Where is the best place to sell handmade soap? Selling online has worked best for me. I’ve done a ton of research, and actually USED multiple channels. Here are my personal 9 top picks.
| Online Sales Outlet | Listing | Selling | Trans | $ to sell $6 Bar | Notes |
| Craigslist | $0.00 | $0.00 | NA | $0.00 | Selling as individual |
| Facebook Biz Page | $0.00 | $0.40 | $0.00 | $0.40 | Commerce Manger in US |
| Zibbet | $0.00 | $0.50 | $0.00 | $0.50 | Standard Shop & PayPal |
| A.C. Moore Market | $0.00 | $0.50 | $0.00 | $0.50 | Standard Shop & PayPal |
| Stich Websites | $0.00 | $0.50 | $0.00 | $0.50 | Standard Shop & PayPal |
| Etsy | $0.20 | $0.40 | $0.25 | $0.85 | Reduce fees w/ volume |
| Artfire | $0.23 | $0.50 | $0.56 | $1.29 | Standard Shop & PayPal |
| eBay | $0.90 | $0.00 | $0.56 | $1.46 | List is 10% of item/ship |
| Amazon Handmade | $0.00 | $1.08 | $0.99 | $2.07 | *AS Individual Seller |
Handmade Soap Sales Channels – Ranked by Cost
This isn’t just theory. My business partner Kim and I own a handmade soap company and use our own advice. It is the same hard-won information we’re sharing right now. This information did NOT come easy and I believe it will help you save time, money and headaches – just like it did for us.
Today, there are more “custom” and “handmade” niche sales opportunities to sell your handcrafted soap online, than at any other time. You can instantly be represented by business giants and cash in on their expertise and reputation.
- For example – Did you know that A.C. Moore has an online shop for artisans and would LOVE to sell your handmade soap? And, although retail stores are closing, the A.C. Moore Marketplace will remain open, according to a spokesperson from Zibbet. Ask yourself, how hard would it have been to get in their stores five years ago?
- Speaking of Zibbet… Five dollars a month buys you what I spent $50 per month for just a few years ago.
- Then there’s Facebook Business Pages, which has one of the best values for selling your handmade soap that I’ve come across – in FIVE years of research, trial and error.
- If you’d also like your own beautiful professional looking sales site, check out Stitch at just $5 per month. Details of each are below and here is a handy chart for your reference.
Soap Sales Costs
The above resource chart is a quick shortcut guide to the top nine sites as ranked by price. Ranking is not based on personal preference, “star” ratings, etc. ALL of these are great options. One or two, however, just might be best depending on your current needs.
The column labeled “$ to sell $6 Bar” is provided as an accumulation of all fees combined in order to sell one product that costs six dollars. I had to make some assumptions here so your costs will likely vary a bit. This is meant only as a guide to help you see a typical cost of doing business through established retail channels.
Again, this ranking is by cost. All options had to present excellent opportunities to get onto this top nine list, but all are not the best options for everyone. That said, I’ll show you how I’ve used some of the less obvious choices to make some very good sales.
Important Note:
These costs are based on selling just ten bars of homemade soap per month. Nearly all of the costs per bar sold will go down with increased volume. This will make an option such as Amazon Handmade far more attractive as you prepare – OR – when you reach that level of sales.
To make the options easier to consider, there are three main categories of cost per bar sold:
- Free
- Under $1
- Over $1
But it’s not all just about price. There are plenty of other considerations such as website features, reliability and reach.
Craigslist, for example is free, however it does not offer a payment portal because it is an online classified ad provider – not a full-service sales platform.
On the far end of the scale, Amazon Handmade’s fees might look intimidating, however these could be drastically reduced by selling more volume and upgrading your account type. And, let’s face it, it’s hard to outdo Amazon for reach and existing returning customer base.
Cost to Sell = Free
It’s tough to beat free when looking at how you can best save cash on business expenses. Craigslist is the only free option on this list, as well as the only option without a sales processing system attached. This makes it ideal for selling soap in bulk loaves or even bulk quantities of pre-cut bars.
