[HN Gopher] Etsy is awash with illicit products and mass produce...
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Etsy is awash with illicit products and mass produced goods (2021)
Author : vector_spaces
Score : 135 points
Date : 2023-02-08 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| motohagiography wrote:
| Governing whose products are cooperative and defective within the
| market seems like a hard problem, and the same problem that forum
| moderators have, but mostly because the people doing it are
| adopting the wrong principles. If a defective participant can
| make an appeal to external/exogenous market principles, there's
| nothing the regulator can do. The artists markets (and forums)
| that do thrive are the ones ruled by direct curation to enforce
| sanctions on defective and noncooperative parties.
|
| This is a general problem with any artisanal market, where
| artists who have made an investment in their craft attract
| crowds, and crowds attract opportunists who defect from the rule
| of cooperation that makes the artists market viable. The whole
| principle of competition is that it's only competition if you are
| playing by the same rules. Imo, artist markets resemble more of a
| co-operate/defect game theory model than a simple economic market
| competition model. In an artisanal market, the co-operation rules
| are unfortunately, tacit, and rubes will reward the honest
| players and defective/dishonest ones alike.
|
| That it sucks implies there is an opportunity, likely for a
| federated curation model that looks more like a department store
| than the landfills of etsy and amazon.
|
| Honest signals of quality and cooperation are necessarily
| discriminatory, and dishonest/defective parties (ones who do not
| cooperate) have the aggregate effect of increasing these
| signalling costs on quality goods to where the signalling out-
| prices its utility.
|
| Regulation comes into play when dishonest parties increase the
| signalling costs so much that it destroys the market for the
| products, and parties have to decide whether the
| regulatory/moderation costs are lower than the signalling costs,
| or to abandon the market altogether, which in the case of Etsy,
| they often do. This is why Etsy is full of scammy junk. They have
| a curation and moderation problem they are not equipped to solve.
|
| Ironically, what makes curation and moderation good is that it
| doesn't scale well at all, even negatively, but that's what makes
| it scarce and valuable - unlike anything available on Etsy. Maybe
| that's the lesson.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Excellent post! I particularly appreciate that you highlighted
| that the "fatal flaw" of curation's lack of scalability is also
| its strength.
|
| >That it sucks implies there is an opportunity, likely for a
| federated curation model that looks more like a department
| store than the landfills of etsy and amazon.
|
| I think this opportunity is applicable to content as well as
| products.
| [deleted]
| leashless wrote:
| I work on a fairly high-end solution to this problem: works for
| art authentication, real estate transactions, that sort of thing.
|
| The _only_ way this gets fixed is through liability: if they ship
| you a mass-produced thing, you get your money back. But if buyers
| are happy with the goods (and they seem to be, generally
| speaking) it 's hard to say anybody's been defrauded -- making
| window shopping boring because most of the stuff is mass produced
| crap is not a crime, as it were.
|
| No harm, no foul.
|
| As for the "illicit" products, same applies: if the buyers don't
| care, it's hard to make the "system" care.
| b0x68 wrote:
| The modern web is insufferable. I can't click on a link without
| seeing a paywall and/or popups. ugh. Thank goodness for the
| wayback machine.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| Etsy is one of the only places where one can buy quality handmade
| works. It certainly is the most concentrated market for those
| items, but you have to know how to dig deeper past the mass-
| produced crap. It helps to know a little about art or the medium
| first. That provides a launch point from which your queries can
| become more focused as one learns.
|
| I've discovered entirely new categories (to me) of arts and
| crafts in that way, from 19th century American coverlets to Welsh
| stick chairs, eventually learning about the nascent Arts and
| Crafts movement's evolution in the 19th century in response to
| the soulless factory-produced goods of that age.[0]
|
| As a result, today I probably have some of the largest context-
| specific art collections in Texas, if not the United States,
| which includes Japanese Takatori ware, Ukrainian art, handmade
| Windsor chairs, and Anagama (dragon kiln) wood-fired pottery. All
| discovered through Etsy.
|
| In some respects, I am under the impression that most people
| simply don't know what they're looking for, i.e., they don't know
| how things are made and therefore don't know how to search for
| it. The genuine real McCoy is there, behind the first page of
| mass-produced imposters, you just have to dig for it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement
| k2enemy wrote:
| I'm sure you know this, but for others curious about stick
| chairs, Chris Schwarz has brought about a dramatic increase in
| people's awareness of them and how to construct them. Lost Art
| Press has several books and videos about their history and
| construction.
|
| https://lostartpress.com
| jason-phillips wrote:
| Yes, I have many of his books. I'd buy one of his chairs but
| they come to market very infrequently. I'd love to take one
| of his classes.
| sizzle wrote:
| Wow do you have a blog or page we can see more at? Sounds like
| an impressive collection!
| jason-phillips wrote:
| I write about some of it on my Facebook page. Just search my
| name and "Lampasas, TX". I don't do this too much; there's
| just too many pieces and after the 15th piece of Takatori
| ware people start to lose interest. When I do write, I try to
| keep it fresh and interesting in some way.
| toss1 wrote:
| That's awesome to hear that you have developed the expert
| knowledge needed to search out such unique finds and
| successfully acquired them!
|
| Except that the entire core selling point of Etsy was that we
| would be able to search, and artists/artisans would be able to
| surface their works, _WITHOUT_ the searchers having to sort
| through all the crap. Merely coming to Etsy was supposed to
| bypass the crap and get to the good stuff.
|
| Clearly the VCs and Etsy management are happy with lying for
| profit.
|
| I hope an honest competitor comes up.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Clearly the VCs and Etsy management are happy with lying for
| profit.
|
| replace the specific Etsy reference with pretty much any VC
| funded company, and you'll have summarized vast majority of
| VC funded companies.
