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I've finally seen the light.
Etsy has said many times its goal is to help artists make a living at their craft. We all assumed they meant we could make a living by selling on Etsy. But they had a much more creative approach in mind. They would frustrate us, show us all the ways not to run an internet business, and waste our time and money. Finally, one by one, we will realize it is easier and cheaper to set up our own sites and promote just ourselves - and get more exposure and sales too. Then we all will be successful artists.
Creative strategy Etsy - but couldn't you have just made a tutorial on how to set up your own website instead of making us hate cupcakes in the process?
Monday, June 30, 2008
From the Bitches Auxiliary
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12 Comments:
By, George, I think you've got it!
I never figured out why so many people went on about outside promotion, adwords etc to drive traffic to your etsy shop. It never made sense to me to drive any traffic to anywhere but my own site.
It definitely makes more sense, whatever. Just not always to those right in the thick of things.
oh, I get the point socali about being "right in the thick of things" , Which is why I did not argue with anyone about it. Back in the early etsy days I thought I was somehow missing something and that is why it was not making sense to me.
If you even yelp that you have an outside website all the cluless haters jump all over you and cheer for Etsy.
How freakin stupid must you be to not realize that you shouldn't spend YOUR advertising dollars on "someone else's" site! Etsy does not repay you for your loyalty. Etsy figures they can con everyone into thinking their opinion matters when it really doesn't.
I've had my own site way before Etsy so if Etsy fell off the earth tomorrow it wouldn't matter to me sales wise. People need to wake the fuck up. Seriously.
There are simply too darn many things on Etsy. It is completely overwhelming, like a walmart on steroids, No one can navigate that stuff unless they know precisely where they are going. I left off one letter on a friend's shop and could not find it for many hours in the etsy search. They need to break Etsy up into..... Art Etsy (separate) Vintage Etsy and so on so it would be navigable--as it is now it is almost usless unless someone is buying indiscriminately. Terrifically bad, Etsy.
Etsy is the new Amway!
Once I found out that A) Etsy does not advertise to buyers and expects its sellers to do all the marketing and B) that they offer no stats I took my already existing website (I've owned for about 10 years now) and created an online portfolio that I now promote instead. At least, this way I can track how people are finding my site, what key words lead them to me, what pages they look at, etc.
Like I've said before, why would I spend my hard earned dollars and time to drive MY customers to Etsy where I risk loosing them to other artisans, cheap resellers or to the frustration of check out?
It took me a little while to figure out, but I've been slowly building my own site. With this current outage, I've had PLENTY of time to work on it, as well as putting up more listings on Ebay.
Etsy made me a PowerSeller! Thanks, Etsy!!
I really do think that Etsy is a stepping stone for those who want to turn their hobby into a serious, professional business.
And it seems that those who have already crossed that bridge, for them Etsy is just one of many venues they sell through.
i think this is just what everyone comes to know and do. realize that you have to work too hard for etsy and all for a plain boring shop page (which can be nice but i'd like a bit more) with no stats and customers have to SIGN UP and then they can't figure out paypal and then there's a TON of competition....
having your own site, even with the start up costs, is just so much more WORTH it.
If Etsy could provide a truly good selling platform and enable people to have easily marketable shop spaces, then it really would be worth continuing to promote externally. But I gave up on that happening quite some time ago :(
Although it was actually Etsy ethics that motivated me to get my own shop set up - within a week of five of my friends being perma-banned from the forums for no given reason I had my own shop designed, built and operational. I've done no promotion of my Etsy shop (apart from renewing) or Etsy as a whole ever since. Nothing quite focusses the mind like a good old fashioned banning!
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