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Just as EB predicted, all that maintenance downtime on Etsy has resulted in a new blog post by tag-errific emilybidwell with her collection of Etsy’s pre-season picks for the Holiday Gift Guides,
which are delightfully described in her words as: "....a small selection of the captivating gift ideas you'll soon be drooling over..."
While we wait in drool-drenched anticipation for these same items to show up on the front page (again) day in and day out in December, anything else in that "distinct Etsy style" you want sellers to start making priced below cost?
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Etsy Holiday Gifts Trendsetter? NOT!
Posted by The Funny One at 8:00 AM
Tagged: emilybidwell, Etsy, etsy picks, favorites, storque
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27 Comments:
Etsy's line of reasoning is so odd...hey, let's make a gift guide! Oh cool, I can get a couple blog posts out of it too! Ooh yeah, and several front pages! woohoo, we don't do anything!
I am starting to get disheartened; yesterday there were 2 (I think, see they all blend together) FP picks. Not that there is anything wrong with the color gray, its a perfectly nice color. But it's making me wonder if I should retake all my pictures.
The thing is, most of my things would look really weird on that slate background, and, worse then that, I *LIKE* my backgrounds as is. Sure my pic taking can improve, but all that color is fun to look at.
Conform? Not conform? Sigh. Sometimes I really hate not liking what's deemed "in", and no being a lemming.
Not knocking the sellers who are featured, but again it's about the photography.
None of this is a surprise. Neither will repetitions of these same styles be a surprise, either.
It must be nice for the staff of Etsy to just sit around and think of stupid crap all day long....if you can call it thinking at all
Excuses about the pix are as out of touch with reality as Etsy is. It isn't about the pix, it's about the TYPE of Etsy-cloned pix (no wonder complaints about copying have skyrocketed) and the teeny selection of Etsy-approved products that is what Etsy is today.
I'd like to underline PRICING on Etsy, because most of what Etsy loves to promote ad-nauseum is priced BELOW COST. This is the true danger of Etsy - no rules based on personalities (when they aren't pouting) means anything can join the competition but be sure to:
1. make the same stuff Etsy has picked as faves for the last 24 months (no imagination whatsoever)
2. price it 20% below your nearest competitor
3. fuck quality, origin or tags, just stylize!
Fans of handmade evacuate!
Honestly, would it kill etsy to feature more than one colour at a time on the FP?
It's just all so depressingly the same. And the endless parade of cowls and fingerless gloves and that freaking gnome beard I swear I've seen about 8 times recently. So many zillions of items for sale and a freaking gnome beard gets repeatedly featured?
I mean, admittedly there's a hell of a lot of crap being sold on Etsy, but there's also a lot of nice stuff that has multiple colours! And non-grey backgrounds! Shocking!
Here's my beef:
How in the hell do they feel qualified to even PICK front pages? Sorry, cowls, fingerless gloves,mustaches, owls and twee shit are SO two years ago!
I don't see any fashionistas over there. dumpster diving for your wardrobe is the norm- so how can we even expect them to know what high end high quality goods are?
There are some extremely talented artisans on Etsy(god only knows why they stay)
If you're going to cookie-cutter the front pages, at least do it with items that show off talent, not what DanielleXO thinks is cool.
Oh, pricing. So many times in the forums, chat, and labs I've seen sellers talk about how they only charge for materials and not their time because they 'just love to make!' Yeah, don't we all?
Or the trap of charging super low to 'get people into the store.' You may be making the sales, but there's no point if you're losing money every time.
I don't know about anyone else, but I won't buy from a seller who's undercharging themselves like that because I feel like I'm ripping them off.
All of this means that an artist can't make a living selling on Etsy, and because of Etsy's sweatshop pricing preferences, it is hard for an artist to make a living on the craft show circuit or by selling to boutiques, etc., because the public expects to pay the prices they see on Etsy. Also, because of the desaturated soft-focus pictures that privilege the moody model over the actual product, it is impossible to discern the difference in quality between a bracelet put together with badly-closed jumprings, for example, and one that is properly soldered or expertly wire-wrapped.
