honestly. . .Etsy

I have had my shop on etsy for 4 years, literally I am one month past my 4 year etsy-versary.  I have been tolerant and understanding and patient while etsy has bugs and glitches and enforces weird and sometimes counterproductive initiatives.  

However, if I am honest etsy's support aka customer service is pretty awful.  In years past writing to support took days to get a response, sometimes the person responding would be clueless on the edge of illiterate in their failure to understand what was written in about.  Most times it was just an automated reply with a bunch of links to FAQ and help articles.  (not helpful)

In the last year since starting this stupid ticket system, I think it's zendesk based it's actually gotten worse.  19 days ago I wrote in about incorrect dates on my milestones in my social media page. 

"Under the Marketing menu on the "Social Media" page in my "shop milestones" section the dates showing are incorrect. screen shot attached 

It is showing my 30th 5 star review with a date of Oct. 23, 2017 but I literally just received my 30th review on July 1, 2019. Where did the other crazy date come from what does it mean?

It is similar with my 150 sales graphic which shows a date of Nov. 17, 2016 when my 150th sale was last month. Where did the odd dates come from?"

After 7 days with no response that ticket was closed. 😐  So I opened another ticket and included the ticket number of the unaddressed previous and wrote in again, again included screen shots and again waited for a reply.  10 days, that's right it took 10 days to even get an auto-reply, the standard canned automated response that starts with "This is an automated message from Etsy Support. We’re seeing a high volume of emails at this time which means it’s taking longer to assist our customers than we’d like."

I call bullshit on that as that exact line has been at the top of every reply I have received in the last year.  If things are that damn bad hire some more people, better yet fire the code monkeys that keep screwing things up and causing all these glitches and errors and you'd have less people writing in with problems.  

I do find it ironic that when I respond to the "how did we do" survey and tell them how badly they suck I suddenly have a response in 10 minutes.  😕

Etsy is not all it promises. . .

I know it's been around a long time now and there are some who are rather loyal to it, but the forums are filled with users who do nothing but complain, about everything, about every change, all the time.  😐  I have been using Etsy for years and the forums have always been a pit of negativity and since etsy outsourced them they are now ugly and not user friendly on top of being full of negative people and bugs.  I still read them but I do not participate, occasionally I see someone that I think I can help/talk to and I will message them but for the most part I just read, sigh, and roll my eyes. 😏

I am not a fan of the current crap etsy has splashed on my dashboard. I do not like the new "activity feed" without the listing photos for favs.  The continuous shove to pay for google ads and have "free" shipping.  The newest re-do of stats which messed it up and gives even less info than before. 😕  Yeah that's not really an improvement. ~sigh~  I am not saying that some of the complaining on etsy's forums is not valid, Etsy often does dumb things, has tons of bugs, and has forced some shitty changes on sellers in the last few years. 

All of which was a factor in my willingness to finally expand to another venue.  The final straw, for me, was something that will take some explaining, etsy lies epic-ly.  I have for years suspected that they do some major number fudging, in their how many shops, how many buyers, overall stats for braggery.  Numbers get thrown around all the time and I have always questioned where they get them. 

You find blurbs like this : "As of 2018, more than 2.1 million sellers sold goods through the Etsy platform, up from 1.9 million active sellers in the previous year. By comparison, there were over 39.4 million active Etsy buyers worldwide."

Now I guess part of it depends on what you define as "active sellers" it used to be the shop had to be open and have at least one active listing for sale, but I'm not sure about that anymore.  See there is this little trick whereby you click into the search box hit the spacebar and click the "find shop names containing" that will show every supposedly active shop, at least it used. I have been doing that at least once a day for nearly a year, tracking the number of supposedly active shops but recently there was a huge overnight change.

The number shops is in constant flux, new shops open, others quit or go into vacation mode, some shops are seasonal, tons get shut for infringement, etc., I understand flux, however, things do not magically double overnight. 😐  I find that highly suspicious. 
Seriously, highly suspicious
1,445,671 shops found for 7/08/2019  pm
1,447,305 shops found for 7/09/2019  am
1,448,089 shops found for 7/09/2019  pm
2,845,072 shops found for 7/10/2019  am
2,846,158 shops found for 7/11/2019  am
2,848,795 shops found for 7/13/2019  pm

Add that to the new forums info which shows 7.3 million sellers. . .?  Do they mean users? is that buyers and sellers? the forums where always for all etsy "members" not just shop owners/sellers. Are they counting every shop that ever existed?

