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Zibbet Review: A Guide to Online Selling for Artists

If you’re a creator, you may struggle trying to sell your products.

A recent study commissioned by Artfinder found that 75% of artists in the United States earned less than $10,000 per year from their art practice.

Now, there’s a way to increase the likelihood of selling your goods.

For creative types looking to sell their art online, Zibbet allows creative entrepreneurs to upload their pieces to one site and then have it broadcast across multiple popular sales channels.

But is the Zibbet marketplace for everyone?

In this Zibbet review, we’ll outline everything you need to know about the service.

We’ll highlight what it is and the potential benefits and downsides of using it.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a much better idea of whether you should use it to build your creative business.

What is Zibbet?

Zibbet is a platform that allows artists, entrepreneurs, and creators to promote their products across multiple sales channels.

It syncs information from all of your sales platforms, allowing you to track:

  • Sales you make
  • Stock levels
  • Inventory remaining at each store

Zibbet is the creation of Jonathan Peacock.

Peacock first founded the marketplace in 2009.

Although he says that the company’s goal has always been to help creative entrepreneurs sell more products, the way in which it’s done has changed over the years.

Originally, Zibbet acted as a direct competitor of Etsy.

It allowed sellers to track their products across sites on a convenient interface.

However, sellers had to enter this information manually.

It wasn’t until recently that the company adopted the current model where it automatically tracks information across multiple selling platforms.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for the revamped site is because of investing it received from A.C. Moore, one of the largest arts and crafts manufacturers in the United States.

The site currently represents 50,000 entrepreneurs across 130 countries.

How Does Zibbet Work?

Zibbet homepage
As an artist or crafter, you may be too busy producing work to worry about the intricacies of running an e-commerce business.

Zibbet, like popular art marketplace Artfire, streamlines the process for you, allowing you to manage all of your accounts in one easy-to-use location.

You’ll no longer have to worry about logging into numerous sites to check the status of your products, which can be time-consuming and tedious.

Currently, Zibbet works with four shops:

  • Etsy
  • Zibbet Marketplace
  • A.C. Moore Marketplace
  • Stitch Websites

The company is working hard to add more sales channels to its platform.

When you are ready to post a new product for sale, you can upload it to Zibbet.

You can edit things such as the product description and add any photos of the product to the post.

Then, you can publish it across any of the sales channels you’ve connected.

When you make any changes to your post, be sure to do so on Zibbet instead of in your own standalone channels.

When you make a change to your listing, Zibbet will broadcast the change across multiple channels.

This allows you to only have to make the change one time, instead of going across different channels.

Furthermore, when you make a sale on Zibbet, the site will automatically import the details to your dashboard.

This cuts down on orders being “lost in the shuffle.”

The ability to manage and fulfill your orders in one convenient location is quite beneficial and can save you time, money, and headaches.

One thing worth noting is that you’ll fall under the rules of each selling site.

For instance, there are no rules in the Zibbet shop.

But you may find that the Etsy shop has stricter rules regarding the type of piece you’re looking to sell.

You’d fall under Etsy’s rules when posting on its site.

Cost

Zibbet allows you to conveniently manage your online marketplace, but doing so is going to cost you.

You will need to pay membership fees if you open an account.

Zibbet’s fee structure is based on how many sales channels you have and how often you use them.

The company allows you to try the site free for 14 days when you open a new Zibbet account.

After that, you’ll need to pay $6 per month, per sales channel.

This may seem steep, but we think it’s convenient for a few reasons.

One, you’re only going to pay for the services you use.

Don’t want to be an Etsy seller?

That’s fine.

You can easily pay for the other three sales channels.

This method ensures you only pay for what you use.

Second, the cost is affordable compared to what you’re going to have to pay to run your own standalone websites.

For instance, the Etsy store charges you 20 cents for each item you list for sale.

Many shop owners find that these listing fees add up quickly.

So using Zibbet could save you money that way.

Additionally, we love Zibbet because of how much time it saves you.

If you measure the opportunity cost that you would lose having to run separate sites and manage your own traffic, you’d find that it costs far more than $70 per year.

As time goes on and Zibbet considers adding other sales channels, you may want to get more picky about which channels you want to sell on.

Zibbet doesn’t necessarily offer a premium membership, but the company includes a discount for those who elect to be billed yearly.

In these cases, the cost per month breaks down to $5 instead of $6.

Right now, at the yearly rate, it would cost you $240 per year to use Zibbet to represent you across all four channels.

That’s not terrible, but those costs could escalate quickly if you’re not careful.

However, only you can determine how much value you place on being able to forgo DIY selling.

Benefits

There are a few benefits that stand out when considering Zibbet.

First and foremost, there are no transaction and listing fees.

You will only pay for what you use. If you don’t use a specific sales channel, that’s OK.

Your payment guarantees you unlimited usage.

Additionally, the information that Zibbet provides is helpful.

You can quickly track sales and manage inventory.

Having such quantifiable data readily available will allow you to streamline your business and become much more efficient when making decisions.

Lastly, one of the other primary benefits of Zibbet is that it allows you to manage your products instantly.

You can even do things like upload a PDF to the site and attach it to a product.

These changes will be carried across all of your sales channels without you having to think twice.

Downsides

Although Zibbet could be quite useful for artists and entrepreneurs, it’s not without its faults.

The most notable is that the company does not offer any free services.

This is different from sites like Aftcra or Etsy, which provides you access to certain features for free.

We also would have liked to have seen a bit more of a perk for annual subscribers.

Right now, they only save $12 per year per channel if they choose to sign up yearly instead of monthly.

Is Zibbet Right for You?

people standing on sidewalk with "passion led us here" on the ground
E-commerce has changed over the past few years.

If you’re an artist or craftsperson who participates in the handmade marketplace, you may need to post your product on everything from eBay to Craigslist to an online selling app or social media channels.

Fortunately, Zibbet helps streamline this process.

If you’re someone who doesn’t mind paying a little bit for convenience, then you’ll want to consider using Zibbet.

As Zibbet continues to introduce integrations with different sales channels, you’ll find more and more options available.

It will be interesting to see if Zibbet adds major marketplaces like Amazon in the coming years.

In the meantime, Zibbet still appears to be a valuable purchase for artists selling their wares.

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