So in all seriousness...
Jun. 15th, 2018 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2ygzD3g
vaspider:
vaspider:
vaspider:
madionspock:
autisticrevolution:
fabulousfidgets:
vaspider:
… if you don’t want the stuff you buy on Etsy to become more expensive, start making the kind of noise about Etsy’s fee changes that y’all made about Patreon’s fee changes.
Sooner or later, those costs become customer costs, one way or the other. :/
Make some noise, because this is ridiculous. Etsy isn’t giving us anything new: for the new features not only will we be getting hit with these raised transaction fees but we’ll also be required to pay a subscription fee. So what we’re getting for these increased fees?
Nothing. Just more fees. No more features, just more costs.
(And yes, I am looking into alternatives, but omfg, make some noise on social media, please. Patreon backed down from their ridiculous fee grab with enough user pressure.)
Please everybody listen to this. I try to keep my prices as low as I can but with these fees I’m going to have to start increasing process or find somewhere else and lose alot of my customer base.
Please make some noise and help out small business owners on Etsy by protesting these fee hikes.
Oppose the fee hikes! Support autistic businesses!
Also the fact lies that it isn’t even just fees on the actual product you’re selling, it’s also on the shipping cost. So say I know exactly to the penny how much a package will cost to ship, so I charge the customer that much. Etsy now is taking a percentage of that fee away. So either I have to overcharge knowingly for shipping, passing that cost down to customers right off the bat, or I have to make up for the lost currency. Small businesses and artists who even just make some extra cash off of Etsy can not always easily afford the cost of buying and hosting their own separate E-commerce business. People who have built up followings on Etsy can’t force customers to move to other platforms. The entire situation is poo and people who want cool merchandise for the reasonable prices artists are currently able to offer need to make noise.
And Etsy calculates that for some of us, too. So they’ll calculate it. And then add 5% to it? Do they charge the customer (like when they do sales tax for us) or just us? Am I gonna have to add a handling fee to cover the shipping upcharge?
Though honestly, the processing fee hike is… it’s terrible.
For those of us who do this full time, we already live in the literal margins of what we make. Etsy deciding to just snatch 1.5% of what I make out of my hands without offering me anything in return is… that shit adds up. I already only make - at BEST - maybe 40% of every dollar that a customer pays me, once you account for all costs.
Let’s assume I have an amazing year and we do 30K in revenue. Etsy’s fee hike means they’ve taken an additional $450 out of my hands. Which, in this assumed scenario, they’re taking that out of the hands of someone whose profit, that is, the money that’s really mine (assuming I owe no income tax, heh), 12K?
That’s … it’s brutal.
Oh yeah, and:
This ain’t about shit but making Josh the CEO, talking down to us peon sellers in that awful video, richer.
Fuuuuuck that.
Added: the hashtag I’ve seen so far on Twitter is #etsyfees.
In any case, please update your bookmarks - find us at www.nerdykeppie.com! Whether or not we break up with Etsy, you can always find us there.
I just saw that notice yesterday, and I didn’t watch the video but I read the thing that went along with it.
I’m in the relatively privileged position that I do Etsy for work. We do over a million dollars annually on Amazon and eBay; Etsy was my idea, to sell vintage stuff more aimed at home decor than at Serious Camera Types, and we do uh, a lot less than that on Etsy, but more than I’d anticipated. It’s accidentally taken off as a great way to sell film developing and digitizing services online, however, because it coincidentally coincided with a major drugstore chain discontinuing support for film, and a lot of little boutiquey places like our retail store going under. So our business has increased, unexpectedly.
It seems the subscription fee is not required, but is… necessary to access certain features. What features? I don’t understand. I’m not interested in features. I have an enormous database in an order fulfillment program that I already have to manually enter my Etsy orders into; I’m one thousand percent certain that these “features” would not help me integrate that more smoothly.
