Is Etsy Cyber Week Sale Too Rich for Sellers?

by: Life During Wartime

Dunno how many Etsy sellers are aware of this, but I just clicked on a promoted listing that appeared on page 1 (most relevant) of listings at the Vintage link at the top of the page.  I clicked because it was a contemporary mass made product, and discovered that it was a test shop run by the Senior Product Manager at Etsy.  It's a shop full of clearly contemporary hair clips and barrettes that are listed as ''vintage from the 1900s'', each in quantities of over 200 units in stock.  The titles and descriptions are gibberish.  Maybe someone who knows about Marketing can explain to me how running fake ads on the coveted first (most relevant) page can help connect Etsy sellers and shoppers?  At the very least, this nonsense is taking a PL spot away from a legitimate listing.

by: BargainzBabylon

@flyingchilders - we women are not idiots and can run our own businesses and make our own decisions.  We don't need you to be our SJW. Thanks anyway.  

by: SammyCat

@Life During Wartime did you happen to grab a link.  I would love to check it out please.

I do not believe @flyingchilders was insulting women and he explained his comment and he made some points that I agree with.

No offense to anyone but there are many women that have been crafting and making things for many years who turned to Etsy to have a platform and monetize their work.  

Many that I have seen on the forums etc do not know good business practices and are following the so-called expert advice of Etsy.  They've been given so much information on the forums and teams by fellow shop owners, yet they chaff at the seasoned advice.  I don't get it, I really don't.

I have seen many people offering free shipping on a $5.00 items.  After fees and even if they can ship for $1, how on earth are they making money, and what does that say about the value they put on themselves and their work  (so-called vintage too) and/or calling it a business!  

by: Life During Wartime

SammyCat -- Etsy is having technical difficulties right now, but I managed to save a bunch of links related to the test ''vintage'' shops in a blog post:

https://etsysellsfakevintage.blogspot.com/

by: SammyCat

OMGod - so they are actually screwing things up for vintage.  Lying and deceiving buyers and messing with search.  

Is there no lengths to which they will not go.

What a bunch of crap too, and 200 of each like you said.  

Unbelievable, truly  

by: SammyCat

Unfortunately, even Mr. Silverman has no clue and referred to something as vintage which it was not.  However, it had a 'vintage' style.

To the Etsy millenials (no offense to anyone!) running the joint,  'vintage' is a style and not an era. This is their out in letting shops mislead their customers.  

by: The End

To say sales are Dismal here is a HUGE understatement.
Frightening enough to consider permanently jumping ship.

by: hawk

is it possible they're bilking sellers for every dime they can and selling off as much stock as they can , as they are planning on just letting etsy die off , closing it down , and just run and hide with all they can in their pockets ?

by: maxmad

It's quite shocking how etsy turned in this total disgrace of a business in a really short time,

I guess all it takes is the evil vision of only a few,

we would never sell our products thru etsy ever again

by: maxmad

I will warn sellers again, etsy stock is in free fall, etsy has followed similar tactics as to what ebay has done to sellers, etsy WILL need to make more money, and EXACTLY like ebay, they have only ONE revenue source, and that's YOU

Rinse and Repeat

These nasty tactics is what brought ebay down, etsy will fall too, but much harder and much faster, but in the mean time they will stop at NOTHING to take as much money from you as they can,

by: SammyCat

I ditched ebay back in 2003 and I can not believe that I am considering going back, at least for the holiday season and give it a go.  

As a seasoned antique dealer, this is my living and every month is a white knuckle ride, and while not a crier, I find myself crying out of abject fear (sorry to get too personal!)

Website up and running but damn its a slow slog until its off and running and takes more time than I feel I have right now.  (cancel knock on wood)

What they are doing is criminal and I do have to wonder if these sell-offs were insider trading of some form or other.   The timing is certainly suspicious but that doesn't make it provable.  

by: MRV

@LifeDuringWartime -- Your disclosure of the pooping pooch calendar as part of their ad campaign sounds quite allegorical.

Or perhaps, an expression of the adolescent toilet humor that the site often participates in and excels at.

by: The End

Cyber week is for Big Box / China  / Foreign makers.
NOT ETSY.
Again, Josh doesn't know his place.

by: AnotherTime

When I read that Etsy is suprised that more folks signed into Etsy's free shipping scheme than they expected, it makes my blood boil because the company has forced us to do it or die in search results!  
Etsy - get back to providing a quality, level search result that is focused only on bringing product to the front that a customer is looking for.  THAT will produce the most sales.  Period.

by: hawk

etsy has become so stupid with greed that they hide listings to kill off sellers and eventually themselves. greed destroys all.

by: Life During Wartime

Concerning Cyber Week on Etsy:  The majority of shops on Etsy are resellers of mass made products which are not personalized, customized, embellished, or altered in any way.  For this reason, Josh does know his "place" (Etsy) and a Cyber Week sale + "free" shipping makes sense.  If you are (re)selling, for example, a necklace purchased from China for less than $10 -- priced in your Etsy shop at $75 as "handmade" -- you can do that discount.  Just like the catalog sites do, and the Big Box bricks-and-mortar stores.

Concerning "quality level search" on Etsy:  Etsy used an excellent "best match" search for only a few months back in circa 2011.  This was at the time when the search options were changed to default to Relevancy, which was almost a decade ago.  It wasn't long after that when Etsy started pushing items tagged with the search term, but other irrelevant to it, to the top of relevancy.  Like a wedding reception program to fit on a dinner plate was the most relevant item in an Etsy search for "dinner plate".  Etsy has been playing around with this concept ever since, with varying results for shops depending on what they sell.  

Since then, the number of listings has more than doubled on the site, and the Etsy-style guided shopping experiments with search have continued.  Every year a bunch of shops discover their sales have dropped drastically from previous years, get fed up, and leave.  Feel the churn!  2019 is not the first time this has happened.

by: purpleiris

I think both Flying Childers and Little Saint made some good points. It's true that certain demographics are targeted by corporate thieves, but it's also true that those in that demographic don't have to put up with it. You're only a victim if you let yourself be.

by: purpleiris

@Life, Etsy's "inventory" doubled, I believe, solely due to them loosening the reins on manufactured products. That's when all the mass-produced Chinese junk really started flooding the site.

Their manipulating of search knows no bounds. That's why I always made sure to optimize my listings for Google and got a lot more Google traffic than most sellers there (the ones optimizing for Etsy search).

It used to be that when others were having trouble getting sales through Etsy, I was still getting them through Google. At least until they started hijacking my Google links to give my competitors' MY business.

I'm glad it's all finally coming out about what crooks these people really are. They all belong in prison.

by: Life During Wartime

After I was perma-muted in 2013 (the Etsy employee who notified me actually admitted that I had NOT done what the stated reason for the 3rd strike said I did) I discovered that all my listings, in both of my shops, were blocked from appearing in the ''Etsy market'' pages that were almost all that showed up for Etsy in Google searches.  It wasn't because there were too many matches for my items to fit on the market pages.  Usually there were fewer than 10 matches, and still mine were suppressed.  (They became visible after you clicked the tiny print link that said something like ''show all items''.)

Fortunately for me, I don't need to earn any money from selling things online these days.  I just sit back on my greedy capitalist rear end, and do as I please.  Not that I wouldn't enjoy finding a venue for vintage that treated shop owners in a mature, responsible, business-like fashion.  But if that never happens, meh...

by: The End

I usually get at Least 2 orders a Day at this time in the season.
NOTHING.
DEAD.