Etsy sellers are debating whether the company should allow resellers of mass-produced goods onto the platform - it currently allows only items that are handmade, vintage, or craft supplies. "I'm sure lots of you have heard of the latest craze with the Stanley x Starbucks mugs/cups/quenchers, Target's limited-edition versions, people camping out in front of Target and then running - Black Friday style - to get them," a seller wrote on the Etsy discussion boards. 

"In turn, resellers are scrambling to cash in, which is fine, but some of them are being sold on Etsy. I ... Read More

Between 2005 and the fall of 2021, Etsy built a $37 billion empire on personalized coasters, dog-themed Christmas ornaments, and bootleg Taylor Swift merch, according to reporter Jason Lalljee in an article for Spy called, "The Fall of the House of Etsy."

So why does it now feel like the end of an empire, he asks?

Lalljee describes how Etsy succeeded by differentiating itself, only allowing homemade, vintage, or craft items on its marketplace, but he said "the overarching issue now seems to be perverse incentives. Etsy gets a percentage of the profits of the sellers undermining its mission."

He also said Etsy's off-site ads ... Read More

Three days after EcommerceBytes pointed out a potential issue that helps fraudsters scam new Etsy sellers, the marketplace announced it would limit access to most discussion boards where sellers openly share information about scammers as well as many other issues.

The decision to wall off the Etsy discussion boards means that reporters and bloggers will be unable to spot trends and gain insight into sellers' successes and failures on the marketplace. And it will make it harder for us to discover issues like the one we described in our January 1st blog post. In it, we pointed ... Read More

Scammers posing as Etsy employees are scamming new sellers - but based on victim reports, we're wondering if scammers have discovered a way to identify sellers as soon as they've registered an account.

In one thread on the Etsy boards, a seller whose profile shows she registered on December 26, 2023, wrote the same day that "Etsy support" had made an unauthorized charge of $578.78 on her card. "On 12.26.2023 I received an SMS from Etsy stating that I needed to enter the code sent to my mobile phone to complete my seller registration," she wrote.

But how did the fraudster ... Read More

What do you do about people who buy things online without reading (or comprehending) the product descriptions? It's a problem for sellers on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, summed up in a recent post on the Amazon seller discussion boards.

"How to wake up customers who shop only by imagination without reading words or pictures," the seller titled their post. "Do I need to write the product size on the main image to ensure that customers can see it," they asked.

The seller vented their frustration. "I have told customers the size of the product in all the places where ... Read More