The Fall of Etsy
I want to start by saying, I use Etsy EXCLUSIVELY for all of my online selling. There are, or rather, WERE a lot of great things about Etsy. For one, they file my sales tax for me, which is just *chefs’ kiss* if you have a bad case of art brain, like me. I try not to get involved with filing sales tax. Numbers are not my thing, accounting is not my thing, government forms are not my thing. So I sell wholesale to local stores and with Etsy in order to avoid having to collect sales tax. However, this is legitimately the only good thing left about Etsy.
The attraction of Etsy for buyers is that it’s supposed to connect you with handmade products from boutique makers and artists. At least, that is what they advertise. You’ve probably seen their commercials; Their WHOLE pitch is that they have unique quality goods by specialty makers. However, the quality of their products & sellers has gone down RAPIDLY. And beautiful handmade/small batch goods now comprise only a small portion of what’s listed on Etsy’s site. I’m starting to see a lot of mass-produced crap, which has really disheartened me and made me almost embarrassed to still sell there. If you’re on my side of TikTok, you’ve also probably seen those “How To Make Passive Income on Etsy” videos - which is essentially regular people designing something crappy in Microsoft Word and selling it as a digital download; OR even worse - companies with no passion for design creating things haphazardly and MASS-producing that crap just for the sole purpose to make money. These are not craftsmen or people who are in it to sell beautiful, well-made products that they are proud of. These are people who are pedaling garbage just for the money. And Etsy is HELPING them do this while knocking down the little guys who are actually in it for the CRAFT.
More recently they introduced a program called the “Star Seller” program - kind of like what “super host” is to Airbnb. The Star Seller program honors sellers that maintain a certain level of criteria. The criteria consists of 3 basic elements:
Responding to personal messages within 24 hours (95% of the time or higher)
Maintaining 95% or higher level of 5-star reviews.
Keeping an on-target ship date (95% of the time or higher)
You have to maintain 95% or higher on ALL three of these things in order to receive a “star seller badge.” This badge claims to give sellers (and I quote) “more chances to be featured” … which is just as vague as it sounds. They also say it makes you “stand out from the crowd” and it gives you an “opportunity for increased sales” - which in layman's terms means buyers will not want to buy from you if you do not have this.
Now, at first, I was really excited about this because I have a stellar product and great customer service, and I’m mostly on top of everything. But as I got into the holidays, I realized how unrealistic and problematic this is for a sole-proprietor.
One thing I noticed, sellers are not given any leeway with message response for any reason. Etsy does not care about holidays, weekends, or holiday weekends. I received 12 messages. Out of those 12 messages, I did not respond to ONE of those messages within the 24-hour mark - which took me down to 92%, and took away my ability to qualify as a “star seller.” That’s just one out of 12 messages that I missed, while still maintaining all the other criteria. I looked back at that missed message, and it had been sent the night before Thanksgiving. This means I would have had to reply on Thanksgiving in order to meet that criteria - which is completely unfair and unrealistic. No “boutique” company that is solely run by one person is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They NEED to allow leeway on federal holidays. Or at the very least, lower the expectation from 95% to 90% or 85%. People have emergencies. People have health issues. Life is not ideal. No human being runs at 95% ALL THE TIME. Even brick and mortar stores close for emergencies. 95% is a completely unrealistic percentile - especially for small/boutique businesses, especially for part-time makers, especially for sole-proprietors, which is the entire seller demographic Etsy CLAIMS to be supporting.
And this really illuminated the problem for me. Etsy is promoting an unrealistic standard of sellers. Etsy is more concerned about cashing in (regardless of product quality) and less concerned about supporting the individual maker - which, again, is the entire platform they run on. It seems that the star seller program is just another way for Etsy to stifle small businesses and the part-time craftspeople. The only way people can conform to these stats is if they are a bigger company or someone with more resources and more man-hours to devote. An inferior company with an inferior product that has minimum wage workers can come in and hit all these stats. A sole proprietor will never be able to beat a big business when it comes to speed - which is 2 of the 3 factors you need in order to qualify for “Star Seller.” So essentially, the star seller program is just another thing that is clearly pushing their big business bias while still claiming that they “support the little guys.” Their bogus criteria is only going to support large mass-produced garbage on their site. It's only going to invite more big businesses and people with abundant resources and push those sellers higher up in the algorithm. If Etsy ACTUALLY cared about the sole proprietor or the home crafter - AS THEIR COMMERCIALS CLAIM, they would throw this system out and start over with a new one.
You cannot judge the quality of a product by “message response rate” or by 1 biased review. There are SO many scammers out there opening claims against sellers just to get free products, and there is virtually no protection for the seller when this happens. Etsy won’t interject if you’re scammed, and they won’t remove negative reviews, even if you can disprove them. This is yet more evidence to support that Etsy does not care about crafters or quality products. If Etsy cared about boutique makers, they would work on their seller protection and stop working on how to rank their sellers into a capitalist class system. We’re over here losing money on some of these sales because someone quote “didn’t receive their package.” and “demands another one,” and we comply because we live in fear of one negative review. While they’re over there watching us drown, and then taking a percentage.