Last year’s winner, Etsy, dropped to 5th place in the 2020 EcommerceBytes Sellers Choice Awards. The handmade and vintage marketplace is still a favorite for many crafters and artisans. Popularity of the marketplace is offset by fierce competition and fatigue from frequent change.
In January 2020, EcommerceBytes asked readers to rate the marketplaces on which they had experience selling. An introduction to the Sellers Choice survey along with a summary of the overall ratings can be found here, along with links to results for each of the 10 online marketplaces included in the survey.
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Etsy
Year Established: 2005
Description: Fixed price; handmade, vintage, and crafting supplies
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Summary:
Etsy came in 5th place in the 2020 EcommerceBytes Sellers Choice Awards. Etsy attracts buyers, seller say, though some noted competition can be fierce.
“I do make some good sales on ETSY. Fees are reasonable and if there is a problem, it’s easy to get in contact on the phone,” wrote one seller.
“I love Etsy,” wrote another. “It is easy to use, they have lots of helpful information if you take the time to read it. I think their advertising helps a lot to drive customers to their site, and ultimately to my shop. Definitely recommend.”
“I think people are willing to pay more because there doesn’t really seem to be anything junky on Etsy,” said another seller. “I do like Etsy as a selling venue at the moment just because I get better dollar amounts than on eBay and Bonanza,” wrote another.
However, some said they were discouraged by what one called “Etsy’s continued failure to promote vintage items.”
Some sellers said Etsy search had deteriorated. “What for me is a fantastic site with lots of profit potential and great customer service is being let down by areas such as the search engine and the new ads packages, this goes hand in hand as ads show up in completely irrelevant searches which is not great for buyer, seller or the site in general,” wrote one seller.
A number of sellers said the migration to a new community discussion-board platform was a bad move. “Their new “Community” on Lithium is a horrible change, and has actually cost most sellers sales as the old Team format for promoting is no more,” wrote one seller.
Sellers referenced frequent changes Etsy was now making to the site, including changes to functionality and policies. “Management is constantly running random “tests” on sellers – most of which appear to just be “busy work” for employees as they serve no purpose or present any benefit to sellers. I continue to have a shop on Etsy because I do have sales there and have established a customer base,” wrote one seller.
“Etsy has introduced a lot of new features over the past year, some are very desirable and others less so,” said another seller. “I think they have a lot of different types of sellers so they need to try and accommodate to many different needs and not all things are going to suit all sellers.”
“If they would just stick with what works it would be so much better, instead of making continuous “improvements” that get rolled out with glitchiness,” wrote another.
“I just really wish Etsy would STOP following eBay down into the abyss and stop all the changes and just let sellers sell and be profitable,” wrote another.
But some said they appreciated the support they received from Etsy – “They constantly send out emails and blogs about how to help and improve the stores. I feel like they really care.”
One fan of the site also offered a warning: “Etsy is the best!! But you have to sell only hand-made items or vintage items. However, people are not doing this and Etsy is not policing its site. If Etsy does not wise up soon, it will be their downfall.”
One seller said a pitfall to using Etsy was its reports. “I was doing my year-end accounting, and I still haven’t figured out how on the sales receipt they have one sales price and on the year-end report they have another which doesn’t seem to match any fees.” They said Etsy had yet to respond to their customer service inquiry about the matter.
Sellers also said they objected to the pressure from Etsy to offer free shipping or free shipping guarantee (with a minimum purchase amount). “When the number of anticipated sellers did not participate in this fraud, management then decided to list free shipping sellers as first in searches. Even though all sellers pay the same in fees and should not be punished for not offering free shipping. Management has stated that sellers are “churn” – that for every seller who leaves there are many to take that sellers place.”
“Used to be better, until they pushed for free shipping to US customers for orders over $35,” wrote another seller.
One seller called the changes to promoted listings “catastrophic” and said they have rendered the platform completely ineffective.
