Posts
Now we're not dead, but according to some of the comments if we go two weeks without a post you folks get downright uneasy. Excuse us for having a busy summer.
So, here you go.
The news of the week:
ETSY SENT OUT AN HONEST TO GOD SELLER NEWS MAIL! I mean it! It had informative updates of changes for the rest of the universe who doesn't go to he forums for their lifesource to feed this withered vampire souls for sustinance.
Treasury Keeps Getting Better
Treasury, where members create curated lists of items, is growing fast! No longer confined to the East as "Treasury East," Treasury has gone global, expanding in new directions and sprouting new features. You can now:
Add Tags To Lists
Clicking on a Treasury list tag will take you to a landing page with all the lists that contain that tag, sorted by hotness. Look for the latest trending tags on the main Treasury page, and similar trending tags on tag landing pages.
Set Preferences
We're rethinking the meaning of mature on Etsy and looking to the community's curators to lead the way. Curators of lists that contain mature content are asked to tag them with the keyword "mature." Etsy members who wish to view lists tagged in this way can do so by adjusting their preference in the Account section of Your Etsy.
Set Treasuries to Private
Select the "Only you" option under Privacy when creating a list if you'd like to keep it to yourself a while before showing the world.
Search Treasury!
Our new Treasury search will search for lists by list titles, list tags, list curators, shops in lists and items in lists. It's a seriously fun way to discover curators that share your taste.
Now Browse Etsy in Multiple Currencies
Oh my goodness! In a big step toward supporting global commerce on Etsy, we just launched support for viewing prices in multiple currencies! You can now view item prices in Euros, British Pounds, Canadian Dollars and more.
OMFG. Can you believe it? And actual step of behaving like an actual caring responsible company? Our Etsy? They grow up so fast. Sniff. Sniff.
If you didn't get one it could be you aren't signed up for emails, so they still haven't learned that they need to have a regular mail that goes out to all members. This is important info that everyone needs.
And like clockwork, Etsy has announced incoming much cried for changes to the checkout. Only a small amount of shops are seeing this new cart in the first tests. Any bets if the expected fubar and bug fixing will be fixed before the Holiday season? But when you read that posts over you can tell they are looking at the competition's carts playing catch up.
Here is hoping they pull it off the first time this time. Godfuckingknows it would be a refreshing change .
Oh wait...
Lisajune says:FUCK.
We've been keeping up with feedback on Express Checkout in its initial deployment to 5% of users. We've found a few substantial issues, not least of all being a difficulty charging sales tax via Paypal when using Express Checkout.
We've decided to roll back the use of Express Checkout for the time being while we work through these initial concerns. We'll update further as we have substantial solutions. :)
Yep, the forum is buzzing about all sorts of problems with the new checkout. It really gets to be hilarious after a while that they can't ever roll out anything even close to not failing on release.
24 Comments:
Do buyers who aren't also sellers actually give a rat's ass about Etsy Treasuries?
Are Treasuries bringing new traffic to the site? Do REAL buyers -- by which I mean people, especially people with real taste and discernment, who want to shop for unique and beautiful things, not people who want to play in the social-networking site that more than craft or art or handmade has come to define Etsy -- ever even see Treasuries except for the annointed ones that make the Front Page?
What the hell IS Etsy, anyway? Do its handlers even know?
Treasuries have morphed into a dopey thing that Etsy thinks will drive traffic via social networking, because they think everyone will make treasuries and then spam the social universe with the links.
Unfortunately, most people just make them hoping Admins will pick them for the front page.
The checkout was so exciting, until it became obvious that the new system gives un-itemized and un-referenced data so sellers can't tell where the data is coming from.
And of course there's the expected money-losing-bug, that the new checkout bypasses the PayPal Sales Tax calculator too, so no one's able to collect the sales tax they had set up and working in PayPal previously.
And I'm wondering why I found out about this email via EtsyBitch, because with my 2 shops I didn't get any emails.
