Here is the Article!

As we haven't gotten our copies yet someone was nice enough to send us along a PDF to share. Please buy it though!

Click the thumbs for a larger version.

Our little Secret...

A few months ago we were approached by a writer working up a story about Etsy. They had been looking at the Etsy and somethings weren't adding up. They looked around some more and found us - and didn't find us so far off the mark. We agreed on many many things!

That writer was with Fortune Small Business Magazine. And that article is now out on newsstands (sorry, not online right now, should be in a week or so over on CNN Money as FSB runs it's content there online). We were holding off saying anything till it was actually out online, but the first review came in (in form of a comment on the last post) and we are busting out to share!

Just found out about this blog from the very funny IMHO article about Etsy in the latest issue of Fortune Small Business. The article is called "Can an anti-corporate website survive commercial success?" -- I'm sure y'all know about it... anyway the people who run Etsy appear to me to be, in a word, priggish, and exactly the type of folk who deserve and anti-website. Keep it up.

That's a GREAT review! Run out and get your copies! We are! If you get a copy please tell us what you think!

Facebook connect - now spam your family!

We're sure by now you have all (or at least most of you) heard about or seen the Facebook connect for your Etsy shop. Etsy has been working diligently since May to turn out this wonderful promotional tool for its sellers.

aaaahahahahah sorry, I couldn't keep that up.

The truth is, from what we can gather in statements posted on and off Etsy is that Facebook developed the app and eBay added it so Etsy did too (even though they try to take credit for it - you slimy bastards). But it doesn't seem to work on Etsy and it can only add links to your personal profile, not your fan page (this is a Facebook thing). It might work in IE, but other browser users are reporting errors and/or sluggishness.

Etsy, for all things spam! If they can integrate the code properly, that is.

If you click on the icon on the top menu of your screen after logging in, you can choose to not have it show again if you'd rather forget it exists.


goatmountainarts said:

*sob* This is like getting underwear for Christmas. *runs off waving arms in the air and crying*

uknowuneedanother said:

Etsy, y'all seriously need to regroup, put down the crack pipe, and focus on some reality.

If you were quoted, congratulations and thanks! You can find your celebratory "I've been Quoted" (and other EB avatars) by clicking here.

Etsybitch.com works again!

We had some issues when we had it transferred so it wasn't redirecting here. The registrar found the problem and now it seems to be working just fine again. Sorry it took so long to fix.

It's a deal of finding the time and tweaking and waiting 24-72 hours for it to resolve to see if that did it. This time it's seemed to have finally worked.

Thanks for you patience everyone - keep bitching!

Etsy talks about “Product” and “Priorities” but what about what sellers want?

If you are just getting the latest "Etsy News" in your inboxes gushing about a long list of Etsy-generated changes to the site that are so old and insignificant, the sellers must be wondering where the hell Etsy’s been for the first 6 months of 2009. Out of town (again) on a PR junket? Etsy is out of town so much these days that it’s weekend light duty at Gold Street 24/7!

We’d like to point a finger at the meager, brief, and trite gobbledegook:

"Help improving customer support is top of mind for us at Etsy. We will be updating our internal systems and processes in the coming months to provide better support to our members. This includes updating our Help pages to make it easier for members to find information more quickly."

What did you say? Top of mind? Huh? Does sentence #1 read a lot like sentence #2? Did we just develop a bad case of double vision? Sudden lack of comprehension?

IF you mean Customer Service, as in PROVIDING CONCRETE AND COMPREHENSIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT for sellers on Etsy, sellers have been thinking (for 4 whole years) that this means:
1. Email support 24/7 with an online Request for Help function with a finite turnaround of 24-48 hours.
2. 1-800 Customer Support during regular business hours.

You know, like every other huge online retail site provides - a formal Customer Service Department that acts like customer service! You know, that little button at the bottom of the front page that says "Contact Customer Service"...like that.

