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.