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Despite teasing sellers for 2 years that they may be able to organize their favorites, Etsy has decided they will tell you what your new favorites should be. Forget the time you've taken to mark things, just shop and heart their suggestions instead!
Etsy launched a suggestions feature that you can get to by logging in and visiting your favorites page. It's supposed to be based on shops that are similar to those you already heart and those liked by those who heart the same shops you do (you know, like the connections tool they already had). But many people are saying that the first couple of pages appear to be favorites...no, not other Etsian favorites...favorites.
A stealth way to promote admin faves?
Even if it isn't anything devious, why the hell are they putting up something as useless as suggestions and redundant with other browsing tools when there are other things sellers want and need?
Oooh shiny things....ok, what's broken?
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Etsy has some suggestions for you
Posted by The Righteous One at 6:39 PM
Tagged: Etsy, favorites, really?, suggestions
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45 Comments:
Just checked mine, and it doesn't seem to be the things that etsy would favorite. It does seem to be in line with what I would be interested in.
Meh, this has nothing to do with that. The group working on this feature was acquired specifically for their expertise indeveloping marketing features. I'm guessing they have nothing to do with all the stuff sellers have been crying for.
As usual, I think people are jumping the gun a bit on this one.
Yeah, my list showed mostly already successful and popular sellers and despite the fact that they state that the pages change daily, I have to say for day 2 it was pretty much the same sellers just shuffled around.
The techs have already admitted that it needs tweaking so I'm willing to give it a little time to see how it goes. To be honest, I'd rather have this than pictures of other sellers listing in my shop pages, much less invasive.
And, if the pages wind up not changing much and it becomes redundant, no one will continue to use it or even look at it, so it behooves them to tweak it enough to keep everyone's interest, and then eventually everyone should make the 'hit parade'.
I'm reserving judgement on this one, to see how it develops. I really don't think it's useful to oppose it until it been given a chance to reach it's full potential. Hopefully the team is open to some of the suggestions offered to make it more equitable, not to mention suitable to each user. Remember, they have to start somewhere, so it's not going to be perfect right out of the gate.
Hey, at least the rollout of this feature didn't appear to screw up other stuff on the site, maybe this bunch actually knows what their doing!
I'm really curious to know in how many list I show up....oh already know: none. In my list there aren't a lot of shop in line with what I usually bookmark. so far I really don't understand what to do with it.
Sellers need more important features and this also assumes only sellers buy. Thanks, I'll search all by myself!
I refuse to heart people that I've seen on the front page and in the Storque and wherever; as well as the people who act like total assholes to anyone who dares goes to the forum to point out how utterly UNETHICAL it is for the same shops to be featured repeatedly.
Stamped spoons, cowls, wrap dresses, vintage shoes filled with someone else foot fungus, anything faux bois, owls, bicycles, or white-gray-beige should not be showing up in my "suggestions."
And they aren't.
However, these suggestions still suck.
A lot of them are people I refuse to heart anyway, and I have 20 pages of them, and the ones I refuse to heart will show up on page 1, and again on page 3, and again on page 9, and again on page 11.
If there are 20 pages, and I'm literally shown the same fucking shop on four different pages - how the fuck is that useful, especially, as it turns out, if it happens to be someone I decided was a suck-monster no-talent hack?
Why can't they make a feature work correctly before they roll it out? What the hell?
It does really suck. I don't think it's going to take the few visitors that do manage to get to my shop but it's definitely rubbing my face in others success, (and yes that success in some cases is pure shit luck by becoming an etsy fave). My list consists of a whole lot of my very successful competition. Shops I've watched grace the front pages time and time again with work that in some cases, (not all, not even most), is very sub standard and lesser than my own. So it stings to see them being promoted, (even if only to me), yet again.
My first impression was the same as WindysDesigns, but my other thought was that this is a way to eclipse the supposedly sales generating sites like Kaboodle et al, which profess to make people spend more money online. Hell if it works, since no one is spilling the stats about actual success.
It's a roundabout way to prove that what Rokali so enthusiastically shouted upon return (but then went completely silent) that he would make Etsy a more social site. So, this is no surprise.
It's just that no one no where has proved that social "like" sites actually generate real sales.
The sales it might generate are in the same groups that Etsy targets anyway, so while these shoppers (most sellers buying from other sellers) in a certain age group will have more games to play on Etsy.
More foolin' around, less shopping!
