#fuck etsy and their fees

[emleelion]

These big bois are gonna be on sale soon! Very limited run of only 4 and the only large deadpool ducks I've ever made! Trying to save up money for my working holiday to australia next month!

[carlyraejepsans]

.....I don't want to make an etsy. this is stupid. can't i just handle this all by myself like i do with commissions

[theexorcistiii]

Using Etsy is my least favorite part of selling on Etsy 👎

[iron-bullogna]

oh also do any of my followers collect crystals or minerals? im a stone sculptor and have a lot of pieces I need to offload before I move to the pnw later this year and idk was thinking of posting some here

[fr0stbearer]

my only evil dead merch are stickers, one button pin i asked to make in an anime convention, and a big print on my wall 💀 if i get my hands on some acrylic charm idk i will explode

[fuckyeahpaperco]

𝑷𝒆𝒅𝒓𝒐 𝑷𝒂𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝑺𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑾𝒂𝒔𝒉𝒊 𝑻𝒂𝒑𝒆

I'm so excited to finally be able to launch these adorable sticky notes and washi tape! These are small batch prints so stock is very limited. If I'm lucky enough to sell them out, I'm not 100% sure I’d be able to restock before in time for Christmas after factoring in shipping times 🎄

They are now available for purchase at my shop on Etsy - as always, I would be very grateful if you could shop via the link in my bio or below as I get a discount on processing fees.

🗒️ Shop Pedro sticky notes & washi tape ✂️

Eagle-eyed Narcos girlies will probably spot the no context Javier Pena notebook - currently in development! These are stamped by hand so I'm still tweaking my process. I'm hoping these will be available for purchase soon 🗒️

P.S. Fuck Yeah Paper Co. is now on Instagram! It's still pretty sparse but please do give me a follow ✌🏼

[genderqueerdykes]

Have you heard about the thing where Etsy is going to change its terms so people can't participate in class action lawsuits against them?

thank you for sending an ask about this, i wanted to make a public post about it but couldn't think of what to write

yes i did! they're massive pieces of shit! i'm in the process of shutting down my shop- I have been running this store for a year now and it has been a nightmare the entire time. from the start, i have been dealing with endless bullshit on etsy's behalf. for the first 3 month of owning my store i had to wait for every single payment to clear, well over the projected amount of time they would tell me it was supposed to take.

i was in desperate need of money to pay rent and not be homeless during that time and etsy ended up not even coming close to paying for my necessities because of how steep their fees are, how deep the cuts they take, and how expensive shipping labels still are on their platform. they cut you a deal, but you're still paying something to the tune of nearly $4 for each package. that adds up so fast.

etsy is an absolutely horrendous site to vend for. people have been saying this for years, but it's only continuing to get worse. etsy is genuinely abusive to its shop owners. did you know they won't give you a 1099 form to file your taxes in the US unless you've made more than $25,000 in a year on their platform? i am aware that etsy handles a lot of taxes for you but fuck them for this.

they do not care about a single person who works for them. they are horrible. we are shutting down our etsy store and either vending our art IRL only, or migrating to ko-fi for a digital storefront for our art. this is the final nail in the coffin. let etsy die. fuck them for treating the people who built them like this

have a good day, thanks for reaching out, we appreciate it a lot! we're going to be closing our store as soon as we're able to refund some orders we weren't able to complete, due to etsy not letting us generate shipping labels for those orders, and issues with being able to afford materials.

[lauronk]

hi @freetobeyouandmichi-me love, thanks for the ask!

in my happy little streetlights world, by the time ellie miller is 18 and they’re celebrating christmas, they’ve got four years of figuring out traditions and they’ve got it pretty settled by now:

they do Christmas Eve dinner with tommy and maria and open their gifts to each other

maria (lovingly) coerces everyone into pajama sets for a picture. She got ellie’s size wrong the first year - she got the correct size but ellie likes them a size bigger for extra coziness - but has made sure to get it right every year since

(this is the year maria is pregnant with TJ, which they’d shared before Thanksgiving)

