ETSY Marketplace -3 Powerful Reasons Why You Should Not Sell On Etsy

ETSY Marketplace -3 Powerful Reasons Why You Should Not Sell On Etsy

If you’re looking for an online marketplace to sell your handmade or vintage goods, you may have considered Etsy. However, before you dive in, it’s important to consider some potential downsides.

• High fees: Etsy charges fees for listing your products and taking a percentage of each sale. These fees can add up and significantly impact your profits. From First hand experience they are taking over 51% of your sales in Fees. The fees range from the listing fees per item sold, transaction fees and another new processing fee.
• Too many policy violations: Etsy has strict policies around what can be sold on their platform. If you accidentally violate a policy or receive too many strikes against your account, it could result in suspension or even permanent removal from the site.
• Withholding of funds without notice: Etsy has been known to freeze sellers’ funds without warning if they suspect any fraudulent activity. This can be frustrating if it impacts your cash flow and ability to fulfill orders.

The Story behind Etsy

I was selling my beads and teething products with them for over 10 years its how I first started out on there and over the years, the fees kept increasing and changing and new ones kept being added. When you are a small business and you are trying to sell your products at a reasonable price to you customers etsy is not the way to go anymore.

When I started my Teething Products company I was aloud to sell my handmade teething clips on there. Then one day I woke up to all my listings deactivated with NO NOTICE. They just took them all down in 2019. I was beyond devastated and super confused. I was never notified before hand that they all of sudden were going to change there policies. I abided by the new rule and stopped selling on etsy then. Then I start to notice that other companies were able to still sell there teething products on there. I was outraged! Why was I the only one who was taken down?

I chucked it off to, they did not have enough man power to scour their etsy businesses and taken them all down ( today they are using an algorithm without a human to determine if an items violates a policy ). Then i did my own digging and people just started changing there listings to omit that an item was for “teething” They call the items, silicone pendants or dummy clips or adult necklaces. How is that fair? Because they didnt get caught.

Then etsy created a wholesale side ( which no longer exists )to etsy which I loved the thought of. A place where other businesses can go to buy wholesale items for your etsy businesses. I started to sell through that all my beads that I used to create my custom teething products. I was gaining a lot of traction because of my star seller status since I was on there for many years. This year a new trend started forming. People are making more and more projects with beads. They are creating these amazing pens, garlands, and craft projects. Some days I could not keep up with the demand.

As the year went on I started noticing I needed to raise my prices a lot. Because after all the fees I was not making anything on the items. I was like, how can these other sellers be making any profit with all these added fees ( which were not there before). Then I noticed so many are from china and selling direct. That is not the foundation etsy started with, but yet they allow it.

Then, this year etsy came out with yet again another new policy. You can not list that your products are fda approved. Even if they were and you have proof you could not listing anything that was claiming that. I thought that was unfair to the consumer. They should have a right that the products are fda approved. it is showing it doesn’t contain harmful chemicals in there. Who wouldn’t want to know that. So once again all my listings were taken down with out notice.

Didn’t even give me the chance to just take out the words fda in the listings. BOOM ! Gone ! So there I was having to go and relist all my items ( which is very time consuming because when etsy deactivates a listing you have absolutely no access to what was in it, photos, prices, descriptions. nothing. You lose it all . Feeling defeated and frustrated and I kept going and created a business model that I thought was now finally following all of etsys NEW policies . I gained so much momentum and had fantastic and rave reviews from all my customers. I had many repeat customers as well.

Then I woke up again and found my entire etsy site was shut down. Apparently I violated there policies yet again but this time it was for good. They claimed I could appeal the verdict and I did and I did receive a message ( a generic stated message) that states , we have concluded that the items you sell do not fit under our policies.

They froze all my orders that I had and I couldn’t send out my orders to my customers. Its the week of black friday. I had over 75 orders to get out and all those customers never received their products. I was not concerned at that moment with my money I was more upset that my customers were not going to get there orders in time for the holidays.

Everyone orders the end of November to set them up for all the holiday sales. I was devastated and so upset for all my customers. A lot of people on etsy don’t use etsy very often and when you send messages to people not everyone checks their many mass emails and just delete them. I received so many messages weeks later, where is my order I needed it, why was it refunded i don’t understand. It was a pure nightmare to sort through the wreckage and to right the customer who was in the end ultimately inconvenienced and affected.

The customer always come first ! When etsy shuts someone down they should allow you to ship all open orders so the customers are taken care of. I understand withholding your funds in case there are returns or unhappy customers but this method was absolutely unthinkable. As I was reaching out to customers they were telling many of there other etsy vendors were also getting shut down and none of them were ever reinstated.

They didn’t received there funds for over 6 months. 6 months is a long time after first shutting down orders that you cant ship and then not receiving your money for orders that were shipped out. For a small business this can make them go bankrupt. Every penny counts. The same thing is happening to me as well. I was told I wont receive my money until May 17th 2024.

A special note to all the current sellers on etsy please beware of all the new policies and read them carefully because etsy is rapid changing and you dont get an email saying they have changed their policies, they just list them in the fine print continuously. Etsy has changed from the cute crafting products to allowing only china to sell on here. That certainly is not the original ideas behind etsy. They have turned into a corporate company and is all about the bottom-line.

How can we make more money off vendors while we are ” shutting down” other businesses who are following the original rules that the etsy marketplace was built upon. Here is to the cooperate man taking down the little guys.

Having any business there are always risks that you have to take and prepare for. These are the biggest reason why not to sell on etsy. If these factors concern you as a seller, there are other online marketplaces that may better suit your needs and business goals. It’s always important to do research before committing any time or resources into selling on an e-commerce platform.