Selling Reiki on Etsy?

Christian | Standing Stones Healing Co.

I've heard of people selling Reiki on Etsy. What are you thoughts on that? 

Yes, I know of it, and it really is a thing you can do. I encourage you to give posting on Etsy and/or other marketplace sites a try if you feel called. I personally think oftentimes the vibe on these kinds of sites is lower, but I know practitioners who have been very successful on them. And when it comes to our Reiki business, it's ok to experiment and see what works for us, so if you feel called to try it out, why not?

If you're interested in posting on an Etsy or another marketplace kind of site, such as Fiverr, UpWork, and etc., there are a few things to consider. First, it costs money to post on some sites. On Etsy you have to pay a small fee to post. It's very small, like 20 or 30 cents, but it's still something to consider as a cost that you'll incur. Not all of them charge, but it's important to know this as you're considering this option.

Another consideration is the transaction fee, or the amount that the site will take as its share of your earnings. On sites where it's free to post, such as Fiverr, you might not have a posting fee, but you'll also want to consider the transaction fee, which, is generally a lot higher on these kinds of marketplace sites. For instance, Fiverr takes 20%. That's a lot more than the typical 3% of many payment processors. Because these sites take care of the payment processing, they take a much bigger cut. Essentially all you have to do is list your service on their site and provide it when someone purchases. Piece of cake, right?

But it's not quite that simple. While these sites can get your business greater visibility, you still have to drive traffic to your listing. Yes, people can and do find your services just based on seeing your listing in search results, but when you're brand new with no reviews, your listing is competing with hundreds (thousands!) of others and can easily get lost in the crowd. In order to stand out, you often have to drastically underprice your services (which I don't recommend) or market your listing on social media and drive traffic to it.

This is the same as what you'd have to do if you handled the transactions yourself by creating a PayPal or Stripe or Square payment link for your Reiki sessions. And creating your own payment link and marketing it yourself would let you keep more of the earnings. Yes, these sites help you save a lot of time, money, and effort by not having a website or worrying about which payment provider to choose, but they still end up being a lot of work and taking a lot of your earnings.

The Build Your Reiki Business program talks all about transaction fees and how to take payments, but a site like this can take care of all of that for you. You still often have to drive traffic to your listing to get any traction, and in that case, you might as well do a little more work in terms of setting up a payment processor and take home a larger portion of the session fee.

For instance, I have actually seen Reiki practitioners who are very prominent on a marketplace platform and who run paid website banner ads outside of the platform to drive traffic to their listing, but even if someone purchases, they're giving up 20% of what they charge to the platform. If you charge $20 for a session, the platform takes $4, and you're only receiving $16. To me it makes more sense to run paid ads to your own site and lose 3% if someone purchases rather than paying to send traffic to someone else's marketplace site...and then lose 20% if someone purchases. And yes, prices on these kind of marketplace sites are often quite low, which contributes to the low vibe feel that I perceive on them.

But of course this doesn't mean it can't be a positive experience, so please feel free to give it a try if you feel called and see how it feels for you!

​You may also be interested in getting the free Reiki Biz Kit or Reiki Business Plan Guide.