EB Holiday Promos Week 1

Good morning everyone!

Here is week 1 of the Holiday Promos, for ArtFire sellers. If you dont have an artfire shop, please dont worry, we will feature you next week. Also, if you are planning Holiday sales, please let us know what they will be by e-mailing us at etsybiatch at gmail dot com. We will feature those sales on Black Friday through Cyber Monday. This widget does not represent everyone in the collection. Please click through to see all of the great artisans!

Happy Holidays!

So, nows the time to help those who are never seen by those hipster assholes called Admin.

E-mail me your favorite sellers who are not recognized by Admin, and we're gonna create our own gift guides to be featured by the 20 every Saturday and Sunday until Christmas. Don't be overzealous though, and only send in a few for each week. :D Give people a shot at making it, so we have a good variety!

Send those e-mails to etsybiatch@gmail.com with the headline EB Gift Guides!

It’s an Etsy Branded Holiday Season!

It’s ALL up to you, sellers, to jump on the Etsy Brand "formula for success" & brush up on your Etsy-fication by making your reservations for the rest of the Virtual Labs listed in this post from you-know-who!


We're just thankful that we missed the "better photos" Labs since we already covered them.

Clicking on this intriguing "holiday" topic in the Storque (which is so painfully obvious on the top of the new Community Hub page), we thought we’d see a list of new Etsy promotions designed just for Holiday’09 open to ALL sellers to help them promote sales in a year when most sellers need all the promotion help they can get.


Alas, our hopes were quickly dashed when we saw who the advice was coming from and what topics were included. Aren’t there 350 tips just like that in the never-ending "Etsy Handbook"?

We can add our own seminar for the "Etsy holiday rush" — "If you make and list what Etsy likes to promote (so everything on the site looks the same) we’ll promote you for free!"

The rest of the sellers can do what they always do - forget about getting ANY HELP AT ALL from Etsy for the holiday shopping season. Another Etsy "holiday season" that usually starts on December 15, too late to ship one damn thing.


(And how ridiculous is it that they have a jump page between the community page and the Storque? Why can't they just link directly? They already have server issues! -Righteous)

Stegosaurus Etsy

Whether you’re a shopper or seller on Etsy, that big behemoth that trudges on like a branded dinosaur with an orange Etsy banner super glued to its hide, have you noticed anything new? Nope, not much.

Wade through the 5 million plus items (including those pesky resellers) using the most temperamental Search imaginable, and you start to think you’re stuck in a prehistoric forest!

Etsy, the indie king and queen! The trend to end all trends! They get bigger, haul in more dough and what the heck has really changed or improved for sellers?
Not much.

While ArtFire, Zibbet, 1000Markets, and countless other new sites forge ahead with exciting features for sellers that include:
Universal/Global Editing
Direct Link to Facebook Kiosk
One or Two Page Listing Templates
Coupon and Discount Codes
Store Set Up Customization
Import Features
Huge Holiday Promotions
Real Customer Service Departments

Etsy stumbles ahead with a feature where you can Search by category!!! Wow! Etsy promises a "better shopping cart" whooopeee! (But does Etsy even care about the rising number of non-paying buyers?)

Etsy announces a "maintenance schedule" that whispers "to get ready for the holidays" when we all know what that means after years of slogging along like a festering bureaucracy! What holidays? Are you kidding us again Etsy?

We know how Etsy "prepares for the holidays" – they don’t. Oh, they may add 25 more Gift Guides with cute titles (Equestrian Santas!), buried on a page with hundreds of other Gift Guides, all loaded with Etsy favorite sellers that seem to pop up on the Front Page like flies on flypaper. They stick and never fall off!

SEO and Google Base - "might" be "fully functional" in November???? Oh Etsy, another year, another report on your huge sales records, and none of it includes any tangible changes and improvements for sellers.

There’s this thing about getting so big you can’t see the trees in the forest (even trees that are felted, beaded, and available in 3,500 colors in various sizes!), that "trendy" is clearly a misnomer, Etsy.

You’re so far behind the times that you’re practically a fossil!
　

Hey Etsy, you forgetting something?

The Funny One and I have been discussing Etsy’s lack of promotions for normal events on the retail calendar. We’re all too familiar with seller complaints that Etsy lives by its own calendar, and ignores most of the usual retail marketing tricks.

