Take the Etsy sad hipster poll!

What recent Etsy bungle makes you the saddest hipster ever?

Take the poll!

It's right over there--------------------->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hiya! So many gates, so little time!

Hello, dear readers!
I took some time off, did rehab, spent a few months with a glue gun and miscellaneous trimmings, got psychotherapy, joined a commune, got in touch with my inner child, and. . .

Guess what?

Etsy still manages to piss me off.

Have you been keeping up with Baligate?  With Registrygate?

Are you muted?

Was your shop closed down with no warning?

Have your sales vanished like a fey fairy hipster?

My fox still will not ride a bicycle.

I still hate beige.

It's time for this blog to come out of hibernation.

What do you want to talk about?

So many gates, so little time.

Etsy is more fun with friends

I have decided that this condescending, grade school primer language is causing me to curse more than usual.

Today's Admin Annoucement: Find your friends on Etsy.

I didn't realize my friends were lost.

Etsy has added a "Find Your Friends" button, with no filter for finding those who still owe you money. THAT is a function a lot of us could use, but I digress. You then click which email service you want to use, and sign into your email. Automagically, Etsy connects to your address book as fast as you can say "Hocus Pocus" or "Walla Walla, Washington."

Etsy "fetches" your contacts, matches them with people who haven't opted out of the automagical email id on Etsy, and you can add them to your circle, spam them, or convo them for that $40.00 they borrowed back in college.

You can also send invitations (i.e. "spam") to people who don't even have an Etsy account! "Invitations are limited right now to 20 per day -- use them well!"
Translation: "You can only send 20 spam emails a day. Remember when we used to tell you you were not allowed, under any circumstance, to spam Etsians? Well, forget about that, and please spam non-Etsians as well. Twenty a day. Get clicking and typing!"

And anyone you connect to through Find Your Friends will be able to connect to others through Find Your Friends, and so on and so forth. It can spread like a virus! Like H1-N1!

I would like to repeat something glaringly obvious here. If my friends are in my address book, they are not lost. If I want them to know about my Etsy shop, believe me, they know about my Etsy shop. I know how to copy and paste a link, and put it in an email to a friend.

Why does Etsy want the email addresses of the people I know? I already understand how to steer them toward my shop, and even to other listings on Etsy that I think they might like.

I understand that this is part of the great "social commerce experiment" and all, but I value my friends' privacy more than I value Etsy's desire to mine my email data to grow their business by spamming people who trusted me with their information.

Please remember, not to venture too far into conspiracy paranoia country, that verified email addresses are some of the most valuable pieces of information to any online marketing company. Remember also that current Etsy board members have fingers in all sorts of other online venues.

I think the clock is striking thirteen.

Etsy's Rob Kalin speaks!

Rob Kalin, aka Rokali, spoke up in the Forums last week to address the Etsy community's concerns about recent changes.
Rob is the current CEO of Etsy.

He explained that the words in the header had been replaced with icons to facilitate a more international market, and to make the shopping cart more visible.

He said that the icons were handmade, "pixel by pixel."

He said that he appreciates all of the "negativity" and "criticism" in the forums, because they are more interesting and instructive than compliments.

He said that, "Over $1000.00 per minute is sold on Etsy," and they're monitoring how the changes affect sellers.

So far, so good.

On Etsy's new social networking focus:

"Shopping is itself a unique social experience. This is what we're designing for."

I would argue that online shopping is not a social experience. It's me being able to find what I want, at the price I want to pay, quickly and efficiently. A better search is more important than a social experience. If I want to browse, I will take the time to browse, and enjoy what I come across. I don't often involve anyone else in this process. Maybe I am abnormal.

On Etsy's new homepage:

"Etsy's curated spaces are going away. . . Instead of an admin deciding that every single visitor to Etsy should see a particular Treasury on the homepage, the homepage will be personalized."

