Etsy's Unfair Seller Rating System

I'm lucky.  I'm lucky in that the overwhelming majority of people who buy my jewelry love it and take a minute to tell me so.  For that, I am truly grateful.

However, even the most wonderful 5 star rating with a kind word, does little to salve that loathesome negative review...

In a nutshell, negative reviews hurt.  I take them very personally.  This is because I put my all into the items I make.  I want them to be perfect.  I want my customers to love them as much as I do.  I want to have happy people wearing my hand made items.

I mean, if you buy something, and it isn't what you like or thought it would be, you contact the seller and ask to return it.  Right?  I know that I do.  And, it takes a lot for me to leave less than 5 stars.  I don't take away a star if the item is lost, or late because of the post office.  Even if it takes the seller 4 days after I order it to get it in the mail.  I mean, if it's just what I ordered, I don't usually leave anything negative.  But that's just me and I am a seller, so I know how it feels I guess.

I will say this right now:  Etsy's star system stinks!  It is so vague and can have such a devastating effect on a business from just one 1-star review.  And this 1-star review can be left by someone who is having an awful day, or just being plain vindictive.

 I think there should be a few categories. Delivery/Timeliness, Honesty in the Listing, Seller Communication, Presentation.  And, if the review is 1 up to 3 stars, the reviewer must elaborate on WHY they feel this way for EACH category.  This helps sellers to make changes and also keeps the review legitimate.

I know this will never happen, because I think customers would be like "that is too much time to do".  But if you leave someone 2 stars, you should have to elaborate on it.

My Etsy Negative Review Story:

• This takes me back to the very first, and only, thank God, 1-star review I have ever received.  I believe it was from the 4th or 5th item I sold!  Not only was it 1-star, it was absolutely scathing.  It was so full of venom  I was dumbstruck into paralysis for a short minute.  I wanted to cry.  I was so injured that someone would say such horrible things about a necklace that was so carefully and expertly finished and really very pretty.
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• When I regained my composure, I called my big sister and read it to her.  Her reaction?  "oh my gosh!  Listen to what she said!  She sounds like a shrink plastic jewelry maker who is doing her best to put you out of business!  She sounds like a competitor".  And after reading the review again and again, I realized that every biting insult this person dished out to me sounded like insults the buyer herself might have heard from potential buyers of her own shrink plastic jewelry at crafts shows.  Yes,. the criticism was that pointed.  "it is cardboard" "the bead is not ceramic".  etc.  Everything she said was not true.  Everything.
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• They tell you to never respond to negative feedback and carry on.  I'll tell you, if someone gives me a 1-star or 2-star review, I will have a response.  It is that simple.  However, I won't make my response a personal one with regard to the buyer.  My response to the review made me look the way I felt; like I had just had the wind knocked out of me and was seriously injured, that I was never contacted by the buyer asking for a refund, that after multiple attempts to reach the buyer and offering a full refund, she never responded and decided to keep the necklace, and that down the list, for every thrust of her knife, I had an answer. Which was, the item is shrink plastic, the bead is ceramic, and that I and my shop are not going anywhere, etc.
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• I even had a customer who, shortly after my awful review, mentioned how suspicious the review sounded.  Yay truth!  Yay other honest customers!
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• In the end, I realized that this particular customer had an address that was in the very same city as a super-huge shrink plastic jewelry maker on Etsy.  Call it coincidence, but I don't think so.
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• Anyway, that is my horrible review story, I had to share it!

Observation of another Etsy seller who was slammed

• I remember browsing other shrink plastic jewelry shops and coming across one in particular.  She make shrink plastic pins and bracelets but also made resin jewelry.  Well, apparently, some of her resin had bubbles in it and apparently, the bubbles weren't small.  The buyer purchased several items, about 5 I think and for each one, she left 2 stars.  Even though the problem was with only one item.  I felt so sorry for the seller.  All of those 2 star reviews knocked her rating way way down.  It was so unfair.  I realize the upset of the buyer with the bad resin work, fair enough.  But to take away stars from every item when it wasn't deserved was just plain mean.

Oh, and one more small story...

I have had people in the past give me 4 stars because they felt a stud earring was too small (hey, it's a stud), or that an earring is not long or big enough.  This is after having an insanely clear and very detailed description with explicit measurements  in the "details" section of the listing, along with 8+ images of the earrings which included a photo of the item on a life-size mannequin and a photo of the item compared in size to a US Quarter Dollar!

