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 PipeGate

Rainbow disc glass art, courtesy of glasscoast on Etsy

Etsy is cracking down on creators of glass pipes that are being sold for medicinal and tobacco purposes, as discussed in this protest thread in Ideas. These pipes, or pieces of glass art for display, have been sold on Etsy since the site began. Sellers are being contacted via email by the content team about the listings that need to be removed. Etsy will refund their listing fees for the banned listings.

From prohibited items listed in the Etsy Dos and Don'ts: Drugs, drug-like substances and drug paraphernalia; items or listings that promote or support illegal activity or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.

Is the pipe drug paraphernalia? Is it handmade? Is it an artistic piece of work? Is it beautiful? Does it promote something illegal? Does it instruct you on how to use it to do something illegal? Can I use it to hold up a liquor store?

Here's the twist. If you click on Etsy help (Etsy likes it when you click stuff) and check out "What items can't I sell on Etsy?," the first thing mentioned is "All items in the handmade Categories must be made by the Etsy seller." No reselling. Also, vintage items must comply with the policies for Vintage. At least twenty years old.

As an Etsian, what do you find more distressing? Glass pipes? Resellers? Vintage that isn't vintage?

By the way, glasscoast, the artist who made the gorgeous piece above, is located in California, where it is indeed legal to smoke marijuana for medical reasons. I'm sure there are other listings on Etsy that are not legal in some corners of the globe. Do we need to remove listings for women's clothing that does not cover the entire body except for the eyes?

Or do glass pipes look worse than resold mass manufactured junk or 2001 vintage to potential investors?

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?

Addressing the negativity charge

Greetings and salutations, and thanks for coming. I'd like to talk now to those who say that online negativity will kill Etsy, and to those who say if you don't like Etsy then you should shut your mouth and leave.

Here's why I'm feeling not so positive, and here's why "just leave" is not an intelligent response.

Yes, Etsy is a privately held (for now) corporation, and as so can do as it sees fit with its company, including its website. But how does Etsy make the majority of its money? From listing fees. Who pays listing fees? Sellers. How does Etsy make the rest of its money? From percentages of sales dollars. Does Etsy proper actually sell anything, beyond the "Quit Your Day Job" dream? No. Then who sells the items that Etsy collects a percentage of? Sellers.

Let's break it down even more. How many sellers also shop on Etsy and buy there? Lots. Etsy is full of amazing handmade items, beautiful supplies and drool-worthy vintage. We are paying Etsy on both ends, so to speak.

What is Etsy's main method of advertising? The advertising done primarily by its sellers, whether word-of-mouth, seller blogs, seller business cards, sellers tweeting, or sellers paying to advertise their shops.

Sellers support the site. Sellers get the site seen. Sellers are Etsy's customer base.

From what I have heard of late, the majority of sellers, Etsy's customers, are unhappy with recent changes. I am one of these sellers. There are many who have been on the site longer than I have, and basically built Etsy from the ground up. I salute you long timers. These sellers are trying to make their views heard, and are being silenced and ignored and shut down.

That makes me negative. I started this blog to figure out why I'm negative, if my negativity is justified, and if there's a way to remedy it.

Why don't I leave? Because I've built a business with a customer base at Etsy. Because I've put hundreds of hours of work into my shop there. And because I refuse to give up until I'm sure that the benefits of closing shop outweigh the benefits of staying open.

I'm a business person at heart. This means I understand the soul and passion that sellers have put into creating their Etsy shops, and I understand their fierce loyalty to those shops. I also understand those who feel they will do better elsewhere, and move on. I even understand those who hate negativity. We have all loved Etsy. Some of us are just having a more difficult time doing that at this time.

If you can't intelligently question the wisdom of decisions that impact your business with other business owners, how are you supposed to learn anything?

And, if you treated your customers the way Etsy has treated its sellers, how long would your shop have stayed open? If you ignored direct pleas for clear information, suggestions on how to improve the buyer-seller relationship, convos asking for satisfaction with problem transactions, how would your feedback look?

Consider this blog my feedback for Etsy. They have my twenty cents for each and every listing. I want delivery on the product I was promised. I still have hope that it might get better. Until then, color me negative.