I have been selling my wood wall art on Etsy since 2010. I was able to make a good living with it, selling 80-90k per year. I have not sold a single piece in 3 months. I have started a new shop (year old) selling other type of artwork, it was doing great selling 6k per month till last month. Sales dropped at least 85% no views, no sales. It seems like they’ve been doing some algorithm shenanigans and it disrupted most shops sales. It’s frustrated that they are just able to turn small businesses income just like flipping a switch. I have talked to their customer support, and I was giving the same run around. I feel your pain, and my bills still need to be paid. I will need to go find a 9-5 to be able to pay my bills after 15 years of being self employed. Shame on Etsy destroying small artisan’s businesses.
I am not a seller, but find Etsy increasingly difficult to locate products. The search is terrible. I see more ads of unrelated product than what I am looking for. I like supporting independent sellers, but it is nearly too intolerable to continue. Could be people can't find your products because the search engine is so broken.
As a shopper, it's incredibly hard now to organically discover new artists due to the ungodly amount of AI trash I have to sift through. And even more unfortunately, for some art styles it's really hard to trust that the shop is selling real art, not unethical AI trash 😔. Now I can only buy after a stupid amount of scrutinizing to decide if the artist is legit (and I just don't have the energy for that all the time) so I mostly turn to artists on other platforms.
My shop was open almost 9 years, and I had over 1000 listings. All of a sudden they decided three (out of 1,000+) of my listings were "not what they wanted to sell anymore." They did not give me a reason, and, suddenly shut my shop down. I sold charms and findings and mixed media art supplies. I moved to Shopify and haven't gotten any business, I'll be shutting down completely soon. I did $20K plus a year on Etsy before this. I'm not sure what's going on with them, but they are not making people happy.
Etsy have also shot themselves in the foot. Imagine wrecking your business...and then losing their own revenue from your business. It's the continuing enschittification of the internet
Aw. I'm so sorry to hear you are shutting down, because I love to see people making hand crafted items. I hope you will find a nice niche offline, like a boutique or co-op maybe, or even pop-up shops or seasonal craft fairs, to sell things, if you don't have these outlets up and running already. It's a cruel world, in the online sales arena, because like big business, the big operation always does best, and has most visibility.
What I don’t like about Etsy is when people buy art “from Etsy” that’s what they say or think “I bought this from Esty” not the artist! Or the artist’s name!
Seems everybody on Etsy agrees that it has gotten worse in the past few years. However, as someone who's just starting out, I can't afford my own website until I know for sure that I can sell my paintings. Shame I didn't find my relatively new hobby sooner and was able to try Etsy while it was still fairly good... My strategy now is to grow my social media accounts and I'm expecting it to take quite some time. Glad you and others are giving more realistic expectations than the "gurus" though!
Goimagine will give you your own website through mosaic if you pay for the $10 per month plan. You can put your own domain name on it. I’ve found it to be an affordable starting point for having your own website. And their fees are a little less than Etsy.
I’m frustrated with Etsy too. Something has really changed for the worse this year and I don’t know what to do to fix it. I’m an artist and sell art prints of my work. I was happy with how I was doing over a period of many years but now feel that nothing I do seems to have any effect.
I’m right there with you, Etsy is a tough nut to crack, maybe it’s a lost cause… i’m gonna keep trying for a while more though. with what’s going on with Etsy, it’s even more important to diversify income streams as an artist. That’s why I don’t really count on my online sales for my living. I sell most of my art in person at art fairs.
I share your frustrations!! I would love to open a stand alone website, but can't justify the up front costs when I'm not even bringing it in through my etsy shop
I think part of the problem too is that Esty is so big now that there are too many shops they can't even suss out the bad players that are just copying other artists.
From what I've seen, everyone having this problem has a store outside of Etsy. I'm a new seller and I was going to have an outside store. I've put that on hold for now. Just like RUclips, Etsy doesn't want you to pull customers away from the platform. Given that thought, you have to ask, Why would Etsy want to promote a store that may be pulling buyers off the platform? This video seems to support my thoughts. I currently funnel everyone to my etsy shop. I bet Etsy loves that. Maybe some day my shop grows to the point that I leave Etsy. Thanks for the video. It has provided useful information.
Well I think there are a lot more sellers so the algorithm has to balance between giving new sellers a chance and keeping successful sellers happy. I think the stretch is just not possible based on the demand which means some people will be unhappy. :/
Hillarious they said, "Give it some time." They have a database of a petabyte on a system that works in milliseconds. You've been doing this for years.
So…Etsy integrates with the Square POS which is what I use for payment for my in person shows. I just went ahead and hooked up my Square account to my Etsy shop and I just added Square for my payment on my personal website as well. Thinking/hoping that when I make a sale in person and on my site it will boost my Etsy listing as well as manage my inventory. I’m entering the experimental stage for Q4, so we’ll see. Etsy has become a beast to get and keep traction. It makes a full time job look like a cake walk… Thanks for the video. It was well done and well presented. 👍
Cool idea! I use square at in person shows also. Hadn't thought of linking it with etsy. Please post a follow up comment later to let us all know the results!! :)
My shop is only around 6 months old .. but my experience with Etsy Ads was exactly the same .. Since I don't rank high yet I have low views and so clicks and sales. I have maxed out daily budget all the time and it actually spends like $1 a day at best. This way it will take forever for me to rank even if I had perfect SEO. I guess the only way is to drive traffic yourself from external sources. Another option is to optimize CTR and CR .. but that can only go so far and it's pretty much the only thing I am doing at the moment. Driving traffic is little bit too much for me now (maybe).