Christmas morning is just ellie and joel. He drinks coffee and she drinks cocoa (with an absurd amount of marshmallows), even when it’s 75 degrees out, because texas y’all

they do stockings first, just little knickknacks and funny gifts (one time they gave each other pet rocks, which they each still have). joel gives ellie scratch offs and then tries to claim a “purchasing fee” when she wins more than $5

The first Christmas joel went a little nuts on gifts (it’s a big deal, their first Christmas, sue him) but it made ellie a little uncomfortable because a) she only had like two things for him, both of which were homemade and b) she’s never really been on the receiving end of so much positive attention at the holidays. So joel makes sure to tone it down in subsequent years even when his brain is screaming at him to spoil the fuck out of her

they do just a couple gifts for each other now. this year it’s just little useful, thoughtful things: guitar strings and good quality art pencils and silly socks.

joel gives ellie the full charcoal art set she mentioned offhand one time over the phone, and ellie gives joel a new toolbox to replace the one that finally bit the dust (and she puts some silly mushroom stickers she found on Etsy on it)

after presents, it’s movie time

ellie gave up two years ago on arguing that Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie and now she watches it without complaint (and loves it, not that she can tell him that)

joel is more tired than he can say of the first two Home Alone movies but those are ellie’s picks, so they watch and he always finds himself laughing when the Wet Bandits step on ornaments and get hit with paint cans

(he says “why the hell’d you take your shoes off?” to ellie a lot and she automatically responds with “why the hell are you dressed like a chicken?”)

they stay in their pajamas all day, the ones maria got them this year, and eat leftovers from yesterdays dinner plus whatever candy they’ve accumulated

ellie always falls asleep by the end of Muppet Christmas Carol, like clockwork, head on a pillow on joel’s lap

ellie’s on break from school till the new year, and joel takes Christmas through New Year’s Day off so he and his employees can have a break. So it’s a week of lazy pajama days, visiting other friends, just enjoying occupying the same space before life starts up in earnest again and it goes back to quick hellos and goodbyes in the morning

anyway I just had a couple thoughts about it 😅

[sheydgarden]

fair print-on-demand for artists?

i'm making this its own post for more visibility - feel free to reblog, i'm primarily looking to hear from other artists rather than from customers.

quick definition: a print-on-demand service (POD) is a company that allows you to upload your designs (that you retain full rights to) and have them printed on a variety of products - usually t-shirts & other apparel, stickers, mugs, etc. - by the company itself or a subcontractor. the key here is that you're not ordering a supply of products to sell yourself (or not) at a later date, you're offering customers the ability to go to this website and select a potential product which is then printed on demand, and the company handles all the interaction with the customer (shipping, quality & returns, etc.). because they're doing the manufacturing & shipping, they take a significant cut, but different companies have different pricing structures & some are more fair to artists in terms of profit margins than others.

TLDR: i'm looking for a new POD service to replace my Redbubble account, which i deleted after they decided to severely undercut creators (especially small artists). more details below, please read before you rec!

so the nice thing about POD is that it's passive income - you made the work, you put it up & leave it, people buy things when they want & you get a bit of money when that happens. i also - infrequently! - run an Etsy shop where i sell things i've either handmade or ordered from suppliers (mostly stickers). i get more money from that, yes, and also it's a lot more work on my end. i primarily work as a freelancer illustrator, i've started selling at (COVID cautious) in-person events again, & i'm disabled - this is why my Etsy has been empty all year.

i am very lucky to have enough of a following to be able to regularly sell all my stock when i do put it on Etsy, and (when I had an account) to have a smaller but steadier trickle of income from POD. i do not have enough of a following for it to make sense for me to order large quantities of apparel-type products & sell them myself.

