BREAKING NEWS!

Kalin is OUT! Chad is IN as CEO!

Composing a post now, but this one is for the PARTAYYYYY!

Planet Etsy Where Are You?

Astute sellers already zeroed in on the perfect thread that points the spotlight on the bizarre goings-on at Etsy these days.
We’re thrilled that Admin posts are now highlighted!

Rokali zooms in from Planet Etsy by evading questions about Privacy Settings AGAIN with this doozie:

RK: Happy to answer this. First, can you define what you mean by "all privacy related information and features"?

And here comes lisajune with her know-it-all declaration:

lj:

Social commerce is core to what Etsy is though. It may be what you want to do, but there will be features you can't opt-out of. :/

So there you have it. Rokali doesn’t have a clue, couldn’t answer a question if his life depended on it. And lisajune (aka the Etsy Parrot) has made herself Queen of Etsy the Social Site.

Love it or leave it, lump it or shove it.

What you thought you saw on Etsy (if you can find it on Etsy) is not really what you saw on Etsy because Etsy is no longer Etsy! It’s an Outer Space Orbit of half-assed Admin comments and Announcements that get more bizarre day after day...no matter what you want to sell on Etsy, Admins are DETERMINED THAT NO ONE SELLS ON ETSY.

Be social or they’ll shove more of it down your throat tomorrow!

Rokali speaks out

Oh, don't sell it short, we learned tons. Like that you're a psycho knife weidling narcissist megalomaniac braggart idiot who rides on the abilities of truly talented people to carry you through life with no regard for anyone but yourself.

Oh wait, I think we already knew that. Never mind. You are right. Point to you sir!

"He Must Be On Crack"

We were sent this link to day and we simply had to share such inspired creativity in reference to our favorite ginger asshat CEO.

"He Must be on Crack" is a satirical piece about @rokali the founder of etsy. Etsy is now being represented in the media as a "flea market." I read the recent article about Rob in whatever magazine he was recently interviewed in and all I could say after each paragraph is, "He must be smoking crack." It measures A5 or 5.75x7.5 inches. I did a quick sketch with pencil and then used a Lamy Safari with a B nib filled with Noodler's Black ink for the black lines and color was added with watercolors, the background and all red in the piece is done with Noodler's Nikita and a brush.

It's wonderful. It's a masterpiece. It's so freakishly clownlike. it's so... Rokali.

It's also for sale for a stunningly low $25.

GO BUY IT!


She should make prints of this...

Oh fake Rokali, where have you been all my life?

This is inspired parody.

The Birth of an Idea

I sat in an orange chair facing an open window. Or maybe it was a green chair. Anyway, I was sitting in this chair. It was nighttime and the lights were off. Which made it hard to tell what color the chair was.

But I sat in that chair, in front of that open window, and I could smell madeleines baking. Which was odd, because I was in Brooklyn.

You can follow the wisdom of FakeRokali, on Twitter. For additional yuks, follow FakeLisaJune.

Quotables: Vintage Rokali

Ahhh yes, the early Etsy days:

"There is no “Etsy” in the monolithic sense of a single identity or being. Etsy is the several dozen employees of Etsy, Inc. and even more, the several hundred thousand members of the community. As I see it, large corporations try to sanitize all their outgoing messages for the sake of keeping face. It is very easy to identify this kind of behavior. Whenever you read something and it sounds like a series of pre-made phrases strung together, instead of a human being speaking, this is sanitized communication. To me, this stuff sounds inhuman.I want Etsy to stay human. This means allowing each person’s voice to be heard, even if it’s squeaky or loud or soft.* [Editor's note: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!] I will not put a glossy layer of PR over what we do. If we trip, let us learn from it instead of trying to hide it; when we leap, let’s show others how to leap."

Dear Rokali, you've tripped so many times do you even know what walking is these days?


*Emphasis mine.

Etsy Caves - kinda... okay not really.

A media firestorm seems to be the only thing that can move Etsy from its handmade pedestal enough to actually remove the headphones and stop glancing at fake Chuck Norris' twitter-pretend it's listening long enough to trick you into believing it. Don't be fooled.

They just released this little ditty addressing complaints and what they are doing/have done to address them and actually eek out a half-assed apology and a half-baked fix:

Yesterday and today there have been a handful of articles reporting that purchases on Etsy are public. The articles have led to concerns by members of our community.

We want to apologize. We also want to set the record straight about how our product works and about changes we made today in response to your feedback.

Are my purchases on Etsy public?

No. As of right now, all your purchases on Etsy are private.

Were there changes to Etsy that made my purchases public?

No. The issue here is our Feedback system, which has not changed in six years. We do not directly publish your purchases on Etsy. However, when a seller leaves feedback for an item you bought, or you leave feedback for an item you purchased, we would link to the item. Our Feedback system has always worked this way; our original thinking was that it's important to know more about the transaction, to better establish trust in the marketplace.

We added the option to enter your real name when registering. Right next to this text field, it says: "Your full name will appear on your public profile. This is optional." Some people enter their name, some don't. As of right now, 25% of people (including us) have entered their real name.

It is the confluence of these two things that led us to this position: if you enter your real name, purchase an item, and the seller leaves feedback for this item, this purchase will be publicly visible via our Feedback system. Search engines index our site, which means this data can turn up there, too. It's been this way since October.

If nothing has recently changed, what's going on?

There is a lot of misinformation being spread right now. One blog post even has the outlandish title "Etsy Makes All Of Its Users' Activity Public." This is simply untrue. On Etsy, private conversations, financial information, billing data — all are now and have always been strictly private.There was an article published on ArsTechnica that made clear how direct the connection was between using your real name on Etsy, buying an item and receiving public feedback for that item. The reaction to this article has made us realize that we need to change the way our Feedback system works, and this is what we’ve already done today.

Why make any changes to the Feedback system?

The article and response highlighted for us how we've outgrown our current Feedback system. It dates back to a time when payment for items was sent after completing the checkout process on Etsy. This meant that sellers needed to know how trustworthy their buyer was. We now require payment prior to completing checkout, so this issue has basically gone away.

We believe that markets are conversations. We want people to discuss what they purchase, although this will often mean discussing it in private. As such, we have removed the link from a piece of feedback (which is public) to the item that was purchased (which is now private).

What is Etsy’s view on privacy?

We take privacy very seriously. We work with TRUSTe and audit our privacy policies regularly, notifying all members via email any time a substantive change is made.

In the future, we may provide an option to share individual purchases publicly at the time of purchase. This will be completely opt-in and on a purchase-by-purchase basis.

We are deeply sorry for any confusion and will work hard to regain your trust.

What’s next?

