Now that those of you have had some time to get used to the platform, what insights do you have? Would you recommend other sellers get involved with this marketplace?
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I have about 20 listings there - just a variety to see what happens. Not a bite. I’m not putting more work into it for now.
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Same here. It doesn’t look like anyone on earth has noticed this marketplace exist. Time will tell…
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They seem to have fixed most if not all bugs for their current interface although I for one, have made lots of feedback suggestions for improvement and practical necessity. All total, I have had 13 orders and have been paid now for all. My last 3 payments since they corrected a payment processing issue, have been right on schedule. Many sellers as indicated in various Michael’s forums, are livid about the payment schedule as most seem to expect they should be paid in 3-5 days. Currently, it takes 14 days after shipment to become “Funds Available”. Then the following Monday, that amount goes in to transfer and is in my account by Wednesday.
I have not received an order in 2 weeks now so we’ll see if the upcoming Holiday season changes that. I have 190 listings but will slow down that effort until I see more orders.
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Do you get the impression (as I do) from the forum that many of the sellers there have never sold on eCommerce before?
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Yes and many do not seem to know Amazon’s Handmade payment schedule (either early on sellers on a 2 week schedule, or newer ones on reserve). They would be shocked when they got a business customer order. 
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Yes - it seems like quite a few sellers are Michaels customers who took their “Make Money from the things you Make” schtick to heart. It’s kind of heartwarming, but also a bit head-scratching.
But then, I see a lot of misinformation in the Amazon FB groups too, as you know! LOL
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There haven’t really been any new updates. I keep forgetting to post the links to the Saturday emails in the Saturday thread because there really isn’t any new information.
It looks like they worked out the payment bug.
They were doing some $5 promotions which I think is maybe what had lead to my initial two sales?
My orders were from beginning of September so it’s been well over a month since I’ve had an order.
There doesn’t seem to be away to organize my storefront or listings and so I think having 100+ listings makes it very cluttered?
Michael’s has been mostly quiet in the Facebook group. There have been lots of people in the group wanting to close their shops since not much is going on.
I think if they don’t do something soon a lot of people will loose interest.
I haven’t made it a priority lately, I might start listing more items again but I don’t like the idea that I might have to edit my listings since there is no shop organization that if I had to edit every listing individually that would be a pain, but now that I think about it we never really had a “storefront” on Amazon until brand registry so maybe the storefront isn’t so much of an issue and I probably should just sit down and list my other 300+ items on there. Sometimes over think things. My Etsy shop has been dead all month so I do have the time it’s the motivation I’m lacking 
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Just a little bit of financial analysis here
Michaels, as a whole, has 5 billion / year in revenue. The majority of that is presumably through their 1200 B&M locations.
Etsy, last year, had 13 billion in gross merchandise volume, 100% of that is ecommerce.
Unless they’re going to make a big investment to really push this new marketplace, it’s most likely going to flop as Michael’s just doesn’t have the traffic to make this work without a massive ad campaign.
Looks like they have “classes” there too, which is a nice idea, and there’s a bunch of reasonably priced ones available for some pretty simple things, but there’s already crap like this:
a $300 “course” on how to “be your own boss” and churn out mediocre “handmade” products. Usually good quality crafts are created by people who do it as a hobby. Getting taught how to “create and recreate” designs in a 75 minute course means you’re going to churn out the same crap as the next person.
Different platform, same crap.
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What I’m curious about is that Apollo Group owns both Michael’s and Shutterfly and recently Shutterfly acquired Spoonflower (fabric printing). It doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t put it under Michaels especially since Michael’s doesn’t even have fabric and it would compete with Joanns customizer program. Though I have read rumors about Joanns not doing so well so maybe they don’t need to compete.
Michael’s is in the business to sell craft supplies (they have acquired such brands as Darice and some others I can’t remember right now).
My theory since everything is linked by rewards card is that in the future they will promote and future those sellers who are spending money at Michael’s or sellers who are telling people to buy their supplies at Michael’s.
I don’t spend any money at Michael’s….if only they had purchased Spoonflower because I spend a TON of money at Spoonflower lol.
I don’t know if Michael’s actually wants to replace Etsy/Amazon Handmade or if they just want to keep selling craft supplies? I think they have to know that most mega sellers on Etsy are not shopping at Michael’s and most likely buying supplies in bulk from manufacturers/ebay/amazon/china.
