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The Fall of the House of Etsy

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Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#11

Post by noodlesUK »

acheron wrote: post #6
seattle_spring wrote: post #3

The prevalence of drop shipping is what killed Etsy for me as a buyer. I guess I was too trusting originally, but I was very disappointed when I found out that several items I had bought from them, all marketed as handmade, were just cheaply made pieces of garbage from places like Ali Express, then marked up 10x.

Where do people actually handmaking stuff sell now?

The real answer is where they always have: local markets and craft fairs. Most towns and cities have some kind of periodic craft market, which is often related to a farmers and/or food market. They usually have some kind of weird schedule like first Sunday of every month or similar.

You can also see if your local arts centre/university/whatever has some kind of market. There's also usually different kinds of conventions for specific industries where people will set up booths.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#12

Post by marcinzm »

noodlesUK wrote: post #10

The automatic enrolment in the Etsy advertising program means the platform fees for anyone selling more than 10k USD increase sharply at that point to ~20% of total revenue. What that means is that any artists/makers that are doing volumes that represent anything even close to a full time wage are totally shafted. If I were an artist selling stuff, I would strongly consider a switch to something like Shopify, especia…

> The automatic enrolment in the Etsy advertising program means the platform fees for anyone selling more than 10k USD increase sharply at that point to ~20% of total revenue.

That seems to assume a very very unrealistic 100% of orders being from offsite ads. In reality it's probably 10% for most shops if even that many.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#14

Post by majormajor »

There's still not a better alternative that I've found (searching eBay, Amazon, AliExpress) for specific niche items in some pretty broad ares, from fandom to vintage jewelry to 3d-printed or gray-market custom parts/accessories for cars. Ebay/sometimes Amazon seems better for electronics or manufactured parts; AliExpress if you're willing to gamble more, but for "accessory" things I've had really good luck with Etsy.

Whether you can turn that into a profitable public company... eh.

And there are certainly some blogspammy listings in all those venues (Amazon and AliExpress probably the worst for that), but good luck solving that without human curation - and then you're an even worse investment as a business.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#15

Post by hprotagonist »

noodlesUK wrote: post #11
acheron wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do people actually handmaking stuff sell now?

The real answer is where they always have: local markets and craft fairs. Most towns and cities have some kind of periodic craft market, which is often related to a farmers and/or food market. They usually have some kind of weird schedule like first Sunday of every month or similar. You can also see if your local arts centre/university/whatever has some kind of market. There's also usually different kinds of conventi…

and online: niche, reputation-based forums probably still running phpbb that have been online since the 90s and have aging users with post counts in the 6 figures.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#16

Post by hprotagonist »

pylua wrote: post #13
haunter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OnlyFans

Do people on only fans ship handmade contents to subscribers ? I thought it was a subscription website, but they may have more streams.

you can absolutely purchase physical goods on onlyfans. it often comes in a ziplock bag!

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#17

Post by lancesells »

noodlesUK wrote: post #10

The automatic enrolment in the Etsy advertising program means the platform fees for anyone selling more than 10k USD increase sharply at that point to ~20% of total revenue. What that means is that any artists/makers that are doing volumes that represent anything even close to a full time wage are totally shafted. If I were an artist selling stuff, I would strongly consider a switch to something like Shopify, especia…

I would do run both and try to port over customers to Shopify. The advantage of Etsy is people.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#18

Post by ghaff »

noodlesUK wrote: post #11
acheron wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do people actually handmaking stuff sell now?

The real answer is where they always have: local markets and craft fairs. Most towns and cities have some kind of periodic craft market, which is often related to a farmers and/or food market. They usually have some kind of weird schedule like first Sunday of every month or similar. You can also see if your local arts centre/university/whatever has some kind of market. There's also usually different kinds of conventi…

As augmented by their own websites I assume. You lose the mass discoverability but you at least reduce the direct competition with volume, largely mass-manufactured goods.

Maybe it wasn’t obvious at the time but it certainly became so that your low-volume artisanal craft couldn’t sell alongside manufactured Chinese goods going for 10% the price.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#19

Post by resolutebat »

stavros wrote: post #4
Animats wrote: post #2

"This pattern of scale > internal ad products > clusterfuckery > user exodus is generally referred to as “Enshittification,” a very fun term coined by Cory Doctorow in 2022 to explain why, broadly speaking, everything on the internet now seems way worse." That used to be called "pulling a Myspace". Myspace pioneered that way to screw up. Can anyone name a company that went down this road and came back? Someone should…

"Enshittification" originally had a very specific definition: > First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. Nowadays it's just used as a catch-all for "made worse".

Etsy fits Cory's original definition to a tee though.

Re: The Fall of the House of Etsy

#20

Post by RheingoldRiver »

acheron wrote: post #6
seattle_spring wrote: post #3

The prevalence of drop shipping is what killed Etsy for me as a buyer. I guess I was too trusting originally, but I was very disappointed when I found out that several items I had bought from them, all marketed as handmade, were just cheaply made pieces of garbage from places like Ali Express, then marked up 10x.

Where do people actually handmaking stuff sell now?

A lot of people sell through instagram and facebook groups. I've bought a bunch of art (blown glass, embroidery mostly) through IG
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