Etsy continues to do strange things. It's kind of amusing, since 15 years ago I complained about eBay endlessly. eBay settled down years ago and quit making bizarre decisions. Now, it's Etsy acting strange. The latest debacle is that Etsy is hiding the item description way down at the bottom of the listing page below reviews where buyers will never see it.
Here is the top part of one of my listings (click on the image to view it more clearly). I have cut out the user IDs and text of the two reviews seen underneath the image. The item description used to be on the right just underneath the promotional text about free shipping.
Here is the next part of the listing under what is seen above. Two more reviews appear, and I have also removed the user IDs and text from those reviews. I have placed a red box around the item description.
It is so far down on the page that many buyers will never see it. That's just asking for trouble.
I've already had problems on Etsy with truncated item descriptions. Now they are just plain hiding the item descriptions. Etsy seems to think that buyers only need to see the images. Buyers certainly don't need a written description...
Etsy has started spamming my email with marketing information. That was where I was given the advice that I mentioned in my previous post. Since my blog post of a few days ago, I have received three more messages from Etsy with advice.
I can regard this spam in two different ways. Etsy could see me as a fledgling seller who needs help. On the other hand, Etsy may be in trouble and is trying to spur me on so that they can dig themselves out of a hole.
The first message told me this.
Huh. So, my most popular listing has been favorited by one buyer. Thanks, Etsy, for reminding me about what I already knew, which is that practically no one is favoriting my items these days.
I then received a message the next day with this advice.
First, my Three Investigators books are actually selling, unlike the rest of my books. Aside from that, I'm not sure why a video would help. I guess I could take a video of me flipping through the book.
I received another message today with the same advice that I covered in my last blog post. Gosh, Etsy must see me as a failure.
In summary, Etsy is getting really obnoxious. For now, I will keep letting Etsy send me messages just to see what kind of useless advice they give me. Once I finally grow sick of it, I will unsubscribe from Etsy's marketing emails.
After much internal debate, I decided to renew most of my expired Etsy listings. I have held some back, and those might go to eBay in bulk lots or as individual listings.
After I renewed the listings, I then sorted my inventory by highest price first. I went down the list and lowered the prices of at least half of my books. Maybe that will help. Most likely it won't, since my items are still buried in Etsy's search results. Whatever.
Jennifer's Series Books on eBay
Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy
The silver lining is that I can keep my stores open during the start of the school year since I'm not getting many sales. It's a win-win situation. Low sales... the stores stay open... the people who want to buy are able to buy. Win-win.
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