Just wanted to say congrats @ModernSwitch on the Etsy sales.
Impressive. More than 8x my daily rate, if my early morning math is correct. Sweet.
Congratulations!
That might be true by the numbers, but I think there are a lot of us who started as hobbyists, or moved from craft shows, and went to Etsy. I got started there in 2010. I think the already-established artisans using it as a showcase is a thing of the past.
There are a lot of us who used Etsy to build an online business and have seen enough over the years to know there’s no going back. When Regretsy shut down, when they promoted a not-remotely-handmade furniture maker for Earth Day in 2012, when they defended 3000 sellers making same damn bubble necklaces from AliX kits, the ship sailed - and that was all more than 10 years ago.
Etsy really nailed it’s own coffin when they shat all over the community by getting rid of so many of the community focused items. In 2008 it was a community and most of my sales went to other people who were involved in the community on Etsy. We had chat rooms and the virtual lab, the old forums. Curated tools such as Treasuries, Recently Sold, Recently listed. All these “fun things” about Etsy that they deemed “Didn’t make them any money for the bandwidth required”, were eliminated. Once that happened Etsy was no longer this community where we could cheer each other one and discover new things.
The whole “front page is designed upon what you are looking at because you might buy it” is such a junk broken system. All it shows me is light switch covers…come on Etsy you think I want to buy light switch covers? It’s what I sell. I get emails telling me “Hey you should buy this item you might like it” It’s my own damn item. There is nothing curated for me. I’ve bought some dnd and magic the gathering items in the past, I’ve bought fabric supplies…but Etsy seems to think I just want to buy light switch covers even though I’ve never bought a light switch cover on Etsy in my life. When they had the old treasury system you could see the beautiful unique items and other handmade people were passionate about only putting handmade items into these treasuries that were featured on the front page.
I could just go on and on and on about the good old days on Etsy. Now it’s just a business. Orders come in, I make them the end. No community, no fun, no friendships.
I started on Etsy in 2008 and remember how involved I was in their old forum. I also remember the special sections where shops were featured that were weirdly unique or new shops that never had a sale.
I remember the Etsy continuous feed across the home page where I would click renew to get my listings in the home page feed for 10 seconds at a time.
I remember the publicity Etsy gave their biggest “handmade” sellers like Mignon and Mignon who are part of Amazon Handmade.
Marilyn
Etsy may be in deep trouble, being tied to the banking collapse today.
If they had more than $250K in their account to use to pay their sellers (of course they do), the $ is frozen for an undetermined amount of time as of today.
Scary that such a big marketplace could get caught up in something like this. This is the kind of thing that could start a major financial panic in this country. Only one person to thank for this but I won’t get political here.
Wishing all Etsy sellers good luck and a swift resolution.
I hated Treasuries but also loved them. I was in so many Treasury groups and boy, when you got that 30 mins (or whatever it was, I forget) on the FP it was such a thrill. It really generated a sense of community and it was HANDMADE (or vintage).
All it shows me are photographs like mine. Which helps me find people copying me…which is damned depressing. 
I enjoyed the Treasuries. So many neat things to see.
It’s not political…
But yeah, I’m sorry for all the Etsy Sellers that have just gotten hosed by Sam Bankman-Fried… Such a squeaky, whiney, little dirt-bag!
That wasn’t the guy I was thinking of but good point on SBF.
And on Sunday, Signature Bank collapsed in part due to Sam Bankman-Fried as well. Possibly just the tip of the iceberg as First Republic seems likely to collapse next, possibly by end of day. Watching Western Alliance as well…
Scary stuff if you are old enough to know about the early 30’s…
The worst part is the massive amount of burdensome, costly regulation and oversight that supposedly existed to prevent exactly this.