Several sellers also mentioned ODR – the order defect rate metric that many sellers find troubling. “Etsy’s ODR of 1% max means that if 1 out of 99 sales gets a bad review or a case opened, then your Customer Service stats go over the Etsy limit of 1%,” one seller explained.
“Etsy’s ODR is ridiculous, your shop can be closed because a package that was shipped on time is delayed, delivered to the wrong house or stolen,” said another. “Replacing the lost or stolen item does not count in your favor. Cases opened for these reasons are counted against you even if the case closed in your favor. The shop has no recourse or appeal process.”
Etsy received a 5.67 in Profitability; a 5.37 in Customer Service; a 5.54 in Communication; and a 6.59 in Ease of Use. It received a 5.83 from sellers when asked, “How likely are you to recommend Etsy as a selling venue to a friend or colleague?”
Reader Comments:The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Love Etsy. The customers are much more easy going than other venues. Since handmade and custom is Etsy’s thing, customers are more patient and considerate. Very few “Bottom Feeders” on Etsy as they seem to stick to Amazon and eBay.
Etsy is an excellent selling venue! Great communication, an easy to use platform and very profitable!
I gave Etsy all 10’s because this is a good site for my hand decorated tiles. I do recommend being an experienced seller because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rules like there are on eBay and Amazon. In order to get decent feedback you have to be prepared to handle the sale of your items as if you had a regular store front. This is just my opinion.
Etsy has introduced a lot of new features over the past year, some are very desirable and others less so. I think they have a lot of different types of sellers so they need to try and accommodate to many different needs and not all things are going to suit all sellers. They are there to try and use though rather than required, so it’s trial and error for each shop owner. The search on Etsy has lost a lot of quality and buyers are frustrated with the lack of relevant search results. I know that there have been big changes there and this is a work in progress, but it is definitely something that is impacting the sites profitability. The customer service is excellent in my opinion, the staff are very friendly and helpful, they offer lots of support and always have tips that are tailored directly to your shop. They share a lot of knowledge, and I always feel that I can get an answer to any questions I have. What for me is a fantastic site with lots of profit potential and great customer service is being let down by areas such as the search engine and the new ads packages, this goes hand in hand as ads show up in completely irrelevant searches which is not great for buyer, seller or the site in general. I would like to think that this is being worked on still and that is the general overall impression I get.
I like Etsy very much. The customer service takes time to listen. They could use a little more marketing ideas, but it’s very good now presently
I use Etsy as my main selling venue. I think the listing page is easy to work with, the rules are fair as well as the fees. The fees have gone up since I started listing on their site making them a little less profitable than previous years.
I’ve found Etsy to be the perfect marketplace for my product (kid’s jewellery) and overall I’ve been happy with it, although I’ve been reading that Etsy isn’t as good as it once was for sellers. I can’t comment on that as I’m relatively new to the marketplace (4 months).
This is a great site for home-made items. People expect to pay a little more for their purchases. The fees are a little high, though.
Site is no problem. Sales are consistent. They would really benefit if they began taking feeds/imports from other sites. Listing currently is tedious for us. I would also advise them to not try and emulate other sites, ie: their “Free shipping” push from last year.
Love this site. Seller AND customer friendly. Fees taken off top so no debt on my credit card and reasonable fees. All ecommerce sites could take a lesson from Etsy.
Etsy is my favorite venue. Their SEO makes sense, and is easy to work with. Their listing form is optimized for keywords and key phrases (use of tags). Their back-end tools are efficient and easy to manage. The only complaint I have is that they have no reporting functions other than a csv download, and it’s a pain to get your selling fees at the end of the month.
Etsy is amazing. They care about the seller and want to help them do good. They have a very easy to follow listing page. They constantly send out emails and blogs about how to help and improve the stores. I feel like they really care. It’s a great site to use.