RRobin-
I don't think buyers-only give a rat's ass about treasuries at all. Really.
I bet most don't even know they're there.
HOw do I know this? I asked a few friends and family members who buy on Etsy after I showed it to them, and they didn't even know what treasuries were. They think the front page items are just marketing features.
Etsy fucks up everything they roll out. The more important the thing is, the more they fuck it up.
I don't think anyone pays attention to treasuries anymore. I don't understand what even makes them "social commerce" at this point or why etsy is putting resources towards them.
Treasuries were fun and interesting and people were interested in them when they were hard to get and didn't last forever, but now that anyone can create one anytime, well, they're just not as interesting.
Amenhotep IV, that's my point exactly.
Treasuries are like flagging: set up originally so staff are not responsible. Probably started out as a $$ consideration cloaked as Anarchy, or what Kalin's vision of it was. Kind of like forging your college transcript: cuts down on the work.
I never knew what treasuries were when I was just a buyer, and frankly I still don't care much about them. I had also thought the front page items were paid advertisements and ignored them like the ones on Ebay.
I agree that Treasuries are more about being toys than an actual service of any kind.
However, Tony at Artfire told us (while we were testing the new collections feature which is practically identical to treasuries) that the collections are seen by Google as unique content and thus ups the overall Google happiness for the site. The happier Google is and the more directions it can take to get to the item you have for sale, the more eyeballs are going to see your items.
So yeah, in one way they are pointless, but perhaps that's why Etsy finds them important.
I'm pretty quick to Etsybash, and since they have never told us that's what the treasuries are good for I'm kind of betting they don't actually know that and really do have their heads up their asses, but on this one I'm going to give them an okey dokey.
As for the other crap that was just rolled out that totally fucked up peoples ability to get their money? Well that's just inexcusable fuckery of the worst kind and for that I recommend they don't take any laxatives because with their heads so far up there, well you get the picture.
RRobin has a good point; since Etsy has no interest in its sellers, does anyone think they actually have any interest in the shoppers? Etsy runs on seller fees, not on sales. Which is why Etsy looks like world's largest Less-Than-99-Cent Store.
The new Etsy employees love to run off at the mouth by posting never-ending streams of consciousness in the Announcements section because they love to see their names and bizarre avatars at the top of the Forums page.
Etsy is still what it's always been, a small boutique that flogs a few selected personal-fave sellers on the front page and hundreds of daily tweets. That's all it is.
Oh, and a very clever way to scam a lot of people out of a lot of listing fees for basically -- nothing.
I don't understand the mass of treasuries at all. I never did - except for the fact that yes, sellers create them in the hopes that they will hit the front page. Good luck with that one! I never visit the treasuries, because I could care less and to send out an email that's just pumping up more treasury features blows my mind - USELESS - DELETE.
With a total of 11 employees working on Seller Tools & Checkout - Why the hell can't they compete with other e-commerce venues and offer MORE features to help both the customer and the seller? IDIOTS. Yet there are like 18 working on "social" and "lists". And for the money we spend, this shit should have been done years ago. This is quite an expensive venue for selling. If you add up all the .20 cent renews, re-lists PLUS the commission, it's WAY more than what you would pay elsewhere with just a flat monthly rate. But, there are still ignorant newbies that think it's cheap to sell on Etsy.
This place is so fucked up.
It's nice to see that no matter how they try to change, everything remains the same. I'm not surprised they screwed up the checkout-any more than I'm surprised about the treasuries. I'm not surprised to find that I no longer care. The way they have messed with google, I'm not sure what AF said about google and unique content would apply to the etsy treasuries. About the only thing that does surprise me is that there isn't a bunch of yapping in the e forums about the new AF collections. Guess they are too busy with the malfunctioning shiney things that etsy has given them to play with.
It's sad to see a site that had-notice I said had- so much potential continue to flush it down the toilet.
Subeeds--
I'm surprised too that there isn't a big flap in the forums about the AF Collections.