We have been working quickly to make changes based on your input and opinions. We will continue to work on this, for what’s really needed is a rethinking of our entire Feedback system. In the meantime, all purchases are private, and feedback doesn’t link to items.

If you have any more questions or concerns, please email support [!at] etsy.com or convo us directly on Etsy.

Thank you.
Rob (CEO) and Adam (COO)

The forums aren't buying it. Many sellers immediately pointed out the REAL issues remain unaddressed: no notification when this went live, real names going public and a deafening lack of answers for the user-base in the forums themselves.



And those "handful of articles"? Artsy Alien was nice enough to list them all here:

Consumerist - http://consumerist.com/2011/03/you-want-your-real-name-associated-with-your-etsy-purchase-history-right.html

Ars Technica - http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/03/etsy-users-irked-after-buyers-purchases-exposed-to-the-world.ars

BoingBoing - http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/15/etsys-privacy-valdez.html

MSNBC - http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/15/6273251-e-commerce-site-etsy-exposes-users-shopping-histories

Forbes - http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/03/15/etsys-experiment-with-social-could-be-costly/

Digital Trends - http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/etsy-comes-under-fire-for-revealing-buyers-names-purchase-histories/

Help Net Security - http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10746

NY Magazine - http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/03/unannounced_privacy_changes_ex.html

NY Convergence - http://nyconvergence.com/2011/03/etsy-exposes-buyers-and-purchases-online.html

Auctionbytes - http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y11/m03/i15/s02

The Business Insider - http://www.businessinsider.com/etsy-takes-a-page-from-the-facebook-playbook-2011-3

Gizmodo - http://gizmodo.com/5782146/etsy-privacy-catastrophe-reveals-users-full-names-dildo-preferences-and-other-less-embarrassing-purchase-information

Village Voice - http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/03/etsy_privacy_policy_dildos.php

The Mary Sue (awesome new geek chick blog, if you haven't seen it yet) - http://www.themarysue.com/etsy-privacy-settings/

Buzzfeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/etsy-new-privacy-policy-not-so-private

About.com - http://antivirus.about.com/b/2011/03/14/the-etsy-trojan.htm

Reputation.com - http://reputation.com/blog/2011/03/15/etsy-privacy-change-shows-users-purchase-histories/

Yahoo - http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110315/tc_digitaltrends/etsycomesunderfireforrevealingbuyersnamespurchasehistories

Salon.com - http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/15/etsy_privacy_people_search/

NowPublic - http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/etsy-people-search-privacy-policy-change-exposes-users-2767071.html

Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/the-circuit-kerry-hutchinson-introduce-infrastructure-bank-franken-to-propose-new-net-neutrality-bill-free-calls-texts-to-japan/2011/03/08/AB7m9gW_blog.html

Geek Sugar - http://www.geeksugar.com/Etsy-Privacy-Settings-14921901


Added: Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/15/etsy-privacy-debacle-site_n_836277.html

Added: Ars technica Update post


That more than I can hold in twelve hands, how about you?

Happy Birthday Rob!

From the Auxiliary Guild: Google and Etsy - Truth Stinks

We got this today in the digital mailbag and decided we had to share it.

For weeks now, Etsians have been begging for answers as to why their sales, views and Google Analytics have shown a sharp drop, as if they suddenly hit a brick wall. For weeks we've been given no answers, references to old Storque articles and a post or two from Forum Moderators that they will 'pass the info on' to the tech guys.

Today, Rokali announces that and I'll quote his words:

Rokali says:
(This is posted in another thread elsewhere in these forums. I'm reposting it here because it's work reading. We still need to do some more research, but it's a solid hypothesis.)

Statement of Facts

1. We didn't change anything on our end mid-March that would affect SEO.
2. Google made a massive infrastructure change, codenamed Caffeine.

He then goes on to say:

"As it turns out, we began this work about three months ago, as part of a more general refactoring of our own listings infrastructure."

Announcement here

So I did a little research into 'Google Caffeine'. It seems as far back as August 09' there was information regarding this change to Google. And in January, a beta test was released and quite a few people involved in SEO work got a chance to try it out. I"m certain that those who are well versed in SEO and those whose job it is to keep websites Google compliant have been following these changes closely. I am linking one resource where there is a chronological listing of topics related to this, but just Google 'google caffeine' and you can find much more about this here.

Sellers are falling all over themselves to thank Etsy for this update. Finally, they have spoken.

But take a moment and ponder. Etsy has known about this since last year. The Google Caffeine Beta was released in January 2010. Coincidentally, Etsy started 'generally refactoring' their own listing infrastructure that same month. Really? Just on their own with no regard to any upcoming Google changes? How stupid do you think we are? I get this from the fact that they are already 3 months into this estimated 4 month change.

Count back 3 months.......hmmmmm......

Rokali said they didn't make any SEO changes "mid-March", ok, what about since January? I'm imagining that it might take a little time for those changes to filter down and for some sellers to start noticing something is different.

Everyone at Etsy acts like this is a surprise and 'gosh, it must be that newfangled Google Caffeine that's doing it!' Like they didn't know all along. They strung sellers along for 3 months all the while knowing exactly what was going on and failed to tell the sellers.

What a bunch of horseshit. And people are gobbling it up by the shovelful. Etsy sellers better wake up to the fact that Etsy cannot be trusted, they will lie, skirt the truth and leave you hanging in the wind. What's not to love?

We can't say it better than that! What Etsy says can usually be easily found to be full of shit without much work, or even much reasoning. They think we're all stupid.

Reading the Reincarnated Etsy News Email

We certainly applaud the return of the Monthly Etsy Newsletter sent earlier this week (which was unexpectedly halted in November due to admin getting distracted by shiny things), but it’s a few days later and we’re still not finished reading the 14 links to Storque posts! And that’s before we even get to the More Etsy News and Site Feature Updates!

It brings everyone who reads it (and then spends the next week reading all those links!) up to speed, but we’re still wondering why the promised changes, updates, “Roadmap” and Etsy’s Community Council are so obviously missing from the headlines (yes, they're included as links among all the others, but they're big news).

Etsy has a reputation for inconsistency and forgetting (in a New York Minute) what they said to sellers last week (or for that matter, yesterday) but it’s getting to be a massive exercise in frustration for sellers who have been harping on just a few vital features that they need today, not 3,500 miles “down the road.”

Upon his return to the CEO helm, Rokali sent out a flurry of Announcements and popped into several forum threads bursting with promises to sellers that have simply faded into the background. Where did they go?

Etsy may have an internal roadmap, but the road changes route, fades to black, and runs right off a map that is a fuzzy as a Storque post or another Announcement about a contest that falls flat on its face.

