How is MakerPlace Doing?

Well, from the looks of it, I think Michael’s may be selling lots of yarn and polymer clay.

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Welcome to SAS!

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Yeah I think I read years ago on E that yarn was one of the categories they were competitive for, but that was about it.

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If selling craft supplies were enough, they wouldn’t have branched out into home decor. It’s the same reason Joann’s sells candy and toys. Crafting isn’t what it used to be. Kids today if given a choice prefer video games over the arts. Even though I keep my home fully stocked of painting/drawing/clay/all kinds of craft supplies…my kids still choose screens. I have to be very pushy on my kids when it comes to crafts and book reading because if given the choice they just want games. I am passionate about reading and the arts…but most of my kids friends and their parents are not.

A company wants to stay in business, and good for Michaels for trying to do something while Joann’s spirals down the drain. I just think they need to put a little more effort into understanding in to what exactly it is they want to accomplish. Of course they want to make money, what company doesn’t? They just don’t seem to know how to get from Step A to Step C.

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So no orders yet for the “Big Sale” that started today. Still early yet but I usually get several orders daily. Spent several hours yesterday manually selecting each listing past the 5000 limitation, to create a 2nd sale to cover all my listings.

This morning these 3 pages are not working. Blank pages trying to load. This is with latest version of Firefox. All other sites working fine. Gonna try Chrome. :man_shrugging: :angry:



ETA -On the pages I can get to work correctly, the sellers offering an additional discount above Michael’s 25% are not getting any better placement than those that are not.

ETA 2 - many of my items are not showing the additional discount I set up that were active yesterday. (I set up my sale ahead of Michael’s)

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No orders for the big sale yet for me either. I do have mine set to 25 % off in addition to Michael’s. I figure it’s a good test to see how active their marketing is.

My last sale was on August 14th. So I haven’t even gotten to try the new shipping label stuff yet. My sales seem to come in “batches” like I will get between 1-3 sales all within a day or two and then nothing for a week or two.

Still have no clue how seo works. I would think some of my items should show up higher up (one item has 20 sales on it) so you think it would show up in different searches that I do.

It seems like they are moving baby steps in the right direction. It’s a good being able to pin items since they want us to share our shops. I do have my shop referral link but I only use it on my website. I just don’t have the time or attention span for social media marketing.

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I just complained about those points here:

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I emailed them about this issue this morning, and here is the reply:

“Thank you for contacting us! Our team had identified a visual glitch on some promotions causing the discount to not be visible on the Product Page, but it is still applied on checkout. We understand the urgency of this, and our team is working hard behind the scenes in finding and fixing the root cause. We’ll let you know as soon as we receive an update from our team.”

Well, last time it took the team 2 months to fix the problem of my stats not updating. Anybody want to bet on how long it’ll take them to fix this problem?

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… despite MakerPlace promises that they would.

Spent way too many hours going through almost 500 listings, setting up 10-25% discounts on ~1/4 of the items in my shop — and once again, MakerPlace did not come through on promised promotion. I will not be suckered into doing this again until I see some major changes and not just promises.

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I noticed my Makerplace listings are not currently showing up in google sponsored ads. May be why I have not had any orders for 5 days. :sob:

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I still see your items at MP in google shopping ads in an incognito window.

I’ve had a 6-day slump as well. Just this afternoon got an order–phew! Maybe people are holding out for the next sale coming up next week.

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It’s been awhile since I’ve had a sale. I did have someone from Michael’s reach out to me and tell me several of my light switch covers shouldn’t be in the wall decor or kitchen decor sections. :unamused:

I’m not going to waste any of my time fixing it. I think it is good for me to be spread out in a variety of different categories. Especially since seo is non existent. I haven’t replied back but I figure if “importing an item from China and adding a name” is handmade then something I make that “screws into a wall” is wall decor.

I believe this whole “correct category push” is that they are going to be doing rotating sales by category funded by Michael’s. Looks like the only way they know how to run a business is to put things on sale :grimacing:.

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That’s strange. I see Amazon and Etsy in regular and incognito but not Makerplace :man_shrugging:

I did however get an order after complaining :rofl:

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Just did a regular browser goole search and also see several of your blue star rings fr MP.

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I’m almost shocked that they’re running another Michaels-funded sale so soon after the last one. Got this in email today:
MakerPlace is running another 25% off sitewide sale starting 10/3 and running through 10/11!

Just wowza.

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In the Facebook group there is a post where they talk about the currently running home decor sale and to look for weekly sales with a different category featured each week.

So yeah. At least it’s Michael’s funded….but it really just shows that they think that you need to put things on sale to make money.

I have no idea if the times I get sales have to do with google ads? My sales seem to come in groups of two or three and long pauses in between. I’ll have to remember to I guess search google next time I get a sale?

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They’re thinking like the Michaels model, where commercial products with high mark-ups are reduced for fast turnover, so they can stock new products for the next season or holiday.

This ain’t that.

  1. They’re funding the discount, which means that every time we make a sale, they’re out the money.
  2. Most of us don’t have a radical turnover in our product offerings. As a one-woman business, there’s no way in F that I can keep up with every trend (or any trend, honestly). My seasonal items are promoted in season, but they’re available all year long.

Whatever, I hope they do a better job promoting this than they did last time. #1 on my list — show the final discounted price, both the 25% and any discount we might add, on the ITEM PAGE and in Search, not just in checkout.

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I think this kind of shows how desperate they are and it’s probably because the marketplace is performing very poorly.

A 25% michaels funded discount is nothing short of insane considering they only charge sellers like a 2% commission

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10% for most of us, slightly less for sellers who pay the $10 monthly pro fee. But definitely not 2%.

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Isn’t it 2% for pro, 4% for basic sellers?

There’s also a 3% transaction fee but that doesn’t go to Michaels. That mostly pays for the credit card processing costs.

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