Tuesday, February 24, 2009

What made you open an Etsy shop?

This is our blog carnival question -- what made you open an Etsy shop? What do you like about being a seller on Etsy and what don't you like?

I first decided to open my shop when I heard about Etsy through word of mouth and was intrigued about selling at a site where everything was handmade. The idea definitely appealed to me and since I used to sell on E-Bay with their outrageous selling fees I decided to give Etsy a try and haven't looked back. I completely stopped selling on E-Bay and although I may decide in the future to put a few listings on E-Bay, I have nothing planned. I love Etsy for the most part and I love the community and teams I've joined.

What I don't like about Etsy is their search function, it's pretty bad, when I do a search for something the strangest things come up, things that I haven't asked for nor am I looking for. The other thing I don't like is that sometimes the threads in Etsy forums can get pretty mean-spirited so I tend to stay away from them for the most part. I mean don't get me wrong there are a lot of nice, lovely posts in the forums, but every once in a while out of the blue -- wow - bam -- someone can just get slammed for asking an innocent question, but I guess that's not unique to Etsy.

Well, that's my likes and don't likes, what are yours? What made you sell on Etsy and what do you like about it and not like?

3 comments:

Kristin said...

I gave some of my paper mache beads to a friend of mine who made jewelry. I had been making them as something to do when my baby, who slept all of the time, was sleeping..lol. Anyway, this friend suggested I sell them on Etsy.. so, that is what I eventually decided to do.. I wish the checkout process was easier on Etsy, I could see how it can be confusing. I pretty much stay away from the forums now.. I studied the forums when I first started on Etsy to just familiarize myself with how things work.. Oh, gosh, I am so long-winded.. Good post though, I am interested in what others have to say as well!

Deanna Lack said...

I agree about the search function. Sometimes having a "loose" search function is helpful but when you have people make team tags for specific searches and non-team stuff comes up, it gets annoying.

I still love Etsy, though, it beats any other selling venue I've found.

:-) MaryLou said...

I started out on Etsy after I got tired of selling ACEOs on eBay. Although I was selling a lot of them, I wanted to do more than just drawing; and Etsy seemed like a good place to sell so I could feed my creative monster. :-)

It's worked out pretty well for me, although I find that if I don't list or renew a few things every day the views and sales drop off significantly.

I HATE the Etsy search function! I wind up searching using a whole string of "not this" and "not that" so it filters out some of the listings I don't want to see, but I'm sure buyers are put off by not being able to find what they want easily.

There are some other things that are less than stellar, but I've been using EtsyHacks to solve some of the problems and saving myself all kinds of time.
:-)

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