Expanding Sales - Other Selling Sites (ie Etsy)

Hey Everyone

Sales have been going well for my Shapeways shop so far, now I'm starting to think about other options to improve sales even further.
One of the biggest places I can see 3D prints selling well is on a site like Etsy - I know a lot of people who use Shapeways also sell on Etsy

So I'm just looking to hear from people already do this, if you recommend it, suggestions/tips and so on.

My main issue at the moment is dealing with the logistics, since it isnt possible (I believe) to 'hook' up your Etsy sales to Shapeways, so once an order is place the buyer's details are then used for the order at Shapeways - basically missing the middleman (ie me) as sales do direct from Shapeways.
So I guess it would then be a matter of having 'stock' which would involve larger (expensive) orders on my part, this is the part which takes a lot of thinking
Considering testing the waters by focusing on one or two items, and seeing how they go.

But yeh, is the above mentioned technique generally the only way to do it?
Also, are there other sites people generally use for selling?

You can say in the item description that the item will take 4-6 weeks to ship - that has worked well for me. I may lose sales, I guess, but I can offer more products that way.

One other thing to think about - you'll have to pay for shipping from Shapeways, and then also charge for shipping to the customer. Keeping in mind the good practice to charge the same price for products that you offer in different places on the web, you may have to increase your price across the board to maintain your margins.

Yeh thats another option, 4-6 weeks could be a long time to wait however...

Good points, I realized this shortly after posting this topic as I did a bit of messing around with the math involved. Found my profits probably wouldnt be worth the time and effort, and those calculations werent even taking into account the shipping from myself to the buyer.
I think the problem for me is the amount of profit I have per model, its far to small to allow a shop on another site being feasible. I would, as you suggested, have to increase prices to make it work better, something else I cant really do.

I'll keep looking into the options, but it looks like I wont be seriously considering a shop on a site like Etsy until I have products with slightly higher markup/profit.