An Open Letter To Etsy Admin

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To whom it may concern,
Sorry it took so long to get back to you I had to search so many forum posts to find what you might be asking about.
First thank you for contacting me about this. And thanks for all your efforts in trying to bring the issue to some sort of workable conclusion. All I wish for, is that Etsy gets better and other sellers are happy and well informed, as many like my self, are serious about our businesses and their continued success. And it is very difficult to make a plan B if you have no way to know how plan A failed.

I'm not sure exactly which forum post you're referring to. I have tried to keep a record of most of them but have also been busy formulating my plan B. Which ever post you are referring to I'm pretty sure it was a result of trying to find the answers to my own questions, which are:

Was it ever "promised" or "guaranteed" that each of our items would reach the front page when renewed or relisted?
and
What constitutes a promise or guarantee in this type of business arrangement?


Two areas of concern which relate to your question and mine are outlined here for your consideration.

When a person signs up for a new account they cannot complete the process until agreeing to terms of use. In a perfect world everyone would be serious and actually read the terms of use but they don't, many just click the button.

When I sign up for any account I definitely read the TOU as I consider myself to be a professional and want to understand all the facts. And I'm sure any other serious business person would do the same.

So after reading the terms of use,and hoping that I understand them all, I would like to know more, so there is a menu bar on the left hand side providing much of the pertinent information I would be interested in.

"Selling Faq" which is located in that menu would be a first stop for me.

Selling FAQ »
info about setting up shop here

I would read every topic I would want to be informed about.

And naturally I would want to know how relisting and renewing work so would probably read every word until I understood thouroughly.

Renewing an Item



What does renewing mean?
Renewing a listing means you're restarting its life on Etsy. It will be given a new listing date and a new expiration date four months from the date of the renewal. It will also be sent to the top of your shop and appear in Etsy shopping features just as if it was a new listing.

**What exactly are the "Etsy shopping features" referred to here? I would think the clickable scrolling pictures of newly listed items on the buyers landing page would be considered a shopping feature.**

Down further on the page


I would find:

Becoming an Etsy Seller

Help! I need ideas for improving and promoting my shop; got any suggestions?
There are many resources on Etsy for ideas and help with promoting your shop:

One of the links under that heading is to this article:

* The Storque: "I Heart Marketing My Etsy Shop and You Will, Too!" article series
http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/i-heart-marketing-my-etsy-shop-and-you-will-too-part-2-18/

The author of this article advises the following

"...1. List a new item each day. If you don’t have a new item to list, relist an old item. Every time you list an item, it cycles through on the homepage and in the “Time Machine." New items also show up on the first page of a search. For example, I make a shirt about zombies. If I list a zombie shirt every day, when someone searches for the word, “zombie,” I am always on the first page of results. Sweet! Listing a new item only costs 20 cents. You can’t go wrong with spending 20 or 40 cents a day."

NOTE
This information has since been changed it now says:

1. List a new item each day. If you don’t have a new item to list, relist an old item. When you list an item, it has a chance of cycling through on the homepage and in the “Time Machine." New items also show up closer to the top of chronologically ordered search results. For example, I make a shirt about zombies. If I list a zombie shirt every day, when someone searches for the word, “zombie,” I have a chance of being on the first page of results. Sweet! Listing a new item only costs 20 cents. You can’t go wrong with spending 20 or 40 cents a day. [Note: Admin edited this post to reflect the growth of the marketplace. Relisting or renewing does not guarantee your item will show up on at the very top of the heap, since there are so many items being listed at once! See this post for more info.]

The list of links to selling tips continues:


...* EtsyWiki: Selling Tips from Etsy members
members~http://etsywiki.com/index.php?title=Selling:_Tips

which links to this forum thread:

NEWBIES ~ Here's a few Etsy tips for you
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5021995

which says this in the second paragraph:

...So, here are a few tips about etsy:
* Each time you list an item, it screens across the bottom of the etsy homepage, and it also appears in the "time machine" functions. It also raises you to the top of the category list in whatever top-level category you've chosen for your item (which a viewer sees when she or he chooses that category under the the "sell" page). For these reasons, it's best to space out your listings instead of posting them all at once when they're ready. Posting once or twice a day if you can is great. Of course, when you're first setting up shop you need to post more frequently than you would normally, but once you have at least enough items to spill onto a second page you can slow down....

* The Forums: Business & Marketing Forum
* The Forums: Critiques Forum

Whether or not anyone else would stumble on this information, or want to ferret it out, is a different story. The fact is it is there if anyone wants to find it.

Another item at issue would be this:
Chad Dickersons tech updates, September 24, 2008 states

"...So, is renewing for exposure worth the $0.20 if you don't land on page one each time? Ultimately, that's up to each seller to decide. While your item may not appear on page one for jewelry, it may be on page one of specific search for blue flower earrings or steampunk cufflinks or a specific subcategory page (like necklace within the jewelry category). Also, items still appear in other browsing features that function independently of the batch loading system, such as Time Machine 2, Recently Listed on the home page and Shop Local. "


**items still appear in other browsing features that function independently of the batch loading system, such as Time Machine 2, Recently Listed on the home page and Shop Local.**

Was there a change made causing the batch uploading to affect these features which it supposedly didn't affect previously? If so when was the change made? and Could you have informed us any earlier?

As stated previously I only want the best for Etsy. I am grateful everyday for Etsy and hope this whole thing turns into to be a win win situation for all of us.

Sincerely,
Charlotte