What we DO know is that Etsy Sellers are so busy reading links, reading hundreds of forum threads, and desperately looking for the Roadmap (that remains ONE BIG SECRET to everyone but Etsy Admins) that they can barely keep up with changes and tweaks that have nothing to do with getting real traffic and sales to their stores.

Wasn’t that the original idea behind Etsy? Getting real traffic and real sales?

There’s a world of difference between what sellers discuss in the forums and what Etsy says in this email update. As the chasm gets wider, any Roadmap (if it actually exists) is driving many sellers straight off the site for good.

Rokali & EB: The Interview

Hey everyone. We deeply apologize in the time it took to get this to everyone. Righteous was kind enough to spend time tonight to get r done.

Here it is....

EB: How are you guys going to improve your customer service?

Rokali: Yeah, that’s really important to me too and something I think we’ve done at best a good job with so far, and that’s at best, so there’s a lot of room to improve. Offering phone support is a huge one. And so we actually have three little phone booths here, I’m in one of them right now and we’re setting them up so you know we’re setting up the calling system and we’re hiring a couple people who have experience with that. We have a couple people here who have experience with that so phone support to me is gonna, in terms of the responsiveness of support, trump everything. We’re experimenting, this happened while I wasn’t here, they started using a system called Right Now which helps with issue tracking and things like that. I mean the other side of it is Etsy members help each other more than we help Etsy probably. You know the way that, it’s with different sets of issues, but the people in the forums helping each other is a huge help for us so being able to facilitate that better would..

EB: Yeah that’s true, but when you have a billing issue or there’s something…

Rokali: Oh, sure, yeah for private issues, yeah that’s…

EB: …a billing issue and all you’re getting is the form letter back or you have someone who is, like happened last week, somebody bought out somebody’s entire shop and plastered them with nasty, just completely nasty retaliatory feedback for, which nobody really has any clue why…

Rokali: Right, so that’s also pointing to the feedback system not working the way it needs to. There’s a lot of stuff, I mean you know in my year away from Etsy I got to take a good long look at it from a distance too and you know it’s, it’s clunky and there’s a lot of stuff that just doesn’t work like the way it should, and that’s not just the feedback system being not designed properly. It’s the fact that we, you know, we don’t have enough systems in place to catch that type of behavior like an entire shop being bought out and then a lot of negative feedback being left in a short time period. You know we can write software that flags that. Again, people are probably going to be able to flag it faster than we can. But you know having someone on call to deal with that. People at Etsy here are, you know, we’re always around, so, you know, we have an internal IRC chat room, and there’s a customer support on-call list and people have pagers, although it’s not technically pagers anymore so I mean there’s a system inside Etsy to deal with this stuff it’s just going to be a matter of ramping it up and offering phone support.

Summary of further discussion: After discussing with Rokali specific instances of a lack of support, including an inability to contact admin through the Etsy system and having to resort to Twittering a forum moderator about privacy issues in forum threads to get offending threads fixed or closed, Rokali said that 24-hr phone support would not be immediate or the first implementation. He emphasizes that it will be a gradual ramp-up of the support system to that aim because he admits that, in some instances, a “red phone for emergencies” is beneficial and that it’s a responsibility Etsy needs to embrace as a priority.

EB: What are we going to do about the supposed, whether real or imaginary, favoritism?

Rokali: Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about that internally and so I think some of the favoritism that people see is a natural result of constrained resources and doing things wrong. And I’ll explain that. So the constrained resources are if we have 2 or 3 here curating the home page from a limited pool of treasury lists made by a limited pool of people the same stuff is going to keep popping up over and over again. That I don’t think is the right system to be curating the home page in the first place….so I don’t want to be doing that at all.

After explaining front page bingo to Rokali and how some choose favorites for their treasuries simply to end up on the front page (transcription not done to avoid mentioning names given as examples), he elaborated on the changes planned for both front page curation and treasuries.

Rokali: We’re actually building tools now to start keeping track of all that stuff [number of times a seller is featured in a given period]. And we’re also rebuilding the treasury from the ground up, not in flash, so that there can be thousands of treasury lists to curate from. And then the way they get picked for the home page, we’re gonna try, I want to minimize admin involvement with that. So we’re playing with some different ideas.

We did ask him about Etsy employee conflicts of interest. He said he was previously unaware of DanielleXOs gift impropriety on Twitter. Also, he has no plans to change admin’s abilities to have stores because he feels it helps them understand what sellers experience, but he’s going to discuss internally account disclosure, admin shop promotion, and inappropriate personal/business interactions with sellers.

We had a good discussion with Rokali about the semblance of professionalism of admin and disciplinary response hierarchy. It was mostly him listening to concerns we’ve heard from other Etsians so that he could integrate them into later internal discussions and procedures. This first discussion on these issues was the beginning of helping him understand our point of view and what those outside of Etsy see and experience. It appears that some of these issues will be addressed when the customer services changes are implemented (form letter and slow responses be gone).

EB: What tools do you want to see happen at Etsy, seller tools for us to use, to create an easier experience for us as sellers?

Rokali: Good question. I’ll answer it two ways. First is, I think, what we’ve just been talking about, one of the most important tools we need to help sellers is the right internal content management system and customer support system. So that’s something that we’re looking at. The system we have now is two different systems and they’re not integrated and it’s nowhere near good enough. There’s not enough people using it and they don’t have enough time and so it puts this time constraint on people having to deal with stuff. And I think that’s leading to some of the issues. I’m not making an excuse for why it’s all happening [seller problems with admin communication] but that’s definitely not working well enough. In terms of seller tools, wow, where to start. First, one thing would be having an API with proper authentication. Like, if you guys use Twitter, you know that there are like a thousand applications out there you can use to post to Twitter. And on eBay even, other companies, outside companies, have built desktop applications for managing inventory on eBay. There’s a company called ChannelAdvisor, and so if you look, all of these seller tools are empowered by eBay having a robust enough API with authentication to support this kind of stuff being built. So I think one of the most helpful things we can do for sellers is to just get that done, which is being worked on right now. Then the other stuff are the features that we would actually make into the site itself. Which I can talk about too.

EB: API is nice, but the fact is that most of your sellers are going to use your site, and most of the tools they want are not really overly complicated and a lot of your competitors have already beaten you to the punch months ago.

Rokali: If not years ago. What are some of the tools that you…can you name some?