I'm not sure how to translate this. On a positive note, we can hope that this will give a wider selection of Etsy sellers more exposure. On a negative note, I have to wonder how they will choose what will pop up on your homepage. Will these be treasuries curated from your teams, those in your circle, those with shops Etsy would suggest?

On finding friends on Etsy, or sending them to Etsy:

"For the 90% of people here on Etsy who don't have shops, we're seeing that finding people they know on Etsy has a huge impact on getting them to register, buy stuff, and stick around. . . we're building tools that ultimately help customers find you, which can be quite different than the tools that help you find customers."

I don't believe this theory, but then I don't buy into the entire "social commerce" vision. I'm not approaching this as a buyer only, though. I'm approaching it as a seller/buyer. Everyone I know also has heard about Etsy, through me. As a buyer, I shop a site and buy what I want to buy. If I enjoy a shopping experience, I will tell others about it. I would never use a "find your friends" function on a site as a buyer. Would you?

On improving sales numbers:

"The total $ value of sales on Etsy is up, so the changes we're making are improving the commerce side of this marketplace."

Actual January numbers showed that growth is slowing. Many of the changes Rob Kalin is discussing have been in place for less than a month. The figures for February have not been published yet.

On "Forum Migration":

"Our old forums ran on an outmoded infrastructure, one that we're not supporting anymore. The teams codebase was the future, and we migrated forums to teams."

I don't believe this one. The public forums that Etsy kept were converted to public teams. Others were killed off. Why? Teams (1) require more clicks to navigate, and (2) are not immediately visible to the ninety percent of Etsians who are buyers only. All forums could have been migrated to public teams, and the community would have been kept intact.

On continuity:

"If someone left Etsy in let's say 2006, and came back today in 2011, my hunch is that it'd still feel like the same place."

No. There are still people signing in, asking where the forums are. There are regulars who are confused about the new layout, and convinced that the changes in layout, forum structure, alchemy's "rest" and search have negatively impacted their businesses. If someone took a break around Thanksgiving last year and returned now, it would not feel like the same place.

In response to a seller saying they just want to sell their stuff, and have no interest in circles:

"What you're saying is you don't want to help yourself."

No, what the seller is saying is that they don't believe in your vision that circles will sell their stuff.

On how people buy online by searching, not by looking at favorites, either their own or others:

"That is how commerce currently works. . . we here at Etsy are not trying to uphold the status quo. . . I hope we discover much more, because that is the future I wish to invent."

Here we're getting down to the nitty gritty. Please, Etsy, uphold the status quo while it is still the status quo. I can appreciate wanting to predict the future and adapt to that, but I can also appreciate that people shop most of the time by searching for what they want to buy. Do you look at other people's favorite items in order to buy something 99% of the time?

Also, they're working on the search, tripling the content team which takes care of resellers et al, and working on a new listing process.

Sean11 goes on to explain how Circles and other networking are just extensions of the word of mouth advertising that has helped Etsy achieve the success it has seen thus far--word of mouth that was done by those of us who have been on Etsy for awhile. If you're favorited by someone with a "high circle count," this gets you seen by more potential buyers. Also, clicks on the Circle icon are growing by leaps and bounds.

Again, I can only speak for myself. I have quit using Circles pretty much completely. I'm just not interested in them. I don't spend nearly the time on Etsy that I used to a couple of months ago. I can't imagine most of the buyers I know personally using circles the way these guys think Circles will be used.

What do you think? This is a lot of information to process. What is it saying? And are you buying it?

Take the "Which kind of Etsian are you?" poll

Inspired by yesterday's change to the community page, which kind of Etsian are you? Creator or collector? Tinkerer or thinker? Doer or disgruntled? Vote now, right over there in the sidebar! It's your democratic duty!

Tinkering on Etsy's community page

The image above is from the new Etsy community page.

Etsy rolled out some new changes yesterday evening, including revamping the toolbar and the community page. The text on the new community page reads as follows:

"Etsy is more than a marketplace: we're a community of creators, collectors, tinkerers, thinkers and doers.

