Etsy is a great platform for crafters and small businesses but what if you want to sell your hatching eggs? There is a belief that Etsy deems fertilized eggs (hatching eggs) as part of the “certain animal products” they prohibit from being sold on their platform. But Etsy forbids live animal sales and says absolutely nothing specifically about eggs, which can be used for eating, crafting, or hatching. If you are NPIP certified and set up your listings to only ship eggs inside the United States, selling your hatching eggs online is LEGAL. If you’ve been wondering about Etsy, let’s dive in and take a look:
Is It Worth Selling Hatching Eggs on Etsy?
There are some factors to consider if you want to sell anything on Etsy, which has 500 million monthly visitors. First, the fees are something to be aware of. Etsy has done a great job of advertising their 20¢ listing fees but once you make a sale, the real fees then hit…and they can be anywhere from 9.5% to 24.5% of the total price, depending on if the buyer happened to click on an Etsy ad for your product any time within the last 30 days. (This is when you’re hit with a 15% fee in addition to the standard 9.5% fees.)
Etsy fee calculators are a fantastic tool that let you enter your product costs and shipping fees to determine how much the Etsy fees will be. There’s even a toggle you can switch on to see how much you’ll be charged if the person has clicked on an offsite ad.
Hatching Egg Selling Tips
No matter where you offer your fertilized eggs for sale online, here are some tips that help generate high numbers of sales:
Tip 1: Take Extremely High Quality, Attractive Images
Boring egg pictures don’t sell. Beautifully arranged, farmhousey scenes with stunning eggs generate a flood of sales. Why is it like this? We are a highly visual society used to consuming images online. We like pretty things! Inviting buyers to see how your eggs can help them reach their egg carton goals is the number one way to generate more hatching egg sales.
If you need some ideas, jump to our article on Egg Photography and Where to Buy Cute Egg Selling Supplies (including photography props) for actionable tips on getting crisp, quality images from your phone camera!
Tip 2: Clearly Show the Rooster Who Fertilized the Eggs
People don’t like to read multiple paragraphs of text. Not only will you need to describe the rooster used to fertilize your eggs in detail, you will need to show a clear picture of him. He will look his best if free ranging in lush green grass on a sunny or partly cloudy day, when his feathers are clean and his face and comb are visible. Buyers are going to want to see pictures of your flock so plan on having them be part of your listing images no matter where you are selling your eggs! Don’t just put the rooster info in the description – shoppers DO NOT read product descriptions, they only look at the images so you have to make the rooster info clear in your images!
Tip 3: Understand Why Blue & Colored Eggs Sell the Best
Blue eggs are the most sought-after colored egg. Olive, chocolate, green, and other unique hues are very close seconds! Simply knowing this, and tailoring your breeding to capture the interest in colored eggs, already puts you ahead of other farms. Both new and experienced chicken keepers enjoy keeping blue, olive, and dark chocolate egg layers. Thanks to Instagram, Prairie Bluebell Eggers are trending for backyard keepers but hobby breeders want Whiting True Blues. For the foreseeable future, colored egg layers are going to enjoy some of the easiest and most profitable egg sales. (We have detailed breeding guides that walk you through how to breed for every egg color!)
Rainbow Mixes Sell the Best on Etsy
Who doesn’t like a lovely mix of colorful eggs? Rainbow mixes that have guaranteed blue egg laying chicks hatching from blue eggs and dark brown laying chicks hatching from dark cocoa eggs seem to sell the best. Only offering rainbow dozens on Etsy can help you sell pretty leftovers and unique random eggs without impacting the specialty dozens your farm is selling locally or on your own website. It’s a win-win!
Is It Worth It To Sell Eggs on Etsy?
Etsy sellers find their efforts to be profitable. It will be something to decide for yourself. Let me give you some insider info I have learned about how Etsy works and what is being experienced on the platform:
Etsy Uses Bots to Take Down “Offending” Listings
An NPIP certified breeder selling fertilized chicken or Coturnix quail eggs shipped only inside the United States is PERFECTLY LEGAL. If Etsy happens to take down your listing, you are sent an email notifying you that the listing has been removed and your listing fee has been refunded. The email may even state that your listing violates the US Endangered Species Act (it doesn’t). I have had stamps in my Etsy shop that say “hatching eggs” taken down and I’ve received the same form-letter email from the bots that my listing (for a rubber stamp) may violate the Endangered Species Act. I re-list the stamp and go on with life. A real person did not oversee or investigate any of this; it’s all mindless bots.
