Is there a way to ship through Tindie (like Etsy, eBay, etc)? I’ve been using PayPal multiorder shipping but I’m tired of copying fields from Tindie order to PayPal. Is there a way to exolport a csv and update Tindie with the tracking number? What are other people’s solutions? Thanks
There aren’t any easy solution despite requests and providing them with API documentation. I use ShipStation but there are plenty of other providers such as shippingeasy and shippo. No matter what though, it’s a manual process and it is my most time-consuming sales channel. Combined with the fees, I’m just about ready to dump Tindie in favor of my own website.
I just copy/paste the addresses in to a text file, arrange it as i think it should look like and copy/paste it to a label printer. With already prepared template.
Would be even easier if i had prepared the JS addon to a page so that i have “copy address” button with the data that i want in the form that i want. Though i didn’t do that because sometimes there is company name, sometimes i wan to place ZIP code in the same line as the city sometimes not etc…
At the end, it looks something like this:
Same here. It is the most labour intensive channel to sell(and most expensive) so I had to open other channels and now about 70% of the sales go through those channels(and my product was almost every week in the most popular list so they’re missing out quite a bit). Which is unfortunate, because I like this website and idea behind it a lot. I’ll probably stay here for niche products that are only sold in small quantities.
I’ve already expressed this to Tindie, but the way shipping works on this site can use some optimisation. Same for the PayPal(and USD)-only.
The Tindie API still offers no means to update Tindie with shipping status or tracking numbers. People have been asking for this for years. I’m at the point where I need to pull up my tent stakes and find somewhere better to land because it is becoming clear Tindie isn’t being actively developed.
Then comes the question, what better land is there? I would love to have some tips on easier selling platforms for circuits aswell, as I agree it is quite a tedious interface…
In my case, that better land has been my own store, eBay, and etsy.
Last year (all of 2019), 49% of sales came from eBay, 36% came from Tindie, 11% from etsy, and 3% from my own site.
This year to date (with roughly the same revenue as all of last year), 35% from my own site, 33% from Tindie, 23% from eBay, and 8% from etsy. I’ve gotten a bit lazy about keeping stock status updated which has skewed things a bit over the past month or so but it seems to be a good approach to diversification.
The platform, payment, and listing fees across Tindie, eBay, and etsy require higher prices to compensate so I can offer better prices and shipping options through my own platform which drives more traffic as people become aware of it.
I’ve largely driven traffic to my site through branded materials with each order (to capture return customers and offer support), engagement on social media, posting on reddit infrequently, and engaging on some other blogs or forums. Maybe I’ll get into some paid advertisement this summer to see how that works out.
Finally, I’ve streamlined my process for getting orders out of Tindie over the past few days (ShipStation API Integration) but it still isn’t ideal. There is a python script out there to feed the tracking numbers back in automatically to reduce even more of the overhead, but I haven’t played with that yet.
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