| toss1 wrote:
| Sad to say, you are 100% correct.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 100% will forever have a chilling effect on me after
| watching BJ Novak's opening scene in Vengence. that scene
| was oh so accurate that it was painful to sit through
| hhw3h wrote:
| In my experience if you want to make a sustainable living from
| selling arts or crafts online, you want to go up market. Charge
| $1,000 or more per work.
|
| Use a relationship based sales process starting with one focused
| social media presence, typically Instagram.
|
| Not everyone will be afford your work, but if your marketing and
| customer service is solid, a plenty large market will exist.
|
| Once you start collecting social proof from happy customers, flow
| that back into your marketing and getting your next client
| becomes easier and easier. You can then often charge $3,000 to
| $5,000 for the same exact work because of the social proof and
| the brand you are building with it.
|
| Making an art business work is similar to making a bootstrapped
| software business work, in the sense that software bootstrappers
| again and again go through the personal realization that writing
| software is typically only 20% to 30% of what they need to focus
| on in order to be successful.
|
| They realize they need to bite the bullet and learn sales and
| marketing too and only if they do so can they overtime shift more
| and more of their time to just the areas of their software
| business they want to spend the most time in.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree with this. I've watched someone start by
| making small macrame wall hangings and selling them for $60 on
| Etsy take this direction. Now they're posting professional
| level photos of large ($1,000+) custom ordered pieces hanging
| in client's homes on Instagram. They don't bother with the
| small stuff or Etsy anymore.
| hhw3h wrote:
| Love to hear this, exactly what I'm talking about!
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| It's great to see but also a bit heart breaking. Those XL
| sized pieces are beautiful but I can't justify buying one.
| hhw3h wrote:
| Yeah I hear you. I naturally can relate more to the
| producer than the fan or supporter.
|
| Another good comparison is a company like Tesla. Tesla
| started out with the high priced roadster but as they
| sold more and their audience grew, they pushed the
| pricing down and make cars more accessible and affordable
| to more people.
|
| Art can be done in a similar way but there's some nuance
| to it where you want to make sure if you offer lower
| ticket items that they don't cannibalize your core
| profitable offer and that you can actually have enough
| volume to profitably sell items at those lower rates.
|
| Better to just focus on one profitable offer and skip the
| low ticket items until you have quite a massive audience
| to reach. The low ticket items then become more like
| "merch" you see youtubers sell to monetize their audience
| and then a percentage of those folks ascend to investing
| in commission or originals.
|
| But when starting out just the one core profitable art
| offer sold through personal branding and relationship
| building, I've seen be the most sustainable way to go.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| If you want to have a more enjoyable time with business, if you
| can do this, it is probably the best way to go, although it's
| definitely not easy and you are probably not bothering with
| Etsy.
|
| There is a maximum anyone will pay for a certain type of good,
| no matter how great it is, and that is the sad truth you learn
| when turning hobbies into businesses on Etsy. You can be an
| expert in something, make something absolutely amazing, 10x
| better than the next, but people still won't pay more than $40
| for it because it's just an XYZ.
|
| If you can make the type of _Art_ that someone is willing to
| actually pay whatever you charge for it, you have a chance to
| go up market because you 've overcome the first obstacle of
| picking the right product. 95% of people on Etsy will not or
| cannot achieve this based on what they sell (or know how to do,
| or enjoy doing), but many can still be successful.
|
| There are a hell of a lot fewer people who will buy something
| expensive than something cheap, and having run 5 different Etsy
| shops selling different handmade items from $3 up to $475 I can
| tell you it's so nice to get those big sales, but they don't
| come nearly as often as you'd hope. I make over 6 figures
| selling an average order value of $20. I still have to make and
| ship a LOT of stuff and I've optimized on the businesses that
| are the easiest to make and ship with the highest margin over
| the big sales that take lots of work.
|
| We'll do craft shows and sell $20 items like hotcakes all day,
| while the depressed folks in the booth across from us selling
| expensive art make maybe 1 sale a day, and usually not for an
| expensive piece. Our $475 item that takes a week to make will
| turn heads and bring people in all day and we might sell one of
| them, and 5 other folks will just say they can't justify the
| cost, despite how unique and big and amazing they think it is.
| On the other hand, we'll sell wedding invitations that take 10
| minutes to print for $500 and people won't even blink when we
| name the price, and then they'll re-order again because they
| changed the date. It's shocking.
|
| There are tons of digital download shops that makes 10k-100k
| sales a year on Etsy at $3-$15/sale and they only need to do
| the work of producing an item once. Those are amazing
| businesses and 100x times easier to run than trying to convince
| someone to buy a $x,000 item via social media and paid
| channels.
|
| There are ways to make money, it requires work and cleverness
| and staying on top of things. You can go upscale and play the
| sales/marketing game. You are better off just starting from the
| point of already being a marketer/sales person and find
| something to sell, because trying to do that from just being an
| artist is not going to be easy. You can sell stuff people want
| that aren't that hard to make, but certain markets get flooded
| or less popular and you need to find a good niche and keep on
| evolving, but it's doable and can be fun. People underestimate
| how good the long tail is on Etsy and how much they can market
| for you with the right product. Even with crappy SEO people can
| just find and buy your stuff, which is mind blowing, but it
| doesn't work well when what you sell is just "crochet hat" or
| "pikachu shirt" or "watercolour lilies".
