I launched an Etsy shop, and 2 days later closed it down. Here’s why, & what I’m doing instead… 

My pleasure! Those sales are FAB! 🤩 I love what you’re doing over there and seeing how you respond with your sellers is such a breath of fresh air after everything I’ve heard about Etsy 😕 Hope you clean up in the mass exodus ☺️

@@hedgecomber Thank you! I started off selling on Etsy and genuinely I am sad at what they have become! Sadly their juggernaut status makes it hard for anyone else, apart from Amazon to compete!

Would dearly love to hear how you have set this up. Would LOVE to do something like this in Australia, where Sellers do not have to fear things like Etsy/ebay etc... getting too greedy down the track.

@@aussiegal22 I already had an audience which was lucky but I took our a rather large loan and got it built! It was a leap of faith but I am so glad I did!

Thank you! @@DefundTheMasons

Yep, me too EE ☹️

When I opened my etsy shop in 2018, it was all handmade, hand crafted and it was a good thing. Then came the cheap resale stuff , like car-boot sale stuff, that would sneak in. The fees were sneaking upwards and in came forced ad fees, which if clicked would haunt a seller for 6 months. Then etsy chose to favor certain groups over others for their promotions even though we are all makers. The fees grew higher and higher. Buyers, fueled by social media online unboxing videos, pushed the boutique wrappings and packings as part of the experience - which adds extra cost on the side of the sellers - as buyers still wanted low cost for high experience. ( Attention buyers, that colorful packing material, cloth bags, stickers, confetti, personalized thank you cards, ribbons, etc that your stuff is wrapped, not to mention the safe packing padding, shipping boxes, tape and labels, all cost the buyer money, and increase the price of the item you are buying, or SHOULD.) The algorithm pushed shops with pure-blood 5 star reviews. Any review less than that from any buyer would knock you off the promoted or high ranking page, even if the buyer was complaining, not about your product, but about the shipping or customs agency. Again the fees climbed. Even more people found they could repackage mass produced items and sell them as handmade or handcrafted. (I personally know someone that is still doing this and making a great deal of money and it infuriates me, but etsy allows it.) I left in Spring of 2021, after two months of the fees outstripping any profit what-so-ever, which was tiny to begin with. I'm glad I wasn't around for the current fee with-holding disaster, but good grief. It has come to the point where makers aren't even making enough for their item and aren't able to pay themselves for their time, skill and effort - which was the whole point of etsy to start with.

Wow! Didn't know they started doing this. I hate when shows, shops, sites do this. Not fair to compete w China mfg stuff😢

Just some of the makers. Obviously not all, or etsy as a company itself. But it's out there. @@ccbluesky9780

It's owned by Amazon, still good to buy supply in a small batch. Unfortunately now it has become an easy eshop outlet for brick and mortar businesses. Vintage was good too, now not anymore. It was a gem

Etsy is the poster child of double-standards.

I pretty much just said the same.

Etsy are just as bad as Facebook with shutting people down without havung the decency to say why.

Yeah, try to find the contact link.

honestly, answering very fast is the basis of all customer service, etsy or not. this is really important ! etsy has a 1 day answering policy to be star seller, this is very large. If you dont want, it s still ok, you just wont be star seller, which is fair.

Sounds like a communist takeover…?

I've been cancelled 4 times. I feel her pain.

Why? ​@@thetoritree7865

They do that to all new shops because there are a ton of people trying to scam others. Look up small business triangulation scam. There should be a way for Etsy to avid these scammers in the first place though.

I had the same thing happen! Same email too. And yes, they banned me twice.

This! It is over-run with Chinese store fronts. It was ruined in the same way as EBay was. I haven’t had my shop open for a very long time so I can’t speak from a seller’s perspective, and my most recent buying experience was fine. But they totally lost their way.