Join a team, share ideas, attend an event, chat or watch an online workshop below.

Vous parlez-francais? Visitez la communaute des francais d'Etsy ici. Sprichst du Deutsch? Hier geht's zur deutschen Community."

To the right is a toolbar with Events, Teams and Forums. To the right is a toolbar with Etsy Everywhere, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Meetup.

Below the announcement is a photo album of photos from the Etsy Labs. I've given you an example of these photos at the top of my post.

Below that is the Etsy livestream, with Facebook, Twitter and Buzz share options.

Wow.

Can we start with the photo? Believe me, the one I chose is representative of the entire album. No offense to this perfectly nice person photographed, but she is weaving something with her toes, on the floor, in a sea of feet and hiking footwear. There are other photos, featuring well-meaning people in construction paper name tags or holding George Bush voodoo dolls.

The text is also overly cute and somewhat dismissive. "Tinkerer" alone is a word rife with negative meanings. "Creators"is appropriate, perhaps even "collectors" and "thinkers." But "doers"? Doers of what, exactly?

A high percentage of those who sell on Etsy take their shops seriously. We work hard and take pride in what we create, as well as making excellent customer service a high priority. We spend time and money putting together professional looking shops, carefully considering the language for our descriptions and policies, and taking clear and appropriate photos of our listings.

We're artists, and we put a great deal of care into what we do. This Etsy community page statement is completely at odds with the images and reputations that we're working so hard to establish.

We are not tinkerers. We are sellers. Nowhere on this page is selling mentioned. Or buying. In fact, the "marketplace" facet of Etsy is summarily dismissed in the first sentence of the Community mission statement.

Join a team! More teams. Share ideas! But not in the forums, please, especially if your ideas do not fall into our hazy definition of "constructive." Chat! Watch a workshop! Be careful not to trip over my workboots over there on the floor. Doesn't the Lab have a coat closet?

We can connect to Etsy on any number of social networking sites. Fantastic. We can promote Etsy on this same deluge of internet venues. Great. The community page is designed to increase the number of clicks it takes to get anywhere you might want to go. Count your clicks. Good for you.

Can we at least talk about selling? And buying? Views and sales are down across the board, from what I've read in the forums, or what's left of the forums. This new Etsy image does nothing to project professionalism or artistry. To be brutally honest, it looks like preschool.

Keep tinkering, Etsy. You're losing successful sellers in the process. Those sellers are the backbone of the community you keep singing about.

Now, let's all make crepe paper pompoms.

We need an Etsy sympathy team

I posted awhile back about Etsy admin closing the forum threads for designedbylucinda. At least those threads were allowed to roll on for awhile before the door was slammed shut.

The other evening, a thread was started titled "Blessings to New Zealand," referring to the recent tragic earthquake in Christchurch. The original poster stated that they didn't know where else to post the thread; they just wanted to send blessings. Not asking for donations. Not asking for items for a New Zealand shop. Just sending prayers and sympathy to those effected.

Etsians offered news and support. This is one of the times I most love the Etsy community, when they offer both information and support for one another. That's what the forums once were, when they were at their best.

The thread was closed in about an hour, with lisajune referring people to the International Team.

There is no room for sympathy and information in the New World Etsy Forums. I guess it's just not constructive enough.

Etsy search improvements and issues

Etsy is changing their search. One of the biggest complaints from buyers and sellers over the years has been that you can't find what you're looking for while using the search on Etsy. What you type in the search box doesn't translate to the results that Etsy spits out.

The changes, announced February third in this announcement post, were supposed to achieve the following ends:

More precise results: The example given here is for "cat eye glasses" spitting out any listings with "cat," "eye" or "glasses." The new search will only bring up listings with all three words.

When I search "cat eye glasses," my first result is, in fact, an eyeball ring. There are 2,835 results. The second is a necklace. The third is an eyeglass lanyard. There are socks, earrings and a painting, all in the first dozen or so results.