People don't read sometimes and the seller pays for it.

Getting tired,
have a great day!

The Trouble With ETSY...

When I first took my show to Etsy, it was still promoting the 'handmade' cottage industry that had been so underrepresented by all other online venues.  It was where Grandma Evans could make a few extra bucks selling her hand crocheted slippers that she made in her spare time.  Or where Uncle Bill could sell his happy-faced hand whittled figurines.  Those days are gone for Etsy.  It took a few years, but Etsy's thirst for money has allowed all kinds of 'production partners' in the mass production of goods sold there.

Hey, I'm not knocking the dabbler-turned-full-time Etsy makers.  Ones who may hire family members or help/seasonal help to piece together and sew clothing or jewelry.  I'm knocking the full-out selling of mass produced items from other places with unfair labor practices, we all know who they are.  The items are "hand made", by a worker in a sweatshop. I also have a problem with sellers who design items and have them mass-produced in factories i.e. enamel pins and other media, and call them hand made.  Yes, the design is original art (kudos), but, it is NOT handmade by you or someone in your small shop.  Cafe Press and Zazzle come to mind.  Etsy no longer has seller/store spotlights, which used to give props to shops and shop owners showcasing their ideas/wares/practices.  No longer do they allow sellers to create 'collections' of items.  Just nothing that once made Etsy more unique.

On top of all of the new commercialization stuff, Etsy seems to constantly be changing their 'search algorithms'.  Any time a change occurs, you can hear the sellers scream bloody murder wondering why they used to get a bunch favorites on their items every day or have 10+ sales a day and see it tank overnight.  Only to be told by Etsy 'we are making changes to more accurately direct shoppers to what they are looking for'...which is false.

I pay $1/day for Etsy ads (ads inside of Etsy that are supposed to help get me noticed) and up to $30/month for Google shopping.  In a month, that is $60.  For a little fish like me, that is a lot of money, $14/week.  Add to that Etsy fees for listing ($0.20/per item every 4 months), 3.0% from each sale and 3.5% + $0.25 per sale to a credit card and it comes out to almost 10% of every single sale.  Steep.

To follow and track the changes in minute detail was never something I aspired to since I am a small time side-seller who is not about to give up her day job.  Good money+benefits means I'm not moving to Etsy full time.  Thank you.  But other sellers do, and man are they sharp.  When they dissect the reality of what Etsy is doing to what Etsy says they are doing is so disappointing and disheartening.  Many times over the past year I have contemplated moving myself off of Etsy altogether.  Fear of the unknown and comfort have kept me on Etsy, but this coming new year, 2018, I'm taking the plunge and going my own way.  Independent of Amazon, Etsy, Artfire, etc.

I took my Pattern site domain (which was sponsored through Etsy, and man what a laugh that has been), and I've transferred it to my very own independent presence on the internet.  The site is sponsored through Weebly, but it is mine, and Weebly doesn't promote products, shops, owners, etc.  you are simply on your own to do it your way.  Good luck.  I'll take it.

Let me break down the Pattern experience for you.  I started by paying $15/year for my domain name, plus $15/month for my Pattern site.  Since April 2016 through December 2017, it generated 4 sales worth $101 total...  It's like Pattern 'floated' on top of my Etsy store.  True, I had my own domain, but it was an exact duplicate of what ETSY was, and when a buyer put an item it the cart, they were redirected to my ETSY store to pay, which was confusing and stupid.  Really strange and totally not worth it.  I would not suggest Pattern to anyone.  If you want to sell on Etsy, keep it an Etsy shop and don't add Pattern to the mix.

I am still working on my Weebly store, it has a long way to go and I think the template I picked is quite ugly LOL  Yes, I have a lot of work to do!  But , the import of items to Weebly was very easy and details and whatnot transferred over well.  I tried a Shopify store months ago and the transfer happened, but I was forced to re-type tons of stuff.  I let that entire idea die :)

So, I figure another month or so and my fauxshowart.com store will be alive and well.  It will probably take a century to generate my first sale, but it's a chance I'm willing to take and it gives me comfort knowing my items, being found in a Google or Bing search, are not going to be affected by Etsy meddling with search algorithms within their domain.  I kept saying I wasn't going to list one more item to Etsy, but I just listed 15 items this weekend and I need to stop doing it.  I need to walk away.  Yes, my store will remain open, but new items will not be added.

Have a good day!