EB: There’s seller notes, there’s global editor, etsy importer, coupon, automatic posting to (facebook and twitter), tweet my listings automatically, Google upload my listings automatically, gift certificates, sale mode, vacation mode and vacation mode where you get the choice to leave your stuff up for sale but people get a message saying you’re gone and you get a couple different ways on that. The global editor is really pretty amazing, you can change the prices, change the discount, add a promo label you know like free shipping or something that sticks on top of your picture. If you really want to see what you’re up against go get a little account over at (competitor) and pay the whatever it is now…for a month and see all the features they’ve got. They’ve really, while you guys have been sleeping the last year, essentially, I know you guys have been doing things, but you haven’t been doing the things that the sellers have been wanting. You know, you did give them rearrange pictures, they like that. But there are so many other things. Even… 1000Markets has some tools that Etsy isn’t even anywhere close to getting on. And the thing is, the sad part is, they’re things that people have been asking for on Etsy in the forums for, some of them for, 4 years?

Rokali: Yeah, sure, I mean it, I don’t enjoy having to see those requests over and over anymore than you guys enjoy not having the tools. I was, I mean that was one of the growing pains with Etsy too was, you know we, we hit these issues, I don’t know, about 3 years ago. I don’t know if you guys remember, the V2 ridiculousness…So that was this issue of adding new features versus keeping the site up and then that was a wall that we hit as a company. And I think we’re probably just now fully recovering from that. And that’s why I’m really excited to be back cause I want to show what we can do with this incredible engineering team that we have. And so, yeah, we have a lot to live up to and it’s one of those things where I can talk on and on about this but the only thing that’s really going to matter here is getting you guys the tools and so that’s what I’m here to do.

In further discussion about the dragging amount of time Etsy seems to take to roll out anything, Rokali elaborated that they are actively attempting to adjust this system by avoiding large sitewide code changes that have disrupted the site in the past and by gradually tweaking the site code to keep up with planned changes as well as working on major changes to build into the site. There will be a team of about 5 people working on seller tools. This list will be published so members can contact and interact with them directly. He doesn’t feel Etsy is transparent enough at the moment in regards to who is working on what site features. He also said that one of the top three projects for Etsy right now is giving Teams the tools they’ve needed for 5 years and haven’t gotten yet, which included discussion of groups/forums.

We told Rokali that Etsy needs a dedicated moderator for the Bugs forum and Ideas forum, one that actually provides feedback about what’s going on. Rokali said there is currently someone who monitors the Bugs forum, but he couldn’t remember who it was off the top of his head but will find out and discuss with them better responses with the community. We discussed the concept of a new form of bug tracking (an application or contact form) within Etsy.

EB: What are your ideas on changing the front page, we had briefly touched on that, but what would you like to see happen to the front page. What’s your vision?

Rokali: So, there’s, I mean from a product perspective, we’re about to make a simple change where you’ll be able to stay logged in for a full day without having to log back in all the time and we’re going to work on extending that. Once we split off the more secure things, like changing your password and looking at your bill will require you to re-authenticate, but otherwise you can be cookied for a couple weeks. So once we do that, I think something like, so if we know who you are more often when you come to the home page, something like an activity feed. So showing you, similar to, if you use Flickr, this person commented, this person favorited this, this item sold. So at the very least you can get an activity feed there. As far as the other content, the curated content, on the home page, I’d like that to be much more personalized. Again I don’t want it to be a couple admin at Etsy deciding what goes in Etsy’s home page. I think we should be building software that is, I don’t know, there’s a couple different ways to do it. You know, one would be we could use personalization algorithms to get a sense of what you’re interested in, similar to how Netflix recommends movies to you and then recommend treasury lists to you by showing them on the home page. Things like that, so the general direction I want to go in there is less of a monoculture more personalized. So that’s the system we’re gonna focus on building. And again, we should be building software that empowers other people to curate their own home page, we shouldn’t be curating their home page for them. That’s my general approach.

We discussed the problem of items being removed from shops before payment is received and Rokali said that they are running beta tests of two different ways for Etsy to implement Paypal that will eliminate the issue for items purchased with Paypal. We also discussed approaches to delayed feedback to avoid immediate retaliatory feedback for items that aren’t really purchased. There is nothing definite planned at this time. They are working on an integrated flag system to avoid admin from featuring items or sellers that have been flagged until the flag is resolved as a way to avoid featuring resellers in the Storque.

We made sure that he was aware of the collective problems with a certain admin starting with D, so we’ll see how they go internally with that. That’s the best we could do. We’re not in control of Etsy. If we were, she woulda been canned after the reign of forum terror. He was diplomatic and silent, listening, but not commenting. We also made him aware of willy nilly forum thread closure by a certain forum moderator. Again, silent and listening. He did suggest instituting non-solo moderation to help clear up some issues with admin behavior and mistakes.

EB: What is going to be done about the Etsy brand? Right now the way that, and I totally get that the Indie thing is hot right now, but for the average person who has money…doesn’t like being stuck with this kitschy do-it-yourself and indie label. I mean is there going to be something more inclusive coming? I know the tagline is changing.

Rokali: It hasn’t changed yet, but yeah, I think the owls, cowls, and moustache problem will be addressed with the, what we were talking about, with how the home pages are gonna be, the content is going to be curated in a different way. It’s not going to be admin’s curating it…On the outside it can look a lot more deliberate than it is. I think, right now, it’s unfortunate for sure. It’s a side effect of having too few people using not good enough tools to do something. So being able to personalize that content would mean that people are going to get views into the site as they want to see it. And we have a larger issue with that as we try to internationalize, right, because it’s not just, I mean at least another person in another state in the United States is speaking the same language. We’re going to have issues with what’s called localization. Not just across content, but across different languages. So that’s something we’re really thinking about now for sure….There should never be one aesthetic ruling the site. That to me is the wrong way to do it.

EB: How are you guys going to handle marketing now? I know you guys are about viral marketing, word of mouth, grassroots, and now it seems we’ve kind of reached our limit with what we can do as sellers. We’re out there in the community, we’re pushing Etsy, and there’s never been a doubt that a lot of the sellers boast about Etsy at almost every craft show that they go to. It seems that now we’ve reached the end of that and it’s time to go larger. (interjection : TV commercials?) Are you guys planning to do anything a little bit larger?

Rokali: Yeah, for sure. I mean, first, I can speak off the cuff about this but we haven’t made any conclusions about that stuff. TV commercials I’d have to see a lot of data and would take some convincing to do a TV commercial because you can’t click on a TV commercial, and there are plenty of stories of internet companies spending a lot of money on TV commercials and going out of business a year later.

We mentioned seeing ads for CafePress on late night network TV.

