The 2026 Craft Seller Income Report (n=218 shops surveyed)

• 218

  Active shops surveyed

  12+ months of trading history

• $1,347

  Median monthly net profit

  After fees, materials, shipping

• 62.8%

  Underpriced labor

  By at least $11/hour vs target

• 3.6x

  Tool-tracking gap

  $50k+ shops vs under-$10k shops

Survey methodology

The survey ran for 31 days, from March 15 to April 15, 2026. Recruitment happened in three channels. First, three Facebook groups dedicated to Etsy and Cricut sellers, chosen because they were the three largest US-focused craft-seller groups by member count as of February 2026. Second, the Crafter Margin mailing list, which at the time had 4,712 subscribers. Third, a link shared twice in the pinned post of r/EtsySellers with mod permission.

We received 259 raw responses. We excluded 41 for failing our active-shop screen (less than 12 months of trading, or zero sales in the 30 days before they completed the survey). That left 218 clean responses.

The survey had 34 questions. Revenue questions were asked as exact dollar amounts for the trailing 12 months, with a note asking respondents to open their Etsy Stats dashboard before answering. Cost questions used a mix of dollar amounts and percent-of-revenue bands. Labor questions asked both hours worked per week and hourly rate targeted. Tool adoption questions listed 14 specific tools (by brand name where relevant) and asked yes/no usage.

Limitations, stated plainly. This is an opt-in convenience sample. Sellers who join active Facebook groups, subscribe to a pricing-focused newsletter, and volunteer 12 minutes to complete a survey are not a random slice of all Etsy sellers. Our sample almost certainly skews toward sellers who are more engaged, more analytical, and slightly more successful than the Etsy median. We are comfortable calling results directional for active sellers. We are not comfortable calling them population estimates for all Etsy shops.

Secondary limitations: self-reported revenue has known noise, the sample is US-only (international sellers were screened out), and the sample is 92% women (consistent with Etsy's own demographic disclosures but worth naming). All dollar figures are in US dollars.

Revenue distribution: the real bell curve

The headline result is that the distribution is less extreme than craft-seller social media would suggest. The top decile is not pulling seven figures and the bottom decile is not at zero dollars. Most shops cluster in a wide middle.

Trailing 12-month revenue distribution

Percentile band	Trailing 12-mo revenue	Monthly equivalent	% of sample
Top 5%	$87,400+	$7,283+	5.0%
Top decile (90 to 95th)	$52,100 to $87,399	$4,342 to $7,283	5.0%
Upper quartile (75 to 90th)	$28,600 to $52,099	$2,383 to $4,341	15.0%
Upper-middle (median to 75th)	$14,820 to $28,599	$1,235 to $2,383	25.0%
Lower-middle (25 to median)	$6,340 to $14,819	$528 to $1,234	25.0%
Lower quartile (10 to 25th)	$2,100 to $6,339	$175 to $528	15.0%
Bottom decile (under 10th)	Under $2,100	Under $175	10.0%

Median trailing-12-month revenue was $14,820. That is about $1,235 per month on average across the year, though most shops have seasonal concentration (more on this below). The top 5% of our sample cleared $87,400 or more in the trailing year, and the single largest shop in the sample reported $312,000 in trailing revenue.

The bottom decile is the group most under-discussed. These are shops trading for 12+ months that brought in under $2,100 for the year, which works out to roughly $175 per month. They have made the leap from hobby to registered business but have not crossed into consistent monthly income.

Seasonality is real and measurable. We asked respondents what percent of their annual revenue happened in Q4 (October through December). The median answer was 41.2%. The bottom quartile reported 28% or less in Q4, suggesting either evergreen product mixes or shops that deliberately spread demand. The top quartile reported 54% or more in Q4, which is the gift-driven seasonal pattern most people assume is universal. It is not universal, but it is common.

Where the margin actually lives

Revenue is the top of the funnel. Net profit is what matters. We asked respondents to report their rough cost breakdown as a percentage of revenue, then cross-checked against their reported material supplier names to flag numbers that looked implausible. The distribution below is the cleaned version.

