How to sell 3D prints on Etsy

Etsy is an obvious first place to sell prints: the buyers are already searching there, and a listing takes an evening. What catches new sellers out is not the listing. It is two things they did not read: the rule on what a 3D-printed item has to be, and the fees that come off every order.

This guide covers both, from Etsy’s own pages, and then how to price so the order still pays.

Etsy’s rule on 3D-printed items

Etsy lets sellers list items they made with a 3D printer under its “made by a seller” standard. The rule is specific about where the design comes from. In Etsy’s words, items produced using computerized tools are “Physical items that a seller produced in their personal shop or home, using computerized tools such as a laser printer, 3D printer, CNC or Cricut machine. These items must be produced based on a seller’s original design and are often personalized or customized to a buyer’s specification.” Etsy

Read that before you list. A print of somebody else’s file does not meet it as written, whatever licence came with the file. The safe ground is your own designs, and custom work made to what the buyer asked for.

Photos of the real thing

Etsy also asks that listings for items made by a seller “must use original photo or video content of the final product”, and that a personalized item’s first image shows “a finished, customized item rather than the blank product or placeholder text”. Etsy For a print shop that means photographing your own print, on your own bench or backdrop, not the render from the design file.

It helps you anyway. Buyers of printed goods look for layer lines, colour and scale. A photo of the part in a hand answers all three.

What Etsy takes from an order

These are the fees on Etsy’s own fee pages for a US seller, as of the date at the end of this guide:

• A listing fee of $0.20 per item, renewed automatically each time one of a multi-quantity listing sells. Etsy
• A transaction fee of 6.5% of the item price plus what you charge for shipping and gift wrapping. For a US seller it does not apply to sales tax. Etsy
• Payment processing of 3% plus $0.25 per order, charged on the total sale, tax and shipping included. Etsy Help Etsy
• An Offsite Ads fee of 15% on an order Etsy’s advertising brought in, if the shop made less than $10,000 in the prior year. Below that threshold you can opt out. Etsy
• Once the shop has made $10,000 or more in a year, the Offsite Ads fee drops to 12%, participation is required, and it stays at that rate for the lifetime of the shop. Etsy

The part most sellers miss is the base. These fees are charged on the whole order, shipping included, not on the item price alone.

One order, fee by fee

Say a buyer orders a print listed at $28.00 and you charge $5.00 for shipping, with no sales tax. The order total is $33.00. The listing renewal, the transaction fee and payment processing come to $3.59 on that order.

If the buyer arrived through one of Etsy’s offsite ads, the ad fee adds $4.95 and the order pays $8.54 in fees. That is the same print and the same buyer, with a fee you only see on the statement.

None of this is a reason not to sell on Etsy. It is a reason to know the number before you set the price, because a price set from the filament alone has no room left for any of it.

Price with the fee already in

Work the price out in this order:

• The full cost of the print. Filament, purge, power, machine wear, your time, a reserve for failed prints, packaging. How to price 3D prints covers each line.
• Your markup on top. On the full cost, not on the plastic.
• The fee on the whole order. Item and shipping together. Check what is left.
• The shipping you charge against the shipping you pay. The fee is on what you charge, so a generous free-shipping price still pays the transaction fee on the postage you folded into it.

The 3D print cost calculator does the first three for you: it itemises the print, adds your markup and shows what is left after the marketplace’s cut.

Custom orders are where the money is, and where it leaks

Etsy’s own wording expects printed items to be personalized or made to the buyer’s specification. Custom work is also where a shop loses track: the colour change asked for in a message, the deposit, the date promised. Write each one down with its price and its due date the moment you agree it, not when you get to it.

Printyard keeps those orders against the customer who asked, with the price their quote agreed and the fee taken off the whole order, so the month shows what Etsy’s dashboard does not: what the shop kept.

Before you list

• The design is yours, or the item is made to the buyer’s own specification.
• The photos are of your print, not a render.
• The price covers the full cost, your markup, and the fees on item plus shipping.
• You know whether Offsite Ads are on for your shop, and what they cost an order.

For the bigger question of whether the shop pays at all, read is a 3D printing business profitable, and for what to keep for the tax return, the tax guide.