Rokali: Yeah, so, the other part with that would be, let’s say we want to get the message out there and if we’re going to do it on TV we can either go on TV as part of some programming or we could put an ad on in between programming. Just from looking at Etsy’s own past, if we buy, we’ve bought ads on websites where we’ve had articles run on us on that site. And the articles generate dozens of times more traffic than the ads do. I mean it could just be the quality of the ads, but the discrepancies are huge. [interjection: people don’t click on ads in magazines either ] Right so, Etsy has had pretty good press. We were just in Reader’s Digest, if you wanted to buy an ad in Reader’s, so one approach there would be, Etsy has a pretty good story and sellers on Etsy have such great stories and if we can empower that, I think in some ways that can get us a lot more ink than we could ever get trying to get ads. And Etsy does get a lot of press in that respect. And I’m not saying we’re going to do that in lieu of marketing but I’m saying there’s a lot of that that’s working.

We discussed the style and placement of current magazine press and how Etsy could follow stories on individual Etsy shops with a real Etsy ad in order to bolster the advertising potential of the free press. As well as advertising in new venues, outside of the standard “get new seller” craft mags. He was receptive to ideas. Etsy has tried Google ads in the past year, but spent a lot for few clicks and had poor conversion. They are currently working on a strategy for the next year. However, any new, large advertising push will be prioritized to occur after the site has been fixed.

Addressing drops in sales, Rokali said that the buyer to seller ratio is increasing, but if the number of items is increasing faster, the number sold per seller will drop. So he chalks up the drops to marketplace dynamics. He’s hoping that personalization and new ways of sorting search results will help keep buyers interesting. But it will take a lot of planning and interaction with the community because it could drastically change the marketplace dynamics even further. He’s also hoping to setup something similar to Gmail labs, where members can turn on features being tested, a way to integrate Etsyhacks into the site.

We did ask about the role of the Community Council, but Rokali was not part of the implementation of the first sessions and is only starting to get up to speed with the plans for the second incarnation. He agreed though that until the changes actually occur, it’s lip service. A lot has been said and little has been done, but he’s aware of it.

He elaborated on “people over products”. What he meant is no more retail site stuff like gift guides and weekend sales emails. For him it’s about the marketplace and the people who sell the items, so the focus is shifting to customer service and seller tools.

He’s left the door open for further discussions.

Etsy a little slow today?

As pointed out in this forum thread, Etsy page loading is getting hung up on the dopple analytics script.

And guess what Dopple is! Well, it's a company owned by Rokali that's developing analytics software (even though he's not an IT guy of any form). Hmm...starting from scratch when there's already Google Analytics, but they had trouble integrating that too. Might as well screw up the whole kit and kaboodle instead of just the kit.

So it looks like Etsy is trying to fix the Google integration issue by just making their own software, which they can't seem to integrate either, or maybe it's just a crap beta test. Either way, you're their guinea pigs! Here's a lettuce leaf to nibble on.

Here is the Article!

The article about Etsy we are featured in is up now at CNN money!

Etsy wants to know...

What making a living means to you

Seriously? This is Kalin's new job, asking stupid questions?!

Making a living...hmmm...that would be MAKING A FUCKING LIVING. Survival, dumbasses. Not living in your parents' basement or eating ramen every day while tripping over the storage crates of crafts and Etsy receipts in your 100 sq ft closet with no heat you call an apartment.

What we all have jobs for...to make a living...to pay the bills....to eat...to have a roof over our heads...to take care of our kids.

And he even answers the question himself:

I'd like to know what "making a living" means to you. It could be anything from having a roof over your head, to having health insurance. Or it could mean working your own hours doing what you love, while having a family and teaching.

Ummm...doing what you love is NOT making a living. You can't survive on 'doing what you love' alone.

Will someone on Gold Street do us a favor and smack Rob upside the head?

EB Comments of the Week, October 26th

upsetwithadmin said...

OH! That explains so much. Now I know why Admin lies all the time. Following in the footsteps of their now ex-CEO.

jodie nicholson said...

Oh Etsy, how your constant fuckitude never fails to disappoint.

Grace said...

Etsy is more like the abusive husband that keeps promising to get therapy and "work on it". Etsy brings you flowers when you least expect it (fancy widgets), but refuses to take out the trash when you ask.

Right now, I'm seeing other websites on the side, and getting my finances in order so that I can file for divorce. A girl can only take so much.

If you were quoted, congratulations and thanks! You can find your
celebratory "I've been Quoted" (and other EB avatars) by clicking here.

Rokali: Cover Model? :::gag:::

Imagine my utter dismay (okay, rage) upon seeing the latest issue of INC on the newsstand. Featured on the cover were four young hipsters. One of them former Etsy CEO, Rokali. I scared the girl checking me out with my ranting.

The story is about the most enterprising 30 entrepreneurs under 30 on the scene today, you can read it here.

Each of the 30 has a little blurb next to their name. Of course Rob's little blurb contains old yarn he loves to tell about how he obtained his education with stolen/faked Student Ids:

Rob Kalin

Current Venture: Etsy, a vast website that helps artisans sell handmade clothing and crafts. The Brooklyn, New York, business processes 20,000 orders a day, at an average sale of $15. The site charges a listing fee and takes a small commission on each transaction.

Why He's One to Watch: In just three years, Etsy has attracted 200,000 sellers, a million registered users, and more than $27 million in funding.

The Backstory: The son of a Boston furniture maker, Kalin flunked out of high school, briefly enrolled in an art school, and then faked an MIT student ID so he could take classes on the sly. He so impressed the professors there that they helped him get into NYU, where he learned how to build a website. In 2005, he launched Etsy with two classmates.

Employees: 65

After Hours: Kalin is learning to sew.

What's Next: Kalin, 28, stepped down as CEO in July, though he remains actively involved as Etsy's chairman and chief creative officer. "A lot of companies are started and prepped for an acquisition," he says. "But I hope this will be an independent company for hundreds of years."

Hundreds of Years Rob? Really? REALLY? Google won't be around in 100 years, ad you think Etsy will be? Are you that naive? I don't give you till 2010.

And stop flaunting your faulty figures, you're the only one who thinks they are accurate. And a teacher helped you get into NYU... Right. Plenty of great universities in Boston, and he helps you get into a school in NYC? Let's talk more about his educational goals, this is from earlier in the article:

Co-founder Rob Kalin, an aspiring classics professor, came up with the idea in 2005 and partnered with two techies whom he met in college to launch it.

So being in Boston, and wanting to teach Classic Literature... of course MIT is the natural college for that... in BOSTON. A town with some of the best universities of classical and liberal arts educations in the world... Harvard, BU, U Mass, Northeastern, Tufts, Suffolk, Emerson just to name a few - and he went to MIT... to study literature at the top tech school?

