I have been selling on Etsy since 2013. It works fine on the road but you will want to be sure log in from a secure internet source such as your phone, tablet, etc rather than use a public wifi hot spot.
The funds that come in from the sales get deposited by Etsy into your own designated bank account. I set up a second checking account at my credit union as an inexpensive way to have a business account. That will make your book keeping easier. But Etsy does have integration to some book keeping programs or you can print out the end of the year expenses for doing your own records.
You can purchase the shipping for packages directly from Etsy. Be sure you travel with an accurate postal scale. Of course if you do that you will also want a printer so you can print and paste the labels onto your packages. If you do it this way the only reason you need to go to the post office will be to drop off what you ship out. I don't ship via UPS or FEDEX but I suppose I could if someone ever asked for that because they do offer that shipping through ETSY.
I have a lot of customers from outside of the USA and that has worked well for sales through Etsy as they do international orders if you enable that. I just need to know my tariff number and put in the quantity and what the item is and that generates a shipping label that works for sending out of the country.
Etsy has worked great for me. Some people complain about the fees but it really has made my work much easier with a lot less interaction with customers. Interacting with customers is time consuming and adds stress.
Esty raised the fees a small amount last summer but what they did with the increase was buy advertising space on Google and other search engines. I noticed and 11% increase in business because of that which more than offset the increase in fees. Now when someone searches for the products I sell on Etsy photos of what I made show up right at the top of the results from the search. Of course that won't be true for all products, mine just happen to be more unique rather than generic so that does help them get better ranking. It is very important to fill in those 13 keywords you can add to help people find your listing. People finding your Etsy store is based on several things, keywords are critical, doing some social media work is important, and get photos of what you make and sell onto Pinterest. There will be a cumulative effect. Fortunately I brought a customer base with me into Etsy as I was already known for making miniatures through forums, magazines and the newspaper. If you don't have an existing customer base who knows you and what you make or if you don't let everyone know they can now buy through Etsy it will take longer to get the ball rolling. Remember it is cumulative, it takes some time to get the sales ramped up.
One other tip for one the road, set up the turn around time for shipping out an item for several extra days or even as much as a week. That is because if you are boon docking you might not want to run into town right away or there might be a few days when you are not able to get a signal to receive the notifications from Etsy. You can always ship sooner but you never want to get caught with a record of shipping later than you said you would.
