I've been doing a lot of research on the major craft selling websites.
I've read many complaints about Etsy's fees and policies, but at the
same time, I also read that those same complainers stay because of the
amount of website traffic on Etsy. It made me curious. What is the
difference in traffic per month? How do you find out?
Compete.com
When I worked a corporate job, I used this website a lot to verify claims by potential advertisers and partners. "We can get you tons of website visitors!" they'd promise. Sometimes I'd look them up on compete.com and see that our website already had more visitors in a day than they had in a month—or a year!
To use this website, go to compete.com and fill in two or three of the boxes in the blue "Compare Sites" tab and click on the "Compare" button on the far right. In my example below, I'm using CNN and USA Today.
After you click the "Compare" button, you'll see a nice graph showing the website traffic for each site, along with some other statistics. As of this writing, the free data is current through April 2011, so keep in mind that this is useful to get a general idea of traffic and not minute-to-minute updates.
Free Blogs
This site won't work on individual free blog software (like Blogger) because those blogs are all hosted at on one site: blogspot.com. In other words, you can't see how one individual free blog like artbeadscene.blogspot.com is doing, but you can see how many people are visiting all the Blogger (blogspot.com) or WordPress blogs as a group. Of course, if you host your own website or blog on your own site (mywonderfulworldofjewelry.com), you can check your numbers.
Etsy vs Artfire vs Big Cartel
So, back to my original question: What is the difference in traffic per month between several popular online craft/handmade shops? In one month, Etsy receives more than 7 million visitors, while BigCartel receives about 1 million and ArtFire around 700,000.
Etsy has been around the longest and is regularly mentioned in magazines, TV shows, and other media outlets.
Of course, it's impossible to tell how many of those visitors are buyers vs. sellers!
But, Wait, There's More . . .
Overall numbers don't tell the whole story on these sites. Notice the trends, too. Are the numbers going up or down? Is it just a one-month glitch or has the website been steadily increasing or decreasing its traffic? What are the top keywords that people are using to find the sites? (Does anyone else find it interesting that one of the top keywords driving traffic to Etsy is "handmade soap"?) More detailed information is available for a price ($199 per month and up), but the free snapshot numbers are pretty helpful.
Just One Piece of the Puzzle
One last note: Don't get discouraged by these numbers or the numbers of your competitors. You have a lot of power as a seller and a blogger to drive people to your websites and blogs. Your efforts are more likely to bring loyal customers and readers rather than the random searcher who might stumble upon your website once by accident. For me, the amount of general website traffic is just one piece of the puzzle. I'm interested in customization options, support, fees, ease of use (for both buyers and sellers), and many other factors.
What do you think? Has the amount of website traffic has played a role in your choice of online shops?