I am one of the shops on Esty too. And good products aren't enough. I paid daily 25$ for my advertising will be on top. And haven't sold anhthj yet. Sad 😢😢
I’m in the exact same boat as you. Been on Etsy since 2010 and my sales are trash now. I OWE Etsy money for the first time in over a decade. I used to be on page one in search results and now, they are telling me that my listings need more photos (I’m a digital shop). I have perfect 5 star reviews. Etsy sucks so bad. I’ll likely be shutting down next year if something doesn’t get better. I have my own website, so I am able to do that. The bottom line here, is Etsy sucks-period. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone anymore. Not to buy or sell. Hopefully a new platform will pop up and (there is one currently gaining traction) but doesn’t allow Canadians to sell on it yet.😔
I think the biggest reason is that Etsy is flooded with “AI art”, simple “art” and copycats. And most customers either can’t see the difference or don’t care. I mean they shop on those cheap Chinese sites too so 🤷♀️
That's how system braking us down. Collective will only result no matter quality. Behind that will always be some immune people with plenty of money, just like scene from the glorious mover "titanic", when; a bourgeois father abandons a sinking ship with someone else's child in a fear of his own life. That's how you (we) artists trying do dominant the situation, of money sticky with sweat and greasy with blood .
Now I know I'm not the only one going through this! I have a few years of online shop experience, mostly through eBay. I recently opened a shop on Etsy and cannot get any views on my products. I don't understand the praise for Etsy because, as annoying as eBay can be, selling there is 1000x easier than it is on Etsy. Yes, the fees are higher on eBay but there are no hoops to jump through for new sellers and you only pay for ads when your products sell. Which brings me to another point: the search function and ads on eBay actually work. Whenever I use sponsored listings I search my item from different devices and they ALWAYS show up in top positions. The downside to eBay is that it's mostly full of bargain hunters, so if you're selling art you might lose customers if you raise your prices over a certain point. Otherwise, it's better than Etsy in every way for people who wanna try selling online or who haven't opened their own stores yet.
I believe the eBay is definitely an opportunity, especially with how they do the sponsored listings. I love not having to pay until somebody purchases! I've been selling on both platforms for a while, I do find that lately I sell a little more on eBay. But still not that much. It might be because my prices are too high, since like you said most people on there are bargain hunting.
It is so frustrating to see this development. I'm not sure if the Pattern site is the main factor though. There are many things that contribute to the downward spiral of shops on Etsy but AI "art" is a major factor in this. In my field, 80% of the listings are AI generated. Real designers have no chance of being found at all. It became really tough this year and it is only getting worse. The get rich quick people who set up these hundreds of listings will leave the platform at some point and hop on the next money train. They'll leave burnt ground and a lot of artists who had to give up their shops in the process. But in the end, Etsy will still market itself as a handmade platform to lure in customers... I hope your own shop will get more traction and sales so that you can be more independent from platforms like Etsy.
I'm sure AI art definitely has something to do with it. There is a lot of competition on there, and there are a lot of AI listings. It's sad because customers think these things are handmade a lot of times.
In defense of AI art, some of it, at least, can be classified as true art. When photography first appeared it was also dismissed as an art form for reasons similar to why many are now dismissing AI as an art form. AI images and music, etc can be art just like photography and techno music can be art. What makes art art anyway?
@@Matt-jv3mk AI "art" is trained by using the art of artists without their consent. I don't think photography had the same issue. This is not a debate about if or if not AI can produce art or not. People are using AI in a way that harms entire industries and that is what I'm pointing out here.
@@Matt-jv3mkAI "art" is NOT true art, as it is not made by a human. It is ripped-off art from the real artist's work that the software was "trained" on, and the prompts that are used determine how the rip-off art is then melded together by the software. You cannot compare the advent of photography to hand-drawn or hand-painted art because it is already two very different things. AI "art" is attempting to clandestinely BE art made by humans, by making use of art stolen off of the internet without any of the original artists knowledge or permission! I've seen in examples, that in some software, it can manage to mimic an artist's original style if correctly prompted, by what is so telling about this false "art" form, is that so many times it not only mangles things like hands, feet and limbs, by adding extra fingers, or bending limbs into unnatural positions, or forgetting to include body parts altogether! 😂 It is also known for actually including parts of or the ENTIRE SIGNATURE of the artist it has stolen the original art from! The most telling thing, is when the piece that has a human or human-like being in it, or an animal or fantasy creature, and the eyes are visible, they all have the same, vacant look, as if the subject was not really alive at all, but a soulless creature, like an android from a sci-fi film.
Etsy is getting harder for sellers for sure. You are not alone! I have a shopify store too and have spent lots of time doing seo for google this year so I have another way to earn money. I can't help but feel, is this the beginning of the end for Etsy?