This is how these mega corporations do things, It started with ones like Walmart, home Depot, etc.... Then when tech became available to the general population now it's the "sellers market" they've monopolized. And they get away with it because they have an endless supply of wealth. They pay to be at the top of search engines, and they use their money to lobby politicians to keep their scam going strong through loophole after loophole. It's very easy to setup a shop on these sites, but now you're hostage to their guidelines and policies. It's very difficult to build up your own website business without them, because your webpage is lost somewhere at the bottom of black hole called search engines...

💯

That's because Black Rock and Vanguard have huge shares in Esty. Anything they either own or have shares in is not good. They steal people's money and that's how they get rich.

​@@BattlerBears71it makes sense, I had the impression it was Amazon, but again who owns Amazon.

I 100% agree, and that’s the exact opposite of what Etsy was created for 🥴 Good luck with whichever platform you end up using ☺️

Same here. I've been struggling with where to open a shop. Etsy just seems so easy. But nope. Nope nope nope. This video was basically the last straw for me. I will learn from the wisdom of those before me! I'm too old to place the risk game of "I just have to try it myself".. nope.

Playing devil's advocate, holding funds is one way to guard against money laundering. Etsy has no way to know if a good was actually sent, or just a blank envelope. People could sell fake/non-existant products and sell them to people in their circle, who "buy" them just to wash money. There's a rise in a technique called "smurfing," which is when a lot of people transfer money in small amounts, usually below the threshold of IRS interest.

How sad Greed! It's always greed ! I will not be shopping @Etsy again.

What about Squarespace? I have been hearing about them from a few crafters.. instead of using Etsy.

I agree. : ( Now, where do I go with my upcycling merchandise that I've made here in the US?

Me too.

Yes, where?

Good news for all the sellers on Etsy🤷🏻‍♀️

Me too I took mine down.

Born and raised by Atheist Marxists and I've been hearing that same garbage misinformation here on RU-vid spouted by financially illiterate Leftists for YEARS!!!. Unfortunately that whole time I wasn't investing in the Stock Market mainly through an IRA or Roth. The reason why Vanguard and Blackrock own all these assets is because WE the AMERICANS are invested in out Retirement Accounts through Vanguard or Blackrock Index Funds. Hope you don't end up like me and SO FAR BEHIND!!! Start a Roth account if you're in a Lower Tax Bracket. If you earn under $53k/year you can also contribute substantially to a "Taxable Investment Account" and all Long-term Capital gains and Qualified dividends will be Taxed at 0%... Tax FREE!!! Plus you can contribute up to $6500 after-tax dollars to your Roth that will also be Tax Free in Retirement... Plus you can withdraw contributions at any time because they're after Tax. If you're in a higher Tax Bracket... which I doubt... you can contribute to a Traditional IRA and reduce your current Tax burden and defer them until retirement when you're in a Lower Tax Bracket. Either way, chances are you're going to either invest directly through Vanguard or purchase shares in a Vanguard ETF like VOO. Blackrock also offers many Index funds and Money Market Funds... That's the only reason why they hold so many assets. It's on the behalf of all the Americans investing their hard earned money for retirement and investment purposes THROUGH Blackrock Index Funds and Directly through Vanguard. Don't stay financially illiterate. Educate yourself and invest in your retirement!!! Social Security won't be enough unless you want to live just above the Poverty line. If you contributed $17/day with compounding that would be $217,000 in 35 years which could easily grow by appreciation to $1M!!! Start NOW!!! Keep it simple. Buy VOO and other low cost broad market Index funds. 🙏🏼

BTW and FYI... if you own shares in any of these funds or Stocks, YOU get to Vote on who and what they do with the board of directors. You don't have to but you can.

depends on who holds the majority of the shares. i suggest you look into blackrock, and vanguard. they have their hands in everything and need to be broken up for trust issues.@@SimonSozzi7258

That explains a lot.

P.S. We can also fight and work for change at the same time. Just don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

😮😮😮😢

I'm sure there are people padding their shipping prices to make money back, but for Etsy to make money from the shipping charges is outrageous. Profits over people.