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Not sure if this is an appropriate ask, but I'd be interested
| to see some of the download shops you're referring to - I'm
| putting my art up on print-on-demand sites and I'm interested
| in continuing the endeavour, but it's a slow process - I'd
| love to get some inspiration on the business side of that
| sort of thing.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| Just start with the word "downloadable" in the Etsy search
| bar, you'll get quite the wide variety of random crap. Page
| through it and you can start rabbit-holing down different
| keyword combinations. It's vast. Most people don't even
| know you can get digital downloads on Etsy and we are still
| surprised all the time at the new things people sell (and
| that people are actually buying them and finding them!
| how???). We sell some SVGs and PDFs on one of our shops,
| but we haven't actually put any effort into it last year.
| Based on the handful of listings we already had up we made
| $3k USD in 2022 with like 20 minutes of work for the year.
| hhw3h wrote:
| Really appreciate you sharing your perspective.
|
| And I'm really glad to hear you are doing so well with your
| approach!
|
| > If you can make the type of Art that someone is willing to
| actually pay whatever you charge for it, you have a chance to
| go up market because you've overcome the first obstacle of
| picking the right product. 95% of people on Etsy will not or
| cannot achieve this based on what they sell (or know how to
| do, or enjoy doing), but many can still be successful.
|
| Such a good point. Most artists I see work from their own
| beliefs outwards rather than seeing what the market will bear
| at different price points and targeting a higher rate. They
| think things like, "I wouldn't spend more than $X00 on a work
| of art" and so end up charging the same or less.
|
| > I make over 6 figures selling an average order value of
| $20.
|
| Just curious, is that 6 figures of profit or revenue? The
| nice thing about the $3k to $5k sales is how high margin they
| each can be.
|
| > We'll do craft shows and sell $20 items like hotcakes all
| day, while the depressed folks in the booth across from us
| selling expensive art make maybe 1 sale a day, and usually
| not for an expensive piece. Our $475 item that takes a week
| to make will turn heads and bring people in all day and we
| might sell one of them, and 5 other folks will just say they
| can't justify the cost, despite how unique and big and
| amazing they think it is. On the other hand, we'll sell
| wedding invitations that take 10 minutes to print for $500
| and people won't even blink when we name the price, and then
| they'll re-order again because they changed the date. It's
| shocking.
|
| Yeah it's interesting at these kinds of events I see little
| mistakes or points of friction that artists selling high
| ticket work introduce that reduce their sales. Things like,
| sitting on a chair way back in their booth reading a book or
| their phone, not having an assistant standing out in the flow
| of foot traffic saying hi and drawing people in, displaying
| pricing, having too large a range of pricing, not asking
| questions about the person and their desires and instead
| "talking at them" about the art versus "talking with them",
| etc. Again it takes learning a communication / relationship
| building style that works great if you don't accidentally get
| in your own way.
|
| > There are tons of digital download shops that makes
| 10k-100k sales a year on Etsy at $3-$15/sale and they only
| need to do the work of producing an item once. Those are
| amazing businesses and 100x times easier to run than trying
| to convince someone to buy a $x,000 item via social media and
| paid channels.
|
| I could see once you identify your niche, write your copy,
| optimize the SEO, and set up all the other tech required, and
| you have a product that really resonates with your niche,
| this could be easier to manage once up and running than the
| social media / high ticket approach--at least for some
| people. That said, it sounds like it could be hard and
| unpredictable for non tech savvy art folks to initially set
| up.
|
| There are definitely multiple paths that work for sure and
| there's no one magic ninja hack or silver bullet that doesn't
| require personal development, learning new skills, mindset
| shifts, etc.
|
| Again, really glad to hear about all your success and I hope
| your businesses continue to serve your life and goals well in
| the future!
| ryanisnan wrote:
| What I don't understand is why Etsy doesn't seem to be doing
| anything measurable about improving this. This reason is pretty
| much the sole one that prevents me from shopping at Etsy.
| papito wrote:
| It's almost like we need a way to certify products and authentic,
| much like we look for the "organic" label in a store.
|
| I don't know if that's the solution, but with Amazon also going
| downhill rapidly, something has got to give.
| ghaff wrote:
| >much like we look for the "organic" label in a store
|
| Which means very little.
|
| At some point, there is a distinction between lovingly
| handcrafted and mass-produced in a Chinese factory. But it's
| often not clear where that line is.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I know in the 90's if something had the "Good housekeeping Seal
| of Approval" then it was usually a trustworthy purchase.
|
| What we need is a regulatory board that, like other people say,
| curate products based on their quality, not on whatever
| kickbacks or affiliate link profits they get.
|
| It sucks if, for instance, you go looking for a Towel Warmer
| for your girlfriend and you have to read through 17 different,
| "Top 10 tower warmers 2023" pages that all recommend the exact
| same items with the exact same stock photos from different
| sellers with alphabet soup names.
|
| What I want is an opinionated site that reviews items, has a
| short write up, and then keeps an updated list of their top 3
| which is split between "Best overall", "Best for your dollar",
| and "MVP" (Minimum Viable Product, i.e. the least expensive one
| they've found so far that meets their minimum quality
| expectations for the product).
|
| Products are allowed to occupy more than a single category.
|
| Give me that site, and then let them develop a unique
| recommendation logo with a QR code that goes to their page so
| you can read the review yourself.
| papito wrote:
| I often go to WireCutter before I even look elsewhere, but
| it's a hassle. Amazon and Etsy should be at least partially
| responsible for policing what is being sold on their sites.
| They are not helpless victims.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| [dead]
| newsclues wrote:
| How do we break or slow the cycle of... New great thing is
| awesome, new thing gets popular, new thing turns to shit...
|
| Seems like scalable systems tend to fail with this problem.
| Governments, the internet, social networks, online market places.
|
| WTF?
| wmeredith wrote:
| It's called, or at least very closely related to, the tragedy
| of the commons. It's a problem as old as society itself.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >Seems like scalable systems tend to fail with this problem.
|
| Yes, and the solution is curation, but nobody wants to hear
| that because it likely means paying people to curate vs. coding
| an algorithm that makes a founder rich.