On the first page of my suggested shops are TWO shops that have copied my work over the past few years. They are both Etsy favorites (and have both been featured sellers). I have many, many more sales and many more hearts than both of them and yet I appear on page 7 of my suggested shops. I asked several of my regular customers to see if these shops are being suggested to them and sure enough, they are. And I'm not.
This is simply a way for Esty to make more money for themselves with no thought to how this effects those of us who need to make a living doing what we do. For them to encourage our customers to shop with our competitors (who are sometimes people who have blatantly copied our work) is just wrong. It's hard enough to have to build up our own following and get business to our shops without now having to worry that anyone who hearts us will now be tempted to shop with our competitors instead.
It's so discouraging, I can't really express it.
This undermines the shop you favored. Which perhaps took out a web ad on a blog you read to get your attention and then puts you in direct competition with whoever they feel is just like you? FAIL
(My personal pet peeve is how much they promote palomasnest....I should fav some pottery and see if that'll come up as my 'suggestion')
I don't know. I think it would be wise to choose your battles more carefully. Not to say that there isn't a lot to dislike about it, especially if it never changes from it's present incarnation, but think about it.
This is not a glaring orange button on every page of your shop.
This is not something they click on from the front page, or any page in any shop except their own favorites page.
It's not the default when they go to their favorites page.
It's 20 frickin pages long, if the first few shops or pages don't interest them, they'll forget about it.
You know how if you carry a wide range of items that not every item will appeal to every person, right? That's how I look at this feature.
Long timers and and seasoned sellers (most of which appear to make up the majority of those complaining) are not the target of this feature. You don't have to like it or use it. there is probably a significant number of people who might use this feature to explore the site further and find new shops from which to buy.
Perspective, people, perspective. The TM2 and Pounce and Front page features have much more potential to prevent prospective customers from ever seeing your shop.
And here's something else to think about, for those of you finding yourself in your own list. Logic would tell us that if you show up in your own list, that means your probably in other lists as well.
I predict this is just one of those additions that will stir up a fuss for awhile and then die down and be a non-issue. If people didn't get so worked up right out of the gate.
It would be helpful if more sellers could actually put on their 'buyer's hat' more often instead of always complaining from a seller's point of view.
I do not believe for a minute that Etsy is not controlling what shops show up in these "suggestions." I have three shops. Only one of them has a lot of favorites, one has a few and the other only has one of my own shops as a favorite. I just checked each shop's suggestions and there are at least 15 shops that appear in all three of my suggested lists, and each of these shops is an Admin favorite. I have never hearted them or anything like the items that they sell. ( I swear I have NEVER hearted fabric shoes in my life and yet the old Admin favorite is on page one of each of my suggested pages!).
It's the gift guides in sheep's clothing...
My "suggesteds" wound me up bigtime yesterday, so I deleted all my favourites. Today's suggesteds are pretty much the same, but with an important addition - now, on page 5, Etsy suggest I might like my own shop!
My suggested shops shows shops that carry items I often search for. I'd rather see this feature suggest shops I normally wouldn't search for.
Maybe that David Krumholtz guy from Numbers can come up with a better math equation for this feature so this feature actually make some sense
OK, after all the hype I went and looked at my "suggested" shops.
On the first 2-4 pages are maybe 3 shops I'd consider buying from, based n my personal taste. And of course, on PAGE ONE, is.....
..........drum roll..........
Etsy Shop.
WTH? Not only do I not want to buy Etsy stuff when I'm letting my things expire (or pulling them outright once I find a better outlet), but I actually suggested to their legal team, jumped thru all the hoops in Legal about using the Etsy logo, and nobody got back to me. My idea isn't in their shop, but more than 2 MONTHS after I emailed them with ALL the requested info, it's not in MY shop either b/c they never got back to me.
Instead, they're making this "exciting new feature" (I'm not excited, can you tell?) that most of us dn't want instead of working on the things we DO want.
*sigh*
I am always baffled that etsy bothers to come up with these dopey toys, yet can't do anything worthwhile.
Im a member of a rather large team of very chatty ladies. We took to our offline group to discuss this and our results were NUTS.
There have to be about 30 of us weighing in now and the same shop names are coming up over and over again. Most of them are DIRECT competition to us, its mindblowing..
Mine, personally.. all seem to be a bitter joke comprised of every store I have scoffed at. I dont one a cowl ever,much less knitted eyeglasses.
And it besides the point to ment5ion yet again we have a brokedick shopping cart/search/everything.
This dumb "feature" is nothing I need. It's nothing I will ever use. It's nothing that helps my sales. It's nothing that will help buyers. It's just another shiny.