@@1Letter23Numbers. It seems like ETSY is steering people toward using the free shipping option. If my experience is how they roll all of the time then, it seems that a higher base price with free shipping and, no international orders is the only way to go. I think that a fair share could be had by the sellers and, ETSY would still be able to make a nice profit.

That sounds demoralizing and depressing! Usually the buyer pays for shipping, unless you've set things up differently... as someone with a shop, this doesn't sound familiar and I'm wondering what happened :/

Me too!

Great idea, I decided the same thing. I'm a successful top rated freelancer on Upwork, BUT! When I travel and have bad location (third countries) I have 0 clients. So it's just a disaster, I'm working over other channels. It's a main purpose for me.

I can’t imagine the horror of waking up and someone has closed by business and is ignoring me, taking my money and keeping the rest in their ‘bank’ . I would never go on there at all, I spend time on creative marketing for independent small businesses and driving everything towards my own site. I own the Wordpress template, my domain, I pay my own hosting, it’s not even expensive now. I have 24/7 customer service available to me if I need it. No hosting company closes a site (unless it was posting illegal criminal activities) and I find it all works smoothly. I’m no techy wizard, I find it fairly easy to use Wordpress stuff. I’d never trust any of these arty platforms when they can close me down for no reason and then ignore my begging! Awful, they should be taken to court for this nonsense.

Not all small businesses can afford the costs of multiple site fees.

@@salnellen1381 - But that is not @kerrikolby6124 's fault. S/he took a route that worked for her/him.

I need a better site that will allow me to sell in the US and UK. I'd appreciate suggestions.

and with a nice british accent to boot ... bonus!

Wow, that is fricking awesome!!! Respect to you both, that took some balls. I didn’t add the shop to my wordpress site because of the chance of slowing it down, I figured a separate e-commerce site was the best option for me, especially as my wordpress site pays the bills so I need it to be fast and responsive. Is your shop live yet, I’d love to see it!

@@hedgecomber Thanks mate. It was a lot of work with eBay but I got super stubborn about it & just went NO. This is England. You don't get to keep our money. The judge was actually super supportive. The shop isn't ready yet we are making it quite scalable with some of our wonderful partner firms supporting us. Exciting & hard work both!

That makes no sense you do not have to be a registered company to sell on ebay I’ve been selling for years as an individual and they have never held my money once. I think there’s more to the story here.

@@mr.t8496 I could. It's really straightforward in reality. eBay simply didn't understand UK commercial structures for commercial (rather than private) accounts. They suddenly decided that they wanted various details on commercial accounts that didn't exist for us. For example they wanted a company number Fine for a plc or ltd company. Doesn't exist for sole traders or partnerships. Trouble was they started requiring these details to pay the balance that they already owed and wouldn't fix the errors in their system.

eBay isn't the only online business that doesn't recognize sole proprietorships and general partnerships and legitimate businesses, even though these types are the oldest known form.

I’m so sorry 😟

what do you think you did wrong? did you create the design? was the design copyrighted?

@@HelmetVanga maybe they did nothing wrong and still got targeted by Etsy. It happens.

Take them to court they cannot keep your money

@@HelmetVanga I appealed twice and they said it was because someone tried several times to sign into my account with fraudulent info. Apparently that gets you shut down permanently. They stopped responding after that. So disappointing. I am reseller on many platforms but can't even buy on etsy now.

They are taking advantage of two things: The separation of human interaction - you are dealing to a large extent with a computer. So you have no one to get angry at or communicate with. Distance. The product you purchase (if not a service) probably comes from a long way off, in many cases another country. If there is a problem and you never receive the item, or it is different (lower standard) to what you ordered you are unlikely to spend a lot of time trying to sort it out and are more likely just going to take the hit. So they get your money without having to do much.

So sorry Mel, but good luck in whichever path you choose ☺️

The vast majority who don’t have horror stories don’t post

@@karenl8837 So how do you know they are the majority, if the don't post, how did you count them?

