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In this continuing series, we bring you a review of alternative selling venues, website hosting services, shopping carts, and basically anything else that you can use to sell your lovely handcrafted goods. Next up, Mintd!
Company Information: Mintd is an Australian site run by Colossus Technologies and began in early 2007.
Storefront: The site is similar to Etsy, a shop hosting service where you can setup a store among many other shops. The front page is a collage of store banners.
Cost: There is no fee to setup a store, but there is more customization available for higher (yearly) subscription levels. Commission also varies based on subscription level, but ranges from 3-5%.
The more you pay the more items you can sell per year: free (10 item limit), $20 per year (25 item limit), $50 per year (50 item limit), $100 per year (250 item limit). A comparison is available here.
Features: Lookbooks to earn site points and “interestingness”, shop customization and URL depending on subscription level (see above), choose a different store name when you need to, view your recent activity, make a widget, put your items into categories AND groups of like items.
Payment: Integrated with Paypal, choose your currency.
Community: There are forums, linked at the bottom of the main page, includes a “category suggestion” section.
Customer Service: There is a contact page with a form that can be filled out as well as a separate bug report form. However, word on the street is that the site is very buggy, and slow at times.
Items that can be sold: Anything you have made or modified yourself.
General Impressions:
No stats and many people have reported problems listing items.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Etsy Alternative #3 - Mintd
Posted by The Righteous One at 5:54 AM
Tagged: etsy alternatives, mintd
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14 Comments:
It is very buggy. It has taken me up to a half hour to list one time - the page will time out or not list even if everything is all correct. and if its not, everything would get erased and you'd have to start all over again.
not my fave.
I had a sale on Mintd of an item that needed personalization. Apparantedly there's no place for the buyer to enter that information. The notice of sale contains only the buyer's mailing address and I had no way to contact the buyer. Mintd kept sending me email reminders to mail the item, but took forever to answer my requests about how to contact the buyer. It was a nightmare and I removed my items from the site.
Another thought, is 250 the maximum items you can sell per year?? Do they not want sellers to be successful and make a living??
"is 250 the maximum items you can sell per year"
That's what I gathered from their FAQ page (I am definitely not paying at that level to know from experience! lol) Free shops were also recently limited to number of listed items...but that wasn't in their information page.
I've had an account on mintd for a long time. I have sold one item, but the bugginess of the site has pretty much kept me away. However, to be fair, I haven't attempted to list anything for over 6 months now. Maybe I should give it another shot.
buggy buggy buggy and so sloooooow to list on. also beware their automatic renewal as the money is taken out of your paypal account with no renewal notice warning. the free selling limit is now much lower than 10 (?3) and the forum was dead last time i looked. i loved how i could list in CAD and that anyone could view in their default currency but the unanswered/uncorrected glitches, bugs and hiccups drove me mad while the slow erratic listing upload eventually cut down my interest in the site
.... and since mintd handle all the payments from buyers themselves (IHPS anyone??)there can be problems for sellers with issuing refunds
NB: i had one sale, it went well
I can't imagine limiting the # of items sold per year!? That is just insane.
I've had an account since the begining as well. I have pulled my listings out awhile back. My biggest complaint of Mintd is the fact that they take their percentage off of not only your item's cost but also off of the amount you charge for shipping & handling.
Does anyone even shop there? I've never met anyone who sells there consistently. It's a shame because this was one of the sites I thought might give etsy a run for it's money. It seems pretty stagnant.
i believe the suggestion with the limit to number of items was to delete sold items and replace them with new stuff but i've never had that dilemma on mintd
in all honesty MINTD is so terrible you should probably modify the post to make sure people don't waste their time there. it took me ages to figure out how to list an item even though it was easy peasy to make a lookbook. the forums are devoid of activity - not good at all!!!
The forums on mintd can go a month at a time between posts. Someone can post asking for an admin response and it can take MONTHS to get any kind of response. Mintd seems like a ghost town.
Mint is closing down.
"Goodbye Mintd
After 3 very productive, joy-filled years it has come time for Mintd to close its doors. As much as we hoped we would be able to provide a service and help people connect for the indefinite future, having been unable to attract investment we are simply not able to absorb the costs of running the business any longer.
Creating and growing Mintd has been a incredible and rewarding experiences, and we remain in awe of the remarkable energy and resourcefulness of people all over the world who support themselves through their own creativity. We hope we have been able to foster relationships and move your dreams forward.
We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the site and made it the place it is. We wish everyone the very best for the future.
We will not be accepting new subscriptions, and will do out best to remain a going concern until the last paid subscription expires.
Thank you for your understanding,
Keep creating.
The Mintd Team"
domain is up for sale and does not retrieve on .com.au (australian URL), so I think this is gone too.
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