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Printify review: my real Etsy sales, fees and profit after 3 orders

I sell on Etsy through Printify. Here's what I've earned so far, what one necklace would leave me, and the setup problems I'd watch for.

By Ben Goldberger · Prices and fees checked 2026-10-19

This review contains a referral link. If you sign up for Printify through it and go on to complete three orders from a connected store, Printify pays me $20. It costs you nothing. How I review.

What I sell with it

I run a small Etsy shop selling angel-number designs: art prints, apparel, and printed and engraved necklaces. Every product is made and shipped by Printify's print providers. Etsy orders go to Printify automatically.

Example margin on a $29 necklace

My 1212 steel pendant necklace, for one US order with free shipping. I haven't sold one yet, so this is the margin the costs and fees work out to, not a sales record:

That's about 20% of the price. An art print does a little better, around $8 a sale. Before income tax, and before any Etsy ads.

My real results so far

My Etsy shop has made 3 sales, all for the same art print: $102 paid by buyers, $47.79 paid to Printify for production and shipping, and roughly $11 in Etsy fees (transaction, payment processing and listing), by my calculation. That leaves about $43, before income tax.

That's a very small sample, and it doesn't show what a typical Printify seller earns. I have six active listings; the necklaces and everything else haven't sold yet.

How I calculate profit: what buyers paid (items plus any shipping they paid), minus Printify's production and shipping charges, minus Etsy's listing, transaction and payment-processing fees. Income tax and any advertising costs are excluded. The necklace figure above is an estimate for a $29 US order with free shipping, using Etsy's published fees.

I'm sharing the real numbers because production really is hands-off. Getting sales is the hard part.

Etsy's fees (from Etsy's own fee pages, checked 2026-10-19)

• Listing fee: $0.20 per item. Listings expire after four months, and each renewal costs another $0.20.
• Transaction fee: 6.5% of the item price plus whatever you charge for shipping and gift wrap.
• Payment processing (US): 3% + $0.25 per order.
• Offsite Ads: if Etsy advertises your listing elsewhere and it leads to an order within 30 days, you pay 15% of that order (12% for some shops).

Printify's plans

• Free: $0 a month, up to 5 stores. No platform or listing fees; you pay product and shipping costs only when something sells.
• Premium: $39 a month, or $24.99 a month billed yearly. Up to 20% off all products, up to 33% off new products, up to 10 stores. Non-refundable.

When Premium pays for itself: on my necklace, a 20% discount saves about $2.80 a sale. The yearly plan costs about $300, so I'd need around 107 necklace sales a year before Premium came out ahead. I'm on Free.

What I like

• No inventory, no upfront cost. I've published products I never had to stock or pay for in advance.
• Etsy integration that works. Orders flow through and fulfil without me lifting a finger.
• A huge catalog. I compared all 21 necklace and pendant products before choosing one.
• An API, which let me automate pricing checks and edits. That's rare for this kind of service.

The gotchas I actually hit

1. Your Etsy listings quietly expire

Etsy listings last four months. Auto-renew turned out to be off on all six of my listings, and my only selling product was set to expire the day I noticed. Two shirts had already expired. Check that auto-renew is on for every listing, and check again after publishing from Printify.

2. Deleting a product in Printify deletes the Etsy listing

In my shop the two are linked: deleting a product in Printify removed its Etsy listing too, and a listing's reviews and the links pointing at it go with it. Unpublish or edit instead of deleting if you want to keep the listing.

3. Republishing can overwrite your Etsy photos

If you republish a product from Printify with images included, Printify's mockups replace whatever photos you uploaded on Etsy. If you've added your own photos, republish without images.

4. Etsy's disclosure settings need fixing by hand

Etsy requires you to say who made an item and to name your production partner. A listing I published from Printify came through marked as made by me, with no production partner. I couldn't set those fields through Etsy's API, so I fixed them in Etsy's website for every listing.

5. Check the shipping profile it creates

I meant to offer free shipping. The profile attached at publish charged buyers $5.89. Open each new listing's shipping profile and confirm what the buyer actually pays.

6. Small choices move the cost a lot

The same pendant cost $13.98 in steel and $19.74 gold-plated, which is most of my margin. And Printify only shows a product's exact cost once you've created it, so creating a draft is the quickest way to price an idea.

Who should pick something else

• You want passive income from uploading designs and waiting. Production is automatic; buyers are not.
• You need fat margins. At around 20% kept per sale, ads or discounts eat the profit quickly.
• You want full control of quality. Each product is made by a third-party print provider. Order a sample before you sell anything. I ordered a sample of my best-selling print; I haven't ordered samples of the necklaces yet.

Trying it

The Free plan costs nothing until something sells, so the cheapest test is to connect a store, publish one product, and order a sample to check the quality yourself.

Try Printify free

Sources: printify.com/pricing, Etsy Fees & Payments Policy, Etsy payment processing fees, all checked 2026-10-19. Product costs and sales are from my own Printify and Etsy accounts.