Smart filtering: The automagical alogrithm will bring up the most relevant category for you when you search. "Cat eye glasses" should take you to accessories. Since most of the first page results are jewelry, I would say that this isn't working either.

Spell check: Another name for "autosuggest with a drill down," actually. The examples given are "amethyst" and "amigurumi," because only spelling bee champs know how to spell those words. We are not, by and large, spelling bee champs. Okay, I may have won a spelling bee or two, but I never learned the term "amigurumi" until I got to Etsy. If you're searching for an amethyst amigurumi, the idea here is that life is probably not going to treat you kindly.

Let's try it!

If you search "amethyst amigurumi," spell check will not help you. The good news is, you get a page of seven purple little crocheted critters.

So, what do these changes mean to you, the Etsy seller?

Sellers now need to repeat important keywords in their titles, descriptions and tags, all three places. Google searches pull from titles and descriptions. The new Etsy search pulls or will pull from tags. The words that sellers use to search will have to exactly match your tags, supposedly, for your tags to come up as relevant. Therefore, it's best to keep your tags to either one word, or use phrases that you are sure your buyers will use for searching. Tag stuffing isn't going to work.

Also, most recent listings will still default over most relevant. Hit that renew button, people! Hit it again!

No official word on when these changes will go sitewide, if they already have, or what they're learning while testing, but you can find the forum discussion thread here. Here is a non-admin thread with a lot of great info.

Many sellers have noticed a decline in both views and sales since these changes were announced. Since they coincided with the forum and other changes, it's hard to determine any true cause-effect relationship. Also notice that at no point does anyone in admin clearly spell out how to improve your tags to get your listing seen. If I'm a seller, how do I make this work for me?

And, if I'm a buyer, why do you assume I can't spell amethyst?

Etsy and the atmosphere of fear

When I joined Etsy awhile back, one of the things I appreciated most about the site was the ease of asking questions, getting and giving help, and striking up conversations and friendships. This happened mainly in the forums. At any time of the day or night, I could drop into the forums, ask a question, and get a quick answer. I might get several opposing quick answers, but at least there was valuable information to be had and exchanged.

Information is my drug of choice!

Since the forum changes, Etsians no longer know what they can and cannot post. Even admin doesn't seem to clear on the new rules. There have been any number of thinly veiled promotions all over Business and Site Help. Some people are working the system, but most seem to have no idea where to go, or what they can say, or how to behave in this New Etsy Order. New people have the door slammed on their questions and concerns, and are told to "go find a team. Any team. Start a team. There's a team." No real information or assistance.

It even reached a point where admin instructed people to email their forum posts to Etsy to see if it might be all right to post them. Because that is quick and efficient. . .

What I find most unsettling is the number of people who are talking about being afraid. "If I post this, will I be muted?" "I started a thread that was closed, and I don't know why. I'm afraid to ask." "I have been muted. If I tell people, will my shop be closed?"

There's a reason why I'm anonymous here, friends.

Etsy has turned from a small town of friendliness into a hostile environment of fear for a lot of people. Some of this fear is quite justified; many have been muted in the past few weeks, shops have been closed in the past after Etsians have spoken out, threads have been closed with disparate warnings. There's a heavy hand with no logic behind it.

And fear brings paranioa. Paranoia brings more fear. How can this be remedied?

Saluting the Etsy muted, fifth edition

It's Monday. Time to get out the gags.

cartoonmonster, for asking for clarification about how he was supposed to know not to post in threads that might be closed in the future.

JDWolfePottery, successful Etsy seller since the beginning, in 2007. Update: This was bad information, and JDWolfePottery was not muted.

And echoart, who never loses her temper or her cool.

Stop by and show their Etsy shops some love today.

Etsy clicks, commerce and community

Auction Bytes reported last week that Etsy broke their traffic record in January 2011, with a billion page views.

The number of new items listed was down four percent from January 2010.

