Bye Etsy! Why I'm leaving Etsy :)

hey guys mixed media girl here so i'm leaving etsy as a platform for selling my art and everything else that i sell and so i wanted to do a video on why i'm leaving etsy and some pros and cons with that or with etsy as a site and as a platform please realize this is my own viewpoint feel free to have your own to make your own decisions or have your own thoughts you don't have to agree with me i'm just passing on my own thoughts on the whole matter so first of all a little background i joined etsy in 2014 at the time a friend wanted me to set up a store there she thought it would be a good idea i was selling a lot of art on facebook for free around that time and having no issue with it so we put up some pieces on etsy we paid the listing fees and everything and nothing sold i was out a couple bucks no big deal but i decided it really wasn't for me at that time i was selling just fine on facebook for free um and it didn't really make sense to be paying money for not selling pieces if that makes sense and just as a note etsy won't sell art for you so there's not a single website that you can say if i put my art up here it will just sell you need to do the work yourself so if you're not actively promoting it if you're not researching key terms and really like taking great care with your photos your your titles your descriptions your keywords everything then it's not gonna just magically sell by itself so that's the first thing i've seen some people have some unreal expectations about the platform one of the pros about etsy is that it is really easy to set up so if you're a bit technologically challenged etsy it's beautiful it's easy to set up a nice store on there and you kind of just set it and forget it and it you don't have to do a lot of maintenance to it so that is probably one of the only pros about etsy now not only are you paying that listing fee you're also giving them a percentage of any sales that you make it's not a huge percentage the percentage itself is pretty comparable but you're also giving etsy a percentage of your shipping charges now that doesn't make any sense to me if the shipping is ten dollars on an item and i give etsy five percent of that then i'm paying extra for shipping so that right there doesn't make any sense to me i still was okay with these terms up to a certain point in 27 2018 i started putting things back on etsy again because my art sales really started taking off and i was like okay i need just an easy place to put them all in and keep it all organized and so i started putting things up on etsy was great was fine no big deal still not super happy with those fees but whatever it is what it is and that's what you agreed to when you join the platform now fast forward to 2019 etsy rolls out with this new um free shipping thing they want everybody to offer free shipping and if you do they'll put your listings higher up in the search terms or search box right and if you don't they're going to put your listings all the way at the bottom this really really rubbed me the wrong way to try to force shop owners to give free shipping when it may not be possible it may not make any sense now what did they tell us to do they told us to just roll that shipping cost into the price of the item that's not particularly honest in my viewpoint it is basically a psychological mechanism to make customers think they have free shipping when they really don't companies do it all the time right wrong and different i don't know but it wasn't something that really made sense to me and i have a wide variety of items on my shop and a wide variety of weights now the weight and the size of items makes a huge difference in your shipping so for me one piece could cost eight dollars to ship to someone in california but it could cost eighteen dollars to ship to someone in new york so i can add that extra 18 to my item and then someone in california is paying an extra 18 or an extra 10 right it doesn't make any sense to me so that was kind of the first i don't really like this and i don't like what they're trying to get people to do and i don't like the fact that even though i have good items i have good reviews i make lots of sales i have happy customers they're putting my listings down at the bottom because i won't offer free shipping because it just doesn't make any sense so that was my first like okay not cool etsy and i never agreed to this so at that point i started looking elsewhere for another place to sell my art i wasn't in a mad hurry because okay it's you know i want to make sure i don't have to move more than once so i started researching the other platforms you know shopify there's fine art in america there's all kinds of different things and then of course looking into making my own website which is what i decided to go with in the end but setting up a website's not a really fast and easy process depending on how you want to do it it can be it can be super fast you can set up a website one day but i have courses i have um art supplies i have paintings i have a lot of things so my website's not quite that simple anyways fast forward even a little bit more um etsy implements this new uh paid advertising gimmick long story short they automatically enrolled everybody into this advertising program where they will so nicely advertise for you whether you like it or not if you make a sale they're going to take their 15 on top of the already almost 10 percent that they take because they were so nice and advertised for you and supposedly made that sale so you're giving almost 25 to etsy what the heck this makes no sense whatsoever luckily you could opt out so that's the first thing they automatically opted you in without any agreement i never asked for that but you could automatically you could then go and it wasn't easy to find but you could opt out of that okay great all right so i kept going along going along and then my sales really started picking up which is a good thing right you should be excited about it but what does that mean on etsy that means that i am now forced to be in their advertising program i have no decision to opt out so they're going to force me to let them advertise for me and then take a massive chunk of anything that they supposedly sell now how do they determine what they sell this is also where it gets a bit fishy and in my mind criminal i don't need etsy's help selling anything i've done a lot of hard work building up my own platform where do you think etsy advertises they advertise to my own customers so i have a youtube video who's advertising above and below and beside that etsy is advertising my own items on my own youtube videos they're advertising my own items when people search for me on etsy so people that are already customers of mine they're already my public my audience and oftentimes people that have already bought from me in the past they accidentally click on an ad thinking it's just one of my listings or something and then i lose over 20 of that cost not cool etsy really not cool at all very shady and there's zero way for me to opt out of this even though it is 100 not something that i need or want and in fact quite the opposite i don't want them to do that and i have no way out of it so that was the final straw it's really disheartening um working my butt off you know marketing and advertising and everything my products and then have etsy come along and basically steal a big chunk of it because that's how i look at it they're they're not getting me new customers and even if they were i don't want them to do that so they're stealing money from me that i am not okay with giving them so final straw i'm moving to a new website and that will be hopefully within the next couple weeks it's like done but just the last final touches and then i'm gonna begin the process of moving everything over so i am having a massive sale on etsy if you would like i'll put the link in the description i want to move over as little as possible and then i will be passing on those savings to you guys once i get to my website and i don't have to give them large chunks of my money for no reason so that's my thoughts on etsy the one and only pro being that it's easy to set up and it's a nice looking platform that's literally the only pro i can think of etsy as a platform will not automatically get you sales just because they have a huge audience you have to put in the work yourself and then they have the free shipping issue they have the the force advertising issue and um taking a percentage of your shipping costs which make no sense so a lot of cons and just the one pro that i can think of so that's my thoughts on on the etsy platform hopefully this is good information for you if you are just starting out and you don't know anything about technology i would say go ahead and set up a store on etsy but once you start really making sales it's not going to be a good platform it'll be the opposite you'll you'll lose money that you don't need to lose so if you have had success with a different platform like shopify or anything else like that please let everybody know in the comments so that people can research maybe a better option than etsy and maybe etsy will see this and take it to heart i really hope that you listen to your customers and you do what's best for not only the buyers but also the shop owners like they both need to be able to be successful and win and get what they need and want and it shouldn't just be about etsy's bottom line so hopefully they take some of this message to heart but otherwise thank you guys so much for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Mixed Media Girl

Views: 221,157

Rating: 4.9378281 out of 5

Keywords: selling on etsy, how to sell on etsy, etsy, bye etsy, leaving etsy, etsy review, mixed media girl, why i'm leaving etsy, etsy shop, selling on etsy for beginners

Id: 8d2irxGrews

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021