I am one of the larger vendors on Etsy with over 172,000 sales. I specialize in handmade holiday gifts decor and sales usually increase dramatically in October with Halloween and Christmas sales. This year we fell off a cliff October 1 and sales dropped 39% from last year this time of year. We had a good spring and early summer and sales were up until July. Something definitely changed in October. I have been on Etsy since 2016 and never experienced sales this slow before. My overall conversion rate is high - 5.9%, but visits are at an all-time low. I list new items almost everyday, but no matter what I do, sales keep sliding down.
Handmade seller since July. I have sold just over 800 items so far. I have a specific niche and multiple products to serve my customers. I utilize all sale types (bundles, free shipping over $35, etc.). I always have some sort of sale running, run Etsy ads, etc. Every day I have customers that that buy multiple items. I already have repeat buyers. Last week alone I had 13 repeat buyers alone. Which was about 20% of my sales last week.
@@melissal7984 I have a very bare bones website that I am working on right now. I have only had a few sales from my website here and there so far. I haven't had too much time to put the effort into that yet.
What am I paying Etsy for in fees if they’re not doing their job concerning bringing buyers to my products? If I have to do all the dirty work, why are they getting fees? As someone who makes and ships my handmade products, I’ve enjoyed Etsy since 2011 but now I have no time to actually make or ship my products if I’m having to look at the stats and try to control and manipulate the audience on Etsy to look at my items. If that’s the case, this should be a free site and they should charge us no fees at all because we’re doing all the dirty work.
They had to do all these changes at the worst possible time. Q1 is when you do these changes and not Q4. They have killed my store. First shipping changes which I fully disagree with. My wall arts sold with 70 dollar shipping charges. Now the price is so high that people don’t even bother no matter how much discount I give. Now the algorithm change which has dropped my traffic by almost half. They screws the pooch on this. Very unprofessional 😢
I sell vintage and had to stick with calculated shipping as prices are all over the place depending on item size, weight, location... "calculated shipping" is not affected by their "under $6" shipping change. Completely agree timing is horrible, they are shooting themselves in the foot by doing this in Q4.
I tried it with calculated shipment as a test and Etsy emailed and alerted as one of my listings doesn’t meet their new criteria so I’m not sure if it’s my settings or Etsy is not discerning between the two. Let me know if I’m doing something wrong to cause that. Thanks
@@homayoonpejooh1251 hmm, I've only used calculated shipping because of selling vintage, if I was selling handmade or POD, I would do $5 or free shipping. What I did was go to Settings, Shipping Settings and Created a shipping profile "calculated shipping USPS ground advantage" and I just use that, same thing a friend of mine does who sells all kinds of bulky vintage items. Once your shipping profile is set up, you should be able to select that when you list a product, I weight it, measure it and estimate the lbs, box size needed and it's usually pretty close with a $1-$2. If you still have trouble, not sure what kind of shop you have, or if calculated shipping is best for you, but if your shipping costs are high, and you can't bundle that into the item cost, then it may be for you. With Etsy I'm almost afraid to try anything, I'm trying Everbee and I'm afraid if I upload an invite to an email list somehow that will violate Etsy's policies, their one chance and you are gone attitude makes it difficult for sellers to try new things.
Exactly, the dumbest idea to implement changes in Q4, even though they have been messing with things since February, and their biggest mistake was Superbowl, after that things started to look bad.
@@Felinecat-um I would even pay a low monthly sub for them to just set up the platform, drive traffic, set up a very simple store policy, stop changing it constantly and let the sellers and buyers make the company money. I think Silverman is trying to turn Etsy into Amazon or RU-vid, instead of letting it be what it's supposed to be. These absurd ranking qualifications makes sellers spend more time competing with each other, than selling and making money for the company. I don't need to be "fed" where and what to buy, if I'm looking for something I'm going to search for it and choose the seller "I" want to buy from, not the one Etsy recommends, even on Amazon I go by reviews and look up the seller's store, I don't go buy "Amazon's top pic". Seems like rather than make it human again, they are setting up a platform for people to impulsively buy while scrolling through Etsy like it's Tik Tok.