I do well selling digital items there. I also have an antiques shop and very rarely sell anything out of that one. On the customer service rating – Another shop copied my digital items shop, was using my photos, name, address, and reselling my files and it took Etsy over a week to remove the shop after reporting it multiple times, calling them, and filing DMCA notices on over 1000 items. The fake shop made hundreds of dollars before it was shut down. I would still recommend Etsy as a selling place for certain things since they do get traffic. I’ve tried other sites and the customer traffic just isn’t there.
I sell primarily on this site and it’s the most profitable for my category of items. That said, the search function is terrible, constant changes to the listing pages is frustrating, and their communication is awful. Biggest problem is the broken search. It is driving buyers away and is the key factor to my recommendation rating of only a 5 for the site.
I’ve been on Etsy since 2008. One of my shops is very busy especially at xmas time. They need to improve their customer service though if they want to compete favorably against makers who are jumping ship to Shopify and other selling platforms. I will stick by Etsy. I like the Etsy culture.
I have done very well selling Etsy and it is easy to post on there. They are not demanding and if you are sold out of something, you just refund the person. No hassle and no worries. Unfortunately, we do sell out of things and when you are selling on multiple sites it is bound to happen. Etsy understands this doesn’t ding you for being sold like eBay does.
It’s a good venue for handmade items. Sadly ideas get copies and my items I used to get regular sales on now get no love. No crafty time now to make other things.
If you don’t mind charging sales tax, then Etsy isn’t too bad. I don’t like the 3 month listing limit. And selling hand crafted items is very hard. Competition is fierce on there. Sellers are very nice tho. Sometimes hard to maneuver around the site, but once you find what you want it’s ok. Forums are impossible. Had to leave that site as well due to mandatory managed payments system and have heard that’s become a nightmare.
I started my Etsy shop in 2006, and 2019 was my best year EVER on Etsy! My current goal is to beat last January’s sales revenue; it was my best month ever on Etsy! January isn’t half over yet and my Etsy revenue is up 71% YOY! Today alone I got 6 orders, that’s probably the most I’ve ever gotten in 1 day. It’s been one year since Etsy changed their friendly and easy-to-use forums to the Lithium Nightmare. I used to spend a couple hours a day in the OLD forums, but didn’t spend that long in the forums in ALL of 2019!
Etsy is still a worthwhile selling site, even though they continuously fix what is not broken, so creating endless problems for sellers. If they would just stick with what works it would be so much better, instead of making continuous “improvements” that get rolled out with glitchiness. Their new “Community” on Lithium is a horrible change, and has actually cost most sellers sales as the old Team format for promoting is no more. But overall, buyers know about Etsy and keep returning, so the potential for good sales is there. Pity though that Etsy still keeps Vintage as an afterthought, especially given how modern society values recycling and reusing!
Etsy’s good for me on vintage products. The site could use a sell similar button and save draft. You have fill everything out in order to save draft.
I recommend Etsy to everyone! Etsy has the best customers in the world. Their support is excellent and the billing is exceedingly transparent – I wish that eBay would bill like Etsy.
Etsy is the best!! But you have to sell only hand-made items or vintage items. However, people are not doing this and Etsy is not policing its site. If Etsy does not wise up soon, it will be their downfall.
The site is great for selling crafts at a price you might expect to get at a craft fair, which is very nice. Where they drop the ball is charging every time you relist. It’s not much, but puts a barrier up especially if you want to sell low price items like paper crafts. The biggest pitfall though is ability to figure out their reports and their customer service. I was doing my year-end accounting, and I still haven’t figured out how on the sales receipt they have one sales price and on the year-end report they have another which doesn’t seem to match any fees. I might be able to find the answer some time, but an email to customer service has yet to get more than an automated response saying they have been getting a lot of emails and be patient, that was 2 weeks ago.
I do make some good sales on ETSY. Fees are reasonable and if there is a problem, it’s easy to get in contact on the phone. Problem there is I can’t sell everything because it has to be vintage or hand made.
