Etsy Day???? Oh No, More Free Labor!?!

Etsy Day and Etsy wants sellers to do MORE work for free!

We are just about knocked out of our (organic, handspun, handmade vegan dye-free) socks when we got a load of this exuberant ditty from none other than DXO:

"The Etsy Forums have united and declared Friday, April 24th, 2009, Etsy Day! Hurrah! We here at Etsy love you for working together to create a really exciting opportunity for us all. We will be reporting the guerilla marketing on Friday and we challenge YOU, buyer, seller or fan, to shout "Etsy!" from the rooftops. Get the Etsy name out there in the brightest, sparkly-est, boldest way you can think of! Make sure to record your efforts with video or photos (if you upload photos to Flickr, making sure to tag them "Etsy Day 2009"). We'll be highlighting the funniest, weirdest, most attention grabbing efforts here on Etsy's Blog and on our social networks (like our Facebook page and Twitter), and we'll make sure to link back to you. "

Etsy did add in it's mindbending dorkie: "The Fine Print: This promotion is being sponsored by independent Etsy shop owners, not Etsy.com. We're just excited about it."

We don't really care where the "idea" for Etsy Day came from, it's the whole idea that Etsy is SPONSORING and PROMOTING another push for sellers to do more FREE MARKETING for Etsy without getting ANYTHING BACK is just more of the same. Many sellers have been already marketing Etsy FOR FREE for 4 YEARS already!!!!

Well, doesn’t that just excite that huge, Etsy-loving-fan club that thought this was a good idea? We all know sellers are literally breaking down the doors at Gold Street to offer themselves as free labor for Etsy’s "marketing and advertising" efforts which are based on doing all that work for Etsy FOR FREE!!!

We admit we completely missed this forum campaign to set up an Etsy Day - it kinda got lost in all those hundreds of posts about fixing the shopping cart and doing something about Etsy’s obvious bias and favoritism towards a select group of stores and products.

Oh, but Etsy can’t get bogged down in silly, 3 year old complaints can they? They have much more important things to do like go out of their way to sponsor some wacky and insane Etsy Day that clearly tells sellers that they can do EVEN MORE WORK to promote Etsy FOR FREE!!!!

Now this really clears up what Etsy thinks of its sellers - sellers work FOR ETSY, but Etsy doesn’t work for sellers.

We would have thought an Etsy Day (no matter WHO thought it up) might mean that sellers get something back for doing all this work:
(1) A DAY OF FREE LISTINGS
(2) $5 OFF EVERY MONTHLY BILL FOR MAY
(3) A CASH PRIZE ($1,000) FOR THE BEST FREE MARKETING IDEA
(4) CAN’T ETSY JUST DO SOMETHING FOR SELLERS FOR A CHANGE?