Which Service Should Etsy Acquire to Help Sellers?

by: The End

That's the problem.
Etsy is FAILING because Etsy is NOT FOCUSING.
Etsy is acquiring, and over managing, and sniping shops to ruin with Etsy's 15% success penalty fee.
I've closed my shop.
Good Riddance.

by: Silver Ice King

Hopefully they do not acquire Six Bit because Etsy, just like Ebay, seems to ruin everything they touch and I can see them changing it to an Etsy only listing tool to try and take out the competition since every move they have made recently seems to be anti seller and the only way they will grow now is to remove all the other sites from the playing field.

by: HappyOne

Why do they need a listing tool? It is so easy now that a “Caveman could do it”. Only reason would be to get some mega companies list their entire inventory at a special deal FVF with Etsy. Me with my 250 items does fine with no help. I am not hip enough to even know what these products from India are?

by: HappyOne

I hope Ink Frog is not in their plans. To me it seems Etsy has money to burn. Buying an Etsy look alike in Brazil (Elo7) and a used clothing seller in Europe (Depop) not as good as two year ago purchase of Reverb. But with all the money coming in it has to be spent.

by: postbuster

Etsy has enough ''tools'' already.
None of them help, or do anything productive anyway.

Etsy should just give the wrongfully taken money back to the sellers.
Stop wasting it on dumb and non-effective ideas.

Stupid business practices like this makes the comparrison of kids who steal their parents money to buy drugs.

by: Disgusted

Etsy is or should say has gone down the path of ebay.  Destroy itself from within.
If it ain't broke don't fix it.

by: billly

Instead of acquiring "tools" Etsy should recruit adult humans who actually know code and eliminate whatever department they have created whose sole objective is to create roadblocks for sellers. Instead of focusing on helping legit sellers generate steady revenue they create barricades like a dysfunctional search tool, punishing sellers who don't offer free shipping, allowing sellers who cancel a transaction to leave a review, calculated shipping for USPS only, a "Star Seller" program available only to US sellers which falsely calculates a seller's eligibility and threatens to reduce non "Stars" visibility in search, and most recently, deactivating listings and banning vintage sellers from listing legit vintage designer brands. The only "tool" Etsy needs to acquire is the one that helps them locate their soul and prevents them from mimicking the worst aspects of their competitors.

by: billly

Should read "allowing non-buyers whose transaction is cancelled the ability to leave a review".

by: I_Fix_Dolls

Wondering if Etsy ran out of interns to programming who run hundreds of "Tests" each week to screw up the site, reducing text size, or making it huge, hiding descriptions of items being sold, messing with the listing photos and thumbnails, making the stats not work properly, and various other "Trials" that sellers do not need to list.Maybe they should use some money to just pay some GOOD programmers to fix the site , then leave it alone.

by: Sierra

@HappyOne - Same here. I currently have about 70 Etsy listings, 98% are handmade by me; the others are destash supplies. 100% are ready-to-ship. I certainly don't need any listing tools for Etsy. I need more traffic and better conversion. I think my SEO is pretty good, but I may take a look at it in a couple of weeks when I'm done with the first few Fall shows.

I think Etsy bought Elo7 to get the Brazilian SHOPPERS moreso than the sellers; maybe even shoppers from all of South America? As for the items from India, do a search (or a blank search) then filter by India and you'll see what is being sold by sellers there ... some jewelry, lots of kantha quilts and block printed bedspreads like I used to buy in the hippie stores back in the 1970s.  

by: fusgeyer

I use erank and EtsyonSale. I hope that Etsy leaves both alone, especially Etsy on Sale. If they absorb the Etsy on Sale site, the customers on my email list will lose the ability to double up on coupons/sales that I run twice a year.

Etsy should stop trying to squeeze every penny out of every sale and let the sellers actually make money.  

by: Sierra

@fusgeyer - If you're not making money on Etsy, maybe you should reconsider allowing your customers to "double up on coupons/sales." Etsy shoppers, as a whole, are more educated and wealthier than shoppers on the other major online marketplaces. They want what they want and they will pay for it. They don't shop Etsy looking for discounts.  

by: fusgeyer

@Sierra
Let me clarify, I do make money on Etsy. But, I think their fees are exhorborant, expecially for those forced into the off-site marketing scheme, where a sale can cost a seller between 20-30% of the sale in total Etsy fees. It is not the bargain Etsy makes it out to be.

FYI - My twice yearly sales are my most profitable time of the year thanks to my preferred customer program. I would never reconsider the double dip option. If I was unable to offer that option to the members of my preferred customer program, then I would do away with Etsy sales to the general public and only offer up sales to my program members.

by: fusgeyer

@Sierra
Let me clarify, I do make money on Etsy. But, I think their fees are exhorborant, expecially for those forced into the off-site marketing scheme, where a sale can cost a seller between 20-30% of the sale in total Etsy fees. It is not the bargain Etsy makes it out to be.

FYI - My twice yearly sales are my most profitable time of the year thanks to my preferred customer program. I would never reconsider the double dip option. If I was unable to offer that option to the members of my preferred customer program, then I would do away with Etsy sales to the general public and only offer up sales to my program members.

by: Sierra

@fusgeyer - Glad you ARE making money on Etsy! I create every item I make from scratch so there's no way that I could make enough product to sell $10K or more on Etsy in a year, thus I'm a business to the IRS and apparently a hobbyist to Etsy.

Excluding the off-site ad fees, do you *still* think Etsy's fees are exorbitant?

by: fusgeyer

@Sierra
If you remove the forced off-site ads for some sellers, then Etsy's fees are reasonable. The Etsy on-site ads are optional, which they should be. I am not anti-Etsy. I am for fair play, and the way the offsite ads are set up, it is not fair to high producing sellers.

If Etsy wants to offer something to help sellers, then maybe a paid mentoring program for new and small sellers who are serious about their shops.  

by: Snapped

Sounds like ETSY could first do with ‘acquiring’ some better CUSTOMER ‘service’ - internally.

by: Sierra

@fusgeyer - Glad to hear that you think Etsy's "basic fees" (the ones we ALL pay) are reasonable. I've seen sellers say they think those are outrageous, which I'll never understand (at the current rates, anyway).