Increasingly, an artist can't afford to quit his or her day job, and Etsy is partly to blame for that. Whenever I read of an Etsy seller who says that selling on Etsy is her F/T job, I think: still in school and/or living at home, or hubby is doing well.
how to get on front page
find piece of dried poo in yard, decide its owl poo. maybe magic owl poo if you are glitter prone.
spray paint poo in etsy approved colour like orange.
find dried out manky-assed birds nest, spray paint in etsy approved yellow.
write snarky but cute description about the poo in the nest.
write a story about the owl that lived in the nest, make it a cool emo owl. make it a story about a cool emo owl hand knitting his cowl neckwarmers while combing out his steam punk mustache. he left his nest for christmas vacation in the 1960s and hasn't returned yet.
spend hours photographing poo nest in a fully decorated christmas tree you keep on hand just for etsy photos. take a 4 hour trip to photo the nest placed just so in the middle of a country lane, drive back to the city and photo your nest in a pair of hands held gently over the koi pond at the japanese gardens. photo nest under glass bell jar alongside a taxidermy ermine and some fresh fern fronds you happened to have laying around your studio.
tag with, vintage, owl, handmade, sunset, nest, woodland, bird, tangerine, lemon, sunny, mod, storage, decor, faux bois, wildlife, steam punk, christmas and victorian.
be sure to either overprice it because you are an artist who is really into recycling, or underprice it because after all it was just a free piece of poo and you had left over spray paint in the shed any ways.
bask in the glow of exalted gift guidedness, front page halo and envy induced retching sounds.
just for fun submit yourself to regretsy and get a contract to sell your 'line' of owl poo nests to anthropologie and whole foods as a protest against logging in the sahara or something else you know nothing about. laugh all the way to the bank. lather rinse repeat.
Good grief. I just need somewhere to vent!!
When will this blatant pretentious ass-kissing like activity not be rewarded?? You know what I'm talking about. Read today's Dorque article regarding their favorite Twitter tweeters.
And will little girl dresses stop being presented by vintage sellers as hip, trendy "micro minis". Same with old lady nightgowns as pretty eyelet dresses. They are what they are. wtf??
I'm so pissed off!#!???
Thank you Etsy Bitch for giving me a place to vent. ;)
Hope you guys heard the inane Virtual Lab today on holiday 'promo mojo.'
Really? Spiderbite? Elementalclaystudio? Fuck, stop boring me with the same stupid useless shit. Even if seeing these things didn't make me throw-up in my mouth a little every time, I wouldn't buy them if you held a gun to my head. The only thing missing are the reseller's prints and the shitty silk screened ties.
I'd like to gag someone at etsy with a spoon.
And, I am knocking the seller's who are featured. It doesn't take talent to do that with clay.
Is it just me, or is that sleep mask butt-ugly?
I looked at that article -- there's nothing there that I would buy, actually.
At first glance I thought that was vulva pride soap.
All of Etsy's gift guides need some SOS for their SOS: SAME OL' SHIT!
I am so friggin tired of being told what is "in" and what I'll just "love". Etsy doesn't know me from their own asses.
I was there, Irritated. I like the business plan of 'don't buy any of your own materials, get friends/family to give them to you!' to keep costs down and prices low. Very professional.
Oh, pricing. So many times in the forums, chat, and labs I've seen sellers talk about how they only charge for materials and not their time because they 'just love to make!' Yeah, don't we all?
_________
Just speaking for myself, but I also enjoy eating and hot water, so I charge a little extra.
Exactly! And when she said the secret to selling is luck and karma....great. I'm so glad that this is what they have to offer as tips for holiday marketing.
If you're going to cookie-cutter the front pages, at least do it with items that show off talent, not what DanielleXO thinks is cool.
..............
I stumbled onto DanielleeXO on Twitter. First of all, I am always put off by people who write "i" instead of "I." How old are you, twelve?
Second of all, she's an airhead.
Makes me even a little more glad that I purchased my own .com domain name. Oh for a standalone store....
Well speaking of cowls, did you see the winning outfit on "Project Runway" had a open back cowl neck sweater big enough to hide in? Michael Kors even commented how
80's Aspen chic it looked, so why the win? I just don't get it!
Quoting Make Way for Deliciousness...
I was there, Irritated. I like the business plan of 'don't buy any of your own materials, get friends/family to give them to you!' to keep costs down and prices low. Very professional.
**
And more proof that Etsy admin's image of its sellers is a bunch of teenage girls who live with their parents.
Are there any grownups at Etsy at all?
I do not want the venue I use to set TREND ONE.
Whenever I read of an Etsy seller who says that selling on Etsy is her F/T job, I think: still in school and/or living at home, or hubby is doing well.
________
No kidding. And then you hear the BS about "why does it matter if the seller has a hubby/boyfriend living with them". Because...dummy...if you rent, say, a one bedroom apartment, rent for one is the same as rent for two. It does matter.
Could you imagine if eBay had acted like Etsy, trying to dictate trends and whatnot? They'd have gone out of business years ago.
I'm tired of being force fed this grossly overpriced shit.
Makes me want to snap off it's little porcelain arms.
http://www.craftcult.com/etsyfeatured.php?userid=6978127
All that free promo and still hasn't broken 100 sales? Seems like a waste of valuable real estate on crap that doesn't sell.
For the record, the first 10 times I saw this stuff, I thought it was pretty cool. Nothing I would throw a C note at, but cool nonetheless.
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