| newsclues wrote:
| But does it?
|
| Can you have cells of people that can behave and network them
| at scale?
|
| It might be impossible, but there could be ways to do better.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| What should Etsy do to combat this?
|
| I'm not sure if they're trying, but even Amazon can't figure out
| some way to verify genuine products from big brands.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| They make farrrrrrrr more money by actively not-trying.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Probably this is the case overall.
|
| But I know I'd actually buy a lot of stuff from Etsy if I was
| guaranteed to get quality handmade goods by a devoted
| craftsman rather than a strong chance of something made in
| some Chinese factory.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| Yeah, you have to put in the work, read all the
| descriptions, look at the images, see their bio, look at
| their location, and the tricky, yet most obvious thing, is
| if they have a "production partner", which you are supposed
| to specify if you don't make the thing yourself. Even if
| people fill it in, Etsy makes it purposely hard to find
| that info and anyone not using Etsy as a seller wouldn't
| even know it's a thing to look for.
|
| If something looks too good or too produced in images, and
| the cost seems too good, it probably is to good to be true.
| You can Google image search their main picture and find
| where else it's being sold. If they have a lot of sales
| (like thousands), look much more closely as most artisans
| don't get that high unless they are pretty good.
|
| Clothing is nearly impossible to find anything that isn't
| just a drop shipper. Anything from a country that you think
| would be sketchy is 90% of the time, which sucks for the
| amazing people there, but it's such an easy signal to see.
| Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe, almost always all scams,
| dropship or ripoff factories.
|
| It's sad and frustrating just how much worse Etsy gets year
| after year. We've got 5 shops on there and see all the BS
| and how it hurts us. My wife can't even shop on the
| platform anymore because it's too hard to find actual
| handcrafted type stuff and we know what we are doing. If
| they'd let people report shops it would get cleaned up
| fast, but they'd lose so much money they'd rather kill
| themselves first, they are incredibly greed oriented.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Looking forward to when Etsy becomes the new Silk Road. I can
| shop for hand-crafted gifts for friends and family, and a little
| black tar heroin for myself, all in one go.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Here is headline for you: Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget was
| charged with securities fraud by the SEC and is permanently
| banned from the securities industry, yet he runs a publishing
| platform dedicated to trading and securities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget
|
| Business Insider is not a reputable source.
|
| EDIT: And this story, when it was originally published by
| Business Insider, just happened to break 3 business days before
| ETSY's May 5, 2021 earnings call. What a coincidence!
| kashunstva wrote:
| > mass produced goods
|
| I volunteer for a youth symphony and we were just looking to
| replace one of our timpani. First link was to Etsy. It was clear
| this was not some handcrafted bespoke instrument; it was just a
| used drum. Basically just another Ebay.
| tablespoon wrote:
| Yeah, I've gotten burned by this. We bought some wooden toys for
| a friend's child that said they'd be shipped from Poland,
| assuming they were made in Poland at least.
|
| It turned out the toys were made in China, and they even shipped
| them in the retail packaging (which was nowhere to be seen in the
| listing's pictures).
|
| Everything else I've gotten there has been basically someone with
| a decal machine making custom decals or applying a customization
| to a (likely) mass produced product.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Report it. If they claimed anything otherwise, that's fraud.
| shrikant wrote:
| This happened to me last week, but with Wayfair instead. We
| ordered something from Wayfair by a seller called "Williston
| Forge", and the item that arrived was in packaging branded as
| "VASAGLE". I looked up the corresponding VASAGLE item and the
| exact same thing was available on Amazon for one-third of the
| price.
|
| I ended up returning the Wayfair SKU and getting the Amazon one
| instead. Something about the branding just screams Alibaba
| drop-shipper to me, but the product itself was fine so I stuck
| with it.
|
| Left a (politely worded) bad review on the Wayfair SKU page,
| and surprise surprise, it's not been approved for display.
|
| Since then, I've also been wary of stuff on Wayfair.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Wayfair is notorious for hawking goods under faux brand names
| that can be had for cheaper elsewhere.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I've been selling on Etsy for a few years and the problem has
| only been getting worse. Etsy the company seems to turn a blind
| eye to it since they are making money off of the cheap Alibaba
| junk as well.
|
| That being said etsy is still the best game in town. People
| searching there are very ready to buy and if you are able to
| stand out from the crowd it's possible to be successful.
| docandrew wrote:
| I started looking on Etsy specifically to get away from the
| cheap Alibaba junk other stores are flooded with. There are
| some really nice handmade products there.
| boringg wrote:
| Etsy in its purest form was great. Its been diluted to almost
| trash with all the people gaming the system. Same with almost all
| other tech platforms. Humanity defaults to greedy (ie optimize
| for search results etc).
|
| Worse yet is the big companies pretending to be little companies
| to cash in on indie buyers.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Humanity doesn't default to greedy, but the humans who are
| greedy are the ones motivated to flood these market places. For
| every 1000 small creators hand-chiseling marble effigies
| there's someone who is greedy and can sell the entire catalogue
| of some niche factory in Guangdong. The net effect is a flooded
| market, despite only 1 in 1000 people being greedy.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| The tech bubble worships at the altar of sacred, almighty
| "scale," and then wonders why things like this happen.
|
| Not everything scales. And almost every time tech tries to
| reinvent the wheel at scale, it fails, or makes things worse.
| incone123 wrote:
| Reminds me of the 'small business' tag on some Amazon sellers.
| Technically true, but they're usually just reselling stuff from
| Alibaba.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah the same way with Kickstarter that was first overrun with
| scams and now mainly used for commercial products dumping a few
| early bird discounts for cheap marketing.