I have been with Etsy since 2013. During that time there have been many changes, some good and some extremely poor judgment on management’s part. Latest fiasco is they want sellers to offer free shipping or free shipping guarantee (with a minimum purchase amount). It was suggested that sellers add the cost of shipping to item price and list shipping as free. This has met with resistance from many many sellers. When the number of anticipated sellers did not participate in this fraud, management then decided to list free shipping sellers as first in searches. Even though all sellers pay the same in fees and should not be punished for not offering free shipping. Management has stated that sellers are “churn” – that for every seller who leaves there are many to take that sellers place. Management is constantly running random “tests” on sellers – most of which appear to just be “busy work” for employees as they serve no purpose or present any benefit to sellers. I continue to have a shop on etsy because I do have sales there and have established a customer base.
Etsy provides great tools, great information and makes it very easy to sell and get traffic to your listings. The biggest flaw with Etsy is the cost of $0.20 to list each item, which makes it risky to list items that may not sell and limits the ability of new sellers to get started.
It’s a popular platform among buyers, inherently resulting in more sales, and I like the stats provided. The negatives are that there is a listing fee (that one has to re-new and repay), and what can be sold is limited.
I love Etsy. It is easy to use, they have lots of helpful information if you take the time to read it. I think their advertising helps a lot to drive customers to their site, and ultimately to my shop. Definitely recommend.
Etsy seems to attract clientele who are looking for just the right thing, and not necessarily looking for a bargain. In many cases, items are priced higher than they would be on other sites. I think people are willing to pay more because there doesn’t really seem to be anything junky on Etsy. Everything seems to be of good quality.
Great seller platform, reasonable seller Fees. Love the 3 day escrow of funds on sale compared to other sites. Reasonable advertising fee structure.
Etsy is my favorite site to sell them. They have the most user-friendly interface. The only complaint that I have is they keep updating and changing things and sometimes they get glitches to where things don’t work properly then you have to update your app all the time.
Been on Etsy for 4 years now. Sales have picked up a lot this past year. I get better prices on Etsy than other selling venues, but fees and commissions have gone up, and I very much dislike they are taking fees on shipping charges. I also have noticed they are charging me fees on sales taxes, which should be illegal in my opinion. I don’t like all the forced changes and I want to be able to opt out when they install new things I don’t agree with nor want to pay for. The customer service is not very good. Answers always fall short or are canned responses, and their search engine is one of the worst I have ever tried to use. It is worthless and needs to be completely overhauled. But I do like Etsy as a selling venue at the moment just because I get better dollar amounts than on eBay and Bonanza. It is getting more cumbersome to list things on Etsy, especially for vintage one of a kind stuff. All the hoops you have to jump through to list is tiresome and time consuming. I just really wish Etsy would STOP following eBay down into the abyss and stop all the changes and just let sellers sell and be profitable.
Not the easiest listing form, categories are poor for antiques and vintage, but items have good search results both on internet and in house, and consistent sales.
Used to be better, until they pushed for free shipping to US customers for orders over $35.
I’ve been very pleased with how Etsy has structured everything except their advertising, which is borderline sketchy.
Etsy is constantly running tests on the site to improve the buyer experience as well as for their own profit gathering needs. It is frustrating as a seller when features have changed / changed back / changed again on a daily basis because you get no notice of tests being conducted. If you sell vintage, craft supplies or handmade items and you really work hard at it, you can turn a handy profit here.
I do not like that I have to list every little detail on an item I’m trying to sell. Sometimes I simply don’t have the information.
Recent changes have destroyed what used to be an easy to use, profitable venue. The push for everyone to offer free shipping or face poor rank as well as their catastrophic changes to their promoted listings have rendered the platform completely ineffective.
Etsy allows too many people to sell items that do not fall within their guidelines.
Seller area has display issues on desktop so it’s very difficult to view and edit information for shipping and tracking. Also, the listing process is cumbersome and I don’t sell much on here.
