An Etsy seller survey has fuelled concern that the crafts and vintage marketplace is considering a fee increase in the near future.
You can read a discussion regarding the survey here on the Etsy seller discussion boards. It’s called: Is Etsy about to raise their fees?
In a discussion about the survey on the marketplace forums one Etsy seller expressed concerns about the methodology of the survey and said: “It’s written in a very leading way – very obvious that they’re planning on putting prices up.” Another noted that the survey hadn’t been circulated to all sellers and also included a note to say that the contents of the survey should remain confidential.
Tamebay hasn’t seen the survey, perhaps you have? But one seller described the kind of questions it was asking in the discussion thread we linked to above: “A lot of what if scenarios, like if it was $0.20 for one listing fee per month & transaction fee was 3.5%, would you sell on Etsy? If it was $0.20 for 4 months & transaction fee was 5%, would you sell on Etsy.”
The issue of fees was addressed by Etsy CEO Josh Silverman during the call reporting the company’s 3rd quarter results. He said: “We will continue to look over time as we’re adding value to the ecosystem, what’s our fair share of that. Our guide star that always will be, what are the things we’re going to do that are going to make the marketplace stronger, and as we do that, our fair share.”
It’s not unusual for any company to survey users on a variety of scenarios and possibilities to guage reaction. And Etsy is currently in a period of change and reassessment, so it’s even more natural it should reassess assumptions.
The question is whether a fee increase would deter you from selling on Etsy or stop you from growing your operations there. Let us know.
2 Responses
Etsy claims that their fees are low but this isn’t the truth. The reality is that between renewing listings, Etsy’s internal paid adverts and google shopping (also done through Etsy) AND the fees on each order I end up paying between 20 and 25 percent of my total revenue every month to Etsy. This puts them on par with places like Amazon and Not On the High Street in terms of fees for jewellery sellers such as myself. If they do go ahead with a fee increase there will literally be zero point in staying with them. I rely on Etsy for my main source of income and I’ve already seen this drop substantially over the past few months as a result of Etsy’s constantly changing search and visibility algorithms limiting my exposure to places where the bulk of my business used to come from. I have seen my revenue drop recently and yet the monthly spend on fees has not dropped in proportion.
Bottom line. If Etsy raises their fees anymore it will no longer be viable for me to run my business on there and I will end up without an income. It’s a no to fee increase from me.
We tried Etsy for a quarter. We had over 400 different items listed for the whole of the time it was listed which if I remember rightly is 3 months. We had more sales on ebay or amazon on one day compared to the amount of views (not sales) in the 3 months. Altogether we had one sale and the Studio Etsy, don’t even go there with what a waste of space that is. The problem with ETSY is because it is in financial trouble it’s relying on fee’s what they get from sellers. They don’t promote anything so sellers don’t get anything. To me it looked like a glorified Shopify store. As you can tell we won’t be going back there, no matter what.