|
| The platform doesn't care because they still make money. The
| only one that still seems to work is crowdsupply, I think
| because they are really in a niche market.
| cmckn wrote:
| I've seen more than a few influencers recently promoting
| "passive income" by way of arbitraging Alibaba garbage on
| Etsy/Amazon/EBay. I place more blame on those systems than the
| folks trying to make a buck, but it's demoralizing as a buyer
| having to wade through all of it.
| taylorius wrote:
| I like how they mention mass-produced goods alongside ivory and
| illegal weapons.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/WM1wf
| mcphage wrote:
| It's probably worth including (2021) in the title. The article
| described Etsy putting money to fight this problem in 2021, I
| wonder if it has improved? Some spot checking makes me think
| probably not.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| Definitely not, they won't even include a way to report these
| folks. We run multiple Etsy shops and would report all day if
| we could because it's not hard to identify them at all.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| I may be wrong, but I believe Etsy have a hidden charge of 4% for
| currency conversion.
|
| Normal banks charge about 3%, FinTechs 0.5%.
|
| It listed absolutely nowhere when you buy; it occurs when you pay
| in a currency different to the native currency of the shop.
|
| Etsy I recall decide which currency you will pay in, according to
| the country of your bank - which does not work for multi-currency
| FinTechs; in fact, you can end up paying Etsy their excessive
| conversion fee, and then a second conversion fee to the FinTech -
| that is, if you didn't know any better, and Etsy are completely
| silent about this.
|
| Regarding pricing, looking at Etsy prices, and the prices on the
| web-sites of the sellers, I believe Etsy charge 20%. This is
| monopoly pricing.
| wgerard wrote:
| This was a constant complaint about Etsy 10 years ago when I
| worked there. This was a complaint that predated my time working
| there, even. At one point we even had to ban people selling
| spells (yes, as in the seller would offer to do a magical
| incantation on your behalf).
|
| The exact details might've changed, but the symptoms look the
| exact same. I remember we had to deal with a lot of people trying
| to skirt OFAC regulations, for example, by doing all sorts of
| things to hide the country of origin for something.
|
| Optimistically I will say this is a very hard problem to solve.
| Pessimistically of course the company benefits from it, so I'm
| sure it's not a problem anyone besides maybe a few diehard
| advocates look _too_ deeply into.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Low key, I would buy a spell for my friend, as long as I got a
| video or certificate or something proving the spell was
| actually "cast"
|
| Sounds like a great sibling gift tbh
| wgerard wrote:
| I mean sure, I think that's why it flew under the radar for
| so long. The dark underbelly of it was people buying love
| spells and the like, which starts to feel a lot like preying
| on peoples' desperation.
| Loughla wrote:
| I find that genuinely fascinating from an ethical
| standpoint.
|
| What if the people really believe spells work? Does it
| matter that they don't? Is it just the ephemeral nature of
| spells? What if I were to ship a complete spell in a bottle
| to the person?
|
| (not to be too much of an edgelord) What about religious
| iconography or religious paraphernalia? I would argue that
| anything related to that is just a more accepted version of
| magic spells. Would prayer be banned?
| JTbane wrote:
| My edgy take is that it's the same as donating to any
| church.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| can you sell bibles on etsy?
| tarotuser wrote:
| Given that I am an occultist and a divinatory reader
| (tarot, etc), I see no issue with selling spellkits as
| goods to use. I also see no issue in selling spellcasting
| or divinatory services either. But I also acknowledge
| significant problems with companies allowing these to be
| sold and impossibility of validation or "returns".
|
| Comparatively, selling spells can be quite easily
| compared with a Christian baptism, communion, the
| Catholic sacraments, prayer. The alms (baskets to collect
| money) is the cost for accessing these sorts of spells.
| Some Christian churches demand 10% of your earnings,
| which is way more than what some spells would cost.
|
| Christians dont have normalized divinatory methods, so
| I'm unable to compare those. Their deity, YHVH, expressed
| a ban on that for most anybody - there exists a type of
| divination usable only by his high priest in Judaism
| while wearing the appropriate vestments, and only in
| yes/no questions.
|
| From the occult community, what we see with "spell-
| selling" and the like is that it does attract frauds who
| are in it just for the money. Naturally, some here will
| consider any sort of esotericism to be a "fraud" - to
| those, nothing I say will be of any use. But the issue
| here is "How do you know if you're getting what's
| claimed?"
|
| In order to know that you're buying a legitimate spell,
| the only way to know its true is if you can see and work
| with those energies initially... Thus meaning you would
| be able to do it regardless. Or you don't have those
| abilities developed and thus must trust who sold you the
| spells.
|
| Of course, from a company's viewpoint, there's no way to
| validate spellcasting at all. Anybody could claim "fraud"
| and there's no defense against that. So it's easier to
| not allow these types of sales to happen. Effectively
| they're more problems then they're worth. (And doing a
| simple cursory search shows no christian prayer services
| being sold either... but that's easy to do with the
| abundance of churches in the USA.)
|
| Edit: I'm really tired of having a discussion here,
| sharing my personal experiences, and having it drowned
| out with -1's. You may disagree with the occult. But it
| definitely is an area that Etsy had to deal with.
|
| I guess the -1's are "I disagree with your lifestyle".
| Quite closed-minded, honestly.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with people
| disagreeing with your religious choices, and more that
| you posted one sentence in response, followed by a long
| off-topic screed that includes simplistic criticism of a
| stereotype of other people's religions?
|
| I recommend you take some of your own advice.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| there are a ton of rationalists on this site, quite an
| intolerant bunch.
| wgerard wrote:
| > Does it matter that they don't?
|
| For an e-commerce platform that allows returns: Yeah
| that's kind of an important sticking point and was a big
| part of the problem.
