… 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.
How do we make noise? Seriously I would love to but where do I complain? I also have serious concerns that these new “premium paid” options are basically Etsy saying “If you don’t go premium, we wont give you any exposure.” You know, basically like Facebook did with business pages.
C.A. Jacobs
C.A. Jacobs 