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This article does seem a bit slanted, but interesting. Not sure I want to see ebay copy this….
https://gizmodo.com/etsy-announces-its-found-a-new-way-to-gouge-sellers-1841956263?
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I did get that email, but didn’t look too closely. Thanks for sharing the article.
I have 35 items listed on Etsy and haven’t sold anything since the holiday season. Having additional exposure is OK for now, so I’ll watch to see what happens. I suppose having something sell with the fee is better than it just sitting there until the next holiday season.
Etsy is OK, but it has its limitations. I went to list two things yesterday and ended up moving one item to eBay because the item was too big to get a reasonable USPS rate. Etsy doesn’t provide FedEx as an option.
Most of what I have listed there are whiskey pitchers. I had so many because of a large lot I purchased, and I didn’t want to list all of them on only one platform. Etsy is serving a purpose for me, but eBay remains my main focus.
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Well, that’s annoying. No way to opt out? At least Ebay doesn’t force us into managed payments.
I’m currently at 10 sales on Etsy this month. Instagram is bringing in 18% of my traffic currently. If I work more at it, I could up the off-site traffic and have an excuse to move all of my listings to Shopify. That’s a lot of work by itself, but might be worth it to get off the train of being forced into these stupid decisions by people that don’t ultimately care about the direction of your tiny individual business.
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almasty, Sellers selling less than $10,000/year on etsy can opt out. If you sell more than that, you can’t opt out.
I thought etsy required everyone to use etsy’s managed payment system? Are you saying etsy sellers can opt out of that?
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I quit selling on Etsy in early 2019. When they started “pay for placement” on their site my sales tanked. Back in 2017 I was making $400-$500 a month on Etsy, which at that time was close to what I was making on eBay (in 2017 I had way fewer items listed on eBay). For less than 100 items listed on Etsy that return wasn’t bad.
I thought about trying Etsy again but then Etsy started really pushing free shipping (which I don’t do) so I stayed away. Even though I’m a small seller and I could opt out of the new off-site ad fees Etsy just announced it just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t like that bigger sellers don’t have the option to opt out. I won’t be restocking my Etsy store; they’ve permanently lost me as a seller on their site.
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almasty,
This may have changed, but a few years ago when etsy was lobbying Congress for more recognition of “micro businesses”, I think they said the average seller on etsy made less than $100/month (it might have even been per year, I don’t recall.
Remember, etsy is paying for these ads up front. So, etsy isn’t going to want to pay for ads for really small sellers who probably have only a small selection of stuff to sell. Bigger is better. But bigger also means those sellers are probably already doing OK, and might want to opt out (especially if they have their own site as well, and market that themselves). So I think etsy figures the only way to make sure they have enough sellers, each of them having enough inventory to justify ad cost, is to make it mandatory for those sellers. My guess is, etsy doesn’t care all that much whether the under $10,000 sellers opt out or not, since they aren’t likely to promote them on Google etc anyway. By charging the under $10,000 sellers 15%, etsy can mollify the over $10,000 sellers by saying ” True, you can’t opt out, but you are getting a better deal than those who can opt out.”
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Just for those who didnt read:
Etsy is rolling out a new campaign for offsite advertising that automatically enrolls its sellers and charges them a fee for sales from those ads, but some sellers won’t be able to opt out—meaning they’ll pay for the service whether they like it or not.
In theory, this should benefit Etsy sellers, as they won’t be paying for unsuccessful ads. But the devil’s in the details, and Etsy is taking a pretty significant slice of those successful sales for itself. If users make less than $10,000 in a year, the advertising fee will be 15 percent. These users will be automatically enrolled but can choose to disable Offsite Ads. Sellers who make more than $10,000 during a 12-month period will pay a discounted ad fee of 12 percent—but they also won’t be able to opt out of the program.
Remember the halcyon days when people thought Etsy was a paradise of a low-fee selling platform? Once they went public, I knew it was just a march to needing to squeeze more money fro selling.
This will be the same for Poshmark, etc. When these sites are just trying to get buyers and sellers to join up, they’re happy to subsidize the platform. Its great! Then the business men come in and make it a business that needs to make money.
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I’m an Etsy seller in the UK.
I’m optimistic about this Etsy news!
We are over the threshold, so won’t be able to opt out.
It’s a 12% fee on sales made as a result of off-site advertising.
I’m hoping it results in additional sales to the ones we currently get.
Why wouldn’t I be happy to pay Etsy to increase my sales? It’s no extra work for me.
We will see…
I guess if we just end up paying more fees without seeing an increase in the number of items sold, I can always start selling on Ebay… -
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