Etsy can be a pain in the butt, but you get bang for your buck. Supplement a few ready made things on line with picture posts on Tumblr and a portfolio on DeviantArt (you can sell post cards to posters of your photos and art!), get a reputation up, and take orders for custom made. The customer pays for the supplies as a down payment and the rest when finished. Less to carry, no back stock once you are established. Gab is setting up a market place so get on and join a few craft groups and watch out for the trolls and haters who post to torture. Join the other social media spots out there beside Facebook and blog away. I paid our non rent bills for 13 years that way, and have customers in a holding pattern until the van conversion is finished. Etsy is still very 'vegan, millenial, craftsy' for traffic. If you can paint or work wood or leather or polymer clay, or sew, knit, crochet, it's wonderland. Ravelry, I believe, has a custom knitters market? The biggest problem developing is Etsy is as full of itself as Facebook, and you have to absolutely do the math. I used to add 5$ to an order base price automatically, now their fees are x percent of everthing from sales to postage! Someone has yet to get back to me how 5% on a 10$ item is 12$ in fees. You do all the work and they seem to think you work for Them as sweatshop labor. I ignore their nagging emails to work harder, charge more so they can skim. Still the exposure is worth it. Just don't pay their advertising money like Google ads, it's a scam.
Ahem. Rant over. Just saying what worked for me.
P.S. painted rocks are big on Etsy.
