Is anyone selling on goimagine? If so, how has it been for you? I ended up over there because Amazon was annoying me and I didn’t want to start on Etsy. I’ve been over there for almost 2 years and have only made 2 sales. Both have been this year and about 6 months apart. They have potential. I want them to succeed and I hope they do succeed, but I don’t know. I don’t know how they can survive without investors…one indication being that they just lowered donating 100% of their profits to charity to 2% and it’s been 5 years since they started.
I had a couple things listed over there for about a year. No sales.
Decided I was tired of paying the $2.50/month fee with really no hint of ever making a sale.
That’s how I ended up over there. I was trying to find other handmade marketplaces that weren’t Etsy and paid the sales tax. I have a referral code you can use to try it for free for a month, although I do think you still have to give them your cc regardless.
I will say that Makerplace probably gets way more traffic than goimagine, which is probably most sellers main complaint–no traffic. They do submit to google shopping and I have found my stuff on google, so they do advertise.
The FB group and support are wonderful! The lack of sales aren’t, but it doesn’t hurt to try. You definitely have to drive your own traffic, which I’m very lazy about doing.
I have the $10 Mosaic plan and I also have my own domain through them. The upside to that is that when someone clicks on your listing, they will only see your products. I’ll see how Q4 goes, and then re-evaluate. At least on MakerPlace, it doesn’t cost me not to make any sales! haha.
I hopped over to their website to read more about this, as that was the first I’ve heard that they had changed this. It did used to say “100% of profits” which sounds awesome, but is actually very vague–we all know profits are way less than revenue. Changing it to say that they donate “2% of every purchase to a children’s charity” is more concrete and less ambiguous from a buyer’s perspective I would think. It’s been a while since I left that marketplace, but it looks like their current commission is 5%. When you factor in the cost of running the site, I think 2% donated is pretty generous.
I had started a shop over on Goimagine when they first started. I needed to take a leave to have a baby and I had emailed to ask if I could put my shop on pause (without paying the monthly fee) and they misunderstood my request and deleted my shop. I haven’t tried reopening because I’ve been too busy with mostly Amazon. I don’t have any hard feelings, and I hope they succeed.
Oh, no! That stinks! My understanding is that you can cancel your subscription but all your listings will still be there for a year in case you want to come back. The biggest complaint is that they advertise to sellers (I’ve only seen FB ads) and not buyers (the do submit to Google). They say they do that because the buyers looking say they can’t find what they are looking for because there aren’t enough sellers. However, sellers leave because they don’t aren’t getting any sales. I also think a lot of sellers sign up thinking it’s going to be like Etsy in volume and it’s not. I’m so torn about staying there.
If anyone is contemplating signing on with goimagine this year, the founder will be doing a live Jan 6th about the year end review as well updates for 2025. You can watch it in their official FB group or in their Maker Circle app (it is also a website). It will be available for replay if you can’t watch the live. You do not have to be a seller on their platform to be in the FB group or Maker Circle.
I know they are going to be adding other payment options such as apple pay, google pay, klarna (i think that’s what it’s called). I’m hoping they will adding being able to print shipping lables within the dashboard.
Tried both GoImagine and Poshmark for about a year with 50 or so listings each. Never got an order on GoImagine and only a handful on Posh. Posh interface was so horrible it made MakerPlace look good lol. Had over 800 sales first year with MakerPlace but last 10 days have been goose eggs. Redoing all my keywords to try and turn the sprinkler on again.
I won’t lie, I’ve only had 2 sales on GI in the 2 years I’ve been on it. The main reason I stay is because of having my own domain name for cheap and they still take care of sales tax.
Their new dashboard does get riddled with bugs at times, so I’m hoping they have ironed things out now.
I’ll have to watch the replay of live, bit will report back on what was said in case anyone is interested.
So, they are changing their selling plans. Mosaic, which I have, is going from $10 to $15 month. However, if someone buys something through your own domain website, GI won’t charge you a transaction fee (you will still be charged the stripe fee). This is to help high volume sellers. They will also be upgrading the payment options like I said earlier. There was something else about inventory tracking. There will be 2 other selling plans. A free one for 12 listings, but a 6% transaction fee on top of the Stripe fee. I’ll have to think about this, since I’m not a high volume seller. I like having my own domain name, but you have to be on the Mosaic plan to do so.
Anyway, if you want to watch the video, it’s on their YouTube channel. It’s only 20 minutes.
My opinion is FWIW, the general public thinks of Etsy when they think of buying crafts and other handmade items online. IMO Etsy sucks but a presence on Etsy is probably an essential for any artist or artisan.
One of my daughters is on the crafts show circuit. She has a small selection of her work on Etsy. One of her FB is from one of her show buyers who needed a couple of pieces and bought from her on Etsy rather than making a trip to a show.
Etsy is cheap, not overly taxing to use, and commonly used by artists and artisans who do not rely upon it for their income.
My daughter also uses Instagram to keep her buyers aware of where she is and her latest work.
She is not a high volume seller, but she is proud that 172 of her pieces are on the wall of people’s homes as a result of this year’s shows. And that helps motivate her to create new work.