@@KrystleColeArt This is something I suspect but am 95% convinced. Etsy's software looks at the pictures to see what's in them and then displays them where it thinks they belong (now it thinks this needs further testing which I'm doing). Thing is, it's AI so it sucks a lot of times. If you have some tags missing, on ads section, Etsy will try to give you recommendations. If you look at what Etsy recommends for your listing you'll see what it thinks that listing is. Same can be done with checking out which keywords Etsy is showing your ad on. example - I was selling a Christmas ornament, used a mockup that I bought on Etsy to put my design on, and my listing was showing up for "mockup" keyword even though it was a physical item and there was no mention of mockup anywhere on my listing. conclusion - using a mockup picture made Etsy think I was selling a mockup or my listing was more appropriate for that keyword. (same thing happened with bunch of Tshirts) there's different ways you can turn that to your advantage based on exactly how Etsy's image recognition works. I'm still testing and finding out more like - can it tell the context of the image like more advanced AIs? Does it simply visually match your pictures to other listings with similar images and group you all under certain keywords? Is the AI trained on images from Etsy or outside of Etsy.. Also when you go on Etsy as a brand new visitor, you can sort of see what kind of aesthetic Etsy wants.. (In my opinion, for your store it's worth a try to take an "Instagram-esque" picture for a thumbnail, like you holding up your painting, or your painting in a room with some themed decorations, with high quality camera and color grading similar to that aesthetic I mentioned Etsy likes promoting). There's many other things to consider but this comment is already way too long
Also cancelled pattern. But my views and sales have increased. I wonder if it's regional. The pattern sales are no longer counted for Etsy sales. That's why I cancelled
Thanks for sharing! Good to know that your views haven’t decreased since you shut off pattern, so maybe that isn’t what I have going on… maybe it’s regional like you said. Who knows! Trying to figure it out :)
It wasn't dropping your pattern shop that did it, the timing for that was just coincidental. I have never had a Pattern shop, but I have experienced the same problems as you, traffic waaaaay down, about 65% down from last year. It's not our listing quality or SEO, any of the other excuses. Like you we are an established shop, over 20k sales, longtime rock solid products are not selling anymore. Like you I really pushed hard on ads, but was not getting any views or clicks, or when I did they were costing over $1 per click. The only thing making it still work is my conversion rate is over 4%, so when people do find my shop, they like what they see and they buy. If Etsy would actually put my items in front of people I would be doing really well. Sales on our Amazon shop and web site are up. Same products, same pictures, same SEO. People are buying our items, just not on Etsy anymore.
Ditto!!! This month was shockingly awful! When my items are shown, they sell. You would think their bots would be happy to show our successful products!
According to Etsy, I was late getting an item out in my Etsy shop and I got all my funds held. I had some items listed as ship immediately and some made to order with different ship times. It happened again and, again, they held my funds. It wasn’t until the second time it happened that I figured out that Etsy had gone in, unbeknownst to me, and made my ‘made to order’ items with the same ship time as ready to ship. I’ve been on Etsy for 12 years and have two shops. My first shop ( with the funds issue) has not recovered. I put up ads to try and help to no avail. I went in trying to search for my items using tags I had used. I couldn’t find my ads. So, I’m paying for them, but they’re not showing up. I’m trying to pivot, but my income has plummeted to such a degree that I, too, am thinking of walking away, pivoting to a sticks and bricks or starting my own Etsy type shop for Catholic artisans like me. Ty for the video. At least I’m not alone.
I too have over 3000 sales and what was once a modest little endeavor now I only get 3 or 4 sales a month consistently. All 5 star reviews except 2 in 13 years!!! Etsy was once an amazing site but no longer. I think they just screw the little guy over and over.
I own multiple etsy shops and they all have been bad for the past few months. My personal theory is that Etsy traffic is just dying. I don't think they have a lot of users
I am an embroidery artist and I sell embroidery patterns and kits on Etsy. Feeling really deflated recently. The amount of AI generated embroidery patterns on Etsy is saturating the search and real artists like me are not seen. Shops with 800 (!!!) patterns priced at £ $1-2 are obviously the first ones that pop up. Consequently, patterns like mine priced at $5-9 are automatically considered overpriced, and people will look at those "beautiful" designs and expecting something totally unrealistic (those effects and colours are literally IMPOSSIBLE to replicate). 😩😩😩 The quality for them is no longer important just as long as it sells. So probably you have the same source of problem… it’s not you, it’s people who stuffed Etsy with their fake AI generated images
Customer of mine had her bank card cloned in Hong Kong soon after buying from my etsy shop. She wants to buy more from me but not on Etsy ,im unsure scared Etsy will see her messages to me about it
I think AI is a problem, there are a lot of sellers on Etsy selling products with AI on them. So there’s definitely more competition on there. But I don’t know that it would cause the ads not to show up.
@@KrystleColeArt I think memeconnect4489 means that people are creating their own pictures from AI for free. Therefore there’s less of a need or desire to buy art. There are a lot of AI generators being sold on FB now with some pretty good deals.
Could part of the issue be that with the advent and growing popularity of AI art generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion that more and more people decided to open up Etsy shops to attempt leverage the power of AI to make some extra income via Etsy? Has there been a significant surge in the number of Etsy shops in the last two or three years? If there has been, that could explain the dramatic drop in visits and revenue per shop that a lot of people seem to be experiencing: there are that many more sellers competing for what I've heard is an overall drop (15%-ish?) in YOY traffic at Etsy.