|
| The other problem was that spells were effectively a
| service and you can imagine that we didn't want to get
| involved in determining the validity or accuracy of
| services being performed virtually that had zero tangible
| artifacts.
|
| > What if I were to ship a complete spell in a bottle to
| the person?
|
| This is probably what people actually do now to get
| around it, since there's an actual item being sold now.
| [deleted]
| greenie_beans wrote:
| yeah i don't see the problem with selling spells, that seems
| like something i should be able to pay money for if i want
| to.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Do a video of it and it's basically just Cameo, really. And
| people pay for that.
| xwdv wrote:
| What's wrong with selling spells? Is it because Etsy believes
| they are fake or because they are real and too powerful?
|
| And where would you even go to buy spells in real life?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _And where would you even go to buy spells in real life_
|
| There's places in pretty much every major city, and even in
| some surprisingly rural places. Even in ritzy neighborhoods,
| there are private and public palm readers and tarot card
| shops catering to the upper crust who will sell anything they
| can get away with.
|
| In places like New Orleans there's an entire tourism sector
| for it.
| Nursie wrote:
| Etsy generally doesn't go into selling services IIRC, and a
| lot people selling this stuff on Etsy sell "I will do a
| spell/psychic healing/remote reiki/whatever", which is a
| service.
|
| Also, even in the case of having the parts of a spell shipped
| to you, how do you do a payment dispute when the spell
| doesn't work?
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| I like to dream about changing to a four day workweek, and
| dedicating one day to woodworking. Originally, I wanted to sell
| on Etsy, but the flood of drop shippers pretending to sell
| handmade stuff has put me off. It seems like it has gotten a lot
| worse in the last decade.
|
| I know that this one day a week would decrease my overall
| earnings, but it would probably still be worth it. However, with
| the abundance of cheap, mass-produced items on Etsy I would have
| to price my items so cheap that I would fall below minimum wage
| on that day.
|
| I don't want to complain, I get to do enough woodworking as is,
| since my employer gives me 12 additional vacation days in
| exchange for 5.2% of my salary, taking me up to 47 per year.
|
| But it would still be nice if there was a platform in Europe that
| does what Etsy used to do.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I would focus on a more local market. Shipping real wood
| furniture would be an expensive hassle anyway
| greedo wrote:
| I made my desk out of a thick walnut slab, and it turned out
| great. On the woodworking FB group, people said I could sell
| it easily on Etsy etc for over $2K. So I looked into it. My
| COG was about $1k, and Etsy would take 20% of the $2K selling
| price, leaving me with $600 before shipping costs. Now this
| desk is large, weighs a lot and shipping would easily be
| $300-500 in the CONUS. I guess that's on the customer though.
| Hmm...
|
| While noodling around with this idea I did some market
| research on Etsy and saw that others were selling similar
| desks for about $2K, with FREE shipping. I reached out to one
| of the sellers asking if this was real or a bait and switch.
| Apparently if you don't ship for free, Etsy actively
| discriminates against your post. So my end profit would have
| been between $100-$300 for a week or so of work.
|
| Sometimes no matter how you slice it, physical goods don't
| make much sense. I'd have to charge at least 50% more to make
| it even worthwhile, and I doubt the market for $3K desks is
| that large.
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| This isn't really a problem with Etsy dropshippers, handmade
| goods simply cannot compete with mass-produced goods as you
| can't scale your time. Without scale you need magnitude, people
| must be willing to pay you for a piece of work much more than
| it cost you to make it, and you must do so consistently.
|
| My suggestion is to put a few example woodworks you've done on
| your spare time for sale with no expectation of making any
| money from them, and then offer to make custom handmade designs
| for people.
|
| You can charge a lot more for those and you are basically
| guaranteed a sale for the time you spend on each one. The rest
| comes down to marketing, I have a print-on-demand shop with my
| own designs with 0 sales. I mostly use it as a way to leave a
| mark somewhere of things I've made that didn't involve coding.
| Burnout does that to you. Losing 20 cents for each design I
| make, but hey, I enjoy it.
| xwdv wrote:
| Yes, this is a common thing to think of e-commerce sites like
| Etsy as a sort of social network page where you post stuff
| but maybe have no intention on making any sales, it's just
| another way to display your hobby.
| zeruch wrote:
| This is the reason I haven't started putting my original
| artwork on Etsy. I make a small amount annually with JIT art
| prints from Society6 and RedBubble (I used to do DeviantArt
| as well, but since their AI debacle, I've got a moratorium on
| that option). Originals cost much more than prints (my stuff
| is priced between 100-10,000 USD depending on size and
| complexity) and mostly come via work of mouth commission. I
| _want_ to market, but the time commit seems onerous, and I
| like it not being "work" (that's what the day job is for)
| gilleain wrote:
| Heh, I do this too - create stuff, put it on Etsy and watch
| the 0 sales just roll in.
|
| I also see it as a way to show the world that I make stuff,
| dammit, and not just type code into an IDE! :)
| mattkrause wrote:
| It might be cool to include some photos and a build-log of each
| item being made. I think I'd like this as a shopper _and_ it
| would let you distinguish your products from mass-produced
| stuff.
|
| It wouldn't have to be super-comprehensive, but I think it
| would be fun, especially if the reader could sorta track how
| the product evolves from the raw material: a knot being used as
| the focal point of a rustic table---or hidden with an inlay for
| a fancy one, for example.
| japanman425 wrote:
| > shippers pretending to sell handmade stuff has put me off
|
| What does handmade mean to you? My adidas are "hand made".
| criddell wrote:
| Usually it means you are buying the item from the person who
| made it or the store you are shopping in bought it directly
| from the person who made it. It's low volume production with
| very little or no automation involved.