I find everything about this fascinating. What exactly is their end game goal? Clearly Amazon Handmade and Etsy need all the resellers because that’s how they make their money. A truly Handmade platform probably isn’t sustainable. It takes a lot of money for programming and creating a marketplace.
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A truly handmade platform just doesn’t make sense.
Shareholders want to see +revenue and +profit
How do you gain additional revenue? Volume. Volume comes from cheaper products and loosening the restrictions on what can sell there.
How do you make more profit? You cut expenses. Properly vetting sellers costs money and it also reduces revenue if you block sellers.
If Etsy started banning high volume sellers importing stuff from China their shareholders would crucify them.
A successful marketplace costs a lot of money to build. Companies raise a lot of money by having shareholders. Shareholders don’t give a crap about anything but return on investment.
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I suspect that Michaels is offering an already-trusted space to mostly its own customers who are small time makers (not necessarily small businesses) to direct their customers to.
My guess is that Michaels isn’t trying to replace Etsy or Amazon Handmade so much as pull in the mamas making hair bows for the cheer team and aunties monogramming cups for sororities and granddaddies wood-burning name plates for graduation, from Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Shopping, to give them an alternative online presence, where the makers themselves already shop.
It’s a comfortable option for makers who don’t want to deal with a social media presence just to sell locally by word-of-mouth or at booth/vendor events. It’s convenient for the makers and their customers.
I personally buy products from MichaelsPro, so I suspect that’s also a customer base that MakerPlace selling is for (but not actually me, personally).
Just to note, MakerPlace is visible in the top menu on mobile, while MichaelsPRO is hidden in the hamburger menu.
It’s just a whole different thing. 
FWIW, here’s my view (note the emphasis on classes and how-tos):
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Oh makersplace is for sure to pump their main business. They even offer you commission for anything you get people to buy through your online classes or how-to videos.
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But, but…it includes a CERTIFICATE CEREMONY!
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Well, at least she knows how to sell it to the fools hah.
The best part about it is it’s not even about handmade or “handmade” items, it’s about printing designs onto mugs or what have you by a professional printing service from what I see by the images.
The products I saw were handmade products: candles, crochet pumpkins, etc. On my (admittedly) quick glance through the home page, I saw all Halloween stuff, no red flags.
I’m not going to knock MakerPlace at this point. It’s still in beta (for sellers and shoppers), and they have been receptive to seller feedback.
I honestly applaud something that gives small batch makers a non-social media selling option and gives shoppers who are already on Michaels for decor or supplies a curated online booth market.
Feels like a lot of potential, if they manage it well.
But it’s not going to be for every seller or every shopper.
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Well, since MakerPlace beta opening on 8/1, I had one sale and that was about 2 month ago.
I signed up with the free basic plan, it’s not going to costing me anything. so I’m just going to leave the items I have listed on there to see what happens.
Listing there isn’t really that hard/time consuming if I just copy/paste info form Amazon, but since it’s so dead, it’s hard to be motivated to do the listings. So far I’m up to 42 items and will add more if I feel the urge.
One thing I’m not sure if it existed on MakerPlace is whether there is a ranking system of the items like on Amazon, that when an item had sales that make the item shows earlier in the search result.
Personally I don’t think their search result is based on sales, because my item that I had an order, it didn’t show up any better than my other items right after the sale, it was actually showing up worst than others.
I’m not doing any promotion of the site myself, I never did any for Amazon either, so I don’t know if that makes any difference compare to others who might promote their MakerPlace store on social medias.
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This is one reason I think it’s gonna stay dead. It’s free to have a seller account there, but you and a few other people in this thread have basically said you got no motivation to spend time and effort to put up more listings because the bottom line is you’re not getting any sales.
No customers → sellers aren’t motivated to put more listings → less product selection → even less customers
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I have about 70 listings. Setting up shop was fairly easy. I’ve not had a sale and hardly any views. My items show up well for my main keywords so it’s not that I can’t be found. I do see listings with star reviews so some people are buying some things. We’ll see if things pick up before Christmas, but I will have to remember to downgrade my plan before fees kick in in February.
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Kind of surprised with that. When I use the categories to look up earrings, I do see many of your listings in the first few pages of search result. So if anybody is looking to see what earrings are available on MakerPlace, they should have been able to see some of yours.
That kind of shows there really was not many people looking. Same as you, my recent daily Listing Views were mostly between 0 -2 with a few 3, all together there were 339 views since 8/1, which I wonder how many was from myself checking on my listings page in the early days of store opening.
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