I've a very small shop on Etsy, and sales are low, but in a recent ad campaign, with a 1 dollar per day upper limit, I got a couple of thousand impressions, a few clicks, and 3 favorites, with 1 almost sale (abandoned basket) over the couple of weeks I ran the campaign. I ran it as an experiment, but although I didn't make any sales at all, my exposure on Etsy seems to have improved slightly after running it. I'm thinking this - what if Etsy are actively trying to get really small shops like mine to invest more often in ad campaigns, and giving them better exposure than they used to (I've run an occasional short campaign in previous years) , to encourage them? I'm not sure that it relates to your ad experience, or answers any of your questions about it, but I am suggesting that maybe they change the ads algo to try to maximize their ad revenue, and giving smaller sellers better exposure than a couple of years ago is one way they are currently trying to do it. It's always guesswork, where algos are concerned.
Not sure why anyone would use etsy pattern if you have an etsy shop to begin with..etsy charges more for everything than shopify ..you will make more on the dollar on shopify..I would try and send people from etsy shop to shopify myself.. But yeah etsy has created this problem themselves and kinda blame it on consumers..
Hi, watching this trying to figure out what the problem is, in your title you overuse the term “cat”, which only needs to be used once. Try having a look at your titles and tags. Terms such as wall art, wall hanging, room decor, Feline Print may work. I have a big shop and noticed a very stark decline recently. Changed my titles and tags to avoid repeating terms, adding a broader selection of terms is working.
Agree with everything. Last 2 years in Etsy have been downfall. I hope there is somebody with deep pockets and big heart to support artisans with a new website. Etsy is full of, let's be honest, crap now. Printable mugs and T-shirts. From china, probably.
Good video but um … it kind of seems illegal for a company to take someone’s money and not perform the service they promised. If Etsy took your money for ads then they have an obligation to distribute your ads as promised regardless of what other services you are paying for. That being said I think that Etsy believes that they are 100% in the right because you run a POD shop but in reality, because you are the original artist of the pieces you sell and the originals are painted by hand, they are actually 100% in the wrong. The problem is that they don’t differentiate between someone who generated a picture via AI and then slapped it on some POD products and someone who carefully hand drew or painted a picture and then uploaded a photograph of it to the web to put on POD products.
I was only charged eight dollars. I only got charged for the clicks. I think I tried to make that clear in the video, I wanted to pay more so I would get more clicks, but they would not give me more clicks. Ads are broken for some reason for me.
I agree with Krystle and the other commenters. I have had an Etsy shop for 6 years now and I was making lots up until last year, my sales dropped off allot, but still made money. This year however, my sales have dropped off to practically nothing. I think one of the biggest issues is the changes to the criteria for the "Star Seller" status. if you don't make $300 every month, they reduce your ads and your search status. This is completely crap, as I thought being a star seller should be about positive reviews and question response - not sales! I'm thinking on killing my Etsy site as well now that I hear it's not just me, but others are having the same issues.
You are missing part of the issue; American are neck deep in debt; credit card debt is at an all time high, people are not buying non-essential items, people come looking for bargains or thoughtful gifts. Your Shopify store does well because people who do have higher incomes and love art are more likely to search for the websites of actual artists. Etsy will be a struggle for another year or two for most people if the economy doesn’t turn around.
Beginning of oct my shop visits completely tanked. I saw a video that said etsy updated their seo then and alot of sellers got tanked. Im trying hard but am at a lost for what to do!
Why dont you reopen the Patterns account for a while and see if sales improve and if they do then just consider the Patterns part of your cost of sales. After all if you're making more than the cost of your Patterns subscription then you're in a better position.
I would but I don't think it's just as easy as opening the pattern site again. I think that I was selling things through the pattern site, which were counting as sales on etsy. I can't really funnel the traffic through pattern anymore, everything's going through my shopify website and I'm selling more on there than I used to with pattern (so I would be losing money overall if I went back to pattern for my website).
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.6% conversion rate is extremely low. You can't expect Etsy to push your listings in front of people when they aren't going to purchase. Raise the conversion rate then Etsy will show your listings more and you'll get more traffic and more sales.
I have been selling my wood wall art on Etsy since 2010. I was able to make a good living with it, selling 80-90k per year. I have not sold a single piece in 3 months. I have started a new shop (year old) selling other type of artwork, it was doing great selling 6k per month till last month. Sales dropped at least 85% no views, no sales. It seems like they’ve been doing some algorithm shenanigans and it disrupted most shops sales. It’s frustrated that they are just able to turn small businesses income just like flipping a switch. I have talked to their customer support, and I was giving the same run around. I feel your pain, and my bills still need to be paid. I will need to go find a 9-5 to be able to pay my bills after 15 years of being self employed. Shame on Etsy destroying small artisan’s businesses.
Absolutely agree! No exposure for me either since Oct 1
I am not a seller, but find Etsy increasingly difficult to locate products. The search is terrible. I see more ads of unrelated product than what I am looking for. I like supporting independent sellers, but it is nearly too intolerable to continue. Could be people can't find your products because the search engine is so broken.
Maybe so
its also sometimes difficult to find a shop that is not pure dropshipping
I've been selling on Etsy since 2008. This current drop-shipping abomination isn't Etsy.
As a shopper, it's incredibly hard now to organically discover new artists due to the ungodly amount of AI trash I have to sift through. And even more unfortunately, for some art styles it's really hard to trust that the shop is selling real art, not unethical AI trash 😔. Now I can only buy after a stupid amount of scrutinizing to decide if the artist is legit (and I just don't have the energy for that all the time) so I mostly turn to artists on other platforms.