Who the hell are you kidding, Etsy You’ve been ignoring the need for Customer Service for your sellers for years - you throw out a wishy-washy 3 sentences that are as vague and noncommittal as your fixation on the non-colors BEIGE and WHITE - and we’re supposed to pat you on the back?

What did you say? Right, another bunch of nothing.

You finally hire a customer service director and this is all we get.

Etsy's CEO is oblivious

She has to be to say crap like this:

On the technical end, scaling swiftly and keeping pace with consumer expectations and demand can sometimes feel overwhelming for a company with limited resources. Acknowledging that this problem exists regardless of stage, Thomas recommended the following tactics:

• Hire the best CTO you can find. Do not settle on this one!
  
• Make clear who is in charge of and responsible for development sprints
  
• Be deliberate in deciding upon and building a collective mindset around development methodology

Has she been in the forums lately?

And then there's the admittance of what we always thought. Etsy's marketing plan is simply to get it for free, from their own customers:

Etsy is known for its loyal and enthusiastic community, and accordingly, uses a customer driven approach to marketing. Thomas suggested the following strategies to develop community and enhance engagement:

• Create methods for consumers to engage one another. Etsy, for example, has forums, internal email, chat, and teams.
  
• Get to know, in person, some of your customers in order to really understand them
  
• If necessary, use a service like Get Satisfaction to ensure customers needs are adequately noted and addressed
  
• Measure loyalty through metrics like net promoter scores and repeat customers
  
• Take advantage of high quality, enthusiastic interns

We assume that the customers they get to know are the faves, or maybe the celebrities they show off (and try to ignore when they go crazy), or maybe she doesn't know who Etsy's customers are! Does she or any of the admin really get that the sellers are their customers?

And their customers bring them new customers. But grassroots works both ways. The negative word about how Etsy treats its customers can be spread just as quickly and easily as the positive words that built the site. If everyone were to suddenly spread the word that Etsy is awful to its customers, but the sellers on the site need help because of that, there will gradually be fewer new sellers and the current sellers won't go sale-less as they move off to other horizons.

Etsy's ship is sinking, and the CEO is out blowing air up the public's ass. Why are they inviting her?! She has done nothing to help Etsy, as far as it's actual customers go. But maybe she's done exactly what she was brought in to do - pretend it's ok so investors will still pay.

I think I see what Etsy has become. You have to sort of squint to see it. But first you have to erase everything we used to know Etsy to be. It's no longer a close knit community, admin are no longer one of us, the founders are no longer struggling to help their customers. Etsy is a corporation, now known as Etsy Corp. And they are doing exactly what they once stood against - promoting mainstream, in the box, mass produced, disposable and unnecessary crap that is a detriment to handmade and to the values of helping one another ("take advantage of enthusiastic interns" = "these people will do anything if you tell them it's good for handmade")

They are no longer about helping artists make a living. They are all about Etsy Corp making another dime. And the corporate world loves the fact that they can learn from Etsy - learn how to take advantage of their customers.

If you want to tell Etsy what you think, there's currently a forum thread where the link was posted and launchbox has commenting available at the bottom of the article. Edit: on 6/29 the thread was closed after anti-Maria sentiment caused HeyMichelle to remind the community to treat other members with respect. Also, it has been brought to our attention that Launchbox is not posting comments on the article and that some who contacted them have been muted by Etsy for older threads. There is also Twitter talk of at least 1 shop closure of a previous anti-Etsy voice. If you are muted, shutdown, or otherwise harrassed for flimsy or inappropriate reasons, send us an email or twitter.

(Thank you to the readers who brought the article to our attention)

The engineers are sleeping...still

We've been watching a thread regarding some problems with searching multi-word tags. We figured that bugs happen, we'll give Etsy a chance. That is, we figured that until someone pointed out that this 'bug' was reported a month ago.