Same here, let my Etsy site go inactive when these horror stories broke and have finally decided that I can't put myself in the position Etsy wants to put everyone in as a seller. Goodbye permanently to all of the Etsy hassle and yes, fraudulent behaviour...

@@user-gr3nn9xy1c because there’s millions of sellers and there’s not millions of complaints. Plus people are always far more likely to whine. You know it’s true

So, so sorry to hear about such sad times you had losing your parents - and having your shop closed down was despicable. I wish for better times for you. From London U K.

@nancypedrick5596 First off, I am so sorry for your loss of your parents. I lost mine from long term illnesses and cancer, and can relate. May you and your endeavors be blessed with success.

Also, I made scented candles and other things and relate to the Walmart Mentality of wanting it cheap no matter the quality. A hard mindset to get

I'm sorry about your parents, but please please wake up to how evil the mafia allopathic industry is. If they took toxic drugs of any kind, that is what makes people sick & often kills them. Be well & sorry you were attacked by the evils' etsy site.

So sorry for your loss, I really hope you are doing better now, Etsy behavior was disgusting.

❤️

💜💜💜 I agree.

I’m so sorry this happened to you both, I hope you find another safer way of selling soon x

I’m sorry to hear about your experience, I hope you find the perfect solution soon ☺️

I wish you much happiness and success!

Great news & you get to see real live human beings instead of dealing with AI bots meant to destroy Humanity. Where are you located? I'm curious how much the rent is these days.

Oh that’s so ridiculous, I’m so sorry 😣 Fingers crossed you find your perfect selling place soon x

They did that to me, too last January. I have a shop, but in this case, I was a customer. The seller had a mix-up with my items, and her last message was "Let me check and get back to you." I'm always very prompt in replying, and this was on New Year's Eve, and I was busy, so I didn't think it required a response. When I asked them why they dinged my SELLER account, they said that a seller is a potential customer, and you should be more professional. I searched their rules, and could not find anything about this.

That’s utter bs!

I can't even message my buyers. Etsy has messed that up and won't resolve it. I've asked several times.

That’s basically robbery

Same here!!

Me too! I guess it’s time to search out an alternative.

Same here

And yet there’s plenty who don’t have any trouble at all.

What I would do is launch your own website and do the work to get your name out there. It takes time and money but better spending it on yourself than giving it to a corporation so their CEOs can buy a sixth vacation home.

P.S. I love your keyrings. They are beautiful.

Great idea, good luck with it ☺️

I was following what was happening with the Indie Sellers Guild over on their website and I learned about the launch of the Artisans Cooperative, which is exactly what you are talking about in the first part of you comment! As someone who thought about opening en Etsy shop but ultimately decided against, I find the concept very appealing!

I fully agree that there needs to be a better platform that is much less about greed, lies*, and cares about the sellers. I have been very annoyed about a few things over the past few years. This one gets me too - *So Etsy claims to save you a certain amount in shipping fees when you buy your shipping label through them, but they leave out in that statement the face that they also charge you 10% of the shipping fee that a customer pays. That can be enough to wipe out most of that "big" discount and cause you to pay some of the shipping. Not great when selling "small dollar items. Shipping is so high, and with etsy fees, almost not even worth it anymore.

hosting security is a lot better now that it used to be... hope you give opening your own shop a try. Just be sure to purchase hosting that provides a SSI (secure socket layer) certificate. The shared certificates are safe and cheap! I pay $119 per year for hosting and then add pay pal buttons to my products for free. I think Pay pal takes about 2.4 percent. What a deal!

☹️ good luck xx

Best of luck and success in your next venture!