They also noted that, "Despite international expansion, Etsy's sales growth rate continues to slow," and that there was some discrepancy between Etsy's reported sales volume and actual sales volume.

The site has been redesigned to cause more clicking: Activity Circle numbers, navigating to find teams and forums and threads you have posted in, even the ease of curating a treasury, which increases the number of treasuries a seller can be included in. All of these new features increase clicking.

In my opinion, and yours may differ, all of these changes have fractured the community. It's difficult to keep up with multiple teams, difficult to find time to curate treasuries, and difficult to stay in touch with Etsians that I used to cross paths with regularly in the Forums. With these Etsians out of sight, their shops are also out of mind. I no longer browse someone's shop because I see their avi in a forum. I no longer take the time to browse shops because I'm making a treasury. I already know the people who are on my teams.

Using the community as a sales tool, or even a buyer tool, has effectively stopped.

I check my activity feed just to clear the number. I question whether buyers even use the activity feed. At first, it was interesting to see what other people found and favorited. Now, I never look at it.

Extra clicks may make the site look busier and more popular. Do extra clicks equal extra commerce? Do these clicks tangibly prove that shoppers are searching and buying more?

Do the new features make selling easier? Is anyone seeing an increase in traffic and sales?

Take the Etsy changes poll

Which of the Etsy changes do you dislike the most?
Take the poll over there in the sidebar.
Maybe you like them all!
Vote up! Cheers!

Maybe Etsy said it all in a picture

This photo was posted on Etsy's Facebook wall yesterday.
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." --Confucious
Deep, huh?

Etsy admin poll results

You voted, and here are the results.

Question: Do you feel bad for Etsy admin?

The seventy-seven votes break down like this:

52% of you voted "Heck no, they seem to be enjoying themselves."

17% of you voted, "No, they believe in what they're doing."

14% of you voted, "Yes, they're hopeless pawns."

8% of you voted, "What's an Etsy admin?"

The people have spoken. I love democracy.

Saluting the Etsy muted, part four

This just in from the Mute Desk:

jenmaestre, amazing pencil genius artist, permamuted for calling out obvious resellers.

blackgermanshepard, whose Etsy shop has taken on an interesting look since the mute came down.

And eclipse, the opinionated and eloquent polar bear.

In other intriguing news, the muted are now being told who reported their posts. Nice of Etsy to further pit one seller against another.

Their definition of "community" is certainly different from mine.

I salute you, sisters!

Alchemy is taking a rest on Etsy

Maybe it needs a FreakyOldWoman sleep mask.

Announced January 27th, Etsy put Alchemy down for a nap beginning February 3.

According to the Etsy Blog article, Alchemy had enabled 80,000 custom creations since its inception. Alchemy allowed buyers to request a custom item, take bids from different sellers, and then choose a seller to make their special request. This is what Etsy is all about for me, buyers and sellers connecting on a personal level to realize a creative vision.

Alchemy was also the backbone of a lot of sellers' business. They bid and built relationships with customers through the Alchemy process. It was an ideal way for sellers to be seen. The Alchemy screen also provided a photo board of completed projects. Browsing shoppers could click those pictures and be taken to the seller's shop.

With wedding season heating up, many brides used Alchemy. Lots of shoppers used it because they couldn't find what they wanted with Etsy's less than stellar search.

This action hurt buyers and sellers, while wiping out one of the best ways for them to connect on a personal level. Once again, can I point out that the language ("taking a rest" and "it needs its beauty sleep") is both condescending and unprofessional.

Etsy's blog article goes on to say, "We love what Alchemy represents, and we want to do it even better." The article offers no details for these improvements, and no date for waking up Alchemy. The article also doesn't explain why Alchemy couldn't remain up and functioning while the tech team works on the improvements.

Many Etsy members doubt that it will ever return. Sad.

Saluting the Etsy muted III

Just off the docket:

BeastieDesigns, forum rabble rouser.

ecovintagevegan, creator of lovely party boxes.

lastchantsstudio, who is moving to artfire.

