and customize and have my customers point, click, shop, and come back to my blog site and read up on my grilling tips. I explored so many options then someone told me about Made Freshly and I'm all over it RIGHT NOW!"

Big Fat Daddy's has integrated this shop into his bbq blog, and you can click on the "Return to Site" page to  go back and start reading.

So how did he integrate it into his Blogger?   Simple, he added a page on his blog about "online store" and "Buy TShirts" and "Buy Spice" that redirects customers right into his Made Freshly customized storefront. Then on Made Freshly storefront he made a  "Return to Site" page above since you get two free pages with the free plan!  Notice how this redirects you right back to the blog. Customers don't know they are swapping back and forth and they aren't stuck in cyberspace hell!

Wayne says, "This is going to be great, it looks so professional and great for anyone, wanting to keep their site and blog and store together. I hope I need that fancier plan real soon.  By the way, for anyone who needs to know, you can easily link your other sites on the top right, so it helps with your branding" 

Check it out for free here.