Does anyone have any experience selling photos, videos or other digital assets on ETSY as a way to sell directly to customers?

I'm trying to work out if it's worth setting up a shop as a test, but I don't really understand what market it caters for.

For example, after a quick search I see shops selling a bundle of literally 1000 interior design images for like $4.00 plus a discount. Then I see someone selling 100 photos of hair for $19.00 with 50,000+ sales. Or a 10,000+ animation and video bundle for $1.50. Is this really legit?

I suspect a lot of it is AI, but why do they sell it so cheap as it must still take weeks to generate and organize into a bundle.

Who is the average type of buyer who shops there?

I think mainly females buy there. Apparently lots of (primarly) east indians stole/spam other people's assets & just put them on 'merch' there to spam the crap out of etsy.

Not sure how easy it is to make a significant mark there now...

I tried some high quality, large size, stock images. Then I saw what you found was more common, and they do make some sales. People right click and save and find PD images and whatever they can scrape from the web. Then they make huge sets, for low prices, and the quality isn't anything. My guess is the buyers don't care, they just want a big pack of images.

No I don't sell anything in Etsy and I stopped trying. Maybe someone else has some better ideas and ways to do that.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on September 24, 2025, 23:48
I tried some high quality, large size, stock images. Then I saw what you found was more common, and they do make some sales. People right click and save and find PD images and whatever they can scrape from the web. Then they make huge sets, for low prices, and the quality isn't anything. My guess is the buyers don't care, they just want a big pack of images.

No I don't sell anything in Etsy and I stopped trying. Maybe someone else has some better ideas and ways to do that.

TBH from what you mentioned it all sounds a bit sketchy, not sure how ETSY gets away with allowing shops to sell images that have been scrapped or even stolen from the web.

Also, when I tried to complete the process of setting up a shop ETSY wanted a one time fee of $20 lol

I started selling prints on Etsy recently. So far a few sales and no profit yet, but I think there is potential for profit when the shop gets more traction. But I don't sell any digital assets and not planning to.

Quote from: mike123 on September 26, 2025, 11:50
I started selling prints on Etsy recently. So far a few sales and no profit yet, but I think there is potential for profit when the shop gets more traction. But I don't sell any digital assets and not planning to.

i've been on etsy for over a year with no sales of 'clipart' collections of images or single images. i tried but abandoned their offsite ads program.

however i've had success selling vintage comics from the 60s.  unfortunately i can't select which items are used for ads - it's all or nothing.  i'll be traveling a lot of the next4 months, so only my digital images will be available. after that i'll likely remove all images &H be able to advertise the comics.

Tried them for a year trying to sell a dozen or so prints that I would print locally and ship. Waste of time for me.

All I received were spam/scam messages. Closed my account with no regrets.

Quote from: cascoly on September 26, 2025, 20:43

Quote from: mike123 on September 26, 2025, 11:50
I started selling prints on Etsy recently. So far a few sales and no profit yet, but I think there is potential for profit when the shop gets more traction. But I don't sell any digital assets and not planning to.

i've been on etsy for over a year with no sales of 'clipart' collections of images or single images. i tried but abandoned their offsite ads program.

however i've had success selling vintage comics from the 60s.  unfortunately i can't select which items are used for ads - it's all or nothing.  i'll be traveling a lot of the next4 months, so only my digital images will be available. after that i'll likely remove all images &H be able to advertise the comics.

While it's unrelated to us, I do buy seeds for my garden from Etsy. Same guy, year after year, Tom's. I also bought custom printed drink coasters. Sometimes during the Winter I find old photos, I mean vintage, like George Barker. I'm still trying to find a specific image that he took in the 1890s. I picked up a film EOS camera with a cheap kit lens, then I used the lens for a project.

Personally no success with digital items. If I sell something, items not digital, I use eBay or Marketplace.

Etsy is a dump when it comes to digital files. They absolutely do not care about the origin of the images until someone complains. I have a shop on Etsy with my illustrations, a few sales a month, it's insignificant but it doesn't cost me any work. However, dozens of people sell my illustrations on products and as part of vector sets. I always report those sets. Every time they are clearly people from somewhere in Arabia, Pakistan, India or Africa. They create several shops in which they sell essentially the same sets, with similar graphics. Until their shop is closed due to complaints, they sell for hundreds of Euros and it pays off in their countries. Sometimes the place of sale is the US, sometimes Germany or another country. Etsy clearly does not care about this. And they have no problem having hundreds or thousands of sales a year per shop.

Many such sellers or listenings disappear within a few months. I know this because I have saved links to listenings using my images (I don't have the energy and time to deal with cases where they may or may not have licensed it, Canva is very benevolent when it comes to printing licenses).

So if you have the stomach for it, don't sell your stuff and steal online or generate anything colorful via AI. That's a successful business model for selling digital graphics on Etsy.

One example: A few days ago I reported my same stolen drawing on the store DigitalDreams008 from the United States (893 sales in 6 months) and DigitalDreams009 from Germany (1200 sales in 10 months).