marla e.

This review is for someone who is planning to open up a shop on Etsy.
Here is the negatives:
1- You will get charged for other sellers browsing your shop looking to copy the merchandise you have sold or looking to copy what you have in stock.
2-Etsy cannot fully explain in detail to a seller how the promotion end of it works. Nor do they make that information available to the public.
3- This company is a cover for the sneaky underhanded owner of the company. He only promotes his own people. Other sites like zibbit.com is a subsidiary... so be warned to stay away from them as well.
4-The company created this illusion of a handmade artisan community where the current trend is to sell your crafts. My advice is to open your own shop with your own domain.
5- Etsy profits on selling a dream to people to work for themselves. Then Etsy charges crazy fees to sellers until they cant afford it and eventually loose everything. Etsy is doing this to thousands of people and making extremely high profits.
6- Etsy has been known for muting shops and arbitrarily closing down certain shops. For years they kept shops open who were selling machine made items from China, India, and Israel and then would abruptly shut down certain shops that were good honest highly skilled artisans.
7- Their administrative teams takes things personally and will punish sellers by closing down a shop or muting a shop simply for asking questions and wanting answers about fees, promoting store etc...
8- Some of the sellers peruse through Etsy and report shops to the Etsy team as violations in efforts to get their competitor shops shut down.
9- My advice is to do your research and open your own shop with your own domain and pay for advertising too. The fees that you pay for Etsy are much higher and at least you know what you are paying for with your own online store.