What's your shop? one of the things I started doing was watching more of the videos that Etsy sends us as owners and it appears like my traffic is increasing and so are my sales. It would be crazy if they were rewarding sellers that actually use their resources 🤦♀️
My views, visits, orders, revenue are all down 40-50% compared to last year. My jewelry shop was doing so well year-over-year since late 2017. Now, it's a steady decline. I see more competition since Covid lock-downs with mass produced items. I keep reporting shops and giving Etsy links to the online distributor. These sellers are even using the stock photos! Some shops have been closed down, so there is progress happening. I'm now dedicating 1-2 hours a week reporting shops that I can prove are resellers.
A lot of big time retailers are predicting a really anemic holiday sales season this year. This doesn't negate the real issues Etsy has, but I feel like this needs to be factored in to these kinds of discussions.
I was an Etsy seller, but I couldn’t keep up with demand in my niche as well as my local customers, plus all of the shipping issues were a mess! Now, nothing from the locals! I am convinced it’s the economy. This time last year I was taking advanced orders for all of the holidays, plus doing the regular weekly sales. It’s heartbreaking!
This is the worst it's ever been. I have been on etsy for over 13 years and done over 2M dollars but something is really off as of late. Isnt etsy losing a ton of money??
ya. Im done with etsy. 18 months in and 808 sales later -- It sounds like a lot but the profit and sales volume is just not enough. It's too much work for what I get out of it. I'm going back to nutrition coaching.
Enjoy it while it lasts, lol. I guess it depends on how much money you plan on making. For those of us trying to keep a roof over our head, things are not looking good. If one just wants a few bucks and don't care when it comes...... fine. For those that depend on several thousand a month, it's yikesville.
I’m not handmade or POD, I’m digital files. I started my shop just over a year ago because I was making a product for a friend and needed to make a design. I didn’t want to buy the design so I learned how to make it. I put it up on Etsy for the heck of it. Sales trickled in but over the last 60 days I’ve seen a substantial uptick, over the last 60 days I’ve gotten 55 orders. My total since I started my shop is only 141. I’ve doubled down on digital files, mainly split monograms. Now I’m trying to figure out how to best market mine so that people trust me. Any recommendations on how to “product research” for digital designs?
Compared to last year, my revenue is down 38%. However, for October I am exactly where I was last year with revenue. So I do have hope. My worst months were April, May and June. I believe that is because I have a wedding item that was my biggest seller, but a couple other Etsy sellers caught on and started selling the same item (but with their design albeit similar to mine, it wasn’t exactly the same). This is unfortunate for me, but nothing I can do but just keep trying to stay ahead of the curve and come out with new items. Trying to stay positive.
100k - I would love your roadmap. I have 2 handmade shops and one POD and sales are down in all three shop. I am currently researching different options on places to sell my products other than Etsy. They have become extremely greedy, they have lost all focus, and they don't care about the sellers anymore. It's all about the customer. They forget that if there were no sellers their would be no customers and they would not have a platform to run. Sellers are their bread and butter and we get tossed aside like garbage.
Sales are way down for me. I still get a lot of views and favorites, but no sales. And previously with slow periods I would still get one or two sales a week. It has been over two weeks now. Running sales, ads, etc don't seem to move the needle at all. That is with maybe an eighth of my shop being POD.
You are doing great job guys! With your help I opened my Etsy shop and with your Podcast I am tweaking every my misunderstanding to the right way. I learned a lot from this video and ready to adjust my shop again. Big Thank you 🙏
them just cancelling the Pirate Ship integration is ridiculous! right before the holidays? really? hope my integration stays through the holiday or its gonna create alot of extra work. Thanks Etsy haha
I don’t do pirate ship anymore, not because they’re not cheaper, but because my contents got destroyed almost every time I used them. I think the US Postal service does this on purpose.