I get that they charge on shipping because it’s a time-honored and ancient tradition to bury some of your item’s cost in shipping (and, people, PLEASE, charge for handling, include handling in your shipping cost, if the USPS charges you $2.66 for a 6-ounce package pay yourself for the time it takes you to put it into that package, PLEASE) but it still is shitty.
I do not and never have used their service to buy shipping, even though they’ve made it tricky– if you use their shipping, you just push a button, but to complete an order otherwise you have to go through a menu– because we have negotiated shipping through UPS and USPS and have had for the fifteen years we’ve been on eBay, and it would frankly be stupid for me to use their inferior rates. (Not that I’ve compared, but listen, we also can drop-ship through Amazon if it’s something we’re storing in one of their warehouses for them to use in Fulfillment By Amazon, and their prices on shipping are insanely low. I know for a fact Etsy can’t compete with that.) So at least they can’t ding me twice with this. They’ll take a cut of my shipping charge, but I overcharge a percentage for handling, and I don’t give any of that to them.
These changes seem to me, from my relative outsider perspective, as a way to edge the marginal off Etsy, and gouge the amateur. For us, it’s nothing. Amazon charges more than Etsy’s measly percentage. eBay’s fees are higher and their site fucking sucks. Etsy gives us a completely different demographic and an astonishingly low rate of fraud, so we’re not bothered. Also, the things we sell on Etsy are largely services, which means that our costs are sort of nebulous– labor, and materials split many ways, and mostly just a lot of handling. We’ll raise our prices if we have to but at the moment it’s mostly not a big deal. 1.5% is about thirty cents on an average order of ours, which isn’t nothing, but.
If you’re selling handmade goods, which you probably have already underpriced, you’re going to have to take that out of paying yourself. And that sucks.
So, I deplore it, but I have had more blood wrung out of me already by Amazon than Etsy could ever dream of. And I’m sorry for those of you that this is life and death to. But Etsy’s publicly-traded and seems to be doubling down on the Making Techbros Rich way of life, which is a shame.
(Your picture was not posted)
vaspider:
vaspider:
vaspider:
madionspock:
autisticrevolution:
fabulousfidgets:
vaspider:
… if you don’t want the stuff you buy on Etsy to become more expensive, start making the kind of noise about Etsy’s fee changes that y’all made about Patreon’s fee changes.
Sooner or later, those costs become customer costs, one way or the other. :/
Make some noise, because this is ridiculous. Etsy isn’t giving us anything new: for the new features not only will we be getting hit with these raised transaction fees but we’ll also be required to pay a subscription fee. So what we’re getting for these increased fees?
Nothing. Just more fees. No more features, just more costs.
(And yes, I am looking into alternatives, but omfg, make some noise on social media, please. Patreon backed down from their ridiculous fee grab with enough user pressure.)
Please everybody listen to this. I try to keep my prices as low as I can but with these fees I’m going to have to start increasing process or find somewhere else and lose alot of my customer base.
Please make some noise and help out small business owners on Etsy by protesting these fee hikes.
Oppose the fee hikes! Support autistic businesses!
Also the fact lies that it isn’t even just fees on the actual product you’re selling, it’s also on the shipping cost. So say I know exactly to the penny how much a package will cost to ship, so I charge the customer that much. Etsy now is taking a percentage of that fee away. So either I have to overcharge knowingly for shipping, passing that cost down to customers right off the bat, or I have to make up for the lost currency. Small businesses and artists who even just make some extra cash off of Etsy can not always easily afford the cost of buying and hosting their own separate E-commerce business. People who have built up followings on Etsy can’t force customers to move to other platforms. The entire situation is poo and people who want cool merchandise for the reasonable prices artists are currently able to offer need to make noise.
And Etsy calculates that for some of us, too. So they’ll calculate it. And then add 5% to it? Do they charge the customer (like when they do sales tax for us) or just us? Am I gonna have to add a handling fee to cover the shipping upcharge?
