Open Post: There's Been A New Round of Mutings

Consider this an open post to talk about recent new mutings or anything else Etsy related. I've approved all the comments that were waiting for approval, please accept my apologies for the backlog.

Truth fucking hurts.

Making Money the Etsy Way - The Untold Story About Renewing

TechCrunch published a lengthy article on September 11 by Steven Carpenter, TC Teardown: Etsy, It’s Crafty, an article worth reading just for what it leaves out.

The author provides a rather shallow view of the actual Etsy fee structure here:

Etsy makes money in two ways: it charges sellers $0.20 to list a product for 4 months, regardless of the price of the item, and then it receives a flat 3.5% commission for each completed transaction.

Carpenter fails to mention that Etsy also makes a huge chunk of change from sellers who constantly renew thousands of items per day, which goes on at such a high volume that it could actually equal the totals spent on new listings.

We don’t know the actual dollar totals on relisting fees paid because Etsy keeps all its real number under wraps.

What we do know is that the original fee structure, which is based on 3 profit streams (listing, renewing, and sales commissions) that underlies the Etsy of today compared to the Etsy of 2006 no longer support the argument that "renewing is worth it" and results in actual sales on a site with 6.7 million items.

Renewal fees and the aggressive push to relist is based on a site format that LISTS BY MOST RECENT DATE.

The renewing deal, along with a site structure that is designed to grow by volume is based entirely on upping the numbers: more new sellers list more new items while current sellers list new items and relist items in a never-ending cycle that costs sellers big gobs of dough.

If relisting/renewing (a significant Etsy revenue stream) gets you to the top of the heap on a site with 6.7 million listings with thousands of sellers relisting hundreds of thousands of items per day and week, how much time to you think your item is going to stay at the top of that heap (the heap that sellers use to get traffic)? Less than a second.

The REAL question is, does relisting have the same meaning, significance or value to sellers that it did in 2006?

Be sure to stop by TC and let them know what you think about Etsy's revenue streams.

What he neglects to mention

You’re going to love this. Make sure you’re sitting down and there’s no glass to break nearby.

Mr. Etsy, Rokali himself, has been so kind as to provide an update on the inner workings of Etsy in the Dorque. Ya know, Etsy is now 125 employees strong and still hiring! Amazing. All that brain power and they still act like they’re a group of 5 morons sharing a brain.

And they secured more venture capitalist funding – welcoming yet another money guy to the Etsy Board. They only spent about $1 per member (5 million they tout! 5 million!) on server and hardware upgrades this year, they’re so thrifty!

What our precious little red-headed fiend neglected to mention was that the latest round of funding was $20 million dollars. And that Etsy is now valued at $300 million because it sold more than $130 million in goods in the first 6 months of 2010.

And yet there’s no customer service department, no real new checkout that’s acceptable, no coupon codes, no sale mode, no batch edit…you know the list by now. Oh but, their largest expenditure is the equipment and their employees, and with 125 ironic apartments to furnish, well, we can’t expect them to actually have money left to spend on the site!

Etsy will make roughly $5-10 per member this year ($30-50 million total, ~$12 per shop on the site).

Rob, just between you and me - maybe you should cut back on the manpower and up the ante on brain power. Cut the fat, stop hiring until the people you already have are capable in their jobs. Your revenues will halt when sellers jump ship over the nonsense. Unless of course you’re just prepping it for an IPO.

Oh wait, you are. Yep, Etsy is planning on going public next year according to financial reports. He failed to mention that admin no longer serve the customers, they serve the investors.

Quotables: The tipping point

Ahh, you smell that? That's dissatisfaction, and the Etsy forums are full of it regarding the new Sales Tax feature being rolled out. In fact, some just can't take the nonsense anymore:

First, I would like to say that I never rant in the forums. This issue, coupled with several other changes recently implemented at Etsy, have brought me to a tipping point.

Quoting: ericds says:

"The new Checkout, which will require payment before an item is marked as sold, is one of the most requested features and we think it will dramatically improve the experience for buyers and sellers.

We didn't want to delay the release of the new Checkout until we had released the perfect sales tax tool, which could take a long time.

We decided to start simple and will improve the sales tax feature over time."

