Shadowbanned on Etsy?! How to Know if Etsy Has Shadowbanned Your Shop 

Etsy has too much control and pick and choose who get sales. I knew I was shadow banned when I couldn’t even find my listings from another phone. But they still take your fees though.

Etsy "shadowbanning" without explanation has to be illegal somehow. Etsy sellers are customers who pay to list, and have a right to know. What about those still paying Etsy ads? Or those of us who direct traffic to our Etsy through our own off-site networking. To hinder these sort of sales (and our customers who got turned away) would certainly seem illegal. 🤔

I’m currently being shadow banned by Etsy. I was getting 300 views a day had a bestseller… Now, I’m getting like 20 to 30 views a day and I’m not getting sales.

I’m shadow banned and it’s not for any of these reasons. I’m a star seller, ship in 1-3 days, and have never been reported. They literally took my Etsy from 6 figures to 1 sale a day max. They were making over 50k off of my business a year for the passed 2 years and then randomly shadow banned me.

Love this video!!! You’re so amazing and have great knowledge; thanks for sharing! 🙏💕

Really informative and practical video. I am grateful that you posted it. Thank you :)

Like that your down to earth with your videos, wishing you all the best x

Very helpful video! Thanks!

I wish the suppliers on Printify would speed up the processing times for sellers. My last order was a sample for myself and took literally 6-7 days from Swift POD. I'm considering changing my supplier to a different one because I've noticed their rating go down on Printify and their processing times taking way too long now. I ordered samples in the past and it only took 2 days for processing prior, but this was several months ago.

I like your shirt! Topsail is one of the best beaches on the Outer Banks.

My usual shipping time is 1 week, to 4/5 weeks. I ship custom made historical costumes. I could never have fast making time 😅

I have a question! What if a customer uses Etsy’s seller/buyer protection? Etsy will refund a package that doesn’t arrive but a customer has to file a case in order to get the refund. Will that get you shadow-banned?

What and when do you change your processing times to when it comes to the Christmas season? I upped mine because it was recommended (3-7 business days) but my items typically ship between 1-3 business days still.

I think they banned me cause I haven’t had a sale since May and I post almost every day!

In your opinion, can there be a shadow ban with the same number of views and likes? All that has changed is that at one point sales just stopped coming in. I used to have 2-5 purchases a week, now I have had 16 days of 0 purchases. Also, about the same number of days ago, eBay removed my listing for using the logo of a company in my miniature model. But why only one listing was banned, if the logo is present on other listings. Other sellers also have this logo, but I at least customize it, while others sell just like that, without customization

If my shop is shadow banned and I buy my items from other store the payment will be pending and failing,or it will be successful?

How does one know if they have an open case filed against them? I've had customers message and tell me they've never received their item and after I've shown them the tracking information that it was delivered to their address they don't respond. I do not follow up and ask if they found their items, I assume they found them or they would have sent another response that their item still hadn't shown up.

I pissed off (and rightfully so) one of the employees at Etsy, so now my shop is being retaliated against, it's VERY obvious they're shadow banning me. The problems happened shortly after confronting them of an ongoing error that they keep telling me will be fixed and never gets fixed. I went from having very good, steady sells and a lot of daily views to literally crickets now. I badly need to find another platform and leave Etsy. They have bad attitudes and are run by pompous, unprofessional, don't give a damn ppl. It's near impossible to reach a human. They're extremely passive aggressive. I've had enough! 😤

I have a brand new shop, POD, and I’ve just been putting listings in my shop with no sales and 2-4 views a day. I now have a little over 300 listings with the same amount of views. What in the world is going on? Lol! Any suggestions?

BTW, yes, my shop does have the 'star seller badge'. 😊

i am a little confused as to how my etsy products are supposed to show up on my printify account. i posted my first listing after my "throw away" listing, and it has not shown up yet on my printify account. maybe i integrated them wrong? it says on my listing that my product ships from my house but i thought printify was the company that does all the shipping and "creating" after we design our product. does anyone have any suggestions of what to do or maybe what i did wrong? thank you!

Then why do they keep charging the listing fee if the shop owner is banned? isn't that unethical? Etsy is doing the same thing. We are their customers and if they shadow ban and not respond to customers then they are much worse than the store itself.