it's frustrating to see that many alternatives to Redbubble (like Bonfire or Spring) have moved to a "campaign" model where you release a design in a time-limited campaign with a selling goal, aggressively promote it on social media, & then all the products (shirts, whatever) are shipped at the same time. i understand why it exists - larger batches mean lower manufacturing costs & higher profit - but for someone like me who doesn't have a massive social media following or really even a big presence now that Twitter is dying, i'm not sure it could work. for me the point is that i put it up, i leave it alone, i direct people towards my shop & the small handful of beautiful weirdos who vibe with my work can buy what they want on their own time (i adore you, weirdos! there are so many more of you than i ever expected, but i am not, as the kids say, an "influencer")

i've been researching various companies & i keep finding that Redbubble, prior to their nasty fee restructuring, seemed to have some of the fairest profit margins due to the ability to set your own pricing above the manufacturing costs. what i want to hear from other artists is where you sell & if you feel like different systems (Society6's 10%, for example, or Threadless' artist cost-setting vs. letting them manage your shop & offer discounts to move more products) work or are ripping you off.

thanks so much for reading & solidarity to all the other working artists who are struggling to stay afloat as various social media collapses & corporate greed continues to cut our opportunities in half!!! for the love of fuck just let me make things & get paid

[emilykaldwen]

Ooh, how'd you get into bookbinding? It looks really cool but I'm also intimidated.

Hi anon!

So I found bookbinding by seeing some of the binds @renegadeguild had posted and decided to do some investigating. I had seen people selling binds on Etsy (WHICH IS SUPER FUCKING ILLEGAL) and had always thought about bookbinding my own - I had watched bookbinding youtube vids via DAS Bookbinding for quite some time at this point but finding renegade helped me get into a community.

So I had a fic that I always liked to come back to read, a bunch of printer paper, some fabric, elmer's glue, and some museum board I had used for some dioramas I made. Along with some thread and a push pin.... that's how I made my first book! With materials I already have! You don't need to buy the perfect paper or proper book cloth or etc etc. You can make a book with just some things you have laying about the house. Even gluing together layers of cereal box to make book board is totally fine! I mean hell, I used some of the fake $2 craft leather from dollar tree for this last bind I just did (and honestly it worked out really well)

I already had Adobe InDesign, but plenty of people use Microsoft word. I also recommend Affinity Designer. One time fee for professional grade layout software that won't make you cry like Word does.

I have been thinking about putting together a tutorial of how I bind a book (am I avoiding writing? possible) so if this is something people are interested in? My next bind is laying out @vampire-exgirlfriend's fic, They Say I Killed You (Haunt Me Then) once she's completed that and has made any adjustments/minor edits to her story!

[spacerangersam]

I try not to be a bummer about these sorts of things but holy shit are etsy fees fucking ridiculous, they take so much from you

[frecklystars]

I need some advice, if anyone is willing 🙏✨

I purchased a La La Land screenplay from someone on Etsy, apparently signed by Ryan and Emma for an extremely affordable price. I thought "oh, there is NO WAY in HELL these are real." and then I agonized over it for a few weeks because my god I need some serotonin, and I have a little bit of spending money left, and I WOULD like a La La Land screenplay, bonus points if it really is signed by Ryan and Emma.

Finally, I bought one, reading on the seller's page that they do full refunds/returns within 14 days of the delivery. So I had nothing to lose if I ended up discovering the autographs were fake, I could just send it back and get my full refund. No shipping fees either.

Screenplay got delivered. So gorgeous, everything looks all nice and official, got a Certificate of Authenticity with matching serial numbers. I had high hopes, at first. The sharpie Ryan and Emma supposedly signed with have bled through the page, so it cannot be a reprint. But I did some research on the "Certificate of Authenticity" and it is probably fabricated. I am 99% sure. Someone could easily fake this certificate, slap on some holographic stickers they made themself, and then mimic Ryan and Emma's signatures using their own sharpies.

It says it was certified by 8FL*X institute (the * is an "i" -- I won't type the name out fully because I'm afraid it'll show up in the tumblr search results, and this guy apparently has a tumblr with a shit ton of "receipts" on him. but more on that later) and - guess what - that is not an actual institute run by multiple people. That is a website run by one (1) dude -- the very dude who sold this to me on Etsy. On the certificate, it's HIS name that is signed saying it's official. Did he witness Ryan and Emma signing this?? I have no clue. How would I know that. I don't know how this stuff works tbh but I'm pretty sure it's not real, seeing someone selling *multiple* signed scripts for just $61 each, with a lot of A list celebrities.