As FantasyClay mentioned, why this with so much else that truly needs to be fixed.
Simply boggles the mind.
Yay!! Yet one more place on Etsy that I'll never show up.
I'm about over the whole Etsy experience. I'm selling way better on ArtFire where they don't concentrate on gizmos and time sucking gimmicks, but actually work on giving us the tools we ask for. It may not be as snazzy looking as Etsy, but over there, it's all about the sellers. Tools, tools, tools. And my ArtFire listings actually show up in Google searches, usually at the top of the first page. My Etsy listings NEVER come up in Google searches.
Etsy might be the biggest venue of its kind, but it's sure not the best. Sellers and buyers are starting to figure this out.
I'm so annoyed there aren't even words to express it.
Agree with those who don't know why they chose to make this. If they felt compelled to do something that involved our favorites why not give us the ability to sort that was asked for, or the ability to search within our favorites. Those would be helpful, this not so much.
While you make interesting points WindysDesigns in your 2nd comment, the issue is not the buyers' point of view. It's that Etsy is a behemouth without rules or a smidgen of quality control, so to set up a tool that gives wacky results (that many sellers obviously don't like for valid reasons) just points out how awful Etsy is.
"Suggested" points a big finger at all the copying that goes on without end, to the point where every shopper has to ask themselves if anything is what it says it is on Etsy.
The more Etsy fiddles with their little projects, the bigger the spotlight on one of the worst problems that Etsy created all by itself --- massive copying of the product-types that Etsy likes.
It's a disaster.
The Funny One, I don't disagree with you about the copying issue or the fact that this feature might spotlight it even more.
I'm not sure I even like this new feature nor will I be inclined to use it.
I'm kind of thinking though, that this feature is really meant to target the 'buyer only' who isn't familiar with the site. *IF* they are committed enough to even have a favorites list and *IF* they notice the tab. And if they do both of those, then they have to look at a page or two. If something interests them and they check out a new seller it doesn't necessarily have to be a competitor of someone they have hearted. It could be something that caught their eye in addition to the item in their favorites.
Then again, they could glance at those first few pages and not see anything that interests them and click back out and never give it a second thought.
I just don't think it's invasive or obvious enough to be such a huge concern. I think a lot of good suggestions have been made as to what could be changed or tweaked but some of the responses have been a bit over the top.
This feature has the potential to expose a lot of sellers who dwell in the land of 'in between', who don't list, renew or sell a lot to be seen TM2, and who are not new shops or shops with low enough sales to be seen in Pounce.
No single feature on Etsy is fair to everyone, I don't think there is a way for that to happen, but over time I'd like to think that features might be developed to give a larger percentage of shops some kind of exposure.
Sure, right now it appears that this feature is all top sellers, but give it more than 2 or 3 days before you decide it is another doomsday device designed specifically to ruin your business.
I think the big point that everyone in the forum is missing, and that all the commenters here are missing, but was mentioned in the article is:
This paragraph from the Storque:
"The suggestions are generated with the help of an algorithm developed by Stefan Karpinski. Stefan — along with Jason Davis, Greg Fodor, Matt Walker and Isaac Oates — joined us in December when their company Adtuitive became a part of Etsy."
So, 5 marketers/engineers have been employed since December (over 5 months) to basically repackage the Connections tool from it's dopey Flash origin to it's new dopey Taskbar position.
5 engineers, 5 months, maybe about $125,000 of salaries and all that time to repackage a function that NOBODY used. Did anybody ever use Connections? Did anybody know where it was, or that it was there?
I'd have been happy to create a new logo, button, and an ad campaign to point people to it for a lot less than $125,000.
Clearly, Rokali had no idea what to do with Adtuitive when he bought it, so he said "do something cool" and this was the most creative notion they could come up with? Let's keep ourselves employed by repackaging an unsuccessful tool that has marginal long-term value.
I'm less upset by the crappy algorithm that relies on top level categories and and sales volume, than I am by the deplorable management that just cuts a team of 5 loose to do squat while resellers and scammers run rampant and shopping cart abandonment is pushing the highest rate in the eCommerce industry.
Adtuitive... Hmmm....
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y10/m05/i11/s02
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6517585&page=1
Windy, I'm a long time seller. I did put on my buyers hat.
I don't like the fact it's not changing, it's all people I have seen a bazillion and one times before, there are repeats every other page so I actually only get 10 pages, and it's stuff I wouldn't buy.