Here is what my company, Good Life Goods, did to take advantage of the fantastic free local advertising platform known as Craigslist…
We started by trying to sell individual bars and got nowhere. Then it hit us that salon and spa owners probably use Craigslist to sell off old equipment and look for bargains. Kim and I listed our soap as “Wholesale Handcrafted Salon & Spa Soap” and were able to sell cut bars at a discounted rate and whole uncut loaves at a nice profit.
We even “white labeled” the soap with the spa’s logo when asked. This led to increased orders. Now the owners were giving away THEIR soap brand in gift baskets and as client gifts.
More soap sold to spas in one week, than in two months on Etsy. We even hand delivered it for free. This became a fifteen minute drive versus shipping costs.
More importantly, however, we avoided some issues…
- Days in transit under conditions we could not control
- Soap getting left on loading docks in the hot sun
- Our boxes jumbled in a delivery truck with tons of others
These in-person touch-bases even gave us a chance to show off new soap types and fragrances. Huge win!
Insider Tip: Consider incorporating something into the soap that is local. My friends on Cape Cod add local beach sand as an exfoliant and their customers love it! It’s also a big hit with vacationers buying souvenirs.
Craigslist
Cost: NA
Cost to Sell = LESS than $1 to sell one $6 Bar of Handmade Soap
These five online sales venues are right in the sweet spot for most homemade soap shops. That is, if you are are trying to sell about 100 bars without doing a lot of legwork and setting the checkout portion of the transaction on autopilot.
Of course, you still need to fill each order – AND advertise to make sales – but you can also benefit a little from drive-by traffic in most instances. It’s not nearly as much as you might hope for and for every plus there is often a minus to balance it out. For example, this KILLS me every time…
I might pay $1 to drive someone to my product page just to have that prospect stolen by one of the DOZEN paid ads on that page or the half dozen featured competitor products in the “You May Also Like” section below that.
WARNING: I got burned more than once so I don’t really drive any traffic to those particular sites anymore. The bulk of my traffic goes to pages where I alone control the content. But that’s just me.
Our company made plenty of sales from services that do this, like Etsy (lots of similar marketplaces do this), and it’s still a great resource. Also, I really liked the huge shipping discounts I got through Etsy. That is a nice perk.
Facebook Business Page
- Cost: $ (low)
- If the total purchase price is over $8.00, you pay 5% per shipment, or
- Flat fee of $0.40 for shipments of $8.00 or less
- Note: Commerce Manger and checkout platform only available to US customers
Zibbet
- Cost: $ (low)
- $5 per month/per sales channel
- Sales channels include: Esty, Zibbet Marketplace, A.C. Moore Marketplace, etc.
- Note: A minimum of 2 sales channels is required
Soap Sales Strategy: If you decide to use Zibbet, consider attaching A.C. Moore and Etsy. It will help centralize your listings, inventory and even marketing/sales descriptions. Having a “single source of truth” is one of the easiest ways to say organized and save time.
This is especially true in an industry where we can create something new and have it for sale just days later – such as a new soap recipe.
A.C. Moore Marketplace
- Cost: $ (low)
- $5.- per month
- This is part of the Zibbet program
- It can be counted as one of the two required sales channels
Your Own Website! (via Stich Websites)
- Cost: $ (low)
- $5.- per month
- This is part of the Zibbet program
- It can be counted as one of the two required sales channels
Etsy
- Cost: $ (low)
- Listing fee: $0.20 per item to be listed for 4 months
- Transaction fee: 5% per purchase + 5% of shipping cost
- Payment Processing: 3% + $0.25 on every purchase
Cost to Sell = MORE than $1 to sell one $6 Bar of Handmade Soap
I consider these options more for big league selling, however they can work right away if you choose. To keep things fair, I used the same estimate of selling ten bars per month average in order to price all options for a handcrafted soap startup. However, once you get rolling, you can really pick up the volume.
Our first month of online sales at GoodLife Goods was only six bars of soap. All were individual sales through Etsy. We spent nearly $8 in advertising and fees to sell each $5 bar of soap.
Talk about a loss! But we learned from it and realized that we spent a lot of that money for clicks that didn’t convert right away. However, when some of those lost prospects saw our page again, they bought. It might take 3, 4 or 5 times to visit before they trusted us enough to buy, but it eventually happened and brought in repeat business.