Salute!

R U Serious, Etsy? AKA Candyheartgate

Etsy is making my job too easy.

In what could graciously be called a marketing misstep, Etsy published an article on their blog Monday titled "Found Objects: Candy Hearts." Written by Andrea Siegel, who apparently doesn't have an Etsy account, the article is a skewed and sarcastic look at the sweet Valentine treat. Ellison, in fact, likens the candy to prison tattoos.

She goes on to discuss the grade school custom of exchanging the hearts from schoolmates as "opening an emotionally masturbatory dialogue with you in their minds as they drizzled come-ons into your envelope." From there, she discusses the mental instability of her fifth grade stalker with his "warm, gamey pockets" and his "pungent home." A boy she wouldn't have even "borrowed a chewed-up pencil from."

Where do I begin?

Let's start with the fifth grade masturbatory come-ons drizzling, shall we? For a corporation that has become increasingly prudish about mature listings and forum decorum over that past six months, that's a fairly sleazy string of metaphors there. If Etsy members are as up in arms as they seem to be about seeing a discrete photo of pair of silk underpants on the front page, what must they think of this obviously disturbing language? I am no prude, but fifth grade deviant candy sexuality is a pretty heavy topic for a supposedly light-hearted public corporate blog.

Also disturbing is the superior attitude of the author to this imagined fifth grade paramore. The absolute tone of disdain is almost more upsetting than the drizzling. It's a mean-hearted point of view for a romantic holiday, don't you think? The heart giver is so beneath the writer that she wouldn't even touch is pencil? Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil, after all.

Furthermore, this article was accompanied by hipster hearts art, as seen above, making light of asking if someone is gay or has herpes. Again, fairly hypocritical from Etsy when they recently banned a line of humorous greeting cards for addressing similar topics in a supposedly wry manner. Those cards, whether you liked them or not, were at least not featured as a topic,
not only approved by, but published by, Etsy itself.

It's not necessarily the topic itself, but the disingenuous duplicity of Etsy that bothers me here. How about an article on homemade Valentine traditions? Victorian Valentine ephemera and how to upcycle it? Eros? Cupid? Frank Sinatra?

And there's a link to Valentine's candy on Etsy at the close of this article? Nasty.

Etsy, I'm so Not Into U right now.

Addressing calling out and blog comments

When I started this blog, I thought about addressing both the "front page regulars" issue and the "forum cupcake/cheerleaders" issue. That would involve naming Etsy names. I'm not going to do that, and here are the reasons:
I don't want to personally attack anyone. We've had enough of that in the community, especially lately.
If there are front page regulars and cupcakecheerleaders, the fault of that lies squarely on Etsy as a corporation. They choose the front page listings, and they choose who to mute, close threads on, etc.
I'd rather spend my time here examining the larger issues than calling out individuals. If individual sellers are part of the larger issues, then Etsy is ultimately responsible for those issues.

Now, onto blog comments. It would be hypocritical of me to delete comments here that I don't agree with. If I'm going to give Etsy a hard time for closing threads and muting sellers, I can't exactly pick and choose who gets to comment here. I don't agree with the comments posted about the recently muted. Everybody has their views.
If comments get out of hand, I'll get rid of them.
Honestly, it's just nice to know that someone is reading this, because I think the topics I'm writing about are essential to those selling, and even buying, on Etsy.

Information is my only drug of choice.

Saluting the Etsy muted II

urbangipsy, who got an indefinite muting today. She opened shop in January of 2007.

Archivia, who received a one month muting for saying "Seriously gross" in an Etsy forum thread.

BlueKittyMinatures, another well-respected member of the Etsy community.

Christina Perdue, longtime Etsy seller and one of the organizers of the donations for designedbylucinda.

On a postive note, Admin signs your muting email "All the best." That has to count for something, doesn't it?

I'm sure there are more mute-ees who I haven't listed. I've seen the recent count at fifteen. My guess is that there will be a lot more before this is all over.