The one thing I heart and buy regularly isn't even on the list one time. I might actually have used it if it made sense.
While it might be true that Etsy isn't "fair" (whatever that means!) it definitely is true that Etsy is a personally picked, small selection of a tiny fraction of 5 mil listings that Etsy personally likes to promote until the viewer feels like their narrow style aesthetic is being rammed down their throats.
Their promotions tactics, practiced in a very rigid and uncreative way for 5+ years has clearly created a swarm of seller issues that never would have cropped up without such blatant favoritism.
I don't think some of the seller reactions to "Suggested" is a little over the top. This is what Etsy's tactics have done to their very own sellers, and turned up the volume of the definition of "competition" to the utter extreme.
Every time Etsy sticks their finger in the dam, they just shine a spotlight on the original flaw; profits based on listing fees creates a site full of knock-offs, resellers and who knows what, but it's ain't handmade.
And wise shoppers have gone elsewhere, a long time ago.
Max,
Oh I noticed that in the Etsy email this morning. It took five people nearly half a year to do this. So what are the other 26 engineers on staff doing? I shudder to think what unasked for, cool tool they are making.
I would have far preferred a way to sort my EXISTING favorites.
Or, an update to the search engine.
Or, the ability to use coupon codes.
Or, revamps to several pertinent categories.
Or, a repair of the PayPal + Canada problem.
Or... you get the drift.
Gotta say, I'm with WindyD on this one.
Do I think this is something that should have been a priority? No way! It shouldn't even have been on page 1 of any priority list anywhere in the building.
But...
I don't think it's the apocalypse for all sellers except the blessed few.
(Now, I have no knowledge of this particular algorithm, but am speaking generally of basic "suggestion" algorithms I've seen and worked with.)
Issue 1) You're seeing the same old same old Etsy faves in lots of people's suggestions?
That's because they have lots of sales and hearts - granted that's driven by Etsy's favoritism. They're not getting "special treatment" by the suggestion feature - they're getting real results based on their prior "special treatment" by Etsy.
Is it fair? Absolutely not. Does it mean the suggestion feature is broken? Absolutely not.
Issue 2) You're seeing your competition in your own suggestions?
Ask yourself: are you in a "flooded" category like jewelry or knitted stuff? have you ever hearted something you want to try and make your own version of, or for general inspiration? have you ever hearted a friend or teammate to show support? have you ever hearted your competition to "keep and eye on them"? all of this is picked up by the algorithm.
Plus, some of this is part of being in business. Do you think Nora Roberts *likes* it when Amazon suggests her readers buy books by Nicholas Sparks?
Issue 3) it's suggesting things you feel are sub-par or inferior.
It's a computer. It doesn't judge, it has no taste. It sees object A has markers in common with object X which to it mean they're related, so they suggest it. No computer program will ever account for taste (let's hope, if they do we all need to re-watch those Terminator movies for survival tips).
However, a well-designed system would have a "don't like this" button to let you indicate those shops. Leaving this out was big a miss by the development team.
Issue 4) shops with less hearts are suggested over mine.
Without knowing the algorithm's set up this is speculation, but I would imagine it's not just 10 hearts vs 7 hearts.
It's probably more like the same 15 people hearted shop A as shop B so they must be similar. Let's suggest shop A to people who hearted shop B and vice versa.
Let's all take a deep breath. Leave the forums. Stop obsessing over Etsy's every move. And most importantly let's go make stuff - that's what brought us here originally right?
I don't usually align with Etsy on anything, but my suggestions were all actually based on my favorites; and if you bear in mind that I do not belong to the cupcake crowd (more to the dark, haunted, and Everyday-is-Halloween crowd), it's astounding. Some of them I hearted for a while but deleted for some reason. Out of the 20 pages, I could not account for maybe 10 shops, but the rest are shops that are not on Admins' favorite lists or have been ever featured - maybe some a little, with the Steampunk fever that shook Etsy for a while. Many shops suggested are from my Street Team friends, and from some of those suggestions I have bought several times.
Do I think that I will ever use this feature, or that it's something useful? No, but I don't know if it's true that it's another new way of promoting their favorites.
Just an FYI, but $125K will buy you 1 year from 1 very good engineer or 1 year each from 2 recent grads. Especially in NYC area. The last few consulting jobs I looked at in the NYC area paid around $150K (consultants get no bennies, so there's a bit of a markup for that). Way expensive cost of living thereabouts. I do hope Etsy is paying their engineers with real money and not just all the owls, cowls, and cupcakes they can get.