The holographic stickers and serial numbers seem legit, but there is no way for me to search them online to check if they're authentic. It's as if he basically said "yep these signatures are real" and signed the certificate himself. Also, if you search "8fl*x nick" on tumblr, there's a whole ton of discourse??? because he apparently leaked a screenplay for Stranger Things when he wasn't supposed to, or something??? Listen. Listen. I fucking HATE mob mentality on this hellsite; any time there's a call out post about someone, I take that shit with a grain of salt, because you don't know what's real or not, whether or not the "sources" of someone's wrongdoings are completely fabricated screenshots or not, because it's SO easy to make fake screenshots these days. but I still think it's worth mentioning here that there are existing "receipts" on this guy, bc knowing there's discourse abt this seller just in general... doesn't help me feel reassured whatsoever.

If anyone is able to figure out a way that these signatures are legit btw, that would be great. but like I said, I don't know anything about buying online autographs. Maybe there's something I can do to verify, and I just don't know it.

Anyway I debated on whether or not I should keep the screenplay, decided in the heat of a moment "ah fuck it, I wasted money", I contacted the seller and didn't mention why, I just asked for a refund without any explanation -- to my surprise, have had no trouble! He's totally willing to give me a refund without any question. Huge relief. So if I am willing, I can get a full refund and send this most-likely-not-actually-autographed screenplay back.

Except. Now... I keep thinking about it... do I actually want to give it back? I mean yes it is the smart thing to get my money back but... here's the thing. I don't own a La La Land screenplay - like, physically in my hands. I love collecting screenplays. There's a La La Land screenplay for sale online for ten bucks, but it's not the one I want, and I'm not very fond of the cover for it... I can't find another La La Land screenplay anywhere online that's as pretty as this one. There's the 2013 original version and there's the 2015 final draft version, both are really fucking good and totally different. Lots of good content. This seller put together the 2015 version, and the colors look so nice, there's photos in the front when you open it up before you get to the signed page, it's just... it's so pretty. The signatures are pretty, even if they are most likely not real, it's kind of fun to just... hope blindly that maybe, just maybe, they're real. 99% sure that they're not -- but that 1% chance is nice to think about!

So, my question: is it smarter for me to get my full refund and just settle for not owning a La La Land screenplay? Or should I keep this, despite every time I look at the signatures I feel a pang of disappointment and think to myself "ah man that's not real and I spent sixty bucks on it" ??? OR... or. or. should I return this screenplay, get my refund, and then... just .... print the screenplay myself... and make my own very pretty screenplay???

If I go that third route -- HOW do I potentially print out the entire screenplay myself? If I knew how, I could include pictures of Ryan and Emma and just put together my OWN La La Land screenplay. Oh, hell, why stop there?? Why not replace Mia's name with mine, make a whole self ship script out of it, put my own story with Sebastian? Add some drawings?? Make it look like a real screenplay. That would be such a fun project.

But... I don't own a printer and I don't know if it would cost fifty bajillion hundred thousand dollars to go to a printing shop and ask them to print up a hundred pages for me. Or... is that too big of a project to take on? Am I just being silly? ;-;

ok thank you to anyone who took the time to read this. I love u.

[dailypokemoncrochet]

I know you aren't generally making/selling patterns (valid as FUCK) but I remember you made some for your Patreon. If you still have any of them, would you ever consider selling them? Just the ones you already have?

I still have those patterns but no I'm not going to sell them anywhere. It's not worth dealing with whatever fees Etsy or Ravelry or wherever would charge plus the hassle of having to figure it out.

Also I've always maintained that my pattern notes aren't what most would expect from a published pattern in that 1) untested by other people than me, 2) no pictures, 3) mostly straightforward numbers, 4) not many guidelines for attaching/details. So I don't think they're "polished" enough to be sold outright for what I would price them at.