My shop was open almost 9 years, and I had over 1000 listings. All of a sudden they decided three (out of 1,000+) of my listings were "not what they wanted to sell anymore." They did not give me a reason, and, suddenly shut my shop down. I sold charms and findings and mixed media art supplies. I moved to Shopify and haven't gotten any business, I'll be shutting down completely soon. I did $20K plus a year on Etsy before this. I'm not sure what's going on with them, but they are not making people happy.
So sorry to hear this have you tried selling on eBay or Amazon handmade?
Etsy have also shot themselves in the foot. Imagine wrecking your business...and then losing their own revenue from your business. It's the continuing enschittification of the internet
@@LinguisticLifeform It’s a habit all companies are adopting. They are all in a weird self destruct mode. They are so dumb. lol.
Aw. I'm so sorry to hear you are shutting down, because I love to see people making hand crafted items. I hope you will find a nice niche offline, like a boutique or co-op maybe, or even pop-up shops or seasonal craft fairs, to sell things, if you don't have these outlets up and running already. It's a cruel world, in the online sales arena, because like big business, the big operation always does best, and has most visibility.
They booted you in favour of drop shoppers it seems 😭
What I don’t like about Etsy is when people buy art “from Etsy” that’s what they say or think “I bought this from Esty” not the artist! Or the artist’s name!
I totally agree!
Seems everybody on Etsy agrees that it has gotten worse in the past few years. However, as someone who's just starting out, I can't afford my own website until I know for sure that I can sell my paintings. Shame I didn't find my relatively new hobby sooner and was able to try Etsy while it was still fairly good... My strategy now is to grow my social media accounts and I'm expecting it to take quite some time. Glad you and others are giving more realistic expectations than the "gurus" though!
Growing on social media will definitely take time, but it is doable! Just takes some perseverance :)
Goimagine will give you your own website through mosaic if you pay for the $10 per month plan. You can put your own domain name on it. I’ve found it to be an affordable starting point for having your own website. And their fees are a little less than Etsy.
I really appreciate you! I’m glad that I found this channel!
Welcome!
I’m frustrated with Etsy too. Something has really changed for the worse this year and I don’t know what to do to fix it. I’m an artist and sell art prints of my work. I was happy with how I was doing over a period of many years but now feel that nothing I do seems to have any effect.
I’m right there with you, Etsy is a tough nut to crack, maybe it’s a lost cause… i’m gonna keep trying for a while more though. with what’s going on with Etsy, it’s even more important to diversify income streams as an artist. That’s why I don’t really count on my online sales for my living. I sell most of my art in person at art fairs.
I share your frustrations!! I would love to open a stand alone website, but can't justify the up front costs when I'm not even bringing it in through my etsy shop
It’s a lot to manage for sure
I think part of the problem too is that Esty is so big now that there are too many shops they can't even suss out the bad players that are just copying other artists.
I agree, though they do have some anti-copyright infringement features but they don't work that well
From what I've seen, everyone having this problem has a store outside of Etsy. I'm a new seller and I was going to have an outside store. I've put that on hold for now. Just like RUclips, Etsy doesn't want you to pull customers away from the platform. Given that thought, you have to ask, Why would Etsy want to promote a store that may be pulling buyers off the platform? This video seems to support my thoughts. I currently funnel everyone to my etsy shop. I bet Etsy loves that. Maybe some day my shop grows to the point that I leave Etsy.
Thanks for the video. It has provided useful information.
I keep asking where are the millions of monthly shoppers on Etsy? I have almost 80 listings with ads and no sales.
80 listings? Try having 2,300 listings and no sales all of a sudden!
Well I think there are a lot more sellers so the algorithm has to balance between giving new sellers a chance and keeping successful sellers happy. I think the stretch is just not possible based on the demand which means some people will be unhappy. :/
Hillarious they said, "Give it some time." They have a database of a petabyte on a system that works in milliseconds. You've been doing this for years.
So…Etsy integrates with the Square POS which is what I use for payment for my in person shows. I just went ahead and hooked up my Square account to my Etsy shop and I just added Square for my payment on my personal website as well. Thinking/hoping that when I make a sale in person and on my site it will boost my Etsy listing as well as manage my inventory. I’m entering the experimental stage for Q4, so we’ll see. Etsy has become a beast to get and keep traction. It makes a full time job look like a cake walk…
Thanks for the video. It was well done and well presented. 👍
Cool idea! I use square at in person shows also. Hadn't thought of linking it with etsy. Please post a follow up comment later to let us all know the results!! :)
Heard alot of bad about etsy lately
My shop is only around 6 months old .. but my experience with Etsy Ads was exactly the same .. Since I don't rank high yet I have low views and so clicks and sales. I have maxed out daily budget all the time and it actually spends like $1 a day at best. This way it will take forever for me to rank even if I had perfect SEO. I guess the only way is to drive traffic yourself from external sources. Another option is to optimize CTR and CR .. but that can only go so far and it's pretty much the only thing I am doing at the moment. Driving traffic is little bit too much for me now (maybe).
