Etsy added an extra slot, a black image with a search/magnifier icon for “related searches” with clickable links! It looks like it’s been about a month…
It must be an attempt by Etsy to make sure the buyer purchases something somewhere on Etsy because this is what counts, right?! The buyer is essentially being led away from the seller’s listing…but who cares? Clearly not Etsy.
On the bright side, links to our products can also come up in related searches in other sellers’ listings.
Still, the black and ugly slot looks as if the seller put it there intentionally.
With changes like this one, I feel like selling online gets more and more difficult and less and less fun!
That’s the problem with Etsy and eBay, even when they aren’t direct competitors for 3Ps like Walmart and Amazon.
More and more–and like @doilyboutique444–I feel like handmade and small batch manufacturers (like me) really just do better at regional in-person vendor events, craft shows, pop ups, and (if we’re even still willing to ship) our own websites.
I love my craft shows…BUT I don’t love the work. An outside show truly takes me 6-8 hours to set up. August heat…September heat…October…heat… Then two indoor shows of hauling it in and 6 hours to set up. I am beat on set up days. Tear down…for some reason,not so bad. But the physical labor is horrible.
I used to do 22 shows…but my on-line sales have replaced all but my 5 favorite.
My light switch covers never seem to do well at vendor events and I think it’s because a lot of people don’t know what kind of light switch covers they have. I have people who tell me they can’t remember if it is a double or single toggle, so I just hand them a business card and hope they shop online later. But even then I still get people who order a single toggle online and go to install it and realize they need a double toggle and they pay to ship it back and I make the exchange. I guess it comes with the territory of selling something people don’t pay attention to. No one ever thinks about their light switch covers.
I suppose at least on the bright side of this perhaps the keywords are what people are searching for so at least good to pay attention to what they say people are searching for?
I also wonder if we should just have an Etsy megathread here? I don’t really know how many of us Etsy sellers there are on SAS.
