When I was reading this which I followed from Splitcoaststampers I thought of Craft Nerd. Geez I always thought Etsy was for home made goods by regular people but now it is open to actual shops so the small Etsy shop is competing with big manufacturers....so not fair.
Blog PostFrom the blog article:
Aside from the issue that independent designers are now competing with full-scale production operations, there is the issue of sheer volume -- Etsy now has over 1 million shops. When a seller is competing in a sea of 999,999 other shops, the odds aren't good.
Now that Etsy shoppers have the option of buying from middlemen selling three dollar watches, finding that handmade wrap watch you're looking for will undoubtedly be more difficult. From the seller's perspective, no matter how many times they change their "tags," SEO or refresh their storefront, the traffic just isn't going to come like it used to.
So what actually happened?
In the fall of 2013, Etsy shifted their loyalty from the maker to the shareholder as it made plans to further scale its business model. How did this change things?
Because Etsy's policy changes happened at the maker's expense, many of the people who were once making a living off of their shops are now seeing a fraction of the sales. The difference between Etsy, and let's say, Wal-Mart just got a whole lot smaller. At the core, Etsy changed its mission. No longer is it a website for makers of one-of-a-kind, original goods. Instead, it has become yet another website for the mass-produced and cheaply made goods that satisfy our insatiable culture of mindless consumption.