Etsy Buyers are Clever When It Comes to Shopping for Hatching Eggs
Every spring one of my listings for a shipping stamp gets hundreds of clicks per month and almost no purchases. Why? Because the first image is of a shipping box and people think it is a cleverly hidden listing for hatching eggs! Buyers are willing to scour Etsy to find the fertilized eggs they want in early spring and their voracious searching and clicking proves it.
What Search Terms Do Buyers Use?
Titles and tags matter for your listings, but they can also be targeted by the bots for take-down. How do you work with this? Eating eggs are allowed on Etsy because people with allergies often need to purchase eggs from specialty-fed hens. “Farm Fresh Fertile Eggs” is a popular term. Most buyers will simply search “hatching eggs” and if that is one of your tags, your listing should pop up if your pictures are pretty enough that other shoppers have already clicked on them. (I cannot emphasize this enough: the best pictures win. Period. Forever.) You’ll need to experiment with finding the balance between listing titles that inform but don’t trigger the bots.
Etsy Bots Cannot Read
Etsy bots are little more than a computer program that is checking your titles and tags against a list of prohibited words. They do not seem to be able to read any text that appears in an image. They may be able to read the NAME of any image you upload so use 1DozenRainbow.jpg as your image name instead of Fertilized Rainbow Hatching Eggs.jpg as an example. Since selling live animals is prohibited, do NOT use the word “chicks”. It is fine to have images only of chicks in your listing.
How Much Do Etsy Sellers Make?
They make enough that they stay pretty hush-hush about it! There are some breeders whose Etsy sales require them to ship almost everything their flock lays. They don’t have a website because the Etsy orders never stop and there would not be enough hatching egg dozens to sell online. If your eggs are priced so that you will make a profit, every sale will be profitable and your shop will be profitable.
If You Do Sell Hatching Eggs on Etsy:
• Make sure your “About Me” section is fully filled out and that you post some attractive chicken shots & pretty egg images there. Etsy has toyed with the idea of the search algorithm placing your items higher in the search results if your seller About Me page is filled out with pictures.
• Listings with videos are believed to rank higher in search results. Ranking higher in search means more people will see your listing. You can add up to 10 images and 1 video so take advantage of this and add as many pictures as possible! Filming 1 video (less than 15 seconds) of a slow, close up view of your colored eggs is smart. Alternatively, you can show a video of the high quality shipping packaging you use with eggs already packed and use this one video on all of your listings. The point is that listings with a video generally rank higher.
• Once your listing sells the first time, Etsy will more quickly show your products to other shoppers who type in similar search terms. If it sells again rather quickly, it will be one of the first items shown on the platform for days. This can create very fast, easy sales that keep your listing in the top search result spots.
• Listings that sell cannot be taken down or penalized by bots after they have sold. The bots will only take down an active listing.
• Remember that Etsy shows shoppers red text that reads “Hurry! Only 1 Left and it’s in X people’s cart!” to encourage a speedy checkout. But this only happens if there are 3 or less available in stock. Only list 1-3 hatching egg dozens at a time. (You do NOT want someone with a 200 egg cabinet incubator ordering 16 dozen at once!)
• If you offer a coupon code to people who add something to their cart, Etsy sometimes shows the coupon to shoppers shortly after they add your item to their cart, while they are still shopping. If you’d prefer to not offer a discount, don’t create any coupon codes for your shop.
• Sales work better than coupon codes. Etsy shoppers LOVE when things are on sale! It is fine to price your eggs so that you can run a 20% off sale and still get the profit per dozen that you want. Etsy favors listings that have a 20% or higher discount and will sometimes place them higher in search results.
• Look into the shipping discounts Etsy offers. You may be able to purchase Priority and Express shipping labels at a discount through the Etsy label service, which is sometimes 10% off USPS rates. If USPS is having issues, UPS and FedEx will ship eggs (not chicks) for only slightly more and they guarantee 2 day delivery.
Seller Beware:
Buyers like the protection Etsy provides them. If they buy hatching eggs that arrive broken, don’t hatch, or they don’t like the chicks that do hatch out, buyers can leave scathing 1 star reviews AND get their money back through Etsy’s Purchase Protection Program. Since Etsy provides a 100 day window in which to leave a review and to open a claim after the item has been delivered…and chicks hatch in 21 days…your buyers have plenty of time to complain. You’ll need to be generous with freebies and only ship the prettiest eggs that look like your listing images to avoid poor reviews.