I also imagine MIT has a top of the line kick ass security system in place - and he sneaks in on a faked id? Riiiiight. I am willing to bet you need significantly more than a faked ID to even get into buildings as almost all colleges are locking down these days requiring codes and swipe cards to even get the door open. That's why I call bullshit on the whole story and always have. I know he thinks it looks daring and bootstrappy, but it just looks like he's lying - about everything.

I do love the start of the article though... The first paragraph is Etsy defined.

A question for Etsy

Etsy is an ecommerce venue, right?

So why doesn't Etsy offer any real statistical tools to its sellers?

Etsy has never offered its sellers any stats, although it's been vaguely promising them for almost as long as the site has existed. (This is consistent with Etsy not offering a slew of features that most people would consider standard for an ecommerce site: streamlined listing, bulk image uploading, searchable sales, a proper printable invoice, vacation mode. They've only just now given us bulk feedback, for pity's sake).

The end result of Etsy offering no stats is that sellers are working almost totally in the dark. If they run an advertising campaign for their Etsy shops, they have no way of tracking where their traffic is coming from, and, therefore, whether that advertising was successful. If they change their product line, ditto. Without statistics, sellers are flying blind when it comes to running their shops like real businesses.

Etsy has the stats, of course. Most people have noticed Etsy's own Google Analytics loading while they're waiting for a page to open on the site. It doesn't fly blind. It just won't help its sellers (unless those sellers are Admin. We've heard a few reports from people who've visited Etsy that Admin there have lots of access to stats). So, Etsy has lots and lots of statistics for its own use, particularly misleading ones it can trot out in monthly Stroque articles. But it has consistently refused to share basic statistical information with its sellers.

Views and hearts.

The only thing resembling statistics that Etsy has given sellers are 1. item view counters and 2. "hearts". ("Hearts" are given by other Etsy users to sellers or to specific items when those sellers or items are added to another Etsian's favorites list.) Not dazzling. Not terribly useful. Not even reliable (views were seriously wonky from at least August 2007). But they were the only stats we had, and we made the most of them.

We made the most of them, largely thanks to the initiative of other Etsians (not Admin).

Etsy sellers doing it for themselves.

Since February 2007, Etsy's sellers have tried to compile their own stats on the site. Lots of sellers have tried this, including the redoubtable loosewirestudios. This is all of a piece with Etsy rolling out features (in this case an entire ecommerce site) that has enough holes in it to require its own users to come up with work arounds.

An extended example of sellers doing it for themselves was the founding of off-Etsy sites which sprang up to fill the statistical void, notably EtsyTools and The Heart-O-Matic.

The Heart-O-Matic was launched by Etsy seller, juln, and turns Etsy's view and hearts counters into fairly useful statistical tools. From January 2008, until EtsyTools' demise on April 1, 2008, the Heart-O-Matic was offered as part of EtsyTools (see below). Now it's gone back to its original site at http://www.majaba.org/heartomatic.php, where it continues to provide some very useful information for Etsy sellers.

EtsyTools (founded in August 2007 by interrobang and vertis) was another unofficial, off-Etsy site which offered incredibly useful charts of Etsy data culled from Etsy's API (application programming interface). Etsy itself always seemed a little snippy about EtsyTools, perhaps because it was slightly embarrassed that two sellers were able to grab Etsy's data and provide some of the stats that Etsy sellers had been pleading for for so long. For whatever reason, a concerted effort was made by a few seriously unbalanced people to shut down EtsyTools. Finally, it was the death threats that did it, and Etsy Tools closed its site on April 1, 2008. It is much mourned.

Both of these sites were brilliant pieces of work, but nothing Etsy couldn't have come up with itself, as a service to its sellers. It didn't.

The whole view thing

As I said, views were pretty unreliable from August 2007, but they were completely unreliable for over three months, from March to June 2008, disappearing sporadically to the considerable consternation of sellers. During this time Etsy displayed its patented cavalier attitude to its sellers and their needs. Anyone asking questions about views was directed to a month's old thread (which itself referenced a month's old Storque article.) On May 27, 2008, a thread was posted in the Ideas forum by a staff member CaterpillarCowboy, asking us to choose between having accurate views and a decent search, and telling us to defend our choice. This employee finally closed the thread, after having delivered the somewhat upsetting news that the engineers who built Etsy (that would be RevolvingDork himself) didn't allow for the exponential growth of the site, with the result that the view counters were degrading and would continue to degrade. Fixing this problem was going to be a huge undertaking and we weren't to hold our collective breaths.

Then, after months of outcry and frustration in the forums, without any warning, Revolving Dork announced that everything was fixed, for data from January 2008 to June 16, 2008. Not only were views fixed, but they had been restored from previously stored data. A sterling example of Etsy's fine communication, but, nevertheless, we were all pathetically happy to have even this tiny piece of information back.

Etsy asks our opinion ... and then ignores it.

Etsy Admin have, from time to time (about once a year), entertained themselves by seeming to ask our opinions about statistics. They did it in June 2006 and August 2007. Then Rokali asked again in April 2008 -- or, rather, he asked Etsy Forum participants to list their top three ideas for both selling and buying. 93 pages of input resulted in a Storque article on April 21 which disclosed that, tah dah! Statistics were on the top of seller requests. Since then ... nothing. Except maybe the threat that shop stats are something that we're going to be charged extra for.

A modest proposal

Etsy, please stop trying to reinvent everything from scratch, and just let us add a tiny bit of code so that we can use Google Analytics and/or statcounter with our shops. For example, take a look at how shopify.com has integrated Google Analytics so that their sellers can seamlessly track their own stats. In fact, take a look at shopify.com for a lot of great tips on how you can make the seller experience at Etsy better.

Also consider an idea originally suggested by dingo and seconded by littleput. "Even in aggregate some stats would be helpful. Etsy could - today - tell us what the conversion rates are for hits from search engines, bookmark sites, blogs, the front page, the gift guides, Etsy searches, category browsing, etc. They could be fixed up in a daily or weekly chart and shared with everyone."

*******
APPENDIX

[I want to thank a tireless member of the Auxiliary for compiling many of the links below. They give some of the history of sellers' call on Etsy for statistics. (Of course we may have missed some important threads because locked threads are not searchable). I know it's a really long list, but In some ways I think this sorry progression speaks for itself.]

NOVEMBER 16, 2005 :
Sellers want stats, Etsy won't give 'em

JANUARY 5, 2006:
More statistics from Etsy? RD replies that "We're planning on
expanding internal shop-specific stats in future revisions."

FEBRUARY 28, 2006
Seller asks for referral stats, RD replies that they're not in the plans.

