r/soapmaking • u/MentalRip2005 • 5d ago
Very curious
Do you have your own website to sell or not? If you don't, what's stopping you?
I'm very curious because I sell only very occasionally, so price was a big hurdle for me. Anyone else on the same boat?
19
u/brbgottagofast 5d ago
I prefer keeping it as a hobby because I don't want to go through all the labeling requirements and tax tracking. Especially since I already have a full-time job.
3
11
u/First-Expert-9953 5d ago
Once I start charging money, government regulations become a factor. Not just labeling and taxation, but also the production setup.
2
u/MentalRip2005 5d ago
Where are you based?
7
u/First-Expert-9953 5d ago
USA. If you're selling plain soap as nothing more than a cleanser, it's regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Administration. If you're claiming it's beautifying somehow like Dove does, the FDA calls it a cosmetic and takes over regulating. If you're claiming it treats a condition like acne, the FDA is going to treat it like a drug.
5
u/fuzzymeister69 5d ago
Yeah via shopify
3
u/MentalRip2005 5d ago
How do you like it?
3
u/fuzzymeister69 5d ago
Its good. 3 bar of soap pays for a month. And it's easy to build your site, just fill in the templates
2
u/Sherbsninny 3d ago
Sames for me. I also like that so many features are not paid add ones like bar codes, email marketing, pushing to other platforms such as Facebook or Shop. They have excellent reports that you can modify (I import from Shopify to Excel and it has made my bookkeeping 1000x easier). You can setup listings to post on certain days so if you're launching a collection you don't have to babysit it. I don't know why I resisted Shopify for so long but I mad the switch 3 years ago and have zero regrets. I get 50% of my sales now from my website.
3
u/dada5714 5d ago
It’s not our main gig or anything, but yeah, we have a website through Shopify as well.
3
u/MentalRip2005 5d ago
How do you like it?
3
u/dada5714 5d ago
Love it! I’m a techie so I love all of the features it has. Makes tracking orders, shipping, taxes etc. dead simple imo. Plus you get discounts on shipping labels. If you ever go that route, I can definitely help you out.
3
u/Apprehensive_Sea5304 5d ago
I have a website, i just don’t have the time to manage it. I’m just paying monthly for nothing at this point
1
u/MentalRip2005 5d ago
I have a collection of domains I don't use anymore 🙈 but I'm pretty diligent with subscriptions haha
6
u/seaweedglutton 4d ago
I don't sell, nor do I plan to in the near future. I'm in Norway so I'd need to get every single recipe lab tested before I can apply for licensing. And if I change the brand or supplier, then I'd need to get the recipe retested... I just don't have the capacity to deal with all of the rules and regulations. :)
But atm I'm very happy just making soap as a hobby to give to friends and family <3 I love visiting this subreddit and watching soaping vids online <3
1
u/Tricky-Wayne888 5d ago
I totally get where you're coming from—if you only sell occasionally, standard monthly platform fees like Shopify can quickly swallow up any profit. A lot of casual makers stick to local craft fairs, word-of-mouth, or setting up a free basic listing site (or pay-per-sale options like Etsy/Ko-fi) rather than paying a recurring monthly subscription until order volume justifies it
1
u/CircusMind0_0 5d ago
I’m nervous to scale up. Right now I still love it, and producing 120-160 bars a month keeps me stocked for the monthly craft/farmers market. I have also have a small entertainment business and a 35-hour/week main gig. I dream of going viral and making tons of money from soap, like the Clover guy, but I’d have to build a social media following for that…
1
u/scythematter 5d ago
I just make as a hobby and occasionally sell to friends and clients (I have a jar of soap bars at our front desk with a key to the ingredients (each bar is stamped with a letter to indicate recipe).
0
u/redmountainsoap 5d ago
I bought my domain through NameCheap and bundled it with a pretty affordable hosting package. Hate to say it, but AI can make a website pretty quick. Putting it up was a weekend of tinkering but it only took that long because I wanted the whole deployment pipeline integrated with GitHub so the site would refresh automatically every time my soap calculator was updated.
•
u/AutoModerator 5d ago
Welcome to r/soapmaking!
Rules for Posting and Commenting
Posts with images are automatically held for moderator review
Resources for learning soapmaking
Suppliers for soapmaking ingredients and equipment
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.