This isn't a hill I want to die on, to me this issue isn't that important.
If you have a shop and you've been on Etsy any length of time of course you are going to notice competition, repetition and 'favoritism' in the selections.
But you also have to remember that 'hearts' are used for much more than they were probably ever intended.
An algorithm is good, but it isn't good enough to figure out that a heart was used to mark a reseller. Or someone you like from the forums because they said something witty or a team member you heart out of loyalty but you have no actual interest in their products.
Just like tags, hearts have a specific purpose. But just like tags they can be abused and manipulated and used to try and game the system.
Albeit, the tag system is flawed to begin with, but it's the users who misuse it who ruin it for everyone else.
Same with hearts. Right now we have little Mary sunshine running around hugging and hearting all the poor little people who are feeling sorry for themselves because they aren't in the 'cool kids club'.
I think sellers are their own worst enemy on Etsy. The moment something is changed sellers are scrambling to change whatever they can so they can be first in line to benefit from this change. Never mind the fact that the changes made were supposed to benefit the way things were, and all the changing just goes and screws up everything.
People are complaining that their views and sales dropped off in March and haven't recovered. I can't help but wonder if there is any correlation to the fact that these same people have been tweaking their tags and titles almost non stop for months.
Relevant Thursdays was declared a bust because rather than see if what they were already doing was working or not, sellers were scrambling to change tags and titles yet again in order to be more relevant.
Was this a long requested, necessary feature? Of course not. It was a feature made by the recently acquired group brought in for a specific purpose that has nothing to do with fixing the search or seo or categories or resellers or tag abuse. They are working on a part of the site they were hired for.
Stefan seemed pretty earnest in his desire to make this a useful feature for everyone and seemed open to suggestions to tweak it so hopefully we'll see some positive changes down the line. I hope that they are able to adjust the algorithm to make the selected shops more appropriate for everyone and give more equitable exposure to all shops.
But even if they don't, and it stays the way it is, it's fairly well hidden and probably won't get used much, if at all.
I can think of things other sites do to draw traffic away from their shops that are much more invasive and in your face, so I'm willing to concede this one.
Seems like the algorithm is tailor-made to pick up shops that were featured sellers. Almost every shop in my 20 pages of suggestions (which does repeat certain shops over and over on all 20 pages) was once a featured seller. So, basically, we now have two ways to revisit old featured sellers: on the featured seller page, and in our "suggested shops."
Relevancy was doomed from day one. So many sellers prefer to pump to Etsy to stay on the top of the list rather than use relevant titles and descriptions. OMG a listing from a month ago is coming up before mine. Nevermind that this is what the customer was looking for.
The sellers who benefitted were those who invested the least amount of money. Of course Etsy was going to go with the opinion of the sellers who were paying 200 a month to get their items to the top of the list.
The suggested items seems to suggest favoritism- best you can hope for is it will get ignored becasue the suggestion remain stagnent. But I honestly don't think this a toy that will really make diference on sales
The points about sellers gaming the Etsy system are valid, WindsyDesigns, as well as sellers being their own worst enemies. It's just that Etsy's crap "marketplace" structure and years of favoritism has reared its head in much more negative ways, which leads to more gaming, more mis-tagging and more of everything negative under the sun, including sellers trying to virutally gauge each others' eyes out. Etsy created this toxic environment, and everything they do points out how bad it is.
New tricks don't fix a broken foundation. It's a cesspool of Etsy's own making.
Whether or not it plays favorites is hard to prove or disprove, and I've given up worrying about that aspect of Etsy. Their blatant favoritism is what it is, and evidently we've all decided to live with it, or we would have closed our shops. I think the main reason we, as sellers, are so pissed off about the Suggested Shops list is because it's just another toy, and offers no real value to us.
We've been begging for specific tools for so long it's ridiculous, and Etsy totally ignores us. Instead, every few months they roll out a new diversion, hoping that we are so easily distracted that we'll forget about the need for batch editing, coupon codes, one page listing, sales mode, and of course searches that work.
The idea that they hired 5 guys, who took 5 months to come up with this latest toy, is infuriating when you think about what they might have given us that would have been more useful.
Since they can't seem to fix the search, why not just delete it all together?
I don't really need it now since I can all just look at what Etsy wants me to buy from their favorite sites.
An admin has already officially stated that the algorithm is affected most by the number of hearts a shop has. The more hearts it has, the more likely it is to show up. They are hoping to add "Other" data to the soup, but right now the hearts thing is the primary cornerstone.
