Lisa H.

I have been selling on etsy since early '09. It was pretty great at that time, and a decent alternative to ebay. It always bothered me that it was limited in what you are allowed to sell there. For example, I sold high end couture and vintage fashion on ebay, but on etsy, the site rules prevented me from selling anything newer than 20 years old. This has always been a drawback. They should allow the high end couture items, because they are relatively unique pieces and it is recycled fashion, it is always good to reuse and reduce waste, and these pieces are not mass-produced, which is what etsy is about. This rule still exists today, but now, mass produced items are allowed and resale items younger than 20 years old, still not allowed. Etsy has slowly changed in the way sellers are treated too. Fees are still pretty low, but sellers cannot leave feedback for buyers, not even positive feedback. And buyers can't leave feedback for sellers until weeks after they buy the item. By this time, most forget about feedback and move on. Most sales never receive feedback. They also keep aimlessly changing the look of the item pages, and it's never for the better. It seems like they waste a lot of effort/money/time "improving" things on the site that don't need improvement while other things are never even considered for improvement but do need it. The forums are also highly censored. That part is only getting worse. And the punishments are handed down pretty arbitrarily. The threads used to be pretty fun to participate in, even though it sometimes became heated, at least it was real. They've really taken the reality out of it. Also, you have the regular forum visitors that are in constant defense of etsy's unnecessary and lame changes. It just seems like the whole vibe there is going toward censorship, corporatocracy, cookie cutter and plain lameness. Also, the site is now over saturated thanks to the influx of sellers offering mass-produced items, and views have really plummeted, causing sales to plummet as well. Selling used to be relatively easy. You just listed and the item sold a few days later usually. Now, because of a relevancy-based search instead of a chronological one, you can't just relist your item to return it to a higher place in search. You have to constantly re-tweak your SEO to remain relevant. It's so much work for literally a few dollars in profit. The revenue etsy generates for the average seller is a fraction of what you'd receive at an easy part time minimum wage job. The amount of work the maintenance required to sell a $12 item in an etsy shop turns out to pay the seller a few cents per hour. It really has just become overall not worth bothering with for most people. It probably works well for the people who are always featured and re-featured on the main page, i. E., the favorites, which is a whole additional issue. A lot of little things adding up with this site, I'm sure I failed to mention some. If you want to open a shop there, just have low expectations.