I wondered this, too. In the current fee-riddled environment of online selling it seems too good to be true. I decided to do some investigating, including opening my own Storenvy store. So, is it free? In a word, yes, it is.
The only 'catch' is you have to use Paypal to conduct transactions on Storenvy, so naturally if you sell something on it, you'll incur a Paypal service fee, as normal - not a shocker, but that's the
only charge you'll encounter. You can operate your own Storenvy store without paying Storenvy itself a thing. Bad news if you don't use Paypal, or don't want to use Paypal; fantastic news if you already use Paypal and want to knock your fee margins down from the 10%+ of eBay to around the 3.4% of Paypal.
So how does Storenvy keep going without fees, you ask? Yeah, I wondered this too, my first reaction being to level suspicion at anything that claims you can have something for nothing. Truth is, Storenvy isn't too different from many other social networking sites that are free, such as Facebook or Pinterest - it doesn't generate hits for you, it's simply a free storeface. And it survives because it offers an upgraded service if you want to pay for it - stuff like a custom URL for your store - and enough users are doing that to keep Storenvy ticking over. But it's not compulsory to upgrade. And since Storenvy itself appears to be thriving, it's proof online venues don't have to rely on compulsory fees to exist.
Not too many people know about this online selling venue yet, and if you're like me who prefers to handle my own trading, you've been waiting forever for someone to create a decent, customizable online storefront that doesn't come with prohibitive fees or membership costs. Storenvy charges you nothing. Repeat, nada. No listing fee, no final transaction fee, no membership fee. If you're asking yourself "is Storenvy a viable alternative to eBay, Etsy, Artfire and the like?" - it is, though you have to handle your own promotion, just like you do with Etsy. For artists like myself, this is great news - we handle all or most of our own promotion anyway, and feeling dependent on a non-promotional venue with high fees (that's even before you consider your business expenses and taxes) can range from disheartening to maddening, to wondering why you bother.
Use something like Storenvy in conjunction with social media and your own website and... who knows? Your stuff could take off like a rocket. And the more of us using venues like this, that aren't holding our ability to sell to ransom, the better it'll be for us 'smaller' sellers. We should support this kind of selling - the kind that doesn't take big advantage of the 'little guy': those of us not in positions to shift large numbers of attractively cheap products, with a guaranteed turnover each month - are the sort of people who often don't qualify for the best fee discounts elsewhere for that reason.
OOAK artists in particular should benefit from supporting this; by definition we tend not to crank out tons of work at a factory pace and earn those venue discounts easily. There may still be advantages to membership sites and auctions in places like eBay - like the chance for wider exposure and netting a higher-than-expected price for your work, but don't pass up opportunities like Storenvy for a free, customizable store section for your own website.
Check it out! :)