Searching for a multiword tag in your item tags, may not find it (example, "sterling silver earrings" or "sterling silver"). The workaround is searching for "word1_word2". But buyers don't search this way! And if you have "word1 word2 word3", searching for "word1_word2" doesn't find it: "sterling silver earrings" won't be found searching for "sterling silver" or "sterling_silver"

We know Etsy is busy fixing the SEO, but we've always been told that different people work on different things - so why can't they fix this troublesome search bug at the same time?

RobWhite chimed in on page 1 of the new thread that the engineers have been notified - there's been no additional word and it's now 2 days later.

Is everyone at Etsy sleeping? Someone better wake up, because their car is on the edge of the cliff - and Toonces is driving.

Seeing is Believing Etsy, but.......

As of 6/18/09, saralouhicks has finally posted a lengthy response to the SEO debacle in this forum post

EB certainly applauds the corrections to SEO search titles that Etsy promises to put in place (though it is copying Artfire yet again), but we’ve been around the block a few too many times with Etsy. Promises that arrive many days after the issue became the hot seller topic in cyberspace just don’t come across as all that sincere. We’ll believe it when we see it. (And wait with bated breath for the next nutty idea.)

Meanwhile, the damage already done will live on, and the negative publicity surrounding Etsy’s latest faux pas will add to the pile of mistrust constructed by Etsy’s inability and stubborn unwillingness to communicate with their sellers BEFORE they implement dramatic branding and marketing changes that affect every single seller on the site. This time they went too far.

We’d like to point out that Sara’s conclusion is a little off the mark:

We read that some of you believe our initial SEO approach was deceitful or mal-intentioned. This is not true.

While Etsy’s "initial SEO approach" may not have been mal-intentioned or even malicious, it WAS DONE WITHOUT seller input and without beta-testing. Disrespectful and deceitful, yes.

It was also done with COMPLETE DISINTEREST in how it might affect the sellers on Etsy.

It was done with the explicit intention of benefitting Etsy’s merchandising and branding plan and boosting Etsy’s numbers in search and search results. It was NOT done to provide a better search tool to send buyers to individual sellers (since the seller names fell off the Search grid). The proof is in the fewer views and fewer sales pudding.

The complete disconnect between Etsy and its sellers couldn’t be more evident.

Repeat the Rage

We tweeted asking if people wanted a listing strike, and put a link to this old post with avatars we made when Etsy Fucked up search, remember that? Ah that was fun. Good times.

Tons of you spoke out, many of you seemed to have missed them first time around, so here are the links (above) so you can see them again. If we get around to it, we'll make more for THIS particular blunder. ("MY stuff is not YOUR stuff, ETSY!" has a nice ring to it!)

We are serious about a listing strike, though, it would be a strong message if several thousand shops just shut stores down in vacation mode for one week with an avatar from above post and a bluntly worded shop intro. DO you think it would help? What is your suggestion for subversive things to act against them? What date should we do the listing strike?

In the past it's proved that they only move tp repair blunders when there is a major backlash that bleeds off of Etsy onto other sites. Maybe it's time to step up the show and finally try to hurt them the only places they care, the wallet and public opinion.

Google Rankings, Keyword Stuffing and Lots of Fail Pie

I'm going to make this short and sweet and open up some discussion here...

We realize that many Etsy sellers are concerned about their rank in Google searches and the keyword stuffing. While Etsy fails with this on so many levels and their
keyword stuffing is hurting the rankings, its not as drastic as one might think. Your titles are key right now with search. I would worry more that Etsy starts your listing off as "Handmade Jewelry on Etsy" and then includes your title, which should be original and convey what you are selling. Control your titles and work on those first, and see if things improve. If not, you have a case of the Etsy Fails and would recommend finding a venue that suits your needs much better than what you are currently getting from Etsy. If you are feeling abused by them on this issue, why stick with them, KWIM?

Google is constantly changing their ranking criteria. What Etsy has done really has hurt us all, there's no denying. Keep on them, hammer away at it, and change things in your shop or start researching alternate venues.