Etsy promotes retail holidays LATE or not at all, as if it’s an afterthought, or they just made another mistake (even after making the same mistakes 4 years running), and they forget that there’s a shipping time added in for internet business. They’re too busy promoting their favorites and manually picking every promoted item on the site, too busy writing dozens of daily blog posts (mostly about the same stores and items featured elsewhere at the same time) and too busy with their Etsy Merchandising Calendar- A Calendar that has nothing to do with promoting the retail holidays.

Etsy completely missed Valentine’s Day at a time when sellers, more than ever, need them to be aware – and then there’s St Patrick’s Day, Easter, the UK Mothering Sunday, and their inability to recognize that being “trendy” is not in line with the individual spirit of handmade.

So, get over yourselves for a few minutes Etsy, and start promoting Mother’s Day today.

Yes, we know there’s a gift guide - incredibly lacking in 'Mom' items. Where are the cards, the 'Mom' labeled stuff, the kid art...

Instead of “branding” your site and promoting individual pieces or sellers, start acting like a venue and let the buyers know there’s something to shop for!

The Holiday Marketing Plan

Here we are, the end of October and Etsy has finally released the details of their holiday marketing plan...which should be in motion already...too late for their customers (who rely on it) to comment on it.

We've been spitting and sputtering behind the scenes wondering why Etsy is still so ignorant about their own potential audience.

In case you missed it, the full-page ads feature a single seller. That's right...ONE SELLER OUT OF THE MORE THAN 100,000 ACTIVE SHOPS.

They don't even touch on the full spectrum of items available on Etsy. No mention of supplies and vintage. If anything they should have featured an item from the 'majority', which would be jewelry, the most saturated category. How was the one seller picked? If anyone knows we'd love to be enlightened. (And no, we're not commenting on the seller or their items, just on the completely biased exposure of the ads)

For the sake of our sanity, I'll bullet point what is constantly being ignored:

• There is more than one type of item on Etsy
• There is more than one type of seller on Etsy
• There is more than handmade on Etsy
• The admin favorites and NYC/admin style is not the only thing on Etsy

We've received a number of private comments regarding this, and if I overstep in quoting, our apologies, but these summed it up pretty well:

"I think etsy marketed that ad to new sellers. SHE is the biggest part-"meet unique" people think I'm like her, I can make those. I can sell there!
There's no holiday frills, there's no marketing of items with broad appeal, altho cute, no mention of all buying needs being met"

"This whole thing has made me realize that, actually, Etsy has begun to put forth a pretty consistent message. I think that ad represents exactly how they see themselves. I think they're pretty strongly opposed to work that looks too shiny; it's the hip indie shabby thing, exemplified in that horrendous craft show table and their kiddie playland offices.
They want to be cutesy. Look at the way they act and the crap they do in the Labs.
I'm realizing that they're branding themselves this way, and that's fine, but it's not what I want for my work. And not, I suspect, what the great majority of their sellers want. The admins and their advertising "plan" are pigeonholing the site into a pretty limited demographic. "

"Gotta hand it to 70 people who, after 4 years, have no imagination at all.
The hell with the ads, they started too late and they are ho-hum, old school. For an online store destination, they don't even scratch the online ad potential. Or reach out to the audience they love so much."

What happened to the poster sketch contest winners that highlighted at least a few items or categories? Those could have been turned into ads. Some sampling that doesn't give all the traffic to a particular shop.

Here is the accompanying forum thread

Etsy's Holiday Marketing Plan

There have been questions as to whether Etsy would follow through and actually have a marketing plan for the holidays. Well, it's up. But there's no timeline! In today's chatt with Matt it was mentioned that there may be a meeting about it on Sept 26. Is that really enough time? All of this needs to be out before November to be effective. This is an international online venue - things need to be shipped!

I guess we'll all just have to wait and see. Full page ads positioned to target buyers would be really, really nice. (Yes, they DID mention those!) Along with better SEO. Two topics that have been hot in the forums in the past.

May we suggest the addition of something to the list though? Fix the search. Please! It's great to advertise, but it only works if people can find things.

Kudos to Etsy on following through on a promise, but the timeline is a big part of it that's missing(a November/December contest doesn't count). You're getting there, kids.

Edit: Based on a reader's comment from the chat, he did state a potential, and soon, timeline for the ads (October through December)...which was only known to those in the chat at that time. Better, but not quite there yet on the whole communication and timeline thing.