MAY 2, 2006
Etsy seller happywhosists starts compiling some random stats from items viewed in The Sampler to show items sold, price paid per item and average price of item sold. She continued doing this, on and off, until January 2007. Well done!
Here's a forum search for "selling stats for" which will give you most of her threads

JUNE 19, 2006:
Rokali asks "Which Etsy stats can help you?" Apparently there was an internal discussion about stats panel. 11 pages of suggestions from sellers, until August 2006

NOVEMBER 25, 2006
Etsy Statistics? No reply from any Admin

FEBRUARY 13, 2007
Graph for shopping statistics? In the absence of Etsy-provided stats, sellers share workarounds

AUGUST 6, 2007
EtsyTools.com launched by two sellers to fill a void -- using Etsy API, they provided some tremendously useful stats until they were harassed into closing in early April 2008. Eight months. That's how long they lasted. (This thread was locked for misinformation)

AUGUST 27, 2007
Views: Why are they restarting and when will they be back?
RD tells us that view counts are stored in RAM, and that all the information is saved, but not visible. They are "currently trying to overhaul the view system to make it more robust and prevent this sort of thing from happening" , it may take "a few months to be implemented.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2007
Sellers start gathering their own demographic stats to answer the questions: what is our market? What is the sales to listing ration? How long is normal before I make a sale? What day of the week is best to list?

SEPTEMBER 19, 2007
loosewirestudios starts collating the user-gathered data on Etsy Statistics (from the above thread) on Flickr

SEPTEMBER 24 2007
DrWoohoo asks for Seller Stats requests.

This was also a Storque article (of course).

SEPTEMBER 26, 2007
Sellers recommends alexa.com as source of Etsy stats

NOVEMBER 13, 2007
Where do I find Etsy stats? Not on Etsy, that's for sure.

NOVEMBER 14, 2007
Sellers try to compile their own Showcase Statistics

DECEMBER 3, 2007
Idea: Shop Statistics

MARCH 6, 2008
Intrepid seller complies some Etsy stats on his own

MARCH 18, 2008
Storque article on view tally reset, cause and future solutions

MARCH 26, 2008
Curious seller wants to know where she can find site statistics.

MARCH 30, 2008
etsytools.com is closing down because of harassment

APRIL 11, 2008
Minutes of Town Hall meeting -- Rokali announces that shop stats will likely cost sellers more money.

Rokali: one word on shop stats: this is something that's very server-intensive, meaning that it takes a lot of resources for us to provide these stats. Rokali: there will be several differing levels of stats, starting with free and moving onto a couple packages that cost a couple bucks a month (pricing to be set). We'll give you the most we can for free ;P

APRIL 15, 2008
Rokali wants our input as to the top three ideas so that Etsy can "prioritize development". Of course you do, Rob.

APRIL 21, 2008
Rokali announces the results of his forum thread gathering info about our top three ideas for improving Etsy: Seller Stats is number one.

APRIL 28, 2008
RD tells us that views are not a priority, and that the current view tally systems has "some problems with storing data reliably". He refers to the March 18, 2008 Storque article.

MAY 13, 2008
Seller begs for Shop Stats. marymary says they're something Etsy is working towards

MAY 16, 2008
Are we ever going to have statistics?

MAY 27, 2008
CaterpillarCowboy (aka "Dave") asks us to choose between a better search and working views, and tells us to convince him that views are needed. It later turns out that this is an experiment.

MAY 29, 2008
"Dave" calls us all his friends and spills the beans that views are broken because the engineers who built Etsy (that would be Revolving Dork) didn't allow for site growth. They will continue to degrade (the views, not the engineers)

JUNE 4, 2008
Seller would still like some stats, please.

JUNE 11, 2008
"I wish I could see stats!" So do we. It would be even better than seeing dead people.

JUNE 11, 2008
Is there anywhere else I can get stats on my Etsy shop?

JUNE 12, 2008
Shop statistics: any idea when they might be available? How cold is Hell getting, these days?

JUNE 13, 2008
Aren't you ashamed, Etsy? OP about lack of communication, but a lot of discussion of views and stats. Locked on June 18 after 84 pages, and called "long-winded" by marymary.

JUNE 18, 2008
RD suddenly announces that views have not only been fixed but they have been restored

JUNE 21, 2008
ETA on site statistics for individual shops? marymary notes suggestion, and that they have shop stats on the list of "user requested features" (as if the designers of an ecommerce site couldn't have suggested that shop stats would be a good thing), but no ETA.

JUNE 26, 2008
Is there a section on Etsy for stats?

JUNE 27, 2008
Sellers asks how to view shop stats -- usual responses from Etsy community: majaba.org, you can make your own, etc.

JULY 15, 2008
So, Etsy ... How Are Those Seller Stats Coming Along?

JULY 22, 2008
Etsy, you have stats available for your needs -- please share them.

JULY 23, 2008
Charging sellers for shop statistics is a bad idea. Please don't.

JULY 29, 2008
Can we please have daily etsy stats in the aggregate

AUGUST 5, 2008
God, I need stats. So do we all, honey, so do we all.

Am I a boy or a lady, I don't know which?

Have you seen this article in the New York Times? (Thanks to Impetuous for the link)

One has the feeling that the author, Ellen Rosen could scarcely contain raucous hoots of laughter from start to finish. Let's deconstruct this little gem, shall we?

1. The skateboard ramp at Etsy, long a staple subject of snark, apparently disappeared six months ago. This, for Rob, marked the end of Etsy's status as a "start-up". Way cool definition, Rob. I get the feeling Ms. Rosen was impressed, too. So, although we all mourn the demise of the halfpipe, we must ask, why on earth has Rob been kicked upstairs with searing business analysis like that?

2. So Rob knew he needed professional management. “We hit a point in growth that we needed people who have done this before". Etsy sellers have known for some time (even before Caterpillar Cowboy let the lab rat out of the bag) that we're chiefly of interest to our Handmade Overlords as test subjects and experimental fodder. Now we have confirmation from Mr Swimmy himself. We also have confirmation (if confirmation was needed) that the people running Etsy don't have a frickin' clue. And yet, when some of us have pointed this out, over the years, while begging Etsy to take its (and our) business seriously, we've been rebuffed. Etsy knows what it's doing, went the refrain. Trust Etsy.

3. "Mr. Kalin will remain as chairman and will focus on creative efforts as well as the establishment of etsy.org, intended to coach vendors on producing their wares and also to establish an educational arm to guide them in running and expanding their businesses." Translation: "Mr Swimmy has been stripped of any real power, and will now have lots of money and lots and lots of free time to work on what he does best: suckering craftspeople into believing that he actually knows something about running and expanding a business".