Good Biz Sense: Remember that the cost to acquire a long-term customer does NOT have to be the same as the cost to make a one-time sale.
It is far easier and less expensive to keep a customer coming back than it is to get a new one. Had we not learned this lesson early on, we would have closed up shop in less than a year.
After paying our dues, and getting a tiny bit of brand awareness and trust, we upgraded to a sales platform that cost much more in flat monthly fees but more than makes up for it as long as we get the volume.
Insider Tip:
Etsy, especially if you do their advertising, is a great teacher in the school of hard knocks. It might sound like a pain but my business partner Kim and I got a Master’s Degree worth of knowledge from a few months of watching our budget versus sales and fees.
BTW – We eventually found so much more profit, and simplicity of business model, selling to retailers that we now only dabble in the one-off bar sales. In other words, YOU CAN DO THIS at any level and sometimes going big is easier than small.
Artfire
- Cost: $$ (moderate)
- Listing fee: $0.23 per item to be listed for 4 months
- Standard Shop Plan = $4.95 per month + 12.75% Final Valuation Fee + Listing fee: $0.23 per item
- Popular Shop Plan = $20 per month + 4.5% Final Valuation Fee w/ No listing fees
- Featured Shop Plan = $40 per month + 4.5% Final Valuation Fee w/ No listing fees
- Standard Shop used for pricing above
Ebay
- Cost: $$ (moderate)
- Selling fee of 10% of sell price plus shipping price (i.e./ $6 soap + $3 shipping * 10% = $0.90)
- PayPal transaction fee of 3.5% + $0.30 transaction charge
Amazon Handmade
- Cost: $$$ (moderate to high USING the Individual Seller mode – you can save by upgrading if you can do the volume of business)
- Selling fee of 12% + shipping (i.e./ $6 soap + $3 shipping * 12% = $1.08)
- Individual Seller Plan = $0.99 per item sold + fees OR
- Professional Seller Plan = $39.99 per month + fees
Let me end with a quick note on Amazon Handmade. It looks expensive, but that’s if you’re doing minimal business with it. If, however, you can invest the $40 per month and take advantage of their FBA program (Fulfilled by Amazon), you can make some healthy profits and even sneak in a vacation now and again.
There are other potential gotcha’s of course, but there are with any option. Just evaluate those that look the best for your needs at this time and consider what your next advancement might be.
Factor in Cost of Sales When Pricing Your Soap
Knowing how much it costs to fulfill a soap order is very important. However, it is also important to price your soap in such a way that you maximize value for the customer and profit for your business.
To ensure you still have a company to continue supplying your customers with your excellent soap, you need to factor your cost of sales into your pricing.
Please do not confuse this with cost of marketing. We are talking about the cost of transacting the sale – not the cost of getting the sale.
Cost of getting the sale (aka Marketing) is a variable cost that you can reduce through creative advertising techniques. This is something that you have at least some level of control over.
The cost of transacting the sale is fixed per sales channel. In other words, you know in advance exactly what it will cost each time you have a transaction.
This is not to say you should vary your soap prices by channel for a minimal difference. However, if you pay a significant amount above and beyond other sales channels I advise you account for any added benefits and adjust your pricing if warranted.
For Example:
It might cost me $1.22 more to transact on order on Amazon handmade than on Etsy. BUT, that is because I chose to use the lower volume, more expensive per sale cost method on Amazon. That is on me and I can control that as needed.
Also, on Amazon I am getting many times the organic traffic from people looking for my product. Although it costs me more to fulfill the order, it costs me far less to get the sale. I am saving money overall!
There is an entire article on this site dedicated to properly pricing your soap. It also has free soap pricing calculator that you can download for your use.
You can visit How to Price Soap Like A Pro! for the article. Tee soap cost calculator can be downloaded form that page or right here.
In Closing:
Every one of these homemade soap online sales options made it onto this list for a reason. They are all exceptionally good. Some just may be better than others for your particular need at this stage of the game.
Do not be afraid to try new things and be ready to let go of things that do not work in your favor.
>>> Get The Inside Edge
Selling on the web is great, but it’s not the only way to go. We have a good post on how to sell at shows and evets as well. Just skip the online summary at the top and jump in where you see the word “Bonus”.
Happy soap selling!