The Price of the Brooklyn Bridge - It’s a $7 “Trial Offer”

Etsy just announced that they have just launched a "trial offer" of New Subcategory Showcases for jewelry (for $7 per spot) in this Forum Announcement.

It’s a "trial offer" because Etsy is NOT telling sellers what they get for their money. And this latest offer to sell sellers the Brookyn Bridge has not gone by without some skepticism about this "new feature"

Etsy is asking sellers to SPEND MONEY on new showcase spots without disclosing any statistics about view and sales from these new showcases. It’s a secret. Sellers can spend their money on this one, measly "advertising tool" on a site that never tells them whether the expense generates actual sales.


And the showcases have proved to be a cash cow for Etsy, so why not add more???

Controversy over this feature has gone on for many months and the forums are littered with questions and comments about the value of a showcase spots over the costs of relisting. Many sellers have commented that the showcases are a WASTE OF MONEY.

It’s odd that Etsy is ADDING more showcases when Etsy itself decided that the Main Showcase wasn’t all that important anymore in the Front Page re-design. It’s a costly $15 per spot, but now it is boxed into a tiny section of the top of the Front Page surrounded by ALL ETSY PICKS for their own promotions.

We wonder if visitors even know what the Main Showcase is anymore. And can anyone actually FIND the existing Category Showcases?

What we do know is that Etsy is asking sellers to spend more money on a "seller tool" that may or may not be beneficial for sellers--because the stats are another Big Etsy Secret.

All they are offering in this "trial offer" is--IF it works-- Etsy will EXPAND to MORE subcategory showcases (for $7 per spot) WITHOUT ever telling sellers what they get for their hard-earned money.

Sure sounds like your re-selling that bridge again, Etsy--on pure faith (and easy cash).

We didn’t know sellers were breaking down doors to get MORE SHOWCASES, because they’ve been asking for a long time if any of the existing showcases WERE WORTH THE EXPENSE.

Is this "new feature" on the Etsy agenda, or on the sellers’ long list of requests for site improvements?

All we want for Christmas...

When we wake up on Christmas morning, this is what we want to find under the tree from Etsy (better yet, just tell us it's debuting in January, messing with the site in December is usually bad news):

1. STATS - this was the overwhelming wish among our twitter followers and ourselves. We want to know where our customers are coming from, better yet, include the search terms they used to find us. A dropdown menu in checkout of 'how'd you find me?' might work, too. For now.

2. Multiple shipping options to the same country.

3. A fixed search. And the bow on top would be it's advanced search *swoon*

4. A customer service department with a phone number and dedicated email addresses that don't give automated responses, unless they're 'we received your email, we'll be back to you within 48 hours'.

5. DXO pinkslipped, oh yeah, we went there. This would do much to fulfill the wishes we heard - 'R-E-S-P-E-C-T', 'completely new staff', 'fire 'em all, hire intellegent peeps with ethics', 'truth and justice', and 'admins that don't patronize'. (ooh and give us Rob's head while you're at it)

6. Be able to search sold items, favorites, and just plain organize our own shit.

7. 'A week without cowls'

8. Coupon codes - this may be the top marketing strategy for 2009 due to the struggling economy.

9. A real API that isn't fucked with any time a new tool comes along so off-site tools can stop struggling to provide us with what you won't, but would be relatively easy for you to do.

10. A pony. Why not? We probably have the same chance of getting this as everything else above.

Even if they had the 8 nights of Hannukkah to fulfill our wishes instead of one morning, I bet they'd only give us knitted handwear, impractical decorative pieces, and over-rated tees with misspelled French. The first pair or set can be nice, but after a few years it gets old.

Think of us as a jilted lover - it's going to take a very big and very expensive diamond to get us back. If you want to that is...maybe you prefer the cupcakes over a more substantial meal. We probably have a better chance of getting all this if we addressed this to Santa Claus.

Too little too late?

Imagine my utter shock today when I got an Etsy email! Wait wait, no it had nothing to do with the outages and failures this week that has been plaguing the site. No, it was a completely out of the blue announcement... VACATION MODE IS COMING!

Please visit this Storque post for a sneak peak of Etsy's upcoming feature, Vacation Mode. Vacation Mode allows a seller to put her shop on hold if she is out of town, sick, or otherwise wants to take a break from selling. We'll be rolling it out soon, so keep an eye out!

When in Vacation Mode, items in a seller's shop cannot be purchased. The seller's shop will appear empty, with a special vacation announcement. The seller's items can still be viewed via a direct item link (if they are linked from an outside blog for example), and can still be Hearted (added to favorites), but will not appear in site searches or the Category Browser. Buyers can sign up to be notified via email when the seller returns from Vacation Mode. See this Storque post to read more about how the new feature works. We hope you are excited about it!

Love, Etsy

Love? That closing line always throws me. The biggest part of love is communicating, darling, something you've sucked ass at this month. I am still filing for separation. You buying me a diamond ring doesn't make up for the fact you slept with my sister, stole my car and drove me to drink.

And the timing of this sends off major alarms. You can't make up for a massive failure of communication and total disregard by tossing up an announcement that the feature we've begged for for THREE YEARS is finally coming. (And yes we noticed there was no date on that promise. We're not holding out breath for it THIS year.)

You can't apply a bandaid to a huge gash and expect it to stop the bleeding. This is a desperate throwaway nicety to buy back the love and patience of it's sellers that Etsy has forsaken all this time. It's a cheap sleight of hand, and we see that card up your sleeve, asshole.

Let's just rewrite this notice for what it is:

When we fuck up we do it big time, it's our superpower. Our SuperDickery power doens't let us bother to let you know anything you need to know to run a functional storeforont. But that's okay, instead of bothering to send out service outage notes to every one with breaking news and interrupt the office naptime, instead we'll send one out to let you know vacation notice is coming in the future!!!! You've been bitching for it for fucking years, and we're finally kind of sick of playing Rockband and making fail hammocks enough to pull it out of our asses. Don't you love us again?

Now we'll direct you to the Storque article on this empty promise, and we'll be watching the forums so you can give our rightful handjobs and bask in the super nova-like glow of our egos.

See you later fools, Etsy

Fuck you too.