Lots of volume and ease of use. The culture of the admins is toxic though. Once you get a warning it is there for life even if you grow to be as big as Amazon and bring them billions in revenue.
Not many sales from there. Kind of a clunky platform and can only sell vintage finished goods on there – many of my items can’t be listed there. Shipping is kind of messed up on there, can’t even figure out how to have FedEx as an option.
I almost never get a response to my emails to Etsy. I have sold over 75 items, but when there is an issue, it can not be resolved easily if at all. They don’t have a way to send a return postage label to a buyer either. If you don’t have any problems it’s ok.
They pushed all of the sellers to do free shipping. It’s so hard because postage rates vary so much so you can’t always cover your shipping in your price.
I don’t use Etsy anymore. The most annoying part is everything on Etsy is a fraud. Well mostly 90% is. There are more counterfeit items on Etsy than any platform by far excluding the China wholesalers. Every stay at home mom on the planet seems to not know copyright and trademark laws as well as infringement. I’m a stay at home mom too so no shade. I’m also college educated and a business owner so I know business law. That’s the difference. Logos, images, characters and more are replicated and sold illegally every sec on Etsy. Support does nothing to enforce policy and they really don’t do much at all in my experience. The other part of the 90% besides counterfeits are sellers that deliberately lie about everything being handmade by them. Almost 98% of the items sold on Etsy can be found on any China wholesale site and the sellers defraud their buyers 100% by lying about being the ones that made them. Dishonesty is not at all discouraged on Etsy because if items are reported support does nothing. I used to sell regularly on Etsy but left due to the level of fraud. I buy regularly from around the world so I know which items are from wholesalers and which aren’t. I also know for a fact it’s a trend in etsy and depop to lie about everything being made by the seller so they can charge more as well appear to not be sourcing from China when it’s obvious they do. So do I and regularly that’s how I know which stock pics are from which site. Anyway support is not at all strict but also not helpful. It’s easy to list items and in my experience easy to sell, but it seems the app is full of con artist. It’s never a good idea to defraud your buyers in that large of a scale. Just bad business ethic in my view.
We sell vintage items and are discouraged by Etsy’s continued failure to promote vintage items. Their badgering of dealers to provide ‘free shipping’ last fall and early winter was exceptionally annoying as is their penalties for not doing so. We complied for a month or so and found our sales declined significantly so reverted back to calculated shipping that we believe is fairer to both dealers and customers. Our sales then increased although not to their former level. Increasing the commission rate to 5% on sales was bad enough but applying it to shipping costs is difficult to justify other than it was a windfall for shareholders. Etsy had reasonable overheads when we joined a couple of years ago but now is a relatively expensive site to sell on.
Etsy’s constant bugs, glitches, and poorly planned/rolled out changes are a major time-suck for sellers. Their recent bullying of sellers to offer free shipping by manipulating search and visibility, was not nearly as successful as they hoped. They are still trying to make it work. Many of us sellers have noticed a distinct rotation of when we will have one or two sales, and then none at all. Etsy’s managed payment is a major money grab, and a bookkeeping/tax paying nightmare for sellers. I’ve been an Etsy seller for many years and have watched my sales drop for the last five. I plan to maintain a presence there, but the bulk of my inventory is moving elsewhere. I’m hoping that this survey will show some well-liked and successful venues. Thank you for doing this.
Etsy has really gone downhill this year. Every statistic is down – views, visits, sales, etc. Etsy is continuing to market themselves as a special niche marketplace, while their actions are placing them as an overpriced, not so special, also-ran to Amazon, eBay and Aliexpress. Though the list of customer/seller-hostile actions and wrong strategic turns is long, some of the worst things about Etsy right now are search, ads, the free shipping guarantee, and the specific implementation of the odr, where cases found in the seller’s favor (e.g., non-delivery case where package tracking shows “delivered”) still counts against the rating. As a buyer, I have great difficulty in finding specific items I’m looking for, the ads everywhere and pushy popups have become ubiquitous and off-putting, and I’ve abandoned my cart and purchased elsewhere due to the FSG (Free Shipping Guarantee), where sellers have extremely high shipping if you just want to buy a few things, i.e., under the $35 threshold. There is still time for them to change course, but as there seems to be no interest in doing so, I will simply continue the ride until it collapses. In the meantime, like many other sellers, I am in the process of adding other outlets as fast as I can.