Anything but handmade seems to be doing way better these days. They can make way more money on POD because the sellers are not limited to how many they can make and sell. Just a fact. 🤷🏻♀️
I'm one of the rare POD sellers that doesn't have hundreds of items in my shop, nor can I list them quickly. I honestly get kinda annoyed at those types of POD sellers (especially the ones using AI but that's a whole other rant). I create all my own art and patterns for AOP products - all over pinted items like dresses and leggings. I order samples of every product and design and take my own product photos and edit them ( I sprinkle in a few mockups here and there but it's mainly all my own photos). I honestly think all of the low effort sellers are doing a huge disservice to the platform for both shoppers and handmade sellers. I refuse to do that and choose to list quality over quantity.
I love and watch all your videos. But I disagree w your premise. You’re not addressing the Etsy issue but deflecting all the issues to us the sellers. We were doing fine, listings were optimized and selling just fine last year and into September. Etsy should be criticized and have answers and to make corrective measures. I have Ads on and sales on and was selling just fine. But now nothing. Blame is on Etsy. I’m getting ready to launch my Shopify.
Everyone is taking this personally and also figuring out that it's not our listings, our products........ people are burning themselves out, I am one of them. When sales stop like a light switch there is a much bigger problem at hand. I personally think that customers within certain niches are just flat out broke from the economy. That's what a lot of my repeat customers have told me anyway. I thought about Shopify but if things are not selling on Etsy, Shopify will be even worse. You have to definitely drive your own traffic on Shopify and that's after weeks of developing a site and putting out even more money.......... it has crossed my mind though. No more fees...... haha. I mean if Etsy isn't pushing our stuff then I am not even sure why they are charging fees to begin with.
@@nobleguy37 I had my shopify but on stand by as Etsy was doing well and was promising. Today I logged back in and will start it up anyway. Doesn’t hurt. But I agree that the economy and election season has its effects. Good luck to us all.
@@sonseraedesigns Drop fees all together, lol. I think if they raise them again that's gonna be the last straw for a lot. If they can pay the CEO a billion a year, they can use some of that money to help sellers, just saying.
Another point that people get confused about that I think gets glossed over on youtube is longtail keywords. Some "gurus" say absolutely use longtail keywords, some say do not because the etsy algorithm does a mix-and-match so "funny" "cat" "t-shirt" "shirt" would match "funny cat t-shirt", "funny t-shirt", "cat t-shirt" etc. However, in my testing I found that if you use non-longtail (single) keywords then your position drops dramatically, even though it might still cover all possible combinations it was not a positive result. What is the actual answer to the question of "should I use longtail keywords?"
Typically you shouldn't be including just a list of single keywords. If you're wrtiing a title in a human readable way, you would naturally be including the long tail version of the keywords. What is the product? It's "A Funny Cat Shirt" ...so that's how you should write it.
Yes, Etsy is an easy platform to begin on, if they even let you in the door. What they don't tell you is your products will never be seen until you pay Etsy for advertising. And Etsy's ad fees are outrageous.
Amazing content! Thank you for sharing! I am looking to increase sales, since mine are 60-70% down compared to last year, so I would appreciate any help with that! I would like to have your “Book”, “conversations” and “email” links! Thank you so much!
I started my shop back in March. No sales but a lot of that was due to a lack of understanding the basics of focusing on a niche, marketing, SEO and such. Now that I do have a better understanding of it, these updates and drops in sales others are experiencing aren't making me feel great.
They implementing a lot of new things / updates during the most important time Q4, each update brings searches and sales down dramatically, this is ridiculous. People from Tech and development are know, that each plug-in updates each new feature implementation, can break and hold a lot of other system elements. So the platform is basically not stable. Super frustrating
IMHO The reason that people are picking multiple niche's is because when they look on SEO applications trying to find what people are searching in ETSY they find many very different niche's. For example, doing a search on T-Shirt using an SEO tool returns a bunch of items that (at least I have found for etsy) is 35% K-Pop bands E.g "p1harmony t-shirt" or some rap band, or taylor swift, or "fridge magnet t-shirt" or "inappropriate t-shirt"; in these examples most are copyright covered or are adult only or are probably 13-16 year olds searching for their favorite k-pop tshirt rip-off. So, because the customer base is IMHO people (probably mostly kids) trying to find cheap knock-off designs for their favorite bands, then you either ride the wave very very carefully (I dont rip off copyright or do any knock-offs BTW) or you throw random designs out there and pray someone buys. If this sounds a little skewed then please let me know.