I am one of the shops on Esty too. And good products aren't enough. I paid daily 25$ for my advertising will be on top. And haven't sold anhthj yet. Sad 😢😢
I’m in the exact same boat as you. Been on Etsy since 2010 and my sales are trash now. I OWE Etsy money for the first time in over a decade. I used to be on page one in search results and now, they are telling me that my listings need more photos (I’m a digital shop). I have perfect 5 star reviews. Etsy sucks so bad. I’ll likely be shutting down next year if something doesn’t get better. I have my own website, so I am able to do that. The bottom line here, is Etsy sucks-period. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone anymore. Not to buy or sell. Hopefully a new platform will pop up and (there is one currently gaining traction) but doesn’t allow Canadians to sell on it yet.😔
I think the biggest reason is that Etsy is flooded with “AI art”, simple “art” and copycats. And most customers either can’t see the difference or don’t care. I mean they shop on those cheap Chinese sites too so 🤷♀️
I like the title. Make me mad too. All love goes right directions, even frustrated ones.
That's how system braking us down. Collective will only result no matter quality. Behind that will always be some immune people with plenty of money, just like scene from the glorious mover "titanic", when; a bourgeois father abandons a sinking ship with someone else's child in a fear of his own life. That's how you (we) artists trying do dominant the situation, of money sticky with sweat and greasy with blood .
Now I know I'm not the only one going through this! I have a few years of online shop experience, mostly through eBay. I recently opened a shop on Etsy and cannot get any views on my products. I don't understand the praise for Etsy because, as annoying as eBay can be, selling there is 1000x easier than it is on Etsy. Yes, the fees are higher on eBay but there are no hoops to jump through for new sellers and you only pay for ads when your products sell. Which brings me to another point: the search function and ads on eBay actually work. Whenever I use sponsored listings I search my item from different devices and they ALWAYS show up in top positions. The downside to eBay is that it's mostly full of bargain hunters, so if you're selling art you might lose customers if you raise your prices over a certain point. Otherwise, it's better than Etsy in every way for people who wanna try selling online or who haven't opened their own stores yet.
I believe the eBay is definitely an opportunity, especially with how they do the sponsored listings. I love not having to pay until somebody purchases! I've been selling on both platforms for a while, I do find that lately I sell a little more on eBay. But still not that much. It might be because my prices are too high, since like you said most people on there are bargain hunting.
It is so frustrating to see this development. I'm not sure if the Pattern site is the main factor though.
There are many things that contribute to the downward spiral of shops on Etsy but AI "art" is a major factor in this. In my field, 80% of the listings are AI generated. Real designers have no chance of being found at all. It became really tough this year and it is only getting worse.
The get rich quick people who set up these hundreds of listings will leave the platform at some point and hop on the next money train. They'll leave burnt ground and a lot of artists who had to give up their shops in the process. But in the end, Etsy will still market itself as a handmade platform to lure in customers...
I hope your own shop will get more traction and sales so that you can be more independent from platforms like Etsy.
I'm sure AI art definitely has something to do with it. There is a lot of competition on there, and there are a lot of AI listings. It's sad because customers think these things are handmade a lot of times.
@@KrystleColeArt yes, and I think Etsy and other platforms should implement a filter option to sort out the AI stuff.
In defense of AI art, some of it, at least, can be classified as true art. When photography first appeared it was also dismissed as an art form for reasons similar to why many are now dismissing AI as an art form. AI images and music, etc can be art just like photography and techno music can be art. What makes art art anyway?
@@Matt-jv3mk AI "art" is trained by using the art of artists without their consent. I don't think photography had the same issue. This is not a debate about if or if not AI can produce art or not. People are using AI in a way that harms entire industries and that is what I'm pointing out here.
@@Matt-jv3mkAI "art" is NOT true art, as it is not made by a human.
It is ripped-off art from the real artist's work that the software was "trained" on, and the prompts that are used determine how the rip-off art is then melded together by the software.
You cannot compare the advent of photography to hand-drawn or hand-painted art because it is already two very different things.
AI "art" is attempting to clandestinely BE art made by humans, by making use of art stolen off of the internet without any of the original artists knowledge or permission!
I've seen in examples, that in some software, it can manage to mimic an artist's original style if correctly prompted, by what is so telling about this false "art" form, is that so many times it not only mangles things like hands, feet and limbs, by adding extra fingers, or bending limbs into unnatural positions, or forgetting to include body parts altogether! 😂
It is also known for actually including parts of or the ENTIRE SIGNATURE of the artist it has stolen the original art from!
The most telling thing, is when the piece that has a human or human-like being in it, or an animal or fantasy creature, and the eyes are visible, they all have the same, vacant look, as if the subject was not really alive at all, but a soulless creature, like an android from a sci-fi film.
Etsy is getting harder for sellers for sure. You are not alone! I have a shopify store too and have spent lots of time doing seo for google this year so I have another way to earn money. I can't help but feel, is this the beginning of the end for Etsy?
I'm in the same boat. After this last change, no visits, no sales. Etsy sucks. I may end of leaving at the end of the year.
Me too! I have been on Etsy since 2010 with a few shops. My latest shop of artwork since 2016. Lately it’s like pulling teeth.
Good to know I’m not alone
It's the pictures! Etsy is using some sort of image recognition. Same listing with different photos will get many or no views at all.
Thanks for the tip! So you're saying that I shouldn't have any duplicate photos in my listings? Or just the first photo shouldn't be the same?