Plus I wouldn't want to explain stuff to people who bought the pattern and didn't understand something, which I think is not good practice for if you sell any tutorial/guides/patterns of any kind (if I bought a pattern and had a question and the creator was like "no." then I would be offended and want a refund. However, I would absolutely be the kind of creator saying "no." if someone asked me a question)

Also if I put those patterns up, the amount of people asking me for more of my patterns would increase a lot and that would irritate me.

And this is a shrinking hope, but if I ever did finish everything and manage to get official book deal(s) about patterns, I don't know how having previously sold patterns would affect that.

[friendlyloner]

Late again for a wip wednesday post, but in my defense I spent most of this week glamping in Prince Edward County with my husband to celebrate turning 40. Anyways a bold double update to make up for my tardiness.

I'm still plugging away at the Autobots logo, I'm finishing this one fueled purely by spite. The pattern is a hot mess and I am basically reinventing it as I go so I'm refusing to link the creator as I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. Space shark on the other hand, is coming along swimmingly (I'll be here all week try the veal) and it is by thelonelyseaman on etsy who deserves all the love

Pattern here: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/705555081/cant-stop-wont-stop-anxiety-cross-stitch

Gosh but 40 though! There was a hot second where I actually was thinking I needed to do some kind of friend gathering sort of deal to celebrate. Even though I hate being the centre of attention and party type things. And party planning? Get tha fuck outta here! But. It's 40. That's what you're supposed to do right? I had decided that at the very least I shouldn't have to do the work of organizing it, and husband had happily volunteered for the job if I could just put together a list of people to invite. Thank goodness for that, because as I did I realized that all but one of my good career driven lady friends were going to be out of town for work and almost everyone else has kids under 10 and probably wouldn't make it. A perfect excuse to ditch doing the thing I reluctantly thought I should do for something I actually felt excited about. A 5 day weekend away from it all in peak autumn color season.

Husband still did all the planning and found an app that connects people with RVs and trailers looking to supplement their financing to people who just want to short term rent them. Beats freezing my now elderly bones off in a tent or paying astronomical fees for an air bnb or hotel room. And campfires for all! May I also add that as a massive introvert off peak season vacations are absolutely the way to go. The worst of the tourist traps are closed leaving just the stuff that's quality enough to stay afloat year round. No waits or crowding. Bliss!

[armory-rasa]

A Breakdown Of How Shitty Etsy Is, for Both Buyers and Sellers

Alright, folks, you win, I’m doing my taxes. 😂

But in case anyone was wondering just how shitty Etsy is these days, the answer is really shitty.

Check this out, from the bottom up:

I get an order for an Ezio belt -- the customer sends me $241.00

Etsy takes the following:

3% of the total as a ‘processing fee’ ($7.48)

6.5% of the total as a ‘transaction fee’ ($13.65)

6.5% of the fucking shipping ($2.02)

12% of the total, again, because the customer once clicked on an offsite ad ($28.92)

So yeah, out of that $241.00 the customer paid, $52.07 went to Etsy and $188.93 went to me. 🙃 Oh yeah, minus the cost of actually shipping it ($31, because it was going overseas), so actually only $157.93 went to me.

(And the offsite ads fee doesn’t even mean they found my listing through offsite ads, just that they clicked on one in the past month, so there’s a cookie on their browser that Etsy takes as the greenlight to charge any sellers the offsite ads surcharge. And as someone who makes over $10k from Etsy a year, I’m not allowed to opt out of that program.)

This is utterly untenable, both for artists trying to scrape a living, and for buyers hoping to be able to afford their work. This is obscene, just absolute naked greed on Etsy’s part.

So PLEASE, for the love of god, don’t click on offsite ads (ie, if you see ads for Etsy on google, facebook, etc), and if the artist has another way for you to buy from them, DO IT. You’ll be paying less to put more money in their pocket.

(My storefront on my website, that uses WooCommerce as the back end? Charges that 3% processing fee, as is standard for credit card transactions on the internet, but that’s it.)