One of the most intimidating parts about beginning to sell your tarot readings online can be deciding where – and how – to sell them. There are plenty of online marketplace websites, but I think most people would agree that the two that come to mind right away would be Etsy and Storenvy. I read a lot of reviews of both websites before I set up my online shop for the first time, but none of those reviews were really geared towards tarot readings and I find that the answer of “which is better?” sort of varies depending on what you’re selling. I ended up with both an Etsy and a Storenvy and after using both for a while, I’ve broken down the pros and cons of each platform so you can decide what’s best for you!

Etsy

Etsy is probably the biggest marketplace website out there. It’s a great place to find all kinds of products, mostly handmade items but with a lot of digital offerings, as well.

Pros: Etsy looks professional. People have heard of it, so it looks good on a business card and gives your shop credibility. There are limited customization options, which automatically gives your shop a clean look and makes this an accessible platform for the aesthetically challenged or those who don’t want to bother making a layout for it. They also recently added a category for tarot readings (you find it under Home and Living > Spirituality and Religion > Tarot Readings and Divinations.)

Cons: First of all, there’s a listing fee of .20 cents for each item you list, and you have to renew that fee every six months or so. While this isn’t that steep, it can be intimidating to shell out money when you aren’t making a profit yet. Secondly, Etsy takes a 3.5% cut of everything you sell. Third, I found that it actually wasn’t that easy to set up and customize my shop (with the limited options available) – the fields you need to fill out are sort of scattered over different pages and it took me a while to be able to find my way around. There was also an issue a while back with Etsy removing stores that sold tarot readings or spells and didn’t have a disclaimer saying it was for entertainment purposes only, so you have to be careful that you’re not guaranteeing any kind of outcome of your readings. Finally, because it’s so big, it’s not very likely that someone will stumble on your shop – any clients you find will probably have had to have been directed there from your website.

Storenvy

Storenvy is actually the platform I decided to go with initially. It’s less handmade-focused than Etsy – there are a lot of little trinkets and items for sale that people probably bought wholesale to sell individually. Because of that, you can find a lot of cool and weird stuff on there, and if tarot readings aren’t cool and weird then what is?

Pros: It’s free to list items, so you can get all your stuff out there and not worry about paying anything unless you make a sale (more on that in the Cons section.) You can really customize the way your store looks on Storenvy and it’s not very difficult to figure out how. I think this is important for tarot readers because all of us are so different – the look of your online space goes a long way towards showing a potential client what kind of reader you are, and might be the thing that sells them on choosing you as their reader. Also, they offer this thing you can opt in to called the Marketplace, which basically makes it easier for people to find your stuff and also lets you participate in some seasonal promotions, like for Black Friday, without you having to come up with it yourself.

Cons: There is a 2.9% + $.30 fee from either PayPal or Stripe, whichever you choose, to process payments. This is cheaper than Etsy and probably unavoidable no matter where you sell, but just thought I’d throw it out there. Also, if the sale was facilitated through the Marketplace, Storenvy takes a 10% cut. If you’re not good with HTML, the customization option might hurt you rather than help – you definitely don’t want your shop to look unprofessional. Finally, you have to pay $9 a month to offer coupons and discount codes – that’s steep when you’re just trying to get started! Every time I’ve wanted to do a promotion I’ve had to manually change the cost of all the items in my store, and it means I can’t offer a coupon code to my newsletter subscribers like I do with Etsy.

So those are my thoughts! If you’re just starting out and aren’t sure you want to make any kind of financial investment just yet, I would recommend that you go with Storenvy. It’s fun and free and a good place to learn the ropes of online selling. The fact that it’s free is what pushed me over the edge and I’m glad I started out on there! I do think that you should eventually consider going with Etsy though – it looks professional and many people have heard of it and use it, so that’s more exposure for you!