Etsy is based in NY State and they are unable to appreciate the somewhat ridiculous tax rate situation sellers have here?! I truly do not understand this at all.

Are you serious when you say "until we had released the perfect sales tax tool, which could take a long time."?!?! Do you have any idea how much trouble this IMperfect sales tax tool is going to cause? It is absolutely 100% useless to me as a seller in NY State. And you are acting like this is news?!

In order for me to collect the correct amount of sales tax I have to plug a buyer's address into the state sales tax online calculator. It is literally done by address - not county or zip code - in some places. Right now I have to refund the whole purchase thru PayPal, re-invoice the buyer with the tax added, and ask them to pay again. It
sucks. There is no way around it until someone writes the magical code for figuring out how to charge NYS taxes by address. Oh, wait... almost every other online retailer does!! My bad!!

All I keep hearing is "the new checkout will require payment before an item is marked as sold". Blah blah blah. Do not placate me with something that should have been done ages ago in order for me to swallow the bitter pill of indescribably poor sales tax collection implementation.

If you were quoted, congratulations and thanks! You can find your celebratory "I've been Quoted" avatar overlays by clicking here.

Update: Checkout rollout has been pulled back to address the sales tax issues - bitching does help!

Checkout roll out coming soon

The new checkout Etsy had to halt during the first 5% rollout is coming back, and they're fucking it up even more!

Sales tax...you need to set it in your Etsy...but if you live in a state where you have to charge different rates depending on location - well, you're fucked. Etsy is overriding any Paypal settings you may have for the tax rate.

Etsy is once again ignoring legality and just speeding forward because it's shiny. Remember how long it took for international sellers to point out that the currency needed to be noted. I'm currently taking bets on how long it will take to make Etsy say "hmm maybe overriding existing tax rate calculators with our own bogus, thrown together bullshit is a bad idea"

Cosmic Yuk said it best in our previous post

Looking for feedback? Are you fucking serious? You're rolling out another half-assed feature that screws with a huge segment of your membership!!!!

Does no one do any research? What are people supposed to do during the time you are 'figuring it out'? Overcharge? undercharge? refund the overage? eat the underages? You do realize that Paypal intends to charge for refunds, right? That you can't keep accurate tax records if you charge more or less than you're supposed to? And that it is illegal to do in some states?

Are you FUCKING SERIOUS ETSY??????????

Edit: As of 1.5 hours before rollout they have not sent emails to all sellers - only to the EtsyNews subscription list

Update: Checkout rollout has been pulled back to address the sales tax issues though many are reporting checkout problems and seeing a new layout/Paypal interface.

Mature sellers getting the shaft

Etsy likes to make changes to what sellers have to do without enforcing current rules or actually giving sellers something functional. It appears they're at it again.

Mature content filtering: A treasury experiment

Experiment would imply they aren't deadset on this being permanent, but since they aren't responding to much of the feedback they're receiving...well...it is Etsy after all.

This isn't the first group of sellers to be treated as substandard members of the site. I remember a particular dolls and miniatures hubbub...then there's vintage and supply sellers...yeah, it's Etsy. Five years in and they still don't know what they want their site to be. It would be so much easier if they were just straightforward and honest about who is and isn't welcome to sell there.

Shiny yet functional

You know how Etsy likes to put shiny things in front of sellers when they fuck up? Well this time the shiny thing is actually useful...if you're selling anything that is.

They've made the Orders(Sold) page (from the left menu of Your Etsy, fifth link under Items) more functional, as described by ericds in this forum announcement:

When you click "Show buyer address and message" we now remember that preference when you return to the page. If you prefer to see the buyer address and message, you no longer need to click that link each time you view your orders.

When you click the buyer username associated with an order, we used to simply send you to the buyer's profile. You now have options! Clicking the username reveals an overlay with links to send a Conversation to the buyer, view the buyer's profile, or view all orders from that buyer. It's now easy to contact a buyer from the Orders page and check if a buyer is a repeat customer.

I was a bit skeptical, but the execution appears clean and managable. Even the show/hide appears to actually remember my preference, even after logging out and back in. For those who like to reward return customers, the new way to view all orders from a buyer is going to make your lives easier. And the direct link to convo a buyer - well, it's about damn time!

