I've been on ETSY since 2009 and I've sold a lot of product there but ever since it became a public company everyone has suffered from their business decisions. It's not just artists like me, it's customers too. Customers are losing artists that no longer want to put up with ETSY's poor decisions. Here are a few of the issues:
- ETSY uses bots to find shops that are not in compliance with ETSY's rules and the bots make lots of mistakes. Bots shut down good shops that are not out of compliance and the process for getting reinstated is awful, painfully slow and requires putting up with untrained, unhelpful and rude customer service people. I have not personally had my shop shut down but i did have one product shut down (a bad bot decision).
- A very significant number of the shops on ETSY are reselling cheap merchandise that is in no way handmade.
- In order to be found in search you must offer free shipping (otherwise you will not show up in a search). Shipping is not free! Someone pays for it.
- ETSY has taught their customers to put their items in the cart but not check out. ETSY then suggests that sellers offer a discount to encourage shoppers to finish checking out. ETSY does not lose revenue, the sellers do.
- ETSY has taught customers to "Favorite" items and has suggested to Sellers to offer discounts to customers who have favorited items to encourage them to check out.
- The sellers that can afford to offer all of these discounts are the ones who do not actually make the products they sell, they buy them cheap, mark them up as "handmade" and gladly accept a discounted sale.
The result of these bad decisions is a reduction in the availability of real handmade art and craft. I will stay on ETSY for the forseeable future. They have a new CEO and there is a possibility that she will right the ship but only time will tell. Maybe they will spin off the truly handmade business while they pursue Amazon, TEMU and Ebay. Maybe they will assign real people to police the offending Sellers or maybe they will just keep going down this same rabbit hole.
My advice with any online purchase, including ETSY, is do your due diligence to make sure that what you are buying is what you think it is. Check reviews, research the seller, make sure they have a return policy.
Please don't ask me for a discount, nor expect me to offer one if you favorite my items or put them in your cart. If you like what I make and you think the price is fair, buy it, if not that's OK.