Again I say things don't magically double overnight, so how did it go from 1.4 mil to 2.8 mil overnight? Are they counting every shop that ever existed instead of just active shops?  I have tried going to the last page to see who's listed last out of curiosity and the page errors, I have tried changing the page number and cannot get anything past page 1000 to show anything, and it says there are 1250 pages, so. . . I think the "active" definition may have changed or the way they count has changed or they are just inflating the numbers for some reason.

Any way I look at it or think about it what is published does not match what I see on the site and even if it is a labeling error on the forums and it should say 7.3 mil "Users" instead of sellers then that under cuts the 39+million shoppers/buyers they claim. 😕  Nothing adds up or matches, there is some super shady math somewhere.

So I have taken the odd step for me to be an 'early adopter' by setting up on the A.C. Moore marketplace before it even goes live. I got the preview available yesterday and while it's not perfect I currently own several categories of search. 😀 When setting up I was thrilled with the fact that their category selections actually included "chainmaille" even spelled correctly and under bracelets >chainmaille all the listings are mine. 😛  I am apparently they only chainmailler over there at the moment. ~yay~  Also of the 116 paintings listed 54 of them are mine!! ~woo-hoo~  I also have 33 of the 58 "wall hanging" listings.  Any traffic should have no problem finding me as I am whole pages in search results, instead of being buried under 12,000+ other listings for chainmaille bracelet, 559,000+ listings for wall hanging, 2+ million listings for painting.

I'm not wild about the paypal connection but part of me is happy it is separate from my bank that my etsy is tied to, bookkeeping and knowing what comes from where $ will be easy. I am not setting up stripe as I already have Square and like them better but the A.C.Moore set up is currently the way Etsy used to be and allows paypal only and has paypal and stripe as separated options.  

limited free shipping. . .

Not "free shipping" for a limited time but limited free shipping, that's what I'm moving my shop towards. 

I have in the past done free shipping for holidays, as in I actually just put up a limited time sale and pay the shipping out of my profit.  

I have for the last year had conditional free shipping, as in you had to meet a minimum purchase requirement to qualify, I even changed the minimum twice.

So it's not as if I have not tested the notion of "Free shipping" in my shop, however, I will not do it Etsy's way, the concept of rolling the whole cost of shipping into every individual item's price strikes me as wrong and really unfair for people who might want to order multiple items.  😕  I keep using the "  " around free shipping because in most cases it's not really free shipping, it's shipping included. I know I know semantics but I think it's important to be honest.

So I have started changing over certain things to not have shipping charges listed. Necklaces are higher priced items and have room to cover shipping, so I just changed the shipping to a new free shipping profile.  Earrings are really small and lightweight so I adjusted the price a little ($1-2 not the whole cost of shipping) and changed them to First Class mail instead of Priority so I lose less money when I pay the shipping.  

I highly doubt I will ever change everything to free shipping, especially the art as the larger paintings that go in larger boxes really do cost $$ to ship. 😏  I might try to find other boxes and check out sending them first class and maybe cheaper. I might consider offering first class on more of the jewelry but I need to check on the insurance included as priority covers most things and I'm not sure first class package would be equal. 

free shipping will be the end of the world. . .

Sometimes the Etsy forums can get a bit overly dramatic.  😏  

Etsy has been pushing shop owners to offer free shipping in various ways for a while now.  I am regularly resistant to such things but I have done sales for free shipping on larger purchases, I offered free shipping with lower minimum thresholds around the holidays.  

However, I have not done free shipping the way Etsy wants or recommended because I have not added the full cost of shipping into the price of every single item. 😕  I don't like the notion of putting the full cost of shipping into every item price because if someone happens to order more than 1 item them they are actually overpaying for multiple shipping charges.  I know it's all profit for me but it has always struck me as dishonest and a bit unfair so I won't do it. 

Etsy's latest announcement that priority search placement would be given to listings with the new "free shipping guarantee" set-up have set the forums ablaze with threads shouting of unfairness, manipulation, blackmail, the death knell of small business, blaming amazon, hating etsy execs, defiant refusals, etc.,

I personally am a bit torn on the subject because from my reading and interpretation it does not have to be straight free shipping on every item/listing, there seems to be an option to have the "free shipping guarantee" set to give free shipping on orders over $35. 