@thecatid hi I know all sites have issues in general whether dishonest buyers, technical issues with tracking, etc, but do all sites has the issue of shutting down an account w/o reason and holding funds? That’s the problem here not just issues in general. I’m not trying to be contentious I know “texting” doesn’t display tone, so with all sincerity I too was recently considering Etsy but I’m not sure anymore and it saddens me to know when I buy from there that my money could be withheld from the seller who deserves it. Doesn’t seem like a morally ethical company. And I don’t want people experiences and loss of income to be minimized as just any other issue. If Etsy is really shady I want to know and pray it gets exposed. I’m thankful you’ve not been touched by their greed or “closed accounts” but do we continue to support evil companies when they destroy others lives? I know I’m getting deep but this just reflects the world we now live in where even a person’s word is WAY no longer what it used to be. I’m happy for you but so heartbroken for the many others.

Very true. My husband use to sell on amazon, we were doing well. Then amazon gave our 5 star reviews to a similar item from a diff seller. We couldn't get them back, so we closed our acc and we lost that extra revenue we use to make a moth. Luckily we have 2 main Shopify websites that do well. I can't even imagine that happening and it being our only source of income, like a lot of other people. I guess it happens w/ all eCommerce websites unfortunately. When its not one thing, its another.

Yes, thank you for showing us your journey with the bunny. Since people usually only show success stories it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong when in fact it's just the critter was too far gone to begin with and it's much more rare for them to pull through.

The issue with that is traffic

​@@monkeddy3366Agreed but if (and it's a big if) the advertising for the website is done properly and given a wide outreach then the traffic to the site will increase, word of mouth of someone who's used the website is also good. There are ways to make it work but it's alot of time and effort which whilst crafting is very hard to do.

​@@monkeddy3366True, but a RU-vid channel, IG, etc can help drive traffic to your website instead of to an Etsy store.

Having run a commercial (membership) website a number of years back, I can't emphasize how important BACKUPS are. I was using what was then one of the top-rated ISPs in the US and over the course of about 3 years they changed which hosting plan I was on 2x without notifying me (each time I found out by accident while emailing their user support people on unrelated issues), told me I had "made changes to my website" when it began experiencing server-side issues (I had professional experience in the field and was able to tell them what was wrong but according to them, it was not possible and I must have changed something in my website), and when all the server issues I'd been warning them about finally caused a massive crash on their side I was notified that my hosting plan did not include automatic backups -- and when I pointed out they'd been billing me for a plan that *did* include backups, they told me I was mistaken but offered a "discounted" price of just $250/hour to restore my site on a new server *if* I could provide them a full backup. Being a bit of an idiot, I had assumed they would honor the contract I'd had for years and had stopped making my own backups after the 1st year -- the site never returned and I lost a *lot* of money. Moral of the story: KEEP YOUR OWN BACKUPS because ANY platform can obliterate you if you don't.

@@monkeddy3366 That's where social media, branding, and advertising comes in.

Wow

Same thing happened to me. What a scam! It's really disgusting.

Many other Apps also request permission to access, the camera, microphone, emails, contacts and much more. And it's always in the -small- tiny print which goes on forever, so most people can't be bothered to read it all, and just click OK.

Funnily enough I said to Jonny it feels like all the Etsy staff went to the Bahamas for 6 months and left AI to run things 🤣 It is really strange and will be interesting to see what their future holds.

@@hedgecomber When I was teaching at Heathercombe a year or so ago I had an email from YT telling me my account was being suspended for a breach of their terms, but with no further info. I managed to find an appeal form and fill it in, asking what I was supposed to have done. A few days later I received another email saying that my account was being reinstated, but no explanation. I wonder now if that was also an AI judgement that upon appeal was looked at by a real human and judged to by them to be incorrect. No doubt a cheap way for YT and other to deal with breaches as humans only need to look at cases if a person appeals.

That's just what it is in 2020 etsy suddenly got 100s of 1000s of new sellers who had never run business before they where getting loads of sales and some could not keep up some never intended to they where taking buyers money and disappearing. Etsy was trying to do something to protect buyers and stop scam shops but because they are using AI things went too fare the other way and innocent sellers have been caught up in it.

That sounds fun Pat, hope all goes well ☺️

Your own website, wordpress, shopify.

