I’ve been running an Etsy shop for a while now and it’s doing pretty well. I’m getting about 30 sales each month which brings in roughly $1000. Now I’m considering starting a Shopify store to run at the same time.
I’ve been reading some scary stories about people having their entire stores copied by competitors. Is this actually something that happens often? What can you do to prevent someone from stealing your store design and products?
Another thing I’m wondering about is domain names. Should I buy multiple versions like mystore.com, mystore.net, and mystore.shop? And what’s the best way to set up professional email for the business?
Has anyone here run both Etsy and Shopify stores at the same time? I’d love to hear any tips or things to watch out for.
the copying thing’s overblown. yeah, it happens, but most competitors are too lazy for exact copies. focus on getting your shopify seo dialed in first - that’s way more important than buying extra domains. i’ve been running both platforms for 6 months. shopify takes more work upfront, but the customization pays off.
Running both platforms at your volume is totally doable. Your biggest headache will be keeping inventory synced - manually updating stock on both sites gets old fast. I’d start with Shopify’s basic plan and grab an app like QuickBooks Commerce or Sellbrite to handle inventory automatically. For domains, just stick with .com unless you’re worried about trademark issues. Most dual-platform sellers I know focus on driving traffic to Shopify and let Etsy do the organic discovery work. You’ll make better margins on your own store since you skip Etsy’s fees, but expect your direct sales to build slower.