We always say we'll give Etsy kudos when they're due, and they do deserve cookies for this...or better yet brownies...who's got the chocolate-flavored ex-lax?!

Are you fucking kidding me?

Remember those phonebooths Rokali told us about that they were putting in to handle customer service calls?

If you were like us you probably imagine a little cubicle with a computer, a ratty hand me down desk or some grungy table made from a funky old door or window pane or something maybe. Etsy said these booths would be used for customer service calls to sellers.

Boy, were we wrong to believe them. We really wanted it to be true, but they fucking lied to us again.

See, they posted a Dorque article revealing the new rooms! Hurrah right?

Does this look like a work capable environment?

This is just one of the three darling little phone rooms they paid two etsy sellers, who worked for over nine weeks, to make. You have got to see the other two, OMFG.

Lets get started on them shall we?

1. While cute (and if you were 8 year old girl, a fantastic way to convert a closet into a usable play space) these are adults. At work. Work! Fuck do they even know what work means???
   
   
2. Speaking of work - where is there room to do so? There is no computer in these pics, and by the looks of those shelves they won't hold an iMac (Etsy's system of choice) in either weight nor depth for even a damned macbook! How can they possibly add you to the internal blacklist for bothering them with troubles with your account without a computer? How can hey actually FIX a problem with you on the phone while twittering thier favorites?
   
   
3. Speaking of phone - Where IS the phone??? Don't Phone rooms usually HAVE phones? Do they intend the empoyees to use personal cell phones to do customer service? (if they do and you are lucky enough to be called by someone and can get a number on your caller ID, send it to us!)
   
   
4. And those seats.. really...? Despite the padding those are not seats for work. Possibly a campy photo for twitter or your facebook page.
   
   
5. Won't these rooms look adorable in the next national article about how "cool" the Etsy office is? Squeeee! I'm sure they'll look great on the media tours. I think I need to puke.
   

Now what these rooms really are: A cell phone booth for personal calls to your spouse, the vegan deli for your lunch order, or your mother to ask for a raise in your allowance while working at crafting camp.

No, the rooms we were told flat out were to be supposedly devoted to customer care, for the long promised phone support, are for just for show! Or at the very least used for private and personal phone calls without what I imagine is the blaring music and chatter of the office making it impossible to have that conversation. But aren't they cute???


Yeah, just fucking adorable. Fuck.



Edit by Righteous: Etsy responded via Stella in the comments to the Dorque post

stellaloella
Etsy's main offices are in one giant room where everyone works together. Great for collaboration, but sometimes it can be hard to have a one-on-one phone conversation. These phone rooms are for when staff need to have private business calls. We're also investigating offering support by telephone in the future, in which case these rooms will come in handy during the early stages to ensure every member's privacy is upheld.

While the design of the rooms is creative and fun, I assure you, they are totally functional as well. Jen and Brian took care to consider that this is a workspace in addition to an artistic installation. The rooms have working telephones (just not shown in the photos) and staff can easily bring a laptop into the room to work.

So yeah, Etsy cares about its sellers so much that they devote time and energy to making sure staff don't have to step outside to call their mommys while phone support is still non-existent. Fuck you, Etsy, fuck you.



Update by Cranky on Sunday June 13, 2010 at 1:11am:
Etsy is shutting down stores who have spoken out against these rooms in the Storque post with charges of TOU violations that the sellers are saying are FALSE.

So far AprilMarieMai and Bijoutiful (and her other store BijoutifulSupplies as well) have been shut down and muted in the forums.

Here is a new thread about the shutdowns, and you can see the original Storque post is growing and growing in seller outrage as sellers demand answers about these shutdowns.

If you are another seller who spoke out on Etsy who was met with a email notice, or "brickwalled" let us now. A previous forum thread was shut down for "denigrating" the sellers who designed the rooms, though NO ONE WAS. They were criticizing Etsy for having them done and why. We're trying to gather info on what is going on, and who is affected, but we won't publish your name if you say not to (but will add you to the number of shops being shut down on a following post).

Etsy is playing a petulant child because we're not wanting to giggle at their fucking tea party. Maybe it's time we all run to it's daddy, it's Investors, with lots of outraged letters.

