I have been gradually notifying my customers that I would be closing my Etsy shop and focusing solely on my Artfire shop. The day has finally come and my Etsy shop is officially closed. I have to admit it was a very difficult decision for me. Since I opened the shop in 2008 the business had slowly but steadily been growing. Even more important than the fact that the income from the Etsy shop was substantially greater than my Artfire shop is the fact that I had made many friends that started out as customers and I pray they come visit at my Artfire shop if not to buy to stop by and say hello and let me know how they are doing.
Come visit me at : http://pigeoncreeksoaps.artfire.com/
A few of my customers have asked me why I had planned to close my Etsy shop and I promised that I would share some of my reasons in the blog. The easiest answer would be to say that it is a financial decision and that the Artfire shop is less costly to maintain. I was lucky and managed to sign up for a PRO account during their special promotion. This was a fantastic deal where it only costs me $5.95 a month for the PRO account. I have unlimited listings (no more $.20 for each item which doesn't turn up in a search after 8-10 days) and in particular, no percentages due when I sell an item. Those are the financial reasons- not the important reasons.
I began hearing warning bells in early 2010. I began to hear mutterings about sellers being muted in the forums because of negative statements they had made about Etsy. At first I thought they must be false accusations because Etsy had waved the flag of the 1st amendment numerous times when items were flagged for being offensive, in particular this one is my favorite. Many items by this seller are disgusting and reprehensible, but when brought to the attention of Etsy they were totally ignored -that is until CNN ran this spot http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/01/07/jvm.greeting.cards.hln
Kalin's answer to this the CNN segment- "It is important to us that we allow members of the community to express their own sensibilities, and to develop their shop identity to suit themselves and their market. What is offensive to some may be intended as a statement about culture by an artist." Then he proceeded to state that the offensive items and the artist's shop would remain.
And he meant it- at least for a minute.
A website called WomensRights.Change.org began a petition asking for Etsy to remove the listings, which received over 17,000 online "signatures" and he rather quickly changed his tune.
As per AuctionBytes, "The policy has been revised to state that Etsy will no longer allow items or listings that promote, support or glorify hatred toward or otherwise demean people based upon race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation, including items or content that promote organizations with such views."
In other words all one has to do to foment change is get the media involved. Bringing problems up on the Etsy forums and questioning policy will only get you muted. It seems that Etsy has developed a "dictatorial habit of quashing debate on its own users forum". There is actually a list somewhere out there on the internet. I have seen it but can't seem to find it now but I will tell you that it is immense.
These are several of the problems that have driven me off of Etsy, but I actually started making plans to leave around the 1st of October. For sometime I had been noticing that my sales were begining to slow down. This was strange since Jan. 2010 my sales had (for me) skyrocketed. I thought for awhile that it was just a minor glitch and the sales would go back to the way they had been- but they actually got worse. Then I found out why. Here is the best explanation I have found for the reason that mine and many other sellers sales have plummetted.
From http://etsybitch.blogspot.com/search/label/search
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Etsy search and categories limited to 50,000
Do you feel that? You’re getting screwed. I know I know, Etsy’s little limp noodle doesn’t make much of an impact, but your wallet sure does feel it.
Etsy made “minor adjustments” to the search pagination resulting in a return of only 50,000 results when a buyer searches for something. The reasoning:
“our data has shown that purchases drop to .000001% on item listings beyond position 50,000 for a given search”
Yeah, so why help those items sell? They’ll just keep pimping out the constant renewers
Cuz guess what, the results get returned by – recently listed date! (and check out the latest weather report - the backlog of unsold items keeps growing by hundreds of thousands)
To quote an Etsian: “This does nothing to help sellers or buyers find items they may be looking for. This does everything to line Etsy's pockets with more renewal fees, your motivation is so transparent Etsy.”
Oh yeah, and it affects browsing categories, too. So if you haven’t renewed in the last 2 to 4 weeks, your item isn’t being returned in the category when a shopper is browsing. Didn’t you pay for 4 months?
“Only 3% of the items listed in jewellery are now accessible when browsing.
That's a staggering $324,019.60 spent on listing fees for items that are inaccessible. When sorting by price, you can not browse items between $4.49-$139.”
And that thread – more than 1100 posts and no admin response. Surprised?
So rather than updating the hardware, Etsy is simply screwing all of you to get you to pay more to be seen.
Oh this is going to be a GREAT holiday shopping season!
Twit This!
Posted by The Righteous One at 4:53 PM
__________________________________________________________________________________
I know that each time I paid $.20 for an individual listing I expected to be able to be searched for the entire 4 month period that I had paid my $.20 for and I don't like and won't tolerate being screwed!