| notJim wrote:
| Elsewhere in this thread, someone describes selling
| lasercut items on Etsy, which is obviously highly
| automated. Would you argue that shouldn't be considered
| handmade?
| criddell wrote:
| Depends on the specifics. If the service is "submit a
| file and I'll load it into my laser machine and mail you
| what comes out the other end", then probably not. That
| feels like getting photos printed at the CVS and nobody
| would say CVS sells handmade prints.
|
| If there is a substantial amount of manual work to the
| piece after it comes out of the machine, then maybe. It
| would have to be judged on a case-by-case basis.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| You could sell your creations on Etsy. It would help to label
| them such that people can find your wares if one were searching
| for something made by hand, for instance. You can also create
| an external marketing site/portal that directs people to your
| Etsy shop.
|
| My mother was a successful fused glass artist. Her works sold
| for hundreds to thousands of dollars, but in the end, she made
| close to minimum wage per hour, as you described. Art, or
| anything made by hand, doesn't scale well.
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| The external marketing site is probably the key, as well as
| making the items small enough that the profit margins don't
| get eaten by shipping and the cost of high quality wood.
|
| I've started an Instagram account where I post some of my
| work, but I've found out that I'm really bad at social media
| for marketing purposes. I'm currently debating whether it's
| worth it to become better at marketing or SEO in order to
| promote my stuff, but even though it is a no-brainer from a
| business standpoint, it is the opposite of what I want to do.
|
| I originally started this plan to have a workday where I
| don't look at the screen for 8 hours, and now I've gotten
| myself in a situation where I look at a screen in my free
| time to learn how to promote my business.
|
| You're right, art just doesn't scale well. Maybe it's best if
| I continue to just do it for fun and gift it to friends and
| family. Not everything needs to be a business.
| damascus wrote:
| As someone with a similar side hustle: If you are going to
| drive your own traffic don't drive it to a platform thats
| going to take 20%+ of your gross product cost. Drive
| traffic to your own shopify or squarespace site that has
| really good ecomm built in. Get a shipstation account and
| you're pretty set. IMO.
| hhw3h wrote:
| What's interesting about the online art world is that there
| are a number of platforms like Etsy that ostensibly take
| the sales and marketing off your plate, that said, all your
| points are true. They are often a race to the bottom where
| you feel a strong pressure to compete on pricing.
|
| What I've seen work instead is to charge much higher rates
| of $1,000 or more. Think to yourself, hypothetically
| speaking, if I were to charge $1,000 or more for my art or
| my woodworking etc. what kind of items would justify that
| price point and then just focus on those.
|
| Then when it comes to marketing and selling, pursue a
| relationship based selling approach rather than an
| ecommerce transactional approach.
|
| Once you start getting social proof of happy customers you
| can often take the same work that was selling for $1,000
| and sell it for $3,000 to $5,000 or even more.
|
| That's the key to making a sustainable income with art or
| handcrafted work these days.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| 1. You won't regret going to a 4-day work-week even if you do
| nothing that makes you money with the extra time. My wife did
| it over a year ago and she still talks about how it's the best
| thing ever and can never go back. We are a bit poorer, but
| quality of life went like 300x for that one extra weekend day.
|
| 2. Etsy is flooded, true, but it doesn't mean people still
| don't find you and buy your stuff if it's good and unique (and
| you put effort into learning how to do Etsy SEO). If you make
| something that no one else has, you can charge a proper amount
| for it, people will buy it and leave you great reviews.
|
| We make nearly 6 figures on Etsy as a side-business across 3
| different Etsy stores for crafts/handmade/digital goods we
| produce. I can tell you that we used to make a lot of money
| with our laser-cut wood shop when it started, it was a
| wonderful learning experience and trip, but after 2 years or so
| everyone and their dog had a laser cutter, ripped off our
| designs, and sold them for less than half of what we did (and
| they weren't making any money at those rates). We had a Chinese
| scam ring rip off our most expensive item featuring pictures of
| my wife's face in them and use them as facebook ads to try and
| sell our $500 item for $79.99 on pop-up stores. Nothing you can
| do about that, but it shows that we reached a success point to
| be targeted like that. There are so many niches and things you
| can make and sell on there it still blows our mind. People sell
| literal PDFs of a piece of paper with an image of a piggy bank
| repeated like 500 times that people buy, print out, and cross
| out 1 by 1 as they add $10 to their vacation fund knowing that
| at the end they'll have finally saved the $5k they need. These
| stores will have like 30k+ $3.99 sales for 20 minutes of work.
|
| It sucks that you can't report shit stores, they are
| frustrating, but even though they are there, the long tail is
| real, you can find anything from any niche, the trick is
| finding out what people will type in that search bar that you
| actually make or can make, because that will filter out most of
| the crap.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > 1. You won't regret going to a 4-day work-week even if you
| do nothing that makes you money with the extra time. My wife
| did it over a year ago and she still talks about how it's the
| best thing ever and can never go back. We are a bit poorer,
| but quality of life went like 300x for that one extra weekend
| day.
|
| I think the huge increase in QOL is, in part, because on most
| weekends, 2 days is just _barely_ enough to catch up on the
| shit you need to do but were deferring through the week, get
| things in order for the next week, take a quick breath, and
| then dive straight into the next work-week. It 's barely even
| _time off_. It also means you can 't travel anywhere (to
| visit family, just a short vacation, whatever) and have a
| _whole day_ away that 's not also a travel day, unless you
| leave late on Friday and aren't going far.
