If anyone has chatted with me lately - and by lately, I mean the last year and a half or so - they very well know my opinion about the state of etsy and how poorly I think of what the site has become.
I had a shop on etsy for years - since they started, practically. I had one shop, initially, and then opened a new shop there.
At one point, @ least 60% of my sales came from alchemy requests (for sweaters, large projects, etc) and I easily earned a few hundred dollars every few months. Since alchemy closed down a couple years ago, I've lost that revenue.
Also with treasuries: Treasuries were limited to 333 at a time, and they expired after 2 or 3 days. This allowed for more obscure items to be featured, and being in one was a much more coveted spot. Nicer treasuries were being made, and a lot more handmade was being featured on the front page. This isn't happening any more, since treasuries have now changed.
Chat has closed down. So everyone who was using the chat room for help no longer gets help from fellow etsians. Also, many people had a few sales a month from the chat room, which was also lost. This was the last straw for a lot of people.
There isn't a week that goes by, it seems, where etsy isn't making DRASTIC and disfunctional changes. Not to mention all the resellers, wholesalers, manufactured goods from China, trademark & copyright violations and fake vintage that isn't being policed. This blog post details a few of the most recent changes, that happened after I left.
Etsy claims that it's because of a lack of staff and money, and yet there are many reports from reputable sources that state that etsy's revenues are in the millions of dollars.
If you still make handmade, or support handmade, please consider a move to zibbet. I don't work for the site, but I have moved my shop there over a year ago, and it was the best move I've ever made. There is a free account option, and the staff who run that site do a FANTASTIC job at customer service as well as supporting handmade. It is still a relatively new site so it does need a little extra promoting, but keep in mind that etsy was the same way in its early days.
A lot of this post has been inspired by this article published in business week magazine, originally linked via regretsy. It's amazing how etsy has managed to get on the nerves of so many handmade artists, and the site still fools itself in thinking that it can fool non-etsians that it is a supposed handmade site.
1 comment:
Thanks for your info. I am closing my Etsy this weekend because of the lack of sales. I will have to check out these other sites. :)
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