Etsy Q&A Friday... Its all those little questions that dont get explained anywhere else that are the most useful to the most people. Heres one I got the other day in a PM. If I open a shop how would ppl pay me? Does etsy set that up or would I be responsible for finding a way? Etsy pays you in two ways: Through Paypal and through what they call Direct Checkout Both are very simple to set up. But there are there are three steps to doing all this which can be a bit of a PITA, but you only have to got through it once. Step 1: Open a bank account which you will use for your business. My tip: DONT go into a bank and say you want a business account. DO Open a second personal account and use this for your business... banks charge way more for everything as soon as they hear the word business. This is a simple work-around for the small business owner. If your business is set-up as a DBA (in other words, this is me, DBA=doing business as My business name) just ask any customers to write checks to your personal name rather than your business name. If it is very important that they use your business name, ask your bank if you can have an alias on your account. You will (eventually) want people to be able to write checks to your business, rather than your personal name. At which point you will need to get a business license through your state, and an EIN number. BUT, I dont think this is necessary when you are testing your toes in the water (caveat here: I am neither a lawyer or an accountant, and both my lawyer and accountant would probably cringe reading this!) Step 2: Open a business paypal account, which doesnt take long to set up. Paypal walks you through it. Once your paypal account is set up to your business checking you will be able to transfer money to that account from paypal with a couple clicks of the mouse, or even taps of your finger on your phone. You can also get a paypal debit card that you can use just about anywhere and the funds come directly from your paypal account. I like this because it keeps all the accounting simple. I use my paypal card to purchase all my business expenses. Step 3: Etsy now offers what they call direct checkout. Theyve made it very easy to process credit cards and you dont have to jump through all the merchant account hoops. For the same fees as paypal, Etsy does all that for you. They walk you through the process of setting it up, it is very easy and will link to the same account as paypal. When customers chose to pay through paypal, the money is held within paypal until you manually transfer it. When customers chose to pay through direct checkout, Etsy distributes the funds directly to your bank account automatically every Monday, so if a customer buys something on Tuesday, you wont see the funds in your account until the next Monday. Please feel free to ask more questions here, or privately if you prefer! :) Sharon
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 01:41:40 +0000