@@KrystleColeArt This is something I suspect but am 95% convinced. Etsy's software looks at the pictures to see what's in them and then displays them where it thinks they belong (now it thinks this needs further testing which I'm doing). Thing is, it's AI so it sucks a lot of times. If you have some tags missing, on ads section, Etsy will try to give you recommendations. If you look at what Etsy recommends for your listing you'll see what it thinks that listing is. Same can be done with checking out which keywords Etsy is showing your ad on.
example - I was selling a Christmas ornament, used a mockup that I bought on Etsy to put my design on, and my listing was showing up for "mockup" keyword even though it was a physical item and there was no mention of mockup anywhere on my listing. conclusion - using a mockup picture made Etsy think I was selling a mockup or my listing was more appropriate for that keyword. (same thing happened with bunch of Tshirts)
there's different ways you can turn that to your advantage based on exactly how Etsy's image recognition works. I'm still testing and finding out more like - can it tell the context of the image like more advanced AIs? Does it simply visually match your pictures to other listings with similar images and group you all under certain keywords? Is the AI trained on images from Etsy or outside of Etsy.. Also when you go on Etsy as a brand new visitor, you can sort of see what kind of aesthetic Etsy wants.. (In my opinion, for your store it's worth a try to take an "Instagram-esque" picture for a thumbnail, like you holding up your painting, or your painting in a room with some themed decorations, with high quality camera and color grading similar to that aesthetic I mentioned Etsy likes promoting).
There's many other things to consider but this comment is already way too long
there was an etsy ad on this video and first one ive seen yet.
Etsy probably doesn’t want to advertise on this video, it’s not too positive about them lol
Also cancelled pattern. But my views and sales have increased. I wonder if it's regional. The pattern sales are no longer counted for Etsy sales. That's why I cancelled
Thanks for sharing! Good to know that your views haven’t decreased since you shut off pattern, so maybe that isn’t what I have going on… maybe it’s regional like you said. Who knows! Trying to figure it out :)
It wasn't dropping your pattern shop that did it, the timing for that was just coincidental. I have never had a Pattern shop, but I have experienced the same problems as you, traffic waaaaay down, about 65% down from last year. It's not our listing quality or SEO, any of the other excuses. Like you we are an established shop, over 20k sales, longtime rock solid products are not selling anymore. Like you I really pushed hard on ads, but was not getting any views or clicks, or when I did they were costing over $1 per click. The only thing making it still work is my conversion rate is over 4%, so when people do find my shop, they like what they see and they buy. If Etsy would actually put my items in front of people I would be doing really well.
Sales on our Amazon shop and web site are up. Same products, same pictures, same SEO. People are buying our items, just not on Etsy anymore.
Thanks for sharing your experience!! It helps to further understand what might be going on!
Ditto!!! This month was shockingly awful! When my items are shown, they sell. You would think their bots would be happy to show our successful products!
According to Etsy, I was late getting an item out in my Etsy shop and I got all my funds held. I had some items listed as ship immediately and some made to order with different ship times. It happened again and, again, they held my funds. It wasn’t until the second time it happened that I figured out that Etsy had gone in, unbeknownst to me, and made my ‘made to order’ items with the same ship time as ready to ship. I’ve been on Etsy for 12 years and have two shops. My first shop ( with the funds issue) has not recovered. I put up ads to try and help to no avail. I went in trying to search for my items using tags I had used. I couldn’t find my ads. So, I’m paying for them, but they’re not showing up. I’m trying to pivot, but my income has plummeted to such a degree that I, too, am thinking of walking away, pivoting to a sticks and bricks or starting my own Etsy type shop for Catholic artisans like me. Ty for the video. At least I’m not alone.
I was thinking about selling my photography on Etsy, but now I’m wondering if I should bother with them at all.
I still think it’s worth a try, maybe it’ll work for you
I too have over 3000 sales and what was once a modest little endeavor now I only get 3 or 4 sales a month consistently. All 5 star reviews except 2 in 13 years!!! Etsy was once an amazing site but no longer. I think they just screw the little guy over and over.
I own multiple etsy shops and they all have been bad for the past few months. My personal theory is that Etsy traffic is just dying. I don't think they have a lot of users
I've always had much better art sales on Ebay.
I am an embroidery artist and I sell embroidery patterns and kits on Etsy. Feeling really deflated recently. The amount of AI generated embroidery patterns on Etsy is saturating the search and real artists like me are not seen. Shops with 800 (!!!) patterns priced at £
$1-2 are obviously the first ones that pop up. Consequently, patterns like mine priced at $5-9 are automatically considered overpriced, and people will look at those "beautiful" designs and expecting something totally unrealistic (those effects and colours are literally IMPOSSIBLE to replicate). 😩😩😩
The quality for them is no longer important just as long as it sells. So probably you have the same source of problem… it’s not you, it’s people who stuffed Etsy with their fake AI generated images
I agree AI sucks and has been so bad for online selling of art
Customer of mine had her bank card cloned in Hong Kong soon after buying from my etsy shop. She wants to buy more from me but not on Etsy ,im unsure scared Etsy will see her messages to me about it
That sucks for your customer. Never had anything like that happen fortunately 🎨
Same problem in England!!! Massive fees too
My shop has only had 59 sales.
i wonder if AI could be blamed a little , since a lot of people started to just use AI to create the pictures they want
I think AI is a problem, there are a lot of sellers on Etsy selling products with AI on them. So there’s definitely more competition on there. But I don’t know that it would cause the ads not to show up.