Cost structure by revenue band (median values)

Revenue band	Materials	Shipping supplies	Platform fees	Software	Net margin
Under $10k/yr	39.4%	4.2%	12.1%	1.1%	19.7%
$10k to $25k/yr	35.8%	3.9%	11.8%	2.3%	24.1%
$25k to $50k/yr	32.1%	3.6%	11.6%	3.1%	28.4%
$50k to $100k/yr	28.7%	3.4%	11.4%	3.8%	33.2%
Over $100k/yr	26.3%	3.2%	11.2%	4.4%	36.6%

A few things jump out.

Material cost as a percentage of revenue drops steadily as revenue grows. Shops under $10k pay a median 39.4% of revenue on materials. Shops over $100k pay 26.3%. That 13-point spread is mostly wholesale access. Larger shops qualify for tiered pricing at suppliers like CandleScience, Blanks Boutique, and Heat Transfer Warehouse. Smaller shops are buying Michael's and Hobby Lobby retail, paying the markup.

Platform fees are surprisingly stable across bands, hovering around 11 to 12%. This is the Etsy fee structure working as documented. There is no real volume discount on Etsy's transaction fee, and shops cross the Offsite Ads mandatory threshold at $10k, which partly offsets the small operational efficiencies larger shops gain elsewhere.

Software spend rises with revenue, but from a tiny base. Shops under $10k spend 1.1% of revenue on software (often literally $0, because they use Etsy defaults). Shops over $100k spend 4.4%, which at that revenue is $4,400+ per year on tools like QuickBooks, Printful, Canva Pro, and bookkeeping subscriptions. The counterintuitive read: higher-revenue shops spend a larger share of revenue on software, and still make better net margins. Software pays for itself.

The net-margin number excludes owner labor. That is the standard way craft shops report it, but it hides a mountain. Labor is the section we are about to dig into, and it is the single biggest thing our survey measured that is invisible on Etsy's dashboards.

“Software spend doubles as a percentage of revenue as shops scale. And net margin still grows. If you're under-spending on tools, you're subsidizing other platforms with your time.”

What separates $50k shops from hobby shops

We pulled the 47 shops in our sample doing over $50k in trailing revenue (21.6% of the sample) and compared their self-reported behaviors against the 81 shops under $10k/yr (37.2% of the sample). Five behaviors showed up as clear separators with meaningful gaps.

1. They track an hourly rate. 83.0% of the $50k+ group reports tracking their own hourly labor rate on at least some product categories. In the under-$10k group, only 23.1% do. That is a 3.6x gap, and it is the single largest behavioral difference in the entire dataset. You cannot price what you do not measure.

2. They use a pricing calculator or spreadsheet for new listings. 78.7% of the $50k+ group runs every new product through a calculator or pricing spreadsheet before listing. In the under-$10k group, only 34.5%. The under-$10k group more often reports pricing by "what looks right" or "what competitors charge," which the $50k+ group has mostly abandoned.

3. They refuse custom orders below a floor. 72.3% of the $50k+ group has a documented minimum custom-order dollar amount. Below that number they decline the work or direct the buyer to a ready-to-ship listing. The median floor in that group was $45. In the under-$10k group, only 11.1% have a documented floor. This is one of the fastest-compounding behaviors: saying no to unprofitable work creates time for profitable work.

4. They run Q4 inventory planning in Q3. 68.1% of the $50k+ group reports ordering their Q4 inventory and supplies by end of September. Only 19.8% of the under-$10k group does. The back-half-of-the-year rush is softer for shops that pre-bought when materials were cheaper and less backordered.

5. They batch production. 85.1% of the $50k+ group reports batching at least one production step (cutting vinyl, pressing shirts, mixing wax) rather than making orders one at a time. In the under-$10k group, 43.2%. Batching is the single fastest way to lower effective labor cost per unit, and larger shops have internalized it.

Notice what is not on this list. Working more hours is not a separator. The $50k+ group actually reported fewer total weekly hours (median 32.5) than the $25k-to-$50k group (median 36.0). More revenue did not come from more hours. It came from better hour allocation.