Etsy customer service for UK customers such as me is diabolical. There is no number to contact them on and email response is poor in turn around and addressing the issues at times. I do well on Etsy, but it is not the easiest platform when there are issues to resolve that need their input.
I like Etsy as a sales venue. I do not like the forced Etsy payments. I do not like many of their new policies, like paying for paid advertising and having to pay before results are in. I used to love Etsy. Not so much any more.
Etsy used to be easy to use and my stuff sold well there because I listed within the rules. Now that dropshipping from AliExpress is ok and things don’t need to be handmade or vintage, a lot fewer buyers are going to Etsy to buy the kinds of products I sell, so my sales are down quite a bit. This and the ODR threats caused me to move my shop out of Etsy in 2020.
I’ve been on Etsy since 2013, and I’ve always said to anyone who’d listen that it was better than eBay in just about every way. But in the last 12 to 18 months, Etsy has deteriorated to the point where I am no longer enthusiastic to be selling there. Long story short, the administrators keep making changes to the policies and to the functionality of the site that are highly detrimental to the sellers. I just might close my shop in the next year or two.
One year ago I would have rated Etsy much higher, but like eBay did many years back, Etsy has gotten greedy with fees, practically forcing sellers to provide free shipping to try and keep sales alive, and taking away sellers choices to keeping PayPal as default for checkout (another way to keep money for themselves). When eBay did this sort of revamping, it forced many small unique sellers out of the market place and small unique is what Etsy brags about. That too is no longer true, they advertise handmade, (they seem to often forget they also claim to sell vintage because they don’t advertise it) and they have allowed the same giant factory made items into their marketplace all for the sake of money. Vintage is now anyone’s garage sale items. They also recently made changes to community interaction games and forums which helped to drive buyers (by way of sellers interacting) to the site. This makes it now more time consuming and not as beneficial IMO. Only improvement I see in recent revamp, is better access to customer service (phone).
I used to sell on Etsy. Love the ease of their site. Most seller user friendly site of any I have used. Also they provided sales and traffic beyond any other site. I sell cake toppers and they deemed them as toys and won’t allow me to sell them. Why you kick someone off for that reason when they were making thousands of dollars in seller fees from the volume of sales I had. I hated losing that store.
I gather from other sellers that the downside of Etsy is that they let in a lot of shops a few years back that were not selling true handmade goods. Friends of my daughter bought dresses that came from China – called made to order but were posted the day of the order, so there is always a suspicion that these “hand-made” sellers are sweat-shops. I was asked to make a hand-knit coat in a very complicated aran (various cables) pattern – the cost to the buyer would have been prohibitive, even though I’m a fast knitter. Before I could answer with a price, she told me she was buying it from China for $49, including the price of the wool. Being flooded with shops also makes it hard to find anything in a search – I can’t find myself, although I use all the tags and keywords!
Etsy needs to clarify their listing requirements. The site says homemade but allows all kinds of items. Crafts & Supplies supposed to be with your homemade item. But dropshippers are on there too. They have an iteration with Shopify. Along as you don’t get reported from the Etsy police. There is money there.
Etsy’s ODR of 1% max means that if 1 out of 99 sales gets a bad review or a case opened, then your Customer Service stats go over the Etsy limit of 1%. 3 bad reviews or cases opened for any reason during your entire tenure at Etsy could get your shop shut down permanently. I’ve been there for 12 years; I just got my 3rd bad review by a customer who didn’t read the title or description, nor did she look at the photos. She never contacted me to say she was unhappy even though I take returns. Over a $2 purchase. My average sale is over $250.
