Etsy Sales Rise 19 Percent, CFO to Step Down

by: The End

My sales are HALF what they were last year. I can't live on that. A Cat can't live on that. And now, no real world job pays enough to leave people enough to buy my things.

by: Louise

Very nice E's Sales are up as mine this month are half of what they were last year same month. Year-to-date, my Views are over 14,000 less this year. E has also been testing as they constantly do so have no idea if that is an influence.

by: Garcia

I always find it strange that the higher Etsy sales go the lower mine drop.

by: AntiquesEtCetera13

I have been on Etsy since july 2014 and each year my sales have increased.

November that has just finished is my best month ever by far, and actualy my best month in the last 16 years that I have been selling on line in various sites.

So Etsy whatever you are doing it has worked for me, thank you.
Ken.

by: Flying Childers

I congratulate Ken on figuring out how to make money on Etsy.  I am in the same boat as the people who said their sales and views are way down.  

Etsy has figured out how to make money by sellers not being able to sell their merchandise.  They admit to spending very little on advertising and why should they?  The sellers have no choice - if you want to be seen, you have to do your own advertising and promotion.

Not only that, but Etsy does everything in its power to discourage buyers from purchasing handmade and vintage goods so that they will buy more cheap, imported, mass produced products from China that are mislabeled with Etsy's blessing.

Anyone who's been around for awhile has figured it out and I think that except for the chosen sellers, nobody is falling for that line about quitting your day job because you can make so much money on Etsy.

It is like having a store in a mall- you pay the landlord an exorbitant fee for the privilege of having a place in the market.  The landlord does nothing to help you promote your store and couldn't care less what happens to you as long as you keep paying the rent.

Sometimes it works out that you can make a profit, more often than not it ain't worth it.

The rent on Etsy is relatively cheap, especially compared to brick & mortar.  When it's no longer profitable, even a little bit like it is now, I will have to go elsewhere.

The "old" Etsy doesn't exist anymore and it isn't coming back.  The search function is getting worse all the time because the tech employees are not hired for their knowledge but for their politics.  That's just the way it is sad to say.

by: Rexford

If you have to promote your store, you might as well do your promoting on ecrater as ecrater is free.  We are paying Etsy to list. We expect something back. We expect them to do some advertising to promote their site.  

Lack of sales is likely due to lack of visibility, so they are likely playing the same game with search that eBay plays--steering their buyers straight to the big enterprise folks.

If listings were free I would not expect them to advertise, but they are not.

by: betsys.bijoux

2014 I'd be delighted to see 3 sales in one day - 20015 I'd sheer for a double and now I'm thrilled to see a mere one.

The elimination of treasuries has killed my views, shares and thus sales.  I guess the factory sellers in China must be making up for the lack of USA sales.  Too bad Americans insist on buying the Chinese stuff.

by: Toledo Maude

This is my fourth year selling on Etsy, and considering this is a presidential election year which always put a damper on eBay sales since 2000, I am please to announce strong sales on Etsy for 2016.

I am especially please to see sales of my higher priced collectables doing well on Etsy.  I was concerned Etsy buyers would ignore higher priced listings, but that is not the case.

I am not making a ''ton'' of money, but possibly those days are over for both Etsy and eBay.  

Also, eBay's ''fear factor'' and mean spirited eBay buyers are not found on Etsy.  A very big plus!

And if Etsy is offering a big 6 figure salary for the replacement CFO,  Chad baby, I am available.

by: Whatever

I pretty much hate Etsy - I dabble in it now and then with -0- results. My thinking is throw some money at it - it's an investment - if I get no return on my investment I just don't do it again for another year. Same story with Bonanza - I have given up totally with those folks. Paid for a year's membership - got a 35% return on that investment right away then nothing. They keep telling me to upgrade again to a higher level. Well I think I'd rather throw the money at google for ads. At least I always show up on page 1 of google. I'll stick with ebay - we have a love hate relationship. Right now I love them.

by: laurengrace

I am doing well on Etsy right now. Amazon is slow as can be. 1/5 of normal. Election year. But Etsy is looking good for me.

by: Mark4

Expect these other ecommerce sites to continue to grow as ebay continures to fail.......

by: Writings on the Wall

Check out the Etsy forums today.  Some astute US sellers are checking search results and now finding exorbitant percentages of stores from outside the US showing up in the first pages of search results. Shows Etsy is trying to unfairly influence US buyers to buy from foreign sellers first. That explains a lot (about what has been posted here too). That is also consistent with Etsy's idea of a "new economy," i.e. a socialized "share the love."  

by: Writings on the Wall

(continued from above)...Etsy is falling short of their goals to increase their international market, so that is most likely, the reason for the new skewed search....driving US buyers to foreign sellers.

by: Captain Nemo

My Etsy sales are up - and doing about double my ebay sales

by: SammyCat

Fascinating ... how do their sales go up 19% when sellers aren't selling anything.

Must be magic number crunching.

Time they spend some money on advertising instead of getting us to pay to list and then expecting us to drive traffic to the site on top of it.

The promoting is a full time job and without them doing anything, its pretty impossible for any one individual to do what needs to be done.

They want us to spend our time promoting all over social media to bring traffic in.  What are they doing?  Where is the Etsy paid advertising to augment what we are forced to do?

This is one big rip-off if you ask me.

Normally companies spend a % of profits to promote and market - we get nothing of the kind.

Big salaries, stockholders are happy and so are the employees with their vegan lunches etc.

by: Ilka

Etsy is a sinking ship. Its business model doesn't work because it makes 58% of its revenue from selling services to sellers, who in turn, don't make enough sales of products in order to maintain that growth. Their shares are going down, down, down. They have been demanding data from new sellers like DOB, social security numbers, and passing them on to a 3rd party partner for verification but does not disclose  who that third party partner is. Very dangerous! If you read the stock market experts' opinions you'll understand what is really going on there. Their CFO is quitting and dumped most her shares in the market before quitting, and the CEO, Chad Dickerson, followed suit, dumping his as well. I wonder how much longer he'll be around. That happened only a few months after another top level executive also dumped most of his shares. I think that tells a lot about a company. On top of all that, Etsy treats their sellers very badly, "muting" them from exposing the truth on forums and then following the repression with never showing their products in search results any longer or placing them at the very last pages so no one can see them. I absolutely hate my experience there and hope they sink as fast as possible.

by: Ilka

SammyCat, what the article doesn't explain is that it's sale of services, not products, that keep going up and that business model is not working because their new seller base is dwindling.

You are right, Etsy is a big rip off.

by: Derek @ EveryOrder

Etsy did a great thing by creating an API that their partners could use to offer selling tools to their sellers.  However, it could use some updating so that the latest features/changes in the Etsy platform can be brought to their sellers.