I know this has been an extremely long "rant" but I did promise to tell you why I was leaving Etsy. I do have one more comment.
I LOVE ARTFIRE!
One of the main reasons is that they listen.
Come visit me at : http://pigeoncreeksoaps.artfire.com/
A few of my customers have asked me why I had planned to close my Etsy shop and I promised that I would share some of my reasons in the blog. The easiest answer would be to say that it is a financial decision and that the Artfire shop is less costly to maintain. I was lucky and managed to sign up for a PRO account during their special promotion. This was a fantastic deal where it only costs me $5.95 a month for the PRO account. I have unlimited listings (no more $.20 for each item which doesn't turn up in a search after 8-10 days) and in particular, no percentages due when I sell an item. Those are the financial reasons- not the important reasons.
I began hearing warning bells in early 2010. I began to hear mutterings about sellers being muted in the forums because of negative statements they had made about Etsy. At first I thought they must be false accusations because Etsy had waved the flag of the 1st amendment numerous times when items were flagged for being offensive, in particular this one is my favorite. Many items by this seller are disgusting and reprehensible, but when brought to the attention of Etsy they were totally ignored -that is until CNN ran this spot http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/01/07/jvm.greeting.cards.hln
Kalin's answer to this the CNN segment- "It is important to us that we allow members of the community to express their own sensibilities, and to develop their shop identity to suit themselves and their market. What is offensive to some may be intended as a statement about culture by an artist." Then he proceeded to state that the offensive items and the artist's shop would remain.
And he meant it- at least for a minute.
A website called WomensRights.Change.org began a petition asking for Etsy to remove the listings, which received over 17,000 online "signatures" and he rather quickly changed his tune.
As per AuctionBytes, "The policy has been revised to state that Etsy will no longer allow items or listings that promote, support or glorify hatred toward or otherwise demean people based upon race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation, including items or content that promote organizations with such views."
In other words all one has to do to foment change is get the media involved. Bringing problems up on the Etsy forums and questioning policy will only get you muted. It seems that Etsy has developed a "dictatorial habit of quashing debate on its own users forum". There is actually a list somewhere out there on the internet. I have seen it but can't seem to find it now but I will tell you that it is immense.
These are several of the problems that have driven me off of Etsy, but I actually started making plans to leave around the 1st of October. For sometime I had been noticing that my sales were begining to slow down. This was strange since Jan. 2010 my sales had (for me) skyrocketed. I thought for awhile that it was just a minor glitch and the sales would go back to the way they had been- but they actually got worse. Then I found out why. Here is the best explanation I have found for the reason that mine and many other sellers sales have plummetted.
From http://etsybitch.blogspot.com/search/label/search
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Etsy search and categories limited to 50,000
Do you feel that? You’re getting screwed. I know I know, Etsy’s little limp noodle doesn’t make much of an impact, but your wallet sure does feel it.
Etsy made “minor adjustments” to the search pagination resulting in a return of only 50,000 results when a buyer searches for something. The reasoning:
“our data has shown that purchases drop to .000001% on item listings beyond position 50,000 for a given search”
Yeah, so why help those items sell? They’ll just keep pimping out the constant renewers
Cuz guess what, the results get returned by – recently listed date! (and check out the latest weather report - the backlog of unsold items keeps growing by hundreds of thousands)
To quote an Etsian: “This does nothing to help sellers or buyers find items they may be looking for. This does everything to line Etsy's pockets with more renewal fees, your motivation is so transparent Etsy.”
Oh yeah, and it affects browsing categories, too. So if you haven’t renewed in the last 2 to 4 weeks, your item isn’t being returned in the category when a shopper is browsing. Didn’t you pay for 4 months?
“Only 3% of the items listed in jewellery are now accessible when browsing.
That's a staggering $324,019.60 spent on listing fees for items that are inaccessible. When sorting by price, you can not browse items between $4.49-$139.”
And that thread – more than 1100 posts and no admin response. Surprised?
So rather than updating the hardware, Etsy is simply screwing all of you to get you to pay more to be seen.
Oh this is going to be a GREAT holiday shopping season!
Twit This!
Posted by The Righteous One at 4:53 PM
__________________________________________________________________________________
I know that each time I paid $.20 for an individual listing I expected to be able to be searched for the entire 4 month period that I had paid my $.20 for and I don't like and won't tolerate being screwed!
I know this has been an extremely long "rant" but I did promise to tell you why I was leaving Etsy. I do have one more comment.
I LOVE ARTFIRE!
One of the main reasons is that they listen.
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