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- Where?
- who are these 200,000 sellers and why am I not one of them?
- in June, 6.5 million dollars of merchandise sold... supposing there was only the 200,000 sellers that were making a living on etsy selling... that equals an average of $32.50 in income for a month.
- Don't Bogart that joint my friend....pass it over to me.
- i'm lucky if i make a tank of gas off Etsy a month these days
- I guess Kalin's quote was what I call letting your shotgun mouth overload your bee-bee gun butt. :)
- It depends on how you define "making a living"... I pay lots of my bills each month with the money that I make off of etsy.
- Bwahahahahahahahahaha
- Well.....maybe in certain countries $32.50 is a lot.
That is a half a tank of gas for me.
Pity.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Quotables: 200,000 "making their livings from Etsy"
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15 Comments:
I have been writing a reply to this statement since I saw it in the Times, even before you posted it.
*of the 200,000 shops on etsy, over 100,000 are empty
*10% of the remainder are owned by a person having 2 or more shops
*sellers go out of business on a daily basis.
But most importantly, statements like this postion etsy in a favorable light for the investors as well as a large company who wants to purchase etsy. They do not bode well for an artist actually trying to make a living from their craft.
Simple 4th grade division will tell you that no one can live on less than $50.00 a month. Not even a 4th grader.
Ugh! Don't get me started...
Is there no end to the BS that comes from the mouths of admin? At this point if I hear Kalin or any etsy admin say anything remotely accurate, coherent, or rational, I might die of shock.
Simple 4th grade division will tell you that no one can live on less than $50.00 a month. Not even a 4th grader.
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But $50 CAN buy you a month's worth of cupcakes Sherry... Wait, no it can't. Well, you might be able to buy the ingredients for a month's worth of cupcakes... Now, all you need is a home, a stove, fuel for said stove and a cupcake pan and you're set!
no need for a stove. Just set them cupcakes on fire- Wristeroni style.
No, it's not funny when you match what Etsy has been promising for 3 years and what they actually delivered.
They delivered a company with 63 employees who never had sellers at the top of their priority list.
No, it's not funny when you start to understand why sellers are begging, yes reduced to begging, for swift changes because they believed in the promises, invested heavily with time, money, sweat and tears, and they care about what they create.
No, it's not funny when you realize that 63 employees ARE making a living on Etsy while the other tens of thousands of sellers are fighting all the roadblocks that Etsy puts in their way every single day.
It's amazing that any seller is making any money on Etsy.
People *could* be making a living from their own outside website, Ebay, Mintd, and Etsy combined. Sure.
But Etsy has nothing to do with that success. Making a living from Etsy alone? A *living*?! Highly unlikely and I'm sure very rare.
I don't count their "I just quit my job to do Etsy full time" series because most of the people they feature or young (19 or so) and probably still live at home. That does not a living make. That is more like allowance.
Well, simply for the sake of Devil's Advocacy, I don't know that Etsy ever literally intended to be a way for people to make their whole living...BUT that doesn't mean it's not irresponsible for Admins to say that people are when that's not reality.
And yes...many people do split their time between Etsy and other sources. For me it's Etsy and personal networking. And I'm ALLLLLmost making a living doing it...I'm hiring an employee, which for me is movin' on up.
Oh...and living in luxury, I am not. Haha...important to point out ;)
I made a living for a while with just my etsy shop and wholesale orders from B&Ms that found me through Etsy. (I now also have my own shop, and quite a bit of extra income from there). I don't live at home, I pay my own rent, and I live in a country which is much more expensive than the US.
However, I have a feeling I'm very much a minority, and Kalin's statement left me somewhat appalled. It's just..a lie, and it's irresponsible. It seems to credit Etsy with the success of its sellers, when in fact it has a lot to do with sheer hard work, and marketing yourself everywhere you can think of to bring in the customers, and very little to do with Etsy. It used to be that making it to the FP was a big deal for me, but now it seems to make no difference to the day's sales.
Even Emily from the Black Apple has a blog that she uses very effectively to create a customer base. To entail that you can just put stuff up on etsy and rely on it to bring in the money is misleading at best.
Whereas I do think one can earn a tidy sum selling wares on Etsy - the average "crafter" that Etsy targets as a new seller is usually sorely dissapointed by reality within a month or two.
The "quit you day job" series is fairly accurate in some respects: I see very young females in what appear to be tiny apartments describing exhausting 12 hour, 7 day a week schedules. I guess that's just not my idea of handcrated Nirvana.
Oh geeze, cut Cupcake boy some slack. You know he meant to say, "63 people are making a living off the backs of 200,000 sellers."
word, wende!
Etsy is like Amway or some other scam, some folks make money and convince others to join, but most suckers are just, well, suckered.
32.50 is exactly what I have made during the 6 MONTHS I have listed my hand made art on Etsy ... I obviously do NOT make a living from Etsy; I do sell my work in b & m s and at events, as well as teach, so I DO make a living from art, but NOT from Etsy.
It sounds like a marketing move, one that will backfire. I hope this isn't Rob's way of primping Etsy to sell it. Most buyers take a long hard look at the item they are buying. They would see through such a lie.
Etsy has awesome potential. But, right now, it's hit a valley.
I'm just glad my shops are doing well.
Poll Up!
http://indienightmares.blogspot.com/
***I don't count their "I just quit my job to do Etsy full time" series because most of the people they feature or young (19 or so) and probably still live at home. That does not a living make. That is more like allowance. ***
just because someone is young doesn't mean this is "allowance"
I am 21 and live alone, and pay for everything just like a real grown up.
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