Though honestly, the processing fee hike is… it’s terrible.
For those of us who do this full time, we already live in the literal margins of what we make. Etsy deciding to just snatch 1.5% of what I make out of my hands without offering me anything in return is… that shit adds up. I already only make - at BEST - maybe 40% of every dollar that a customer pays me, once you account for all costs.
Let’s assume I have an amazing year and we do 30K in revenue. Etsy’s fee hike means they’ve taken an additional $450 out of my hands. Which, in this assumed scenario, they’re taking that out of the hands of someone whose profit, that is, the money that’s really mine (assuming I owe no income tax, heh), 12K?
That’s … it’s brutal.
Oh yeah, and:
This ain’t about shit but making Josh the CEO, talking down to us peon sellers in that awful video, richer.
Fuuuuuck that.
Added: the hashtag I’ve seen so far on Twitter is #etsyfees.
In any case, please update your bookmarks - find us at www.nerdykeppie.com! Whether or not we break up with Etsy, you can always find us there.
I just saw that notice yesterday, and I didn’t watch the video but I read the thing that went along with it.
I’m in the relatively privileged position that I do Etsy for work. We do over a million dollars annually on Amazon and eBay; Etsy was my idea, to sell vintage stuff more aimed at home decor than at Serious Camera Types, and we do uh, a lot less than that on Etsy, but more than I’d anticipated. It’s accidentally taken off as a great way to sell film developing and digitizing services online, however, because it coincidentally coincided with a major drugstore chain discontinuing support for film, and a lot of little boutiquey places like our retail store going under. So our business has increased, unexpectedly.
It seems the subscription fee is not required, but is… necessary to access certain features. What features? I don’t understand. I’m not interested in features. I have an enormous database in an order fulfillment program that I already have to manually enter my Etsy orders into; I’m one thousand percent certain that these “features” would not help me integrate that more smoothly.
I get that they charge on shipping because it’s a time-honored and ancient tradition to bury some of your item’s cost in shipping (and, people, PLEASE, charge for handling, include handling in your shipping cost, if the USPS charges you $2.66 for a 6-ounce package pay yourself for the time it takes you to put it into that package, PLEASE) but it still is shitty.
I do not and never have used their service to buy shipping, even though they’ve made it tricky– if you use their shipping, you just push a button, but to complete an order otherwise you have to go through a menu– because we have negotiated shipping through UPS and USPS and have had for the fifteen years we’ve been on eBay, and it would frankly be stupid for me to use their inferior rates. (Not that I’ve compared, but listen, we also can drop-ship through Amazon if it’s something we’re storing in one of their warehouses for them to use in Fulfillment By Amazon, and their prices on shipping are insanely low. I know for a fact Etsy can’t compete with that.) So at least they can’t ding me twice with this. They’ll take a cut of my shipping charge, but I overcharge a percentage for handling, and I don’t give any of that to them.
These changes seem to me, from my relative outsider perspective, as a way to edge the marginal off Etsy, and gouge the amateur. For us, it’s nothing. Amazon charges more than Etsy’s measly percentage. eBay’s fees are higher and their site fucking sucks. Etsy gives us a completely different demographic and an astonishingly low rate of fraud, so we’re not bothered. Also, the things we sell on Etsy are largely services, which means that our costs are sort of nebulous– labor, and materials split many ways, and mostly just a lot of handling. We’ll raise our prices if we have to but at the moment it’s mostly not a big deal. 1.5% is about thirty cents on an average order of ours, which isn’t nothing, but.
If you’re selling handmade goods, which you probably have already underpriced, you’re going to have to take that out of paying yourself. And that sucks.
So, I deplore it, but I have had more blood wrung out of me already by Amazon than Etsy could ever dream of. And I’m sorry for those of you that this is life and death to. But Etsy’s publicly-traded and seems to be doubling down on the Making Techbros Rich way of life, which is a shame.
(Your picture was not posted)