I do not know or understand why they are using the word guarantee in this context other than it's a comforting and reassuring word for consumers.  😉  I think I can set it up to give free shipping with a minimum purchase which would be no different than the sales I've ran in the past, the only difference is Etsy wants us to use the new "tool" and set it up through shipping settings instead of using the sales&coupons tool under marketing. 😐  Other than which tool we use and the method Etsy displays it I really think there is no difference, at least not that I have found yet.  

I have not set up my "free shipping guarantee" yet, although the new tool did finally appear in my shop dashboard, I have seen threads where people are having some glitches and issues so I think I'll way a bit. 😁  The priority search placement doesn't kick in until the end of the month anyway and I already use "promoted listings" ads to get to the front of search.  

No I cannot. . .will not

More than once I have received messages asking if I could make a larger version of a painting and I find myself. . . flabbergasted, floored, semi-annoyed because for serious reals the answer is "No, I cannot and will not".   

" I came across your rainbow painting and fell in love! I was wondering if I could commission a painting that is basically the same except on a larger canvas, say 20 x 16 or so,"

"Is it possible to get this in a larger size?"

Ok, so while I'm glad these people seem to like my art, I'm also having a WTF?! for those that seem to think that one of a kind original paintings should come with a size selector option like shoes or some other mass produced thing.  I'm not amazon, these are not painted on a template in a foreign sweatshop.  No I cannot reproduce copies, no I do not have an enlarge function as I am not a laser printer. 😕

There are some other artists that sell prints and reproductions, I am not one of them.  There are artists that use print services to turn actual paintings into re-prints and those services can then print in various sizes.  I, however, am a human being hand painting individual canvases and do not have those functions or abilities. 

I will just ignore the somewhat insulting nature of the one offering to pay less for the larger commission than I charge for smaller canvases.  

The first time I attempted to explain why I was saying no, noting that :
1. The painting style they were looking at does not lend itself to duplication as paint never mixes/flows the same way twice. 
2. I have never worked a canvas that size
3. I do not have large enough boxes to ship something that size
4. The costs of shipping something that size would be considerable

In spite of being polite, professional and apologetic I never received a reply/response.  In spite of them stating they would purchase the smaller one if I could/would not make a larger one they never have.

So the second person got a much shorter answer without all the personal explanation and apologizing and whatnot just simply "Thank you for your interest in my art but no I do not currently paint canvases larger than the 11" x 14" size."

I have before considered larger sized canvases but they present several issues for me.  First, they cost more $$, individually and overall so it's an investment.  Second they take up more space and storage both before and after painting is an problem for me who moves regularly and has 3 cats.  Third, painting something that size uses way more paint so again investment and cost$.  Fourth and finally shipping, as in boxes, packaging, high postage costs, huge boxes on people's porches that are more likely to be stolen or damaged.

I may one day decide to try larger canvases but at this time I do not see it as feasible for me or my business.  When/if I do start painting larger canvases I would not likely put them in the etsy shop due to the shipping concerns listed above.  I am considering some consignment type options for selling some things in local shops in the future.

time slipping away. . .

Wow it's been a while since I posted. 😏  I've been a tad busy and had a vacation in between. 😉  I have managed to get a dozen of the fridge magnets listed and thanks to Etsy's new "link variations to photos" thing I am really happy with the new listings. 

Now that we can link individual photos to variations I really need to rethink, re-do, re-photograph a bunch of stuff for a bunch of older listings.  😌  It's a great feature but it will take a lot of work to update things, as most of my listings have variations, like all the bracelets come in multiple colors.  ~sigh~

So aside from adding lots of art I am also working on the R&D of the rubber stretchy-maille.  I've had my Mom test wearing some for a while now and I've checked other's listings to see pricing and keywords and which patterns are already being sold.  I think I have actually created a new pattern as I have not found any listings or even google images of one of the styles I am making but now I have to name the new thing I created and I don't know what to call it.  Plus I know from experience once I start selling it it will only be a matter of time before every one starts copying it, 😕  so I'm holding it back for a while.  

Anyone who thinks having, stocking, and maintaining an Etsy shop is not work is not doing it right. 😄