I once had a very profitable business on Etsy, but since the company added a new CEO and instituted constant testing, my store seems nearly invisible. My shop’s profits have tanked as a result. I refuse to play the pay to paid advertising game as I rarely had to advertise my products in the past and still achieved good sales. Funny how my same product lines sell very well through eBay and other platforms … most of what I do on Etsy now is deactivate listings because they sell elsewhere! It’s a shame Etsy has declined because the ease of listing and store customization is about the only thing going for this site.
Free shipping has ruined business for everyone. The free shipping started killing my shop and the Etsy Ads killed it off. The ads are a huge waste of money. Free shipping or no sales. But Etsy started out as a place for unique, handmade items for those wanting something a little more than a mass produced. They are tinkering with its search algorithm to the point that good business are being hurt. Such a pity, this site used to be all about buyers and sellers.
Etsy has really gone downhill. I did not have a single sale over the holidays. I have been a seller in Etsy since 2007. Every year as they make changes my sales have slipped. I only list there now due to exposure and hopes my repeat customers can find my shop. Their fees are becoming too high, their policies are not friendly to small business owners and their customer service is non existent. The latest “free shipping” extortion on sellers is the nail in the coffin for me. I’ve started moving my listings to Baroqoo in hopes they will get momentum and take off. Etsy has taken all the joy out of selling and running a handmade business selling art. I would recommend Etsy to a newbie with extreme caution. I would recommend Baroqoo despite no sales there yet over Etsy. The only reason I sell on Etsy is that it known for handmade and my items are placed among somewhat like items, the drawback is IF one can be found, and if there is a sale, be prepared to be shafted on fees and once shipping is covered there is not a lot of meat left in the bone. It is quite disheartening if you are an artist trying to sell on line in this day and age.
It is quickly becoming a pay to play site. It has caused many small artisans and small vintage shops to seek out other venues (which are limited) and/or to create their own websites (which I actually see as a positive for sellers in the long run).
eBay has a bad reputation for snitches and draconian rules, but I would rate Etsy as a million times worse. Their rules are nebulous like smoke and mirrors and are not applied fairly across the board but in an arbitrary way. Communicating with Etsy “trust and safety” team is like speaking with a bunch of robots. Their communications comprise pasted-in snippets and they never address you by name as on other venues. Etsy purport to welcome vintage sellers but have no staff with any experience of antiques and vintage. Their so called “appeal” process is a complete joke.
If you offer free shipping you seem to get more views and orders, it is more challenging to offer free shipping without taking a hit on profits, I just opened a second shop there, Order Dissatisfaction Rate has to be below 1% threshold which is extremely hard to do, and as there are scammers everywhere, that threshold should be higher.
Top 500 seller with 50% decrease in sales. Search is broken and advertising costs are no longer justified. We will be leaving the site after 7 solid years of growth until 2019. Something is broken with Etsy management is unwilling to admit to or fix.
Fees are too high, and some have to be paid up front before selling anything. Analytics and views tracking is nice, and the listing interface is excellent with having the ability to bulk edit and duplicate items. Changed to free shipping for $35+ orders to get better exposure but have NOT seen increased views from this.
The monthly fees are draining to a small shop like mine. I had Zero profits in the span of 5 years. Every sale made, (which was maybe 4 a year) went straight back into the shop for the fees. It was my first experience on having an online store, and I am very sorry that I spent so long being loyal to one online seller for so long. Absolute waste, other than learning from this experience.
Etsy’s ODR is ridiculous, your shop can be closed because a package that was shipped on time is delayed, delivered to the wrong house or stolen. Replacing the lost or stolen item does not count in your favor. Cases opened for these reasons are counted against you even if the case closed in your favor. The shop has no recourse or appeal process. It is not uncommon for Etsy customer service to hang up on you; if you can even get someone on the phone. If I could rate Etsy for customer service it would be minus 200.
Sellers Choice Awards:
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