I think if you shop the site, just be aware of what the individual is selling, making sure they are actually making the items. I’ve got a few friends who sell some of their wares and I try to support them. But setting a shop up there for myself? Nope.

Aww, that’s a cute message! Thanks ☺️

I’m sorry to hear that, could you find a different platform to set up and make a big push on instead?

Awesome. Are you still selling?

@@katthevampire942 No, I shut it down about 10 years ago.

They Dont shut you down immediately. you just get lower ratings if you do it 10 x maybe? There probably is some number rule. You can change your ship by dates at any time. You have to be aware on your site as a shop owner. Read up.

American Express is still in business and just as big as ever.

@@tphillips37 Still in business yes, but not just as big as ever.

@@tphillips37 However, there are many places, especially in Europe, who won't take AMex because of the outrageous fees they charge vendors.

My pleasure Tammy, I’m glad it helped. Good luck with your new site ☺️

It has been a long time since I put my shop on hold, but at that time Etsy did make some aspects very easy for someone who had no experience. Much has changed so I can’t speak to it.

Square space has been in the news too for holding on to seller's funds.

what do you sell?

I’m so sorry this happened to you Allison 🥴 But really glad you’ve now built a safer business model 👏

How do you like Shopify? I was considering that too. I bought my domain but had it with weebly-square (not square space) and boy nothing happened for a whole year. So I am changing products around and considering leaving etsy. Idk. Yep Etsy is mess. They wrote me they had to remove some of my items, and no items were even removed. SO weird..

That’s so sweet of you, thank you ☺️

That's how I got here. I'm so glad I did.

Same here! I saw this pop up on my feed, and since I’ve been contemplating restarting my scent crafting, with an eye towards Etsy, I clicked. Less than 30 seconds I clicked subscribe. Real, kind, beautiful, and lovely lady. My kind of human.

Best of luck to you and have many success!

Oh, sorry to hear that Kim, but maybe you had a lucky escape. Imagine if they’d suspended you when you had a heap of sales and then you couldn’t access your funds 🥴 Good luck with your non-Etsy approach x

It can’t possibly be your seo your product or your photos? All etsys algorithm.

​@@karenl8837I'm not a seller, only a buyer and yes it's the algorithm. It's like fossicking for gold to find good handmade items, I scroll through pages and pages of the same photos from China to find something genuinely unique.

And that is so sad.😭

They treat US craftspeople the same as those from the UK. I've seen the complaints on US metalsmith FB pages. The only ones that get special treatment from Etsy are the Communist Chinese.

That's weird! I ship with stamps a lot, and just mark order as completed and have had 0 issues. 😮

Hiya. The way to beat the star seller ridiculousness is 2 things. 1 put 'not available ' in the tracking code box . 2 set up an auto reply on your messages. You will need to keep reactivating the auto reply because i think it only lasts about 2 weeks, maybe a month. But this will mean all yr tracking stuff is covered ... etsy expects this even if its a non tracked item to get 5star seller rating so this stops the strikes there...and auto message keeps your response rate up . And as for replies that aren't needed i just add an emoji like 👍 or 😍 to acknowledge the message...seems to work so etsy sees you have replies but it doesn't keep the convo going . Xxx hope this helps x

It’s so hard though isn’t it? 🥴

Oh Kim, please try and set up some other ways to sell your products whilst all is well. Hopefully nothing bad will ever happen to your store, but to have a back up plan just in case will give you such a sense of security. Good luck x

what do you sell?

Haha, that was the polite version of how I was feeling 🤣

Completely agree

Sorry for that. Ebay - all countries - has been a ghost ship for years, no sales

Aww, thank you! It’s such a shame as they have so much to offer but it all comes with such a risk 😔 Good luck with whatever platform you end up on 🤞☺️

Hello you! Thank you and thank you 🤩

I’m sorry to hear that Yuzu 😔

That’s kind of you Red, thank you x