Etsy has some suggestions for you

Despite teasing sellers for 2 years that they may be able to organize their favorites, Etsy has decided they will tell you what your new favorites should be. Forget the time you've taken to mark things, just shop and heart their suggestions instead!

Etsy launched a suggestions feature that you can get to by logging in and visiting your favorites page. It's supposed to be based on shops that are similar to those you already heart and those liked by those who heart the same shops you do (you know, like the connections tool they already had). But many people are saying that the first couple of pages appear to be favorites...no, not other Etsian favorites...favorites.

A stealth way to promote admin faves?

Even if it isn't anything devious, why the hell are they putting up something as useless as suggestions and redundant with other browsing tools when there are other things sellers want and need?

Oooh shiny things....ok, what's broken?

Worried about resellers on Etsy?

Hidden among the Dorque garbage from a little over a week ago was this tech update outlining two programs with specific team leaders to combat resellers.

SCRAM and Atlas, headed by CB and Indec, not surprisingly it still includes other sellers doing admin's job (for now, I'll say hesitatingly).

A few details of interest from the article:

SCRAM, which is essentially an internal Etsy "bot" that prowls the many halls of shops and listings, looking for probable resellers and other troublemakers. Since SCRAM was introduced recently, it has identified several hundred potential resellers, each of which our Support Team is reviewing for appropriate action, ranging from gentle reminders to outright banishment. Furthermore, SCRAM pays particular attention to catching those reseller shops that seem to pop up overnight, stuffed with mass-produced products.

...

The Atlas project covers all the tools we use to manage the content of the site.
One of projects that we've prioritized is to rebuild the flag-processing tools we have. While CB's SCRAM tools work really, really well, there's a limit to what automated tools can spot. That's where flagging comes in: Etsy members can report listings that break Etsy's rules. These flags then come into a system within Atlas that allows our Content Team to review the flagged items and take appropriate action — anything from an email explaining the problem and requesting an edit to a listing to outright termination of the account for the most egregious violations.

So all in all, all Etsians can do is flag, and they've added a "report this shop to Etsy" option. In the Bugs thread, some are reporting that the slow response time is still a problem, but Indec has stated that it's only the beginning of a large overhaul (suddenly I'm overcome with deja vu).

Just thought you all should know.

Etsy Paypal Issues Persist

It's been a bit over 2 months now, and the Etsy Paypal issues are still ongoing.

Etsy's probably been too busy playing hot wheels on their road map and coloring outside the lines to fix it. Or maybe they've implemented Paypal Express Checkout already and just haven't told us. You never know with those rascals.

But, hey, it's only a random inability to sell items on the site, so they shouldn't be too concerned.

Oh wait, Etsy is an ecommerce site with a mission statement to "help people make a living making things". Huh...never would've guessed that.

At least the search problems don't matter since people aren't getting paid anyway.

By the way, the work around for payment is to either send an invoice (if you're the seller) or via your Paypal account, "Send Money" to the seller's email address in the Etsy transaction email (if you're the buyer).

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.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

The Etsy header became all confuzzled. And the glaring neon of the new font led me to a dark place called the Storque...

where Rokali has provided a roadmap of what Etsy is certain it can accomplish in the next 2 months.

The first thing on that map was rolled out today to much fanfare chagrin - the wider page and new Etsy header with teeny tiny font. Yes, it is less distracting from the shopfronts, but the lack of testing prior to roll out is, well, what we would expect.

Let's see how well the switch to Paypal Express Checkout goes:

we’re going to require payment for an item before marking it as sold on Etsy. To do this, we’re migrating to a new payments platform at PayPal called Express Checkout (EC).

The biggest change is that a buyer will go to PayPal and authorize the payment, then come back to Etsy in order to actually complete the transaction. ...

Our ideal Checkout is to have a single payment cover all purchases, even those from multiple sellers. This is on the horizon, as PayPal readies their split payments feature for Express Checkout.

There's also the pesky detail of it being integrated properly on Etsy's end. Oh the adventures we're about to have *sigh*

Another Etsy Paypal Bug

Since Etsy won't email its members about the problem, I wanted to make sure you all know about it.

