They may have already employed some bots. I created 2 listings and they both were quickly live (not purchasable yet). I created 2 more similar ones with “Vintage Style” in the title and their status has been “Pending Review” for about 8 hours now. Ima gonna create 2 more without that in the title to test and see if they go active or pending. There’s a lot of things so far that I do not like…having to input quantities on variations (ring size) unlike Etsy. Lot’s of little things to work around but no Etsy for sure.
I created a new listing that did not contain the word “Vintage” in the title and it was active instantly. I’m gonna guess that “Vintage” is being picked up by bots and flagges as the TOU prohibits sale of Vintage items. So next, I’ll edit to remove “Vintage Style” and see what happens. I’ll report back.
ETA - cannot edit a listing ( or any other action such as delete) that is “Pending Review”
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Without seeing the actual market place it’s hard to really even know how to do tags and titles. I noticed tags seem to propagate on the side of my “store” as sections and so it seems weird because I am going to have like a thousand different tags. Im still not even sure if there is a search or marketplace aspect to this platform.
The last I read was they were going to launch early July, so I am not sure when or where it was announced that it would be fall.
Im glad there are a few of us here to discuss this stuff. It feels real weird to have some sort of marketplace with no “support” forum. I would think if this was a beta test they would want us to give them some sort of feedback somewhere? I’ve thought about creating a Facebook group for discussing but I don’t have time for that especially if this doesn’t seem to be a good marketplace.
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Can you use “retro style,” be more specific like “art deco style,” or use a time frame like “1930s style”?
ETA: @wadeorcas just trying to brainstorm around possibilities. I know no one yet knows what Michael’s will/won’t permit, as you’ve discovered with “vintage”. 
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That would be awesome!
“Vintage” is not so critical but would be most suitable. I have more research to discover if this is the reason. I mainly use this term to add a different search term view that I was not using on other venues. We’ll see.
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Interesting. I wonder if they’ll even allow photography, since it’s not made using crafts from Michaels (but possibly frames). Probably said in the long TOU that I scrolled though - lol.
Just unaltered Vintage, so it seems like they should allow the word? Weird. This is the policy:
“Reselling is prohibited, including unaltered vintage items and mass-produced goods.”
Created 2 more listings without “Vintage Style” in title and they are instantly active. Two from yesterday with “Vintage Style” are still “Pending Review” with no way to edit or delete. 
I haven’t gotten any email yet about them opening 
maybe it’s because I’ve already got my store up and loaded it with products? Eerily reminds me of how for the longest time I didn’t get amazon handmade emails.
I have 15 products in my shop. A small reasonable number in case I have to go back and edit keywords or anything. Who knows if they have a functional search or will just go by most recently listed? Another email I sent them about feedback said they might add ground advantage later, and right now if they ad it I have to change every listing individually for shipping changes.
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I have not gotten this email either but I have 50 or so listings ready. Will be interesting.
The site is so glitchy right now I’ve given up on adding new listings.
Good to know that.
I finally signed up for an Michaels account, and have 30 days to finish Registration and to set up the store and listing things. Still not sure if I really want to do this thing, but sure I’m not going to rush to get things done before 8/1.
Not really convinced it’s necessary to be in this at the very beginning, not like the idea of being the guinea pig in Michaels experiment and all that.
We got the going live Aug 1 email on July 29th at 11am.
We have the store set up, and were setting up one product to learn. When I save the draft, I have to start over again, can not find the draft.
I started with a popular product with variations, I think it would best to start slower.
Very limited on amount of text you can use. I did find that you can drag and drop images from other sites. It was easy to open a catalog page on Amazon and load images from there. I even pulled in A+ images with drag and drop.
For now there is a hole in the barn roof, and rain continues.
And Welcome to SAS @Vik this has been a great outlet to share. Appreciate your thoughts very much.
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Setting up my first listing - you can have variations, but you have to input ONE size/weight for shipping package. Which doesn’t work with mine.
I wonder if you have the opportunity to change that, or if any UPS label you create will have that pre-input. If so, I’ll have to skip variations altogether.
I’m skipping variations for now. I have a small supply of my popular sellers on hand that I listed and can ship out with a quick processing time just so I can figure it out. After it launches I think I will make a few listings with variations after I see how the marketplace works.
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So far I have no issues - I was able to create, add variations - I do like the different images for the variation options. I was able to easily go back and edit, and I can duplicate (thank goodness).
My only hangup is the shipping, so I’ll have to see how that works. If it pre-fills the size that won’t work for my various sizes.
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I don’t think there is a limit on number of “Product” listings per month, but there is a limit of “2” for classes. Not doing that, so don’t care about that.
Basic plan does take 2% more in referral fee, so I crunched the number a little, and it looks like when someone can make $500 (or more) in sales per month, then the saving of referral fee for the Professional plan would be more than paid for the monthly fee, so at that point makes sense to change to Professional plan.
Michaels stated: “Upgrade at any time and start enjoying the extra benefits of the Professional plan with a 4 month free trial.”
So, I’ll try out with the Basic plan for now, and change when/if it looks like things are working and sales are happening, then I’ll still have 4 month free trial.
correct. my bad
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Thank you so much for mentioning that. Saved me when I had corrupted file issue with my older photos, and it was also much fast to drag & drop than trying to look through my photo folders for the right ones.
Agree with you. 512 characters for product description is not nearly enough, I had to re-work what I had on Amazon, and take out some necessary info.
Also, I really don’t care for the Tags system there. I add different Tags for each item, thinking they are like search terms on Amazon, but they all showed up together on the store front page. They are not clickable, so why do they need to be shown to the public?
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I listed an item and published it, then realized I don’t have any finished inventory at home, so I was going to change the inventory to “0” to make it inactive, but the system wouldn’t let me do that, I have to enter at least “1” in the inventory box. Finally figured out under the 3 dot drop down list is “Deactivate” button to make it “Inactive”.
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