Yes, I think it stereotypes too much, i see that a lot of with ad algorithms
@@KrystleColeArt
I think memeconnect4489 means that people are creating their own pictures from AI for free. Therefore there’s less of a need or desire to buy art. There are a lot of AI generators being sold on FB now with some pretty good deals.
Could part of the issue be that with the advent and growing popularity of AI art generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion that more and more people decided to open up Etsy shops to attempt leverage the power of AI to make some extra income via Etsy? Has there been a significant surge in the number of Etsy shops in the last two or three years? If there has been, that could explain the dramatic drop in visits and revenue per shop that a lot of people seem to be experiencing: there are that many more sellers competing for what I've heard is an overall drop (15%-ish?) in YOY traffic at Etsy.
I've a very small shop on Etsy, and sales are low, but in a recent ad campaign, with a 1 dollar per day upper limit, I got a couple of thousand impressions, a few clicks, and 3 favorites, with 1 almost sale (abandoned basket) over the couple of weeks I ran the campaign. I ran it as an experiment, but although I didn't make any sales at all, my exposure on Etsy seems to have improved slightly after running it. I'm thinking this - what if Etsy are actively trying to get really small shops like mine to invest more often in ad campaigns, and giving them better exposure than they used to (I've run an occasional short campaign in previous years) , to encourage them? I'm not sure that it relates to your ad experience, or answers any of your questions about it, but I am suggesting that maybe they change the ads algo to try to maximize their ad revenue, and giving smaller sellers better exposure than a couple of years ago is one way they are currently trying to do it. It's always guesswork, where algos are concerned.
My paying for ads made no difference.
Not sure why anyone would use etsy pattern if you have an etsy shop to begin with..etsy charges more for everything than shopify ..you will make more on the dollar on shopify..I would try and send people from etsy shop to shopify myself..
But yeah etsy has created this problem themselves and kinda blame it on consumers..
Hi, watching this trying to figure out what the problem is, in your title you overuse the term “cat”, which only needs to be used once. Try having a look at your titles and tags. Terms such as wall art, wall hanging, room decor, Feline Print may work. I have a big shop and noticed a very stark decline recently. Changed my titles and tags to avoid repeating terms, adding a broader selection of terms is working.
Thanks so much for the tip! I will try it 😀
Agree with everything. Last 2 years in Etsy have been downfall. I hope there is somebody with deep pockets and big heart to support artisans with a new website. Etsy is full of, let's be honest, crap now. Printable mugs and T-shirts. From china, probably.
Good video but um … it kind of seems illegal for a company to take someone’s money and not perform the service they promised. If Etsy took your money for ads then they have an obligation to distribute your ads as promised regardless of what other services you are paying for.
That being said I think that Etsy believes that they are 100% in the right because you run a POD shop but in reality, because you are the original artist of the pieces you sell and the originals are painted by hand, they are actually 100% in the wrong. The problem is that they don’t differentiate between someone who generated a picture via AI and then slapped it on some POD products and someone who carefully hand drew or painted a picture and then uploaded a photograph of it to the web to put on POD products.
I was only charged eight dollars. I only got charged for the clicks. I think I tried to make that clear in the video, I wanted to pay more so I would get more clicks, but they would not give me more clicks. Ads are broken for some reason for me.
@@KrystleColeArt okay because I thought you said you didn’t even get impressions.
@@KrystleColeArtit’s not that they will not give you more clicks … possible customers just weren’t clicking.
I agree with Krystle and the other commenters. I have had an Etsy shop for 6 years now and I was making lots up until last year, my sales dropped off allot, but still made money. This year however, my sales have dropped off to practically nothing. I think one of the biggest issues is the changes to the criteria for the "Star Seller" status. if you don't make $300 every month, they reduce your ads and your search status. This is completely crap, as I thought being a star seller should be about positive reviews and question response - not sales! I'm thinking on killing my Etsy site as well now that I hear it's not just me, but others are having the same issues.
You make a good point, star seller status definitely could be part of the issue for some of us
You are missing part of the issue; American are neck deep in debt; credit card debt is at an all time high, people are not buying non-essential items, people come looking for bargains or thoughtful gifts. Your Shopify store does well because people who do have higher incomes and love art are more likely to search for the websites of actual artists. Etsy will be a struggle for another year or two for most people if the economy doesn’t turn around.
Beginning of oct my shop visits completely tanked. I saw a video that said etsy updated their seo then and alot of sellers got tanked. Im trying hard but am at a lost for what to do!
Me too
Why dont you reopen the Patterns account for a while and see if sales improve and if they do then just consider the Patterns part of your cost of sales. After all if you're making more than the cost of your Patterns subscription then you're in a better position.
I would but I don't think it's just as easy as opening the pattern site again. I think that I was selling things through the pattern site, which were counting as sales on etsy. I can't really funnel the traffic through pattern anymore, everything's going through my shopify website and I'm selling more on there than I used to with pattern (so I would be losing money overall if I went back to pattern for my website).
Hii your videos are great and i would like to work with you im a video editor with 2 years of experience in Adobe premiere pro , after effects and photoshop i can help save your time n efforts in editing so you can focus on creating content i can send you my portfolio and make a free sample for you if you're interested we can talk about it further Thank you.
.6% conversion rate is extremely low. You can't expect Etsy to push your listings in front of people when they aren't going to purchase. Raise the conversion rate then Etsy will show your listings more and you'll get more traffic and more sales.