Looking at the photography on Maker place, I can see why Amazon went to white background on the main image. A lot of the photography looks like Grandma’s 70s living room photos.
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Well, anyone who thinks that is in for a rude awakening if they want to do any kind of ecommerce. It’s standard procedure to hold funds for at least a week after delivery (sometimes even longer) to give buyers a chance to report a problem if there is one, because without that protective system in place the platform would be flooded with frauds who don’t ship any real products.
But, like you said… they’re newbies.
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So awhile ago I used to get search results from people searching ‘holiday’, but when they came out with the “Holiday Shop” now if you search holiday it redirects to the Holiday Shop. Not so bad I suppose.
So I thought to my self, maybe I put a few listings up at a discounted price with Black Friday or Cyber Monday in the title, but it turns out if you search on Maker Place for “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” it redirects you out to Michael’s Crafts Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales pages 
There is no ‘sale’ tool so you have to do things manually. Interestingly enough the Seller Saturday email only talks about Cyber Monday, gives some tips on what you might do, but nothing about Black Friday or Small Business Saturday.
I’m super curious how/if they will promote sales.
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Ok, seriously no Small Business Saturday? 
The things people post in the FB group make me giggle sometimes. Seriously, there’s stuff that looks like the weekend arts-and-crafts I did with my kids.
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I finally got my first order on MakerPlace today! Yay, and it’s a good order. But I have received no email about it. I have not logged in to my account in probably 2 weeks, and today I thought I’ll add a new wintry listing. And on my dashboard I just happened to see another listing say “1 sale” under the photo and I’m like what? so I go to orders and there it is. How are they not going to send an email? I am so thankful I saw this today and not in another 2 weeks!
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Congrates. Was the sale came in today? Maybe the email is not instantly at the same time as the sale came through?
I did receive an email notice for my one and only sales, then saw it on my Dashboard. Don’t know if the sales showed up on the Dashboard earlier than the email notice.
Also, the email notice could went into your spam folder?
That’s the first thing I checked. I still get the Saturday update emails, but I did unscubscribe from all the spam they send (I was getting like 5 emails a day) so maybe that screwed something up.
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I posted a small blurb of this elsewhere but realized I should probably post it here as well.
If you search for “holiday decor” it auto redirects you to Makerplaces Holiday shop. Before they launched the holiday shop “holiday decor” was one of my top search terms. Kind of bummed but at least they are featuring people.
So I thought to my self, I wonder what would happen if I titled a few listings Black Friday or cyber Monday sale. There is no sale tool so it’s just manually setting a lower amount. I wanted to see if others were doing this as well…and color me super surprised that when searching on Makerplace they had set up redirects for “black Friday” “cyber Monday” to go straight to Michael’s crafts webpage.
I posted on the official Facebook group asking why this was, and if Makerplace had any plans for Black Friday etc.
A few days ago someone from Makerplace reached out to me via Email about the post I had made and thanking me for finding the bug and that it was now fixed. As a seller this kind of support makes me feel super appreciated. It is nice to see changes even if it seems slow to roll out.
It is fixed and I do have a few listings and I got 16 views yesterday from Black Friday as a search result.
Today’s Saturday email mentioned that they have extended the free trial for 6 months so that’s pretty awesome as well!
They are posting a lot on Instagram (also on the Facebook group they made a post about Instagram and I thanked them for being proactive on social media and then mentioned how amazon handmade has huge media accounts they do nothing with).
I still haven’t had any sales since the first two several months ago. No idea if it’s just a low traffic issue? My items sell on Handmade and Etsy.
In the next few weeks I’m going to try and get active on social media again to see if I can drive some traffic over there. Even without the sales, I do feel passionate about trying to promote this platform because I think they have crafters interests at heart (even if it’s just for them to sell more craft supplies).
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Congratulations!
I too get emails for every order and weirdly a confirmation that I confirmed shipping an order. I also leave the order page open in my browser but they also need to have a number besides the order link like Etsy. I would email them. Support is very responsive for a fresh change.
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I know Wade & Rino both mentioned getting sales during Thanksgiving period, how about anybody else?
I was hoping Blk Friday/Cyber Monday will bring some sales for me on this platform, and was very disappointed. No sales at all and hardly any inclease in Views. Since I only had 1 sales since the Beta openning, not holding my breath for sales on MakerPlace for the rest of this holiday season.
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Pre and during (and after) Thanksgiving time period, I received so many adertising emails from Michaels, but non of them mentioned about MakerPlace. Guess they only want consumers to spend money on their own merchandise. 
I got one order on Saturday and one Monday, making a whopping total of three orders so far. I got emails for both orders, and I’m not getting any spam.
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Yes they could provide a blurb and link at least. A separate email to announce MakerPlace would make sense. They could do what Etsy is doing by offering a sale promo that does not cost sellers but with their current limited time 0% referral fee for professional plan sellers, there is no margin for this. I’m beginning to think sellers on a professional plan are getting a double win with receiving more promotion, AND 0% referral fee for a limited time. So, it might be wise to get on the free Professional trial for the time being. This may explain why I have been doing well. 5 order/day for last 4 days. Not Amazon but better than Etsy.
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Definitely not bad! 
So glad to hear you are doing well there, and hope it continues.
At first I thought that might be the case, but was wondering where those promotions are happening, so I checked the jewelry section of the Gift Guid, and to my surprise found that less than 30% of the shops promoted on that section are on “Prefessional Plan”, the others are all on Basic Plan.
The biggest surprise is to found out MakerPlace’s “Featured Maker” (Sun Sprinkles") is not on Professional Plan.
So that seems to indicate who gets promoted was not based on which plan they are on, but more based on the likes/taste of whoever does the choosing (and maybe some other unknown factors). If someone is lucky enough to be choosen (like you) to be showcased on the MakePlace main pages or in the Gift Guid, that definately helps with the sales.
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I was poking around abid on MakerPlace, and found another interesting thing related to Basic/Profession plan.
I was trying to look up all my own items by doing a search with my shop name, and the result only listed 10 items (I have 65 listed), so then I tried @meredithbead, and the result gave me 63 items (I know she has well over 200 listed). Both of us are on Basic plan. Then I tried with @wadeorcas , and result showed 373 item (which was the correct number of item listed).
Well, since sales are slow on Amazon, I did a bid more poking on MakerPlace and just randomly looked up some Basic plan shops and Professional plan shops, and found when search with shop names, search result for the professional plan shop will show all the listed items, but the search result for basic plan shops only show a very small amount of the items.
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Meredith’s is showing 245 for me. Yours shows 10. Mine shows 373 but I have 375 (maybe a couple inactive??)
You are right. I was using “Meredithbeads” that gave me 63 items, which were not even her items. But when I used “Meredithbead”, the result was 245.
Don’t know why mine only showing 10, or why you are missing 2.
Also, I searched with @Rino’s & @LR72’s shop name (correctly), and the items of the search result were not their items at all.
Great - off to look. I only have 25 listed, but still.