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As per the normal, Etsy has provided some monthly site-wide stats to make sellers drool over how well the company is doing. But once again, it isn't good news for sellers (or 'sunny' as they call it) when you actually look at the numbers.$7.93 million of goods sold — a 5% increase over August. 544,157 items sold, a 5.3% increase from July's stats.
This is an average price of $14.50 per item, and the number of items sold is half the number of registered members. So half of all Etsy members bought 1 item in all of September. I personally bought about 5. So less than half of all potential, registered Etsy buyers were active last month. And only 5 items sold per active shop (see below for that calculation). Ouch. Also, the equal percentage increases means that this has been the average price since at least July.
911,191 new items were listed, up from 869,000 items last month, a 4.9% increase.The number of items listed increased the same percentage as items sold, therefore, there was no actual increase in sales from the pool of items. Also, the sales per shop has decreased and the number of new buyers has not changed, yet more and more items are being added.
96,473, new members joined the Etsy community, including 18,001 new sellers. Both of these rates of new sellers and new buyers are essentially flat from last month.
Only 60% of new listings sold if considering all old listings from previous months as unsold. The pool of stagnant sales has increased by almost 400,000. This means that net % of items marked as sold is actually decreasing.
344,000,000 page views were recorded on the site, a slight increase from
August.
This is an average of 632 views per sale and approximately 344 views per registered member (assuming the 1 million number they tout). So, once again, only half of the potential, registered buyers are viewing and then buying...at the end of their 344 views. But this doesn't tell us how many views were items and how many were just the front page, the Dorque, the treasuries, the forums, and what not. So this number and my calculations are actually moot...if only they provided numbers that meant something. Like how many people view the shopfront of an individual store but not any items, where the views come from, how long visitors stay on a page...you know, useful information.
A few things to consider with these numbers:
September has one less day than August, which makes a significant difference
as we start having $300,000 sales days (that’s right — even in these tough
economic times, we set a single day record on Sept 30th: $305,000!).
Oh yeah, that’s success
*rolls eyes*
16 Comments:
[Rolls eyes with you.]
I sure as heck didn't see those sales. The few sales I made recently came from busting my hump to bring in people to Etsy offline and through my own web sites, but I don't want to do that anymore due to the arbitrary featuring of the same sellers (don't want to call them artists, as some don't merit that title) at Etsy. It would cost me just as much work to bring in people to my own site with my own shopping cart, or sell my work offline. Why direct them to a marketplace for everyone else's benefit other than my own?
How about stats on how many customers were frustrated by the idiotic search and left?
How many were upset that they didn't receive answers to their questions and left?
How many sellers closed their shops?
So, what do you think?
Stop allowing new registered sellers until they fix shit?
Actually promote Etsy to buyers?
I don't understand, with the constant stream of new Dorque articles, what the focus is here?
If it were me, I'd fix the broken shit before doing anything else.
But common sense isn't Indie.
Wow. I guess I've skewed the average. September was my best month yet on Etsy, selling 85 listings with an average of $20.65 each.
btw- these were all handmade, not supplies or vintage
Etsy has been touting these useless stats for months, and, yes, they have always ignored the stagnant inventory, which is higher than the total number sold. Because inventory = a listing and constant relisting that was paid for by the sellers, which is Etsy's main income.
Etsy's main income is not sales commissions, so sales have always been secondary.
Etsy actually thinks publishing these obcure stats is more than sellers deserve to know, and presenting them in such a bizarre fashion also shows Etsy wouldn't know a value-stat if it sat on their heads and bit their little hey hey hey noses.
(These kinds of Dorque blurbs sure make them look like the idiots they are.)
I'd like to see an analysis like this: How many actual sales are made per Dorque post/article?
And: How many page views are spent in the Dorque per day and how many of those page views could have been spent in actual stores making actual buys of actual products made by actual sellers?
Hey hey hey hey hey Etsy! Dorque page views belong in the stores, you know, like, um, like shopping and buying stuff, you know?
Etsy, your stats are not our stats. Get it?
Your stats show what your customers (us, the sellers) are up to and how good things look for you, Etsy.
Our stats, which we are in desperate need of, would show us what OUR customers, the people we are BRINGING TO YOUR SITE, are up too.
Why is that such a hard concept to grasp? Just because lots of your customers don't know how to analyze the "stats" you are providing and just listen to you blindly does not mean it's the right to publish. I think it's pretty shady considering we all now know for a fact that you are being lead by an experienced CEO.
When is Maria going to start filtering site content?
