From the Bitches Auxiliary: Quit Your Day Job for Welfare

Just want to put in my $.02 about this Quit feature. I wish it were gone-- it's so depressing and misleading. The Quitter now is a woman who has sold 818 pieces-- and they are nice, by the way-- but by my estimated calculations, if her average sale price is $50, she has sold a little over $40,000 worth since Sept. 2007. That is gross, not net. How can someone quit their day job for a job that pays them much less than $20 grand a year and has zero benefits? People who take these profiles seriously will be setting their course for the poor house, and retarding them from truly being independant. She would qualify for social services with that income.

This comment was not composed carefully enough for publication, but it needs to be said again and again. Poor, simple, naive little girls should NOT be propagandized into buying the idea that they can support themselves this way. It's disingenuous for them to believe it, but so many young and inexperienced girls will believe it-- just at the time when they should be out making the decisions that will make them successful and able to pay their own bills. Cinderella much?

Well Aux member, we feel that your final comment was composed perfectly for publication. The sooner that young and/or naive Etsy sellers understand that the entire "Quit Your Day Job" series is a load of hot steaming horseshit, the better. Get real with your dreams people.

Are you kidding me?!

So, umm, yeah, if you've been in the Etsy forums lately it seems that everyone who asks for category changes get them lickety split, but there is STILL no top level doll and miniature categories on Etsy. Sure, there's "doll" and "miniature" under "Toys", but for a site that has "Geekery" as a top level category, there is something to be said for the argument that Dolls and Miniatures deserve a top level category, too. And dividing "Plants and Edibles" is probably another change that should be done.

Oh and by the way, if you sell vintage/antiques, be sure to alter your tags to fit the new subcategories that have been added.

Which reminds me, category changes should be announced to every member! Dawanda recently re-did their category structure and they sent an email outlining it and how to accomodate it to every seller. These are important changes and should not be done lightly or on a whim, it's how the whole mess the structure is in became this way in the first place!

I agree that the recent changes to the Vintage category are warranted and beneficial, but what about those that have been asking for a category for more than 2 years? Oh, wait, they're not allowed to talk about that anymore.

Too little too late?

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

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

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

Love, Etsy

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you later fools, Etsy

Fuck you too.