I'm really waiting for all those who said "AF is so ugly" to now say "AF is just copying Etsy".
People don't even realize how ridiculous they sound when they say that AF is implementing new useful tools or that AF staff are active in the AF forums just so they can look "rosy" in comparison to Etsy's issues.
Even if that were true, who the hell cares? All I know is AF DOES have the tools and their staff IS good about answering questions and actually sticking around for any follow-up questions. Proving that it CAN be done.
I don't know if the Artfire collections will have a lasting effect on the seo or visits but I do know the tools that go with the collections- like code for embedding them in a web page makes it good enough for me.
I can have fun making them but them make some for my blog- like the spotlites on byhand.me that kept conking out.
I agree I doubt most buyers even look or care about treasuries or collections but have a way to post them on a website or a facebook page does add a little boost.
LOL - They've now rolled back the release to the 5% of accounts (Yay! they were smart enough to only roll it out to 5% - unless that's a lie...) because they figured out that they fucked it up royally, once again.
But I'm going to go ahead and give them their awesome credit due for their newbie-hipster-fucktastic brilliance, and say "good going, guys!" for killing this on day 1 to go back to the drawing board, instead of trying to convince everyone that it's all cool for a week or 2 before pulling the plug and admitting defeat.
So maybe they'll have this figured out by November, when they can dump it on the whole site during peak sales season.
Treasuries are nothing more than a way for Etsy to build inbound links. Everyone who makes a treasury (and there are over 90,000 at present) tweets it, facebooks it, links to it from their blog, all this drives traffic to it. Any sales resulting from it are a side benefit and not really the intended purpose.
Same with Artfire's collections. With the exception that Artfire's collections are miles ahead of the primitive treasury system as far as creation is concerned.
Look at it this way, they created a special playground where all the swings and teeter totters are actually built in such a way that when used, they generate power for the school. The more the kids play on them, the more energy is supplied to the building. Sure, it's fun for the kids, but don't mistake their intended purpose.
think about it, they lifted the restriction on creating treasuries. Instead of 300-600 that expire every 2 days you now have thousands that never expire. Sellers think that this change was done to make things more fair and give everyone a chance. It wasn't. It was a carefully calculated change to increase the value to Etsy. As per usual, and benefit to the seller is secondary.
As with everything on Etsy, you have to work it to your advantage. 90,000 treasuries? no sweat. Post links to YOUR treasury everywhere you can. forget about trying to make the front page, create a treasury that features one of your own items and work it to your advantage.
And for goodness' sake, stop thinking anything Etsy does is for seller's benefit. They do everything for their own benefit first and foremost. Any benefit to the seller is incidental. The sooner you accept that, the happier you'll be.
I still have a shop on Etsy (although I've stopped listing, renewing AND selling for that matter--thank fuck) and NEVER GOT THAT EMAIL. I did hear about it.
Pardon me for yawning. Seriously, nothing new with that fucking shithole of a site. Piss fucking poor as usual.
I'm currently getting off on all of the tweets from the cupcakes--one in particular that seems to have some serious hatred for me for some odd reason--BEGGING for answers about the upcoming site widening. In the forums and twitter. Apparently pictures will need to be at least 570 pixels or something, and it's got a few in quite a frenzy. All I can do at this point is laugh.
Etsy? What the fuck is that? I've pretty much forgotten all about it. :)
Life is good.
Great post, Cosmic Yuk. Clears up a few things for me. One thing I think was missed --- the mass bombardment of Etsy sellers and dozens of paid Admins dedicated to jamming cyberspace with the same snarky stuff at $14 and under has bored shoppers (over 15 years old) to death.
No wonder they stopped shopping a long time ago. Etsy only brought it on a lot faster and does (continually) a lot more damage to the handmade product and those who make them.
Etsy may be tweaking their substructure for their own benefit, as usual, but they just figured out how to do things that are 5 years out of date.
They'll never catch up, ever.
