Etsy is surveying sellers about their reaction to this week’s fee hike. The new fees are getting a lot of media attention as some sellers went “on strike” after petitioning the CEO to walk back the fee increase and institute more seller-friendly policies.
Etsy noted in the survey, “On April 11, 2022, we increased our 5% transaction fee to 6.5% to support our fast-growing marketplace,” and it said, “This change will support our plans to make significant investments in marketing, seller tools, and creating a world-class customer experience,” pointing to an article about the fee change.
It then asked sellers, “What is your overall reaction to this change,” giving them choices from which to select ranging from “Very negative” to “Very positive.”
It then asked sellers what planned investments was most important to them and would provide the most benefit to their business, giving them the following choices from which to select:
- Keeping Etsy unique – We’ll build on last year’s roughly $40 million investment in the teams and technology that help make our marketplace a safe and secure destination for handmade, vintage, and special items. This year we’ll expand our efforts to remove listings that don’t meet our policies and help you resolve issues with buyers.
- Seller tools and features – We’ll support seller growth by making investments in new and improved seller tools to make it easier and smoother to grow your business.
- Investing in marketing and buyer growth – We’ll make major investments in the TV commercials, influencers and tastemakers, podcast advertising, and email marketing that bring even more buyers to Etsy shops.
- Seller support – We’ll grow our support team by more than 20% so you can get help more quickly and easily, including faster email responses, expanded access to live chat, and prioritization of your most urgent requests.
- Something else (Please Specify)
Etsy didn’t say if it would share the results of the survey, but it is clear it serves as a vehicle to get its talking points across to sellers about what’s in it for them, though it never committed to spending the entire fee increase on those investments.
“make it easier and smoother to grow your business” ?
Stop raising fees.
Get rid of the nonsense :
Star Seller, redundant stats, weird bookkeeping, unending messages from “Etsy” about how we should run OUR businesses. It’s all just too much.
“make it easier and smoother to grow your business”…go get your own website and enjoy. You’ll be glad you did.
Leave Etsy in the dust.
I know the fee increase is just the cost of doing business and it would happen sooner or later. The timing was rather hard for a lot of sellers with their sales declining this year after the major spikem of sales during the pandemic. For that I am forever rolled into their offsite ads, spammed dailty on how to improve my shop, customer service, here look at trends and see all the good Etsy is doing for us sellers… It is exhausting.
The E
I know the fee increase is just the cost of doing business and it would happen sooner or later. The timing was rather hard for a lot of sellers with their sales declining this year after the major spike of sales during the pandemic and now with the insane amount of inflation on top of it. For that Etsy congratulated a lot of us by forever rolling our shop into their offsite ads scheme.
Honestly, I don’t think they have any real plans to better their customer service for us sellers or make any useful improvements to the site. But I do agree with The End, it is a great time to build your own website. I am so ready to move on.
And good luck to those who feel that getting a website is going to be the “saving grace”, because a website has fees, too. Just take a look at Shopify…their mid-ranged fees are $80 monthly….none of these website companies give you a site for free. The ultimate success to any business is by selling items that are unique, because…
“too much of the same thing competes with too much of the same thing”. This is ultimately what kills shop owners.
I have had the utmost respect for Etsy being unlike some of the other marketplaces. E-commerce seems the way to go these days.
Likewise, buyers are getting smarter too. If they go to an independent store they find on the internet, they receive far better pricing, great service. . .
THEN the marketplaces will suffer dearly. When they push around a good seasoned seller they are setting themselves up for disasters. Seasoned sellers will go out on their own.
The buyer is NOT paying the seller’s overhead pricing, such as the 35% commission, processing fees for payments and the rest.
THINK HOW MUCH BUYERS WILL SAVE?