The Funny One said: Etsy created this toxic environment, and everything they do points out how bad it is.
New tricks don't fix a broken foundation. It's a cesspool of Etsy's own making.
I said: I think I love you. This is like the Etsy critics own version of E=mc².
Oh man, here we go. Now, here is a perfect example of how Etsians screw themselves over.
We have been told that right now the algorithm is based on number of hearts and though it appears to be a popularity contest, that isn't the intention and they will be adjusting that algorithm and might incorporate a hearts to view ratio. Great, right?
So what do you do? You start a thread like this http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6522032 and try and game the system so that when they finally do adjust the algorithm they can come back and cry foul, and that Etsy did something to hurt them, those big meanies!
Rather than exhibit just a little patience, after all the feature isn't even a week old and it apparently took months to develop, Etsians must immediately cry foul and try and game the system.
It also points to what seems to be a lack of priorities; maybe it's the ability of a strong manager to set them.
The place is like a stream of consciousness, which is entertaining for awhile before it gets just annoying.
I knew long ago that etsy is really for the admin's favorite 20. When you accept that, these sorts of things don't surprise you anymore.
Maybe I'm naive, but I'm not truly understanding how this new function will hurt or help anyone. I looked at those suggestions only to see what the fuss was about. I can tell you that I'll NEVER be looking at them again. If I didn't pick them, I won't be making a point to look at them. Surely not that many people go looking at strangers favorites, do they? If you don't want others to see them, make your hearts private.
My only real gripe is that etsy continues to run their business the same way they always have. Instead of fixing real problems, they just slap another nonsense thing on the site to make it appear they are doing something. The longer this is going on, the more I'm thinking the rumors are true that they can't fix what's broken and these new dodads are supposed to get our minds off that.
The only thing that makes logical sense in all of this is that it goes into Little Robby's stupid idea that etsy is a social network instead of a selling venue.
The biggest problem I have with this new feature is that it's used time, effort, labour and money to get out there INSTEAD of things sellers could use like organising favourites and giving us a better shipping calculator.
The problem is that like ebay, Etsy cares more about buyers than sellers. Sure lots of sellers (including me) are buyers, but that still means more buyers. I can't think there'd be many etsy sellers who have never bought anything on the site.
As to it promoting favourites, I've no doubt on that either. Most of my suggested shops seem to be the big-hitters in supplies, as well as people of whom I have individual listings faved. My other old shop has no faves, and yet my suggested shops align perfectly with what I used to sell there. If our suggestions go off what we've already hearted, and I have no hearts, how are they giving me results? Do they take into account people who have hearted ME? Or my old listing tags?
I'm waiting for the moment we get little slices along the bottom of our listing pages saying 'if you like this, you may like these...' with tiny pictures to other people's shops.
I've been on etsy more than 4 years and I'm probably the top seller in the style in which I work (3000+ sales). I have never been a featured seller, haven't been in a storque article in 8 months or so (or pimped myself out with a personal story to CREATE a storque article) and as far as I know have not been on the front page in about a year. I'm not sure why people who are experiencing lower sales (and yes, I've seen a significant drop off myself) are wasting THEIR time griping about this somewhat hidden tool. If I hadn't seen the forum post about this feature, I never would have found it myself. I desperately wish Etsy would offer coupon codes, sale editing capabilities and a whole bunch of other tools that would make my life easier. But I refuse to work myself into a lather or "un-favorite" long-time sellers who appear in my "suggested shops" section. I am desperately trying to keep my business afloat. This is my entire income. It has dropped DRAMATICALLY since March 8th. I don't have time to get involved in a school yard pushing match with Etsy and its technicians re: dumb stuff they waste time on creating when I could be working to better my own situation. It's not going to change any time soon. I promise you. As I mentioned I've been on Etsy for 4 years and the sellers have been asking for the same tools that we have yet to receive since I joined. I don't have any more energy to devote towards trying to get them to put down their shiny toys and make more user friendly ones.
I'm definitely not going to play the "game" of trying to get more hearts so I can show up in someone's suggested list. I took a quick glance at it and it didn't do anything for me. One more tool that really isn't all that useful. It's all based on the popularity game and I hated high school because of it. If you depend on Etsy to promote you, you might as well close up your shop now because it ain't gonna happen unless you make what they like and send them bribes and are part of the in-crowd.
I'm looking a little closer now...........kind of ironic! I have several shops on there that I've flagged for tag abuse and reselling......OMG! Come on! Etsy-fail........again!!!
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