1000 Markets re: my income $$ FAIL
Artfire re: my income $$ FAIL
With the old MAIN treasuries I did make money on Etsy. Not much, but compared to how my income plunged after the switch to un-expiring treasuries I know for sure the old treasury system generated income for me. There were a number of buyers who made a lot of treasuries for fun, and they have stopped. Stopped shopping too.
I have been selling on Etsy for the last 4 years. Most of my shoppers find me on Google. When Etsy messed up the SEO my sales plunged. The new treasury system is the death knell.
The sarcasm that seems to be an internet favored method of communication gets on my nerves on any site. The most sarcastic electronic "people" of all, because I have to endure them while selling on Etsy is the Etsy Admins.
I have always known that their income is from re-listing fees. There is no way such a brutally conducted hate fest towards sellers could succeed otherwise.
I plan on leaving Etsy Dec 31, 2010. No reason to stay any longer after the holidays. The new treasury system is hard core proof that Etsy Admins have nothing but contempt and hatred for sellers.
It seems that when visiting the Etsy forums, anyone who comments about the Google changes impacting the SEO plunge in views, they are made to appear like they are conspiracy theorists or something.
What I see happening is rather than facilitating SEO so that items show up in Google, Etsy is having folks running around in circles building incestuous social networking links. All this is doing is flooding the marketplace with glorified ads. I don't see how that can lead to success except for the handful of sellers who have the resources and time to do SEO? Am I alone in thinking this shouldn't have to be such a struggle? I'm willing to put the work into e-commerce, but I'm starting to get suspicious.
Also, with the treasuries, is it just me or are all the items featured looking similar (with the identical white backgrounds, moody garment shots, the re-appearance of certain themes- mustaches, foxes, owls, geekery)? If you make different kinds of things or photograph them differently, you won't be featured at all. Everything is starting to look like Urban Outfitters or Pottery Barn rather than a handmade marketplace.
@peacekeeper
If I were you I'd start packing now and get on site that doesn't try to sabatage the holidays. Just about every year some bug messes up there during the season - last year it was checkout and they blamed paypal
Quoting F.W.:
"... Everything is starting to look like Urban Outfitters or Pottery Barn rather than a handmade marketplace."
Starting?
Anonymous Dashed Hopes said...
LOL - They've now rolled back the release to the 5% of accounts (Yay! they were smart enough to only roll it out to 5% - unless that's a lie...) because they figured out that they fucked it up royally, once again.
But I'm going to go ahead and give them their awesome credit due for their newbie-hipster-fucktastic brilliance, and say "good going, guys!" for killing this on day 1 to go back to the drawing board, instead of trying to convince everyone that it's all cool for a week or 2 before pulling the plug and admitting defeat.
------------------------------
Unfortunately this is not true. As per usual, the fuckwits made the change on a Friday afternoon, then went home for the weekend. Once those 5% started purchasing, and sellers realized that not only were not able to get a detailed packing list from PayPal, but sales taxes were not being added in the furor in the forums started...
By Monday there were several sellers were threatening to put their shop in vac mode to prevent any more sales. Selling for nothing is bad enough but paying the taxes yourself too? I think not.
Why the hell can't these changes be thought thru and TESTED first?
Good question, fridays child.
Etsy's incompetent tech team claims to be doing TDD ('test driven development') which is where you write programs that check that your changes produce the right results.
It seems that whomever is writing the tests is a typical Etsy employee, though as over and over again, they fuck up.
Agreed with Chantelle and others, they screw up everything they release and have ever released - it's worse than technically though, it's flawed in conception, intention, design AND execution. And then they sit around congratulating themselves about it. And yes, the new treasury is a failure conceptually. They totally missed the point.
Wow, the new Treasury just keeps getting better!
Because it really couldn't get much worse.
It's the usual "We're trying to do Google Style minimalism without really understanding it".
They pretty much ruined the Treasury. Nice how they can take 3 or 4 years of time to update something, and then just straight fuck it up. And not even realize it. And now they'll leave it like this for the next five years. Hope I'm not around to see it.
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