Of course, Etsy just gave ammunition to the sellers with their heads in the clouds who are insisting that I'm not doing enough to promote my shop or "it's the economy" or some other such bullshit. Seriously, if I can sell a hair I pulled out of my hubby's ass and sell it on Ebay because it's "haunted"...then I should be able to sell some fricken earrings on Etsy.
Oohh, but.. but.. all the numbers are up! They are doing sooo well! I mean, it's sunny weather! Sunny I tell ya!
*deeeeeeeeeeeeeeep sigh*
Bahhhhh...I believe haunted ass hair is very rare.
Yeh, I would like to know WHO was getting this millions of dollars in sales because I got squat. It would also be nice to know how much of that was SELLERS buying from SELLERS because as far as i know every sale i've ever had is from someone i know of Etsy. I rarely have new/unknown buyers. It's usually etsy buying from etsy.
They cheer about the # of items listed...
BUT
does that include the items renewed, renewed, and renewed again by the shops trying to up their views by paying Etsy big bucks to sell something for way less than it's worth?
You hhit the nail when you said "Etsy stats are not seller stats".
Etsy needs to pay attention to quality handmade. It seems they do best when they push the idea that ANYONE can sell ANYTHING and quit their day job. What a crock!! Great if you are selling $.20 listings, not so much when you are selling quality handmade et al.
I think that what etsy is attempting to do is blind people with big numbers.
when you look at $7.93 million dollars. That's a lot!
But when you delve in to the number further you see an average sale of $14.50 which is a more telling number. It reflects a fall in the average sale.
I refuse to spend one penny advertising for Etsy when I have no way of knowing which ad is paying off.
I spend about $500 or more a month on advertising for my other website, and it pays off quite nicely. Too bad Etsy won't be getting a piece of that action. I sell about 2 to 3 items on my other site for every item I sell on Etsy.
"I don't understand, with the constant stream of new Dorque articles, what the focus is here?"
DUH. The Dorque. The Blessed Dorque is the focus.
Disclaimer: I'm NOT making this post to rub it in the face of other sellers. I'm merely trying to further clarify how "successful" Etsy really is for handmade artisans and crafters.
I'm a supplies seller on Etsy. I think they should quit skewing the numbers by including supplies sales on there, frankly. I sell about 30 items a day on average, and that's chicken feed compared to the biggies like Lululalaland or Artfulmarket who sell over 100 a day at the very least.
If you look at the Etsywiki Top Sellers page, you can count at least 120 supply sellers who've sold 1k-5k items. Say they sell an average of 10 items a day.
Then count the 25 sellers who sell 5k-10k items. Say they average 30items a day.
Then count the remaining 20 sellers who sell 10k+. I think it's fair to say the average sales for these folks are 100 items a day.
So that's 2000 items a day for the big kahunas, another 750 for the medium sizers (and that's a low estimate, in my opinion), and another 1200 for the newbies/"small" timers.
That's 2150 items a day, or 64.5k items a month.
Now, if you look at the Commercial Supplies listings for the month of September, there are about 3045 pages of items still listed. That's also about 64k items. So if you add the sold items to the unsold items you have about 128k listed items. That's about 14% of the overall listings.
That's a group of less than 200 sellers making 14% of Etsy's overall listings and 12% of Etsy's overall sales (both low estimates in my opinion).
I'm no math expert, and my numbers could be off because my basis for comparison is my own sales and Etsy's existing listings. It doesn't factor in the amount of listings that are just destash of occasional sellers; sellers who mistag commercial supplies as handmade and vice versa; or people selling supplies who a) aren't Top Sellers, b) are Top Sellers but have no idea EtsyWiki exists.
My stats class was pure hell to try and pass, okay? 'Nuff said.
But even I can tell that 12% and 14% for .1% of sellers is a statistically significant skew.
Basically it means that the rest of you didn't make $14.50. More like $12.50. Okay, maybe $12.75, I'm feeling generous.
And these numbers are very likely to skew further as crafters stock up on supplies for the holiday season. So if Etsy brags that October was even better than September for overall listings and sales, well....take it with a huge pile of salt.
alext - thanks for analyzing the first thing that popped into my mind. Considering most of what sells on Etsy is supplies, the stats for handmade crafts must be much lighter on the volume and price.
And the higher end art and artisan sales? Dismal. Of course, if the Art Collectors Gift Guide is what Admins think is fine art, forget trying to sell in that category.
There's plenty of great art on Etsy, but any collector who goes to that section will see nothing but illustrated birdies, bunnies and deer.
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