Where every $1 of gross craft income goes

You keep less than half. Plan your hourly rate around take-home, not gross.

• Self-employment tax15.3%
• Federal income tax12.0%
• State tax (avg)5.0%
• Overhead (supplies, space)20.0%
• Take-home47.7%

Percentages are national averages for a craft sole proprietor at $60k gross. Your state tax varies (0% in TX/FL/NV, up to 13% in CA).

Category winners and losers for 2026

We asked respondents to list their top three product categories and whether revenue in each was up, flat, or down year over year. We collapsed the free-text answers into 18 category buckets. Here is what moved.

Up in 2026. Pet-themed sublimation (up 47.3% year over year across the shops selling it), wedding personalization and bridal party gifts (up 31.8%), custom Christmas ornaments (up 28.4%), and pickleball-related products (up 62.1%, though from a tiny base of 14 shops). Pet sublimation is the sleeper trend: a combination of pandemic-era pet ownership maturing into gift-giving and AI art tools making custom pet portraits feasible at scale.

Flat in 2026. Candles (up 2.1%, basically noise), generic coffee mugs without personalization (up 4.3%), scrunchies (down 1.8%), and keychains (flat).

Down in 2026. Generic HTV shirts with trending slogans (down 18.6%, reported by 43 shops selling them), resin jewelry (down 22.9%), and "mama" and "wifey" themed products (down 31.4%, the clearest aesthetic shift of the year). Generic HTV is declining because the market is saturated and differentiation is hard. Resin jewelry is declining because Temu and Shein imports are eating the price floor.

The counterintuitive one: digital downloads (printables, SVGs) were flat in our sample, not up. The common narrative is that digital is the new gold rush. Our data shows revenue is roughly flat year over year for the 29 shops in the sample selling primarily digital. It may still be a good business, but it is not growing the way the influencer ecosystem implies.

Pricing mistakes we measured

Self-reported mistakes are noisy. We preferred to compute mistakes from the data itself where we could. Three numbers came out of the analysis cleanly.

47.3% of shops price at least one listing below all-in cost. We asked respondents to share one specific listing URL plus their all-in cost (materials, platform fees, shipping materials, labor at target rate). Of the 218 shops, 103 submitted a listing where our math said retail was below their declared all-in cost. Most of these were "loss leader" listings the seller knew were underpriced, but 62 of the 103 said they believed the listing was profitable until they ran the numbers with us. That is 28.4% of the total sample pricing below cost without realizing it.

62.8% of shops underprice their own stated labor rate by $11+/hour. We asked for a target hourly rate, then computed effective hourly rate from (revenue minus non-labor costs) divided by self-reported hours. The gap between target and effective was $11 or more per hour for 137 of the 218 shops. The median gap in that group was $16.40 per hour. Over a typical 20-hour-per-week shop, that is $17,056 per year of labor being gifted to customers.

34.4% of shops charge shipping below actual label cost. We asked respondents to pick their most-sold listing and share both the shipping price they charge and the typical label cost. 75 of 218 shops were charging less in shipping than the label cost, most often because shipping rates went up twice in 2025 and the listings were last updated in 2024. This is a fixable in-one-afternoon problem, and it was the most common actionable mistake we found.

“28.4% of shops we surveyed had at least one listing priced below cost without knowing it. Pricing by gut feel scales well to the size of the gut, not the size of the business.”

Tools adoption curve

One of our favorite cross-tabs. We looked at when shops start adopting business tools beyond Etsy's built-in dashboard. The pattern was surprisingly crisp, and it clustered around revenue thresholds rather than tenure.

Under $500/month revenue. 91.4% of shops in this band use only Etsy's built-in tools. No separate bookkeeping, no pricing calculator, no mileage tracker. A small fraction (8.6%) have started using a pricing spreadsheet.

$500 to $1,500/month. Spreadsheet adoption jumps. 48.3% of shops in this band use a pricing spreadsheet or calculator. Separate bookkeeping stays rare (14.2%). This is the "I know my numbers roughly" stage.