Paypal payments are going to the wrong sellers in some instances

Etsy's solution thus far:

Other users have been able to work around this issue by communicating with their buyers, the other sellers, and working out separate Paypal payments.

Yep, because what Etsy does best for its sellers is making their businesses more difficult to run.

I'll try to find a way to get you all bandaids after you finish banging your heads against the wall. Giant knitted bandaids with owls and mustaches.

Etsy/Paypal Bug

Have a rash of non-paying buyers? Finding that Paypal isn't working for your buyers? Have the no money for your items and stuck waiting blues?

Yeah, it's an Etsy bug with their connection to Paypal that appears to have been occurring for more than a week.

The way around it so far is to send the buyers invoices through Paypal (it's not a Paypal issue evidently), but be sure to explain the issue because they may think they already paid due to the lack of an error message appearing.

Admin know it's going on, but they haven't done anything about it or said anything other than to ask for more specifics. Because, as we all know, it doesn't matter how many individual and specific stories are given in a thread, admin wants to make their own damn thread! And then ignore you.

Etsy Accepting Applications for 2nd Comm Council

This is a bit of news, just fyi. I know not everyone reads the Etsy blog or tolerates the forums so...

Etsy has announced that they are accepting applications for the second Etsy community council.

See this Storque article for information, and the application is here (also linked in the article).

The Etsy Seller Community Council is a group of members who volunteer to meet with Etsy Admin at least once a month for a period of six months to discuss marketplace enhancements and community offerings. The meetings are held in the Virtual Lab and ongoing communications are facilitated through Google Groups

Gift Guides Bullshit

Always late to the party (again) - we’re starting to wonder if those Admins are asleep at their keyboards with the flurry of wacky, detached-from-reality posts from both marymary and HeyMichele dated December 2nd about how sellers can "nominate" your picks for the GG’s.

That’s right, sellers, another round of WHAT SELLERS CAN DO FOR FREE FOR ETSY while they twitter their paid-hours away on faves and more faves!

Once we get past the fact that all of this should have been a hot topic in mid-September, too late is really too late, and lame "announcements" telling sellers to do the work that ETSY REFUSES TO DO ITSELF is finally going over the edge.

Not only that, but both marymary and HeyMichele list several links that take awhile to read because, surprise surprise...there are RULES for nominating your GG picks!
1)Etsy stylized pix so you can’t see the actual product
2)You can pick your own items, but Etsy prefers you to work your ass of promoting OTHERS so you’re even less likely to sell
3)Make sure the item is sold in multiples, you know, like big box stores (fuck OOAK)

After you do all that reading, follow all the Etsy formula branding rules, never promote yourself, and buy into more and more Etsy asshattery, here’s the final message from HeyMichele:

"We can't promise all items nominated in this thread will make it into the guides, but we will be looking through them frequently. Additionally, we may select nominated items and place them in a different guide than suggested, or we may even select something different within the shop of the nominated item."

Total, complete and utterly arrogant BULLSHIT.


More work for sellers with absolutely NOTHING in return!

Feel the Frustration

I was trying to shop on Etsy today...ahem...trying

And I'm not the only one. Despite several years of asking for advanced search, better yet an advanced search that works, and unrolling a number of so-called improvements, we still have...well...frustration

Mistagging is a big culprit, and so search failure is also a flagging failure. Etsy's inability to conduct quality control, even though their members do half the work for them, is a big part of the problem. Sure, you can buy some fancy search algorithm, but that isn't going to wade through the crap.

You would think that with all the time admin spend finding items for gift guides, front pages, finds emails, and Dorque articles they would notice more of the mistagging...ahem

Best Thread Title: “Is this a Bug or a New Change?”

Hats off to all the sellers who diligently report daily BUGS in the ever-changing, weirdly morphing, almost unshoppable site - Etsy!

Etsy is so unstable, sellers don’t know whether it’s a bug or a new Etsy feature dropped on sellers like an iron anvil right smack in the middle of the holiday selling weeks!

Etsy pays little attention, but when they do, like lisajune finally did to the pesky shopping cart time-outs, they tell sellers AND customers to send MORE DETAILS in emails that, admittedly, MIGHT NOT even make it through the silly, old support@ system!!!

Etsy, the site that makes it impossible for most sellers to sell!