How I think of etsy sometimes 🙄 I have had One message since I opened as pod seller this year and it was a solicitation. Why would I want to answer to a solicitation? Secondly, there is an old sale that is still "outstanding" on my account from September, yet she was kept in the loop on production and shipping, product arrived, and she even gave me a good review. I'll be contacting them about these "issues". With everything they have at their disposal, they should be able to overcome these issues they have such as an option for sellers (or buyers) who do not accept solicitations from buyers or sellers. As for old sales considered completed, I will look to see if it can be deleted; yet submission of a review under the same order name isn't detected by the review police? One more thing, I wish they would stop poking buyers for reviews. I review all the time elsewhere, but etsy pokes so much I don't know how buyers can stand it.

I definitely can't show my 3 fingers like you do 🤣

Our sales doubled every year for 3 yrs in a row...kept us busy with our humble woodworking craft. Then sales tanked in 2020...but not until last half of 2020, so I was bragging for a minute about how our sales were still good even through the pandemic....then was like, um...hello? Where the sales at? I've always felt it was cuz of an Etsy shadow ban, and not cuz of pandemic (esp. since our items are usually purchased by people who have disposable income). I mean, what a shocker! Imagine going from (a) thinking you're doing good and life is good and you can now afford more clothes and get the kid new shoes and buy some shrimp once in a while, to (b) "Um...dang, the tires are almost bald and we can't afford new ones and don't have enough fuel oil and winter came early. Omergush, we're gonna freeze 2 def!" Like wtaf? I'm now wracking my brains (have been for 2 yrs) and was chasing every shiny object. So my main hurdle was/is focusing on some POD stuff...lemme get off YT n do dat. Peace!

What digital products sell well on etsy all over year ?

OG POD friends!

I think Etsy should be sued doing all unethical to the sellers

During 90 days Etsy takes your money how we start pod business

That sign was first a Guiding promise sign. The thought of hunger games being girl guides is quite amusing though.

You moved Steve 😂

Why would anyone shadow ban you?

No sense in having policies on Etsy.

Can you make a video of best tshirt niches to design for in 2023?

Waste of time

Hi Heather, I recently found you as a suggestion to my feed from RU-vid. I have been selling on Etsy for a few years now, and my sales finally took off last year, and so thankfully too because of the times that we live in, and I am actually depending on my Etsy income for living expenses, so my success is so welcomed, and I appreciate my customers more than they will ever know. I don't think that I have ever been shadow banned but I had a couple of instances that I don't think Etsy has thought of. I had a customer ask for a special order, I explained that I would be happy to create this for her, but I will need extra time to order special supplies and make other developments to create this project. She was most agreeable, I even had to re-order some supplies because they sent me the wrong color, and she said "thanks for letting me know, I am willing to wait, can't wait to get it. I love your work." However, I accepted the sale, but went way past the shipping deadline, so to Etsy, I probably just looked like I was lazy about filling this order. I think in the future, I will create the item first, and then accept the order. I imagine as a sign of the times, some supplies of mine are late through no fault of their own, and even the postal service can be amazingly fast or a bit slow, it just depends on the area of the country I guess, but I am sure to Etsy this reflects poorly on me. I purchase supplies as I need them and cannot do huge huge gross orders of supplies at a time. Buying as I need to has worked very well all this past year. Another instance that Etsy may not have thought of ... I offer customization choices on my best seller, and every so often I would get this message that read, "This order was placed on a platform that does not support Etsy customizations, please reach out to the customer to fulfill this request." I had created the listing where the custom option was not optional, but since this platform (whatever it is) doesn't support it, they were able to make the order any way, so I would then e-mail the customer to their Etsy messaging and personal e-mail and quite often not receive a response back right away, then it came time to ship it, still no answer, only then when I stated I will either have to hold your order, cancel your order, or send you your customization separately that you can add yourself later to the item... did I finally receive a response from the customer. It just seemed strange sometimes, as if they noticed a loophole and wanted to exploit it. It just creates more work/worry for me and the risk of running late on shipping the order through no fault of my own, I am sure Etsy is not aware of this either. I ended up getting rid of the personalization box option and added them in as variations instead, and this resolved the problem thankfully. I wonder about the competition and their use of trolls to harass buyers, etc. They could easily gang up on you and even "work within the system" to make you look bad, they can click on your ads with no intention of buying but only jacking up the price of your ads, etc, and other dirty tactics like that. So, unfortunately, I think I will have to switch from made to order to make ahead and then release what's available for sale. I just wanted to pass those situations along as food for thought for my fellow Etsy sellers. Thank you, Heather, for all of your videos and expertise, I appreciate you.

You say "eXspecially"? Isn't it especially?