$1,500 to $3,000/month (the inflection). This is where real business-tool adoption starts. 71.1% use a pricing calculator or spreadsheet. 44.4% have opened a separate business bank account. 37.8% are tracking mileage for tax purposes. QuickBooks or Wave adoption starts here (28.9%).

$3,000 to $5,000/month. Tool adoption becomes near-universal. 88.2% use pricing tools. 82.4% have a separate business account. 61.8% are on QuickBooks, Wave, or equivalent. 52.9% have an accountant on retainer for at least year-end work.

$5,000+/month. Every shop in this band reported using at least four separate tools beyond Etsy's defaults. Median tools-in-use count was 7.

The takeaway: $1,500/month is the revenue line where shops start behaving like businesses. Below that, the effort of setting up tools does not feel worth it. Above that, shops that do not set up tools start losing visible money, and the setup friction stops being the bottleneck.

Five years of hourly rate decisions, compounded

At 1,300 billable hours per year, the gap between $25 and $50 is $162,500 over 5 years.

$15/hr$19,500/yr · $97,500 over 5 years

$25/hr$32,500/yr · $162,500 over 5 years

$35/hr$45,500/yr · $227,500 over 5 years

$50/hr$65,000/yr · $325,000 over 5 years

$70/hr$91,000/yr · $455,000 over 5 years

The compounding point: a $5/hr rate bump this year is worth $32,500 of extra revenue over 5 years at 1,300 billable hours annually. Review and raise annually.

Implications for your shop

Translate the numbers into action by revenue band.

If you are under $500/month. Focus on one thing: pricing at least one product correctly, using a real calculator with real material costs and a real hourly rate. Do not worry about bookkeeping software or mileage tracking yet. The ROI is not there. Do worry about whether your listings are priced above all-in cost, because 47.3% of our sample had at least one that was not.

If you are $500 to $1,500/month. You are in the adoption gap. The tools are worth setting up now, but most shops at your size have not. Set up a pricing spreadsheet (not a fancy one, a plain Google Sheet works), open a separate business checking account, and start tracking mileage. The time cost is one Sunday afternoon. The tax savings alone pay for that in the first quarter.

If you are $1,500 to $5,000/month. Your next dollar comes from saying no more often, not from listing more. 72.3% of the $50k+ group has a documented custom-order floor. 88.2% of your peer band does not. Copy the behavior. Set a floor, write it in your shop policies, and decline work below it.

If you are over $5,000/month. Your biggest lever is material cost. The gap between the 35.8% materials cost at your revenue band and the 26.3% at the over-$100k band is almost entirely wholesale access. Apply for wholesale accounts at every supplier you use more than twice a month. Most take 24 to 72 hours to approve and save 15 to 35% off retail immediately.

Across all bands. Fix the shipping-below-label-cost problem this week. It is the fastest fix in this report, and 34.4% of shops have it. Open your three most-sold listings, check the shipping price against current USPS Ground Advantage rates for your package weight, and update anything that is underwater.

What we would do differently next time

Three things we wish we had asked and will add to the 2027 wave.

First, we should have asked about refund and return rates. Several respondents volunteered that returns ate more margin than fees did, but we had no structured question to capture it. Directionally, shops above $50k reported refund rates of 1 to 3% of revenue, which is roughly a quarter of platform-fee spend. Not small.

Second, we should have separated product-hour labor from business-admin labor. We asked total hours worked, which conflated making things with running the business. The $50k+ group almost certainly spends a higher share on admin (bookkeeping, ad management, customer service), and that would have shown up as a separate signal.

Third, we should have asked a single binary question: do you owe more than $1,000 on credit cards used for this business. That would have given us a clean proxy for financial stress that total revenue does not capture. A shop grossing $40k but floating $8k in inventory debt at 24% APR is not in a better place than a shop grossing $18k debt-free.

We will fix all three in the 2027 wave. If you have questions about this year's data or want to participate in the next survey, the contact form is the place.