|
| A three-day weekend mean you can usually get at least one
| actual _day off_ most weeks, versus an average of nearly zero
| entire or almost-entire days off with a two-day weekend. It
| also opens up a ton more options for short get-aways, and
| leaves more room for recovery and relaxation after any
| activities you engage in, making the whole thing far more
| relaxing and cutting out some of the urgency.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| Yeah, that's a big part of it! It also reduces the amount
| of work/BS you have to deal with each week as well, so you
| don't get as exhausted both mentally and physically. Going
| from 5/2 to 4/3 really changes the balance in work/rest to
| almost even in comparison. My wife noticed she never really
| felt like she had to take vacation days or was dying for
| time off the way she was before, you can actually get
| enough time to recharge that it's not like you are crawling
| to that distant finish line.
| patja wrote:
| My brother in law has a successful Etsy shop where he mostly
| sells "charcuterie boards" he makes in his home workshop as a
| side gig from his job as a VP of a civil engineering firm.
| There isn't much to them: no joinery, just a slab with a live
| edge. He just fills any voids or defects with epoxy, puts it
| through his surface sander, and applies a nice clear durable
| finish. Every piece is unique. He does seek out spalted and
| other interesting grain features to highlight. It helps that
| almost all of his wood is locally salvaged at almost zero
| expense other than his time. He loves to hunt down recently
| fallen trees to make a deal with the property owner to take the
| wood off their hands.
|
| He gets a lot of repeat business from people like realtors who
| use his boards as housewarming gifts for their clients.
| dawsoneliasen wrote:
| FWIW I shop on Etsy quite a bit and I can definitely tell when
| something is actually handmade, and I shell out for it. I think
| you would still have a market despite the degradation in
| quality of Etsy generally.
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| I work a four day workweek and have been for a full year now.
| I'm likely to never return to a 40hr workweek. I actually ended
| up interviewing at a few places a couple of months ago (Capital
| One, Farmers, few other smaller companies). I was pleasantly
| surprised by how many hiring managers and HR folks were willing
| to talk to me after I mentioned that I was only interested in
| 32hrs/wk @ 80% salary. My point of advice to anyone who is
| curious about a four day work week is just do it. Ask and I'm
| willing to bet you will receive.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Do you still get fulltime employment benefits? That seems to
| be the sticking point with many companies, as fulltime and
| parttime employees are treated, and cost, different, even if
| salary is prorated.
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| That's wild to me because it's my understanding that most
| HR departments consider anything over 30hrs a week to be
| full-time. I didn't encounter any of that last time around.
| My offer from Farmer's included a pension and full
| benefits. I'm a small sample size though...
| tpxl wrote:
| Bespoke pieces should still fetch a pretty price. It's not
| gonna be a good wage by any means, but it should be far above
| what you'd get by undercutting dropshippers.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Is there any proscription against posting subscriber only content
| to HN? It's annoying to have to go through archive.org or
| something else, and for me my work actually blocks archive.org.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230208000215/https://www.busin...
| kup0 wrote:
| See HN FAQ on Paywalls
|
| _" Are paywalls ok?
|
| It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have
| workarounds.
|
| In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help
| other users do so. But please don't post complaints about
| paywalls. Those are off topic."_
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Kind of related, I'm trying to build something for an 'equitable
| curation' of Etsy. https://lilbetsy.com/
| lukeasrodgers wrote:
| This looks neat, if you had a way for people without an etsy
| store to get notified when this launched, I'd sign up.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Good idea! I'll create a user signup notification thingy.
| hhw3h wrote:
| Yes I'm curious to sign up but don't have an Etsy store
| either. Are you looking to build a more of a competitive
| intel product for existing Etsy store owners or something
| more for end users of Etsy like a weekly curation email
| newsletter?
| oldstrangers wrote:
| It's essentially an end user service that benefits the
| creators by reducing the noise and finding actually
| compelling creators. When a creator signs up, I'm able to
| filter their store info and automatically scrape all the
| info I'd need.
|
| From there it's just a manual vetting process (although
| quickly filtering out the stuff I don't want is kind of
| hidden in the sign up).
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Added!
| temporallobe wrote:
| I happen to know that Etsy is being used as a tax haven for
| selling "products" from an online "store". Basically, you buy
| stuff, offer it for sale of Etsy, and claim all of the goods you
| purchased as businesses expenses for tax writeoff purposes. This
| of course is not limited to Etsy, but it's an easy platform to
| use for this purpose. It's similar to how movie studios will
| purposefully produce horrible movies in order to create a loss.
| Or any other tax loophole, really.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| It sounds like you're describing a classic COGS scenario. Not
| sure I see the loophole, can you expand?
| voxic11 wrote:
| The loophole is that they don't actually expect anything to
| sell. So they are claim a tax write off when the goods
| depreciate, all the while actually enjoying them for personal
| use.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| I doubt many Etsy sellers are running their business on an
| accrual basis to be eligible for depreciation expense.
| Beyond that Inventory is a non-depreciable asset. If
| they're not generating any revenue they can't claim COGS.
| Any of these scenarios are obvious red flags and would be
| audit candidates.
|
| Now if you're suggesting people are submitting fraudulent
| returns thats another thing but there's no "loophole" here.
|
| EDIT - just to add, I'm sure there is a ton of attempted
| illicit activity on Etsy, just like any other marketplace.
| See this [0] for example. I don't think there is any tax
| "loophole" here, however.
|
| [0] https://www.etsy.com/listing/1200405951/t-shirt
| japanman425 wrote:
| [flagged]
| toyg wrote:
| _> you buy stuff, offer it for sale of Etsy, and claim all of
| the goods you purchased as businesses expenses for tax writeoff
| purposes._
|
| That's not a loophole, that's just fraud that goes undetected
| because the taxman doesn't know or monitor Etsy. Amazon used to
| be the same, before someone knocked on their door. Businesses
| doing that are still guilty of tax fraud and will be convicted
| if/once authorities come around (since Etsy will be compelled
| to collaborate).
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