4. The Coral Nail Polish Incident. The New York Times (no strangers, they, to eccentricity) clearly loved this. I picture Ms. Rosen gamely trying to keep a straight face when Rob shared this tidbit of creepy oddness with her, then dashing off a quick email from her BlackBerry to share this with her friends and colleagues. Oh, how the corridors of the NY Times rang with merry laughter on that day!

Seriously, how creepy is this? You're at work (which for most Etsy Admin, admittedly, consists of making shrinky-dink moustaches and videoing each other). The head of the company calls a "all-hands" meeting. "All hands on deck", he cries! You show up for this very important meeting, to find the company's charismatic leader sporting bright nail polish. He explains brilliantly, "I'm a boy, but boy CEOs can't wear nail polish, but I AM wearing nail polish, therefore I must not be the CEO of Etsy anymore".

It's this brand of hard-hitting, diamond-sharp logic that has made Rob a colossus currently bestriding the Handmade Universe. Did anyone at the meeting stop to point out one of the other logical conclusions, "Um, Rob, maybe it means you're not a boy anymore"? "Are you getting a sex change operation so you can be our female CEO"?

And one hopes that at least a couple of people trapped in that meeting thought, in the privacy of their own skulls, "This guy is a total wacko". I'm betting that Matt and Stella entertained that thought for at least a moment.

So, to sum up. What have we learned today about "running and expanding our businesses"? The lesson I take away is this: start up your business with absolutely no expertise, take no advice, exploit other people along the way, and when your finely-honed skills tell you it's time to expand (i.e. when things are getting really tough and your customers are complaining and everything is going pear-shaped), ditch the halfpipe, paint your nails in a bizarre, passive-aggressive display of indirect communication and bring in someone who actually knows what he or she is doing while you are put somewhere where you can no longer harm innocent passersby.

I only have one question left.

Was it handmade nail polish?

Truth in Advertising (or lack of it)

In an article on Friday by Tech Confidential, Etsy Chief Cupcake Officer Rob Kalin reports:


"There are 200,000 sellers making their livings from Etsy,"


ORLY? Let's check some facts. If you go to the Sellers page on Etsy and have a look at the list of seller accounts, you'll see there are 10,408 pages. At 20 accounts per page, that's 208,160 sellers. But oh, just wait a second... if you sort the sellers by number of listings, you'll find that the number of shops with at least one item for sale in them ends at page 4,551, meaning there are actually only 91,020 people selling things on Etsy, at the time of this writing. [edit: at the time of publication, these numbers are already inaccurate]

Huh. Wow. So Chief Cupcake is off by a mere 117,140 sellers. Maybe it's a misquote? Possibly, but given Etsy's propensity for inflating numbers and Rob's history of bluffing his way into jobs, we doubt it. He either didn't bother to check the numbers on his own site, or he didn't bother to tell the truth. You pick!

Let's examine the second half of that sentence. "Making their living from Etsy". Now apparently, in this thread, some people are defining "making a living" as buying some groceries and putting gas in their car. We here at EB tend to think of the phrase in the more old-fashioned way, as in, earning an income, not pocket money. How many sellers on Etsy are actually making their income from Etsy? We're not sure exactly how many, but we're pretty fucking sure it ain't 200,000. Seller Abitabite does a little math in the thread and points out that since in June the value of sold items on Etsy was $6.5 million, 200,000 sellers means that $32.50 was earned in that month per seller. Is $32.50 a month a liveable wage? You decide!

This is hardly the first time Etsy spins some incorrect numbers for PR fluff. Remember the big announcement they made about reaching ONE MILLION members? Except it wasn't one million members, it was one million registrations. Thanks to numerous people pointing out that little error they used the correct word in the Storque article three days later. Oh, and don't mind that little afterthought tacked on down at the bottom of the article in italics, the part about not accounting for users who have multiple accounts and the "one million" including accounts that have been closed.

Etsy isn't even above using sellers' private income as fodder for the PR machine. Several people in the thread recalled Etsy telling Martha Stewart that Emily Martin of TheBlackApple, one of Etsy's top handmade sellers, makes six figures, which Martha announced during her segment with Emily. According to Emily's blog, that figure is not an accurate reflection of her business, and was revealed against her wishes. For shame, Etsy. We thought you were all about respecting each other.

Etsy, could you just get fucking real, for a minute? You have half the sellers you say you do. Almost none of those sellers make a living just from Etsy. And those who do don't make six figures. Of course, we don't expect you to share any numbers that would be real eye-openers, like how many accounts have been closed, how many shops have been opened and never used, how many buyers have signed up and never bought anything. But enough with pimping a dream that doesn't exist. Figure out what's good and true about yourself, and sell that instead. Once upon a time you said you favoured transparency. The waters are looking pretty murky now.

We welcome our new Handmade Overlords

Today MaryMary posted an announcement in the Etsy forums, with an accompanying Storque article, describing some new staff and new roles at Etsy Inc. Along with it came a personal message from Rob Kalin.

I am grumpy to announce that, against my will, Maria has replaced me as Etsy’s CEO. She is now my boss. My new title at Etsy is Chief Cupcake Officer (CCO), a nice meaningless moniker that will allow me to focus on what I'm best at: lying about my experience, stalking private blogs, and reading children's books.

I will also be spending time developing Etsy.org, a money-losing organization that will focus on failed hammock videos, dressing up in silly costumes, eating cupcakes, and giving jobs to my unemployable friends. (More vague details about this are coming soon. Right now, I'm still licking my wounds from getting canned.)

I’ve been filling many roles since Etsy began, all of them new to me. That's because I have no actual experience in anything useful. It’s been an embarassing and exhausting education, much of it public. Watching Maria, with her experience and expertise and sanity, has made me realize what a failure I really am. I’m excited to get back to what I enjoy most, (living in my fantasy world) and maybe even check Etsybitch less than fifteen times a day for the first time in a long time.

Ok, he didn't really write that - thanks Bitches Auxiliary! By the way, it's amazing how many people saw "CCO" and thought "Chief Cupcake Officer". Grumpy minds think alike.

To be serious for a moment, we here at Etsy Bitch are hopeful that Maria's leadership and Chad's technical expertise will usher in a new era of professionalism and progress for Etsy. Hopeful that amateurish tutorials for shoddy workmanship will be banished to the Rainbow Land of Etsy.org. Hopeful that practical, useful tools that will help members market and move their wares will finally take priority. Hopeful that obnoxious, discourteous staff members will be duct-taped and locked in the janitor's closet in favour of pleasant, knowledgeable communicators. Hopeful that resellers and mass-producers will receive the swift kick to the ass they deserve, and that Etsy returns its mission statement and original principles that have been so subverted and abused of late.

Good-bye Rob. Hello Maria and Chad.