It is my advice that if you decide to ship any peach or plain grocery store brown eggs as part of a rainbow mix, they are somehow marked as freebies. (Writing “Freebie!” on the shell in pencil plus what hybrid the chick will be is perfect.)
If you have dark chocolate laying hens whose eggs lighten as the season progresses, you need to create two different listings. One will show her darker springtime eggs and the other will feature her lighter mid-summer eggs. You can post whichever listing most accurately depicts her current egg shade. Even your rainbow egg mixes should have a “dark/vibrant spring” and “lighter mid-summer” versions so the images match what you will ship.
ALWAYS PHOTOGRAPH THE EGGS BEFORE YOU SHIP THEM
No matter where you sell online, scammers are looking for free hatching eggs & chicks. ALWAYS photograph the inside of every single individual shipment before you send it off. This is your best – and sometimes only – proof that you provided a quality item. If a buyer sends you a picture of a ruined package, cracked eggs, or a box of dead chicks and it does not look like what you shipped, run a reverse image search before you respond to them. Scammers use pictures of shipment disasters others post online to try to trick you into issuing them quick refunds, hoping you’re so flustered by their aggressive threats to leave a bad review that you don’t look at the image too closely.
Additional Tip: You can message your buyer with the pic of their shipment! This visually proves you’re providing a quality product you’re proud of and that it left your farm properly packaged. Honest buyers LOVE this assurance. Etsy staff can see this pic in your message history, which will help reduce issues if there is true shipping damage and dissuade a buyer from attempting to scam you. A picture showing inside the box of your well-packaged eggs, sent to your buyer the day you ship them, ruins the chances of an unscrupulous person being able to run a successful scam.
Meeting Buyer Expectations:
Etsy shoppers expect good packaging, freebie eggs, and bargain prices. This makes rainbow mixes a good option to sell. Etsy may not be the best place for selling desirable purebreds or your most exclusive hybrid breeding project. (Purebred blue egg layers are the exception; these eggs sell well!) People are generally looking for a great deal on a mix of Blue, Easter Egger & Olive Egger hatching eggs, potentially with a few dark cocoa or speckled brown eggs in with them. Whatever you show in your photos is what you must ship so don’t show dark chocolate eggs if you don’t have them year-round.
What About Selling Eggs on My Own Website?
Selling on Etsy is a lot of front-end work! But once you have taken beautiful pictures, you could buy a domain name (~$25), purchase basic hosting (about $4.99 per month), install WordPress (free) and set up a free WooCommerce shop on your own website! You can use the same Etsy listing images in your online shop and not be subject to Etsy’s expensive fees. WooCommerce credit card processing fees are much lower, around 3%, and you keep the rest of the sales price. (This is why my stamps are so much cheaper on my website than on Etsy.)
Any Other Insider Tips?
• If you’re going to buy a domain and open an Etsy shop, make sure the name you want to use is available for both! The social media user names/handles should also be available for whatever farm name or abbreviation you select.
• Your Etsy listing images can be pinned directly to Pinterest, which will include a link to your Etsy shop to buy the item shown. You can also upload a picture of your eggs and provide a link directly to your Etsy shop using the Create Pin tool on Pinterest. This is yet another reason you should invest the time to take attractive images because they can be used across multiple online platforms to help sell your eggs!
• My articles on Egg Photography and How to Stage Social Media Pictures Fast are intended to help beginners craft stunning egg images, even if you’re just starting out. A cell phone camera is all you need!
• Keepers in southern states are at an advantage on Etsy! Your hens will come into lay in the late winter when shoppers are desperate to buy hatching eggs to get a jump on the spring season. If you’re on the fence about opening an Etsy shop but you reside in a warmer climate state, just knowing you will have that early spring advantage may be the insider tip you needed to take the leap!
You Can Do This!
I hope these tips help if you have been thinking about selling your hatching eggs on Etsy or on your own website!
You Might Also Enjoy Reading:
Create Eye-Grabbing Egg Pictures
Finding Cute Egg Selling Supplies
How to Breed Colored Egg Layers
Pin for Later:
Leave a Reply