I am taking a break after Etsy shut down 2 of my accounts :( I have a question; do you know of any other handcraft platform that we can try? I don't have good success of Ebay these days. Planning to open a Amazon account & Shopify.
It’s obvious that Etsy doesn’t profit from a myriad of small sellers. Too much competition. The income for Etsy probably comes from their multiple fees and selling shipping labels to the bigger Etsy sellers. My 2024 niche sales are up from the last two years. The economic situation will slow down, because so many people are finally running out of credit. But, there is a lot of money floating out there, just like fish in the ocean.
I notice the changes stays has done and it’s really a huge advantage for new listing although the organic traffic has dropped I see how they are choosing to rank high :)
I am about to look for a 9 to 5. Obviously, it is less than a month in, but although still selling products everyday, for POD it is just not enough. The absolute worst time to start this.
The only reason Im doing okay is because I have a ton of listings and Im very established and do well on Pinterest. However they are down and Im noticing a pattern. I think Etsy is testing and its almost Halloween and a huge election.
It wouldn't necessarily be the return on ad spend itself. First you would need to run through the ad analysis process and figure out why the return on spend isn't where you want it to be
My sales are definitely down from last year at this time. But that being said, I think that people might be waiting to see the outcome of the election first, unsure of their finances. I've noticed a lot of my products have people placing them in their carts and waiting during the last couple of weeks. Till after the election? Possibly, but that's anybody's guess., no crystal ball here. I have noticed that since October 1st my ad cost per click has dropped considerably. Used to run anywhere from 0.30PC to more than a $1PC and now runs between 0.10PC to 0.35PC, maybe as much as 2/3 less? I'm going to keep my eye on those cart saves to see when they will start purchasing, got my fingers crossed!
@@ChelsieMcNeely nope, I sell mostly in UK and some to EU, US and Canada. The abroad sales dropped sometime last year, to do with saving planet, sell locally mostly. But this year, it's a new low for many UK and EU sellers. For us the first signs were back in February, March. Most holidays which used to be very profitable, now are the exact opposite. Basically if compared to last year, all busy times are super slow and super low sales, and slower periods from last year are up this year. This trend started before Easter and is still going on.
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So many people are copyright infringing too.......... especially with POD. Just a thought. I don't use POD but in my niche, people do and I counted 63 listings of copyright infringement on the first three pages........... seriously people ?!! Those items are filling in pages before legit sellers stuff, do people not find anyting wrong with that, lol? What do people not understand about copyright infringement? You simply cannot take a company's image and throw it on a T-Shirt or anything for that matter......... and we wonder what is going on with POD? That might have something to do with it. Just saying.
Sorry for the delay! Here's a guide that shares how we use Email marketing to drive traffic and sales. If you have any questions, let me know. brandcreators.com/email Here are the details for the Conversion Maximizer playbook. brandcreators.com/convert
Sorry for the delay! Here's a guide that shares how we use Email marketing to drive traffic and sales. If you have any questions, let me know. brandcreators.com/email
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Sorry for the delay! I just saw you commented and wanted access to the NEW $100k Etsy Roadmap. Here's you go - brandcreators.com/100k Enjoy and thanks for being part of our community :-) Here are the details for the Conversion Maximizer playbook. brandcreators.com/convert
Sorry for the delay! Here's a guide that shares how we use Email marketing to drive traffic and sales. If you have any questions, let me know. brandcreators.com/email
Sorry for the delay! I just saw you commented and wanted access to the NEW $100k Etsy Roadmap. Here's you go - brandcreators.com/100k Here are the details for the Conversion Maximizer playbook. brandcreators.com/convert
Sorry for the delay! Here's a guide that shares how we use Email marketing to drive traffic and sales. If you have any questions, let me know. brandcreators.com/email
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Sorry for the delay! Here's a guide that shares how we use Email marketing to drive traffic and sales. If you have any questions, let me know. brandcreators.com/email
