At a Crossroads with Etsy + Back to School

Etsy sellers continue to complain about the site, more than what I've ever seen.  

The handmaid item sellers are up in arms since Etsy continues to cater to sellers who list factory-produced "handmade items" that ship from China.  Their sales have plummeted since the sellers sourcing from China can list similar items for much lower prices.  

Etsy has placed many sellers on a 90-day reserve.  Imagine a seller's funds being held for 90 days.  Etsy has placed some sellers on reserve if they are slightly late in shipping out orders or if they have received more orders than they usually receive.

Etsy recently had a bot running amok.  The bot was shutting down listings for nonsense reasons, saying that the seller had violated policy.  For instance, the bot shut down a seller's authentic vintage Star Wars glasses for being drug paraphernalia.

Sellers are also complaining of low sales.  This is where I come in.  My sales on Etsy are quite poor, probably the worst they've been since I started on Etsy.  My listings are buried in Etsy's search results.  I test how my listings appear by using a browser that I've never used to login to Etsy.  This way Etsy doesn't favor what I might like or have clicked on in the past.  It's like I'm someone new to Etsy, and the site serves up search results that are objective.

When I search Etsy on an alternate browser while not logged in, my listings show very low in a Nancy Drew search.  Back in June I checked, and my books were not shown until the ninth page of the results.  Early this month I checked and found one listing on the first page.  Last week I checked, and the first visible listing was on the fifth page.  Yesterday, the first visible item was on the sixth page.

The poor visibility in search is why my sales have dropped substantially.  Take a look at my Etsy inventory.  Click on the image in order to see it clearly.

Slightly over 60% of my inventory consists of Nancy Drew books, which are all showing poorly in Etsy's search.  No wonder my sales have tanked.  I always did well on Etsy because my Nancy Drew books showed up prominently in Etsy's search.  No more.

Right now I'm at a crossroads on Etsy.  I feel exactly the way I did around a year before I left Bonanza.  Etsy, at least for me, is tanking like Bonanza did. 

I should note that eBay sales are lower than they should be, but they are better than Etsy.  Something is going on with people not buying books in general, but my sales on Etsy have been impacted more severely.

I feel like I can see paying to relist my current inventory on Etsy for one more listing cycle.  If sales remain poor, then I close my Etsy shop.  Sayonara. 

That's where I am.

For the last few years, I've closed my eBay and Etsy stores when school starts.  I still have a few weeks to decide for sure, but right now, I feel that I should keep them open.  My sales are so bad that I should be able to handle any sales that should occur.  If I close the stores, then I lose what little momentum I have.  

I will decide for sure what to do in early August.  My Etsy shop will soon have far fewer listings, since most of them expire on July 25.  I will have to decide for sure whether I will stay open before I consider renewing those listings for one more cycle.  I hope that I don't have to leave Etsy, since I do like the site.  However, I'm not going to continue to pay $0.20 per listing when my sales level doesn't justify the fees.

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy

I want to add that I've been thinking over the situation since I wrote the bulk of this post a couple days ago.  I'm going back and forth about whether to renew the Etsy listings that expire on July 25 and whether to close my stores for back to school.  

My thyroid medication has just been adjusted for the fifth time this year.  I don't anticipate that this change will impact my decision, but school starting will cause another autoimmune flare that will mess me up for a month or two.  This just means that even if I keep my stores open, I might decide to close abruptly at any time.  

I will go into more detail on the thyroid situation in another post soon.  I like to detail my journey because of the huge amount of misinformation that is in all the online thyroid forums.  My situation does not follow what the "self-appointed thyroid experts" say to be true.  It's infuriating to see so many people being led down the wrong path by snake oil salesmen.  My hope is that a few people stumble across my posts in their online searches and realize that not everyone falls under the "one size fits all approach" of the thyroid groups.