Looks like MP fixed the issue, my stats have been updated to 5/16.
Not that my Stats really showing much of anything, most days they are just a flat line at the bottom, but once in a while, there would be a high spike in the graph, but they never seems to bring any sales.
YTD, only sold 2 prs of koi fish earrings in Feb, probably gifts for Pisces birthdays. Put a 10% discount on the whole shop for a month and half at the begining of April, hoping to get some Mother’s day shopping, but didn’t get anything.
I set up my MP shop with a Basic plan, it doesn’t cost anything, so at this point I’m just going to leave it alone, not going to put any effort into it.
I deactivated. I hope I’m wrong (for my colleagues still there), but I haven’t had a sale in so long it just wasn’t worth the hassle of thinking about it anymore. And I never see it mentioned, so unless they’re planning another big promo push it seems they’ve dropped the funding.
I understand your decision to deactivate especially after all the hassle you’ve had over their feedback system. I don’t expect MakerPlace to do any promoting now that Michaels has acquired a lot of the Jo-Ann branding supplies.
They really tried to get me to stay open, but honestly I don’t want anyone googling me, finding me there and seeing the gigantic 4 next to my name either.
I had to do a questionnaire about why I wanted to close and I explained AGAIN what happened.
I agree and am wondering if this has lead to some decisions that haven’t been publicly announced. But without that huge competitor, and with some of their lines bringing Joann customers into Michaels, I suspect they no longer need that additional tether for their customers.
I suspect that’s why Dave was let go and why the FB group has reduced staff presence.
It’s like Amazon Handmade. Michaels (and Amazon) want it to fade away.
So it looks like they are discontinuing the affiliate program.
Also looks like they are doing away with the paid professional plan.
The new way it works is there is a free plan, and the premium plan and to get the premium plan you need to spend $500 a year at Michael’s.
The only difference is a premium member pays a 2 percent transaction fee vs a 4 percent fee. Premium members also save 15 percent at Michael’s.
So yeah it’s pretty clear they really really really just want you to spend money on craft supplies .
Someone check my math please. I want to be wrong. I would need to do $25,000 in sales to make it worth spending the $500 at Michael’s just to break even from 4 percent fee to a 2 percent fee?
LOL.
I have no idea if the premium people get the extra store layout like before or if they get extra promotion. None of that is mentioned.
I almost admire their transparency.
I just wish they would get more customers. It’s more profitable even with the new rates, but irrelevant without sales.
Glad I closed my shop there. I assumed from the get-go that their plan for all this was to sell crafting products to artisans. But they really misunderstood the assignment, because nobody who knows their business buys retail!
I had a total of 7 sales last year and nothing this year. So I switched over to the free plan because I did not want to forget and accidentally get charged for the professional plan.
I always suspected the real reason for getting us sellers to sign up was to sell us stuff.
I read through the tedious comparison between the old plans and the new plans and the new premium plan is not cost effective. Essentially, we would need to spend $42 a month (until reaching a target of $500) to qualify for the premium plan, versus the former professional plan which was $10 a month with no requirement to buy supplies from Michael’s.
I have rounded off the numbers above to simplify the math.
.