Eighteen months ago we set up a trading website. To put it mildly, it was a disaster. The content was a half hearted attempt at best. The appeal of building one was obvious enough. Saving fifteen to twenty percent in selling fees and achieving higher prices than on the major platforms is a seductive idea. The problem was time. We simply did not have enough of it to do the hard work properly, especially marketing. At the same time the business itself was growing at a fairly astonishing rate, which made the lack of attention even more pronounced and time scarce.
Go back six years or so, possibly during COVID, and we had a notification out of the blue from Etsy telling us they were temporarily halting trading. No meaningful reason was given and within twenty four hours it was resolved. But it left a lasting impression. It was the moment I fully understood how exposed you are when your livelihood depends on a single platform over which you have absolutely no control. If they close it down, even briefly, there is nothing you can do. Permanently, you are stuffed. I have over 1000 products on my shop, 15,000 images, 1,000 videos and it makes up 65% of my turnover.
After that, we opened two additional Etsy shops to spread the risk. At one point we were trading on three. Over time things changed. I sold one shop to my brother in law. When my partner started her own business, I handed another shop over to her. It had been performing badly simply because I did not have the time to maintain it properly. Alongside that we already had accounts with eBay, Selling Antiques and Vinterior elsewhere. On paper the net was spread wide. In reality, the original Etsy shop remained king.
The real shift came when I started using AI on our listings. I did not ask it to write them for us. I wrote everything myself, but used AI to improve presentation, structure and depth, and to highlight details we might otherwise gloss over. The effect was dramatic. Over the course of a year, during a period of difficult economic conditions, turnover almost doubled. Quite suddenly I found myself running what could fairly be described as a successful business.
Then, a week ago, the big yellow banner appeared at the top of the shop. Etsy informed us there had been a policy violation. Five of them, apparently. Over thirteen years of trading and roughly fifteen thousand items listed, five violations is vanishingly small. Each one was technical, minor and arguable. Yes, they technically went against policy, but there was nothing obvious or misleading about them, and no reasonable person would see them as a serious breach. More importantly none were deliberate.
What makes this harder to swallow is the reality of what Etsy now allows. The platform is flooded with sellers offering vast quantities of imported goods, much of it cheap and clearly mass produced. Entire shops operate in open defiance of the very policies Etsy claims to enforce. Against that background, being flagged for five minor issues over more than a decade feels arbitrary at best.
Trying to contact Etsy only compounds the frustration. For the fees sellers pay, direct communication is effectively impossible. When something goes wrong, you are left dealing with automated systems and bots. Eventually it became clear that Etsy has implemented an AI driven enforcement process but has not properly built the mechanism for sellers to challenge decisions. Penalties exist. Appeals do not, at least not in any meaningful sense. It is hard to believe a company of this size considers that acceptable.
So far the impact on the shop seems limited, mercifully. But the episode has been enough to change behaviour. Over the past week I have been putting more effort into other platforms. Even so, Etsy remains the strongest performer. That is the uncomfortable truth.
Which brings me to the next step. I am now setting up a second Etsy shop as a deliberate backup. It is tedious, time consuming and far from ideal, but necessary. This time I intend to document the process. I will blog about it, complain a little about Etsy, and share what has worked and what has not. The aim is simple. I do not want a business that lives or dies at the whim of a single platform. The plan is to split stock evenly between the two shops, so that if one is pulled, the other keeps trading. It is not elegant, but it is survival.
It will be very hard work, but I have already some back up, but from scratch I go and when it is hopefully successfully up and running, if ever a shop gets pulled by Etsy, the other will ensure I am not left financially dangling
#Etsy #Etsy Seller #Selling On Etsy #Etsy Trader #Vintage Trading
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