In the earlier days of the internet, you’d have your own website. It was usually less flashy (and involved more Flash). You’d own your site and the way you interacted with your customers.

Then social media came along. Facebook, in particular, was really appealing to businesses. Everyone was on there. Like all the time. (It seems surreal to think about it now, but I remember chomping at the bit to get my college email so I could finally sign up. It was still college-only at the time.) And it was free.

Businesses did great on FB. They could really interact with their customers (for better or for worse). But, over time, they began to reach less and less of their audience. Instead, businesses could pay to boost posts. You have to pay to reach the people who followed you for your posts.

Nowadays most businesses have social media accounts on multiple sites. It’s useful to reach the different types of audiences on those sites, sure, but it also protects you. What happens if one day you have to pay buckets of money to reach your TikTok audience? Your other social media accounts would be able to help support you while you figured out how to handle those new changes.

Etsy is similar. It’s obviously not a free platform, but your shop is impacted by their policy decisions all the same. The launch of offsite ads blindsided shops. Offsite ads remain controversial to this day.

In June 2025, users noticed an update to Etsy’s policies regarding 3D printed products. The policy hasn’t seen sweeping enforcement yet, but it has happened in the past. After banning certain adult products in June 2024, shops had a month to remove those products.

A month. Can you imagine the panic? Scrambling to figure out if you can survive without those products? Where do you start over completely? What happens to the customers you had on Etsy?

While your Etsy shop is doing just fine, you have time to build your own site. So... build it.

Once it’s built, you can begin to build your audience organically. Draw in new customers and find ways to entice existing Etsy customers over to your own site.

You don’t even have to close up shop. There’s plugins and platforms that make it possible (and even easy) to run both at the same time.

Having your own site running alongside your Etsy shop can stop chaos in its tracks.

Hey, thanks for reading my first newsletter! As a special thanks for getting this far, I would like to introduce you to one of my four furry coworkers: Loki.

Next time, I'll introduce you to another furry coworker.

Have a great day!
Ed