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The big advantage of a platform like Etsy is just discoverability: it's like walking into a store and browsing to see what they have. Everything I bought from Etsy was by "browsing" like this.

It's the same as YouTube in this regard. Sure, you can set up "https://sleepytimetea.video" and start posting videos, but attracting an audience will be so much harder, and it was never easy in the first place. This kind of thing only really works for people who already have an audience.

Maybe something like https://artisans.coop will be able to take off.

Can confirm, shopify will rank in searches but typically if you also sell on these other platforms, the majority of the traffic goes to them.

Recently lost amazon due to hoop jumping lockout, sales down on a certain product 80% but that's better than losing 100%. My main complaint is amazon won't let you sell your product cheaper on your own website.

not "the" alternative but yes they are competitors