So they finally closed the Etsy Forum thread where so many people were commenting and voicing their opinions about the Feedback situation. And when you consider the amount of comments and also consider how many people on the venue are still afraid to voice their opinions for fear of being muted or having their shop closed down or perhaps just don't want to rock the boat.... it is evident that there are a large amount of unhappy campers rustling about in Etsy land. ( But hey it is "Etsy-ville" pardner and they can do whatever they want there. And you either like it or you leave. )
I am actually surprised that they left the thread up and running as long as they did even if it was kind of buried in the midst of all the chatter. I still give them kudos for letting the thread live for awhile and for at least acting like they care about the seller concerns being posted. I mean you take a creative bunch like this and you take away one of their forms of expression (two way feed-back)....and you tell them that you did it because that is what they asked for. How is this going to end well? But I give them props for their attempts at damage control so far.
I was there in the eBay forums when the similar situation went down and the "tools" were out in full force. To me it was absolutely disgusting the way the bosses on that venue allowed their employees to treat the eBay sellers who came to the forums and voiced their opinions. These were people who had suddenly had the rug pulled out from under their feet, they were in shock and truly could not believe this was happening. Then when they went to the forums the tools were deleting comments almost as fast as they were posted. The tools were rude arrogant mean and above all
I guess the one word I would use to describe the situation would be "HARSH"....they were totally harsh and it was evident that they were encouraged to act in this manner.
So that was when the exodus began and people scattered all over. The way they were treated in those forums made so many people twice as angry about the changes that were eminent. The way they handled that situation was in my mind a humongous clusterfrack
plain and simple.
Both sites will still keep rolling along. They will lose people and those people will find other venues that they never may have even heard of or may have never even searched for had changes like these not occurred in a place they thought they were content with.
If eBay had never done this I myself would have never discovered venues like Etsy, Zibbet, Artfire etc. And I am glad I found those other venues and have met so many amazing people in these other places. And now many are wondering "Where to next....should I stay or should I go? " And this is kind of where I myself am at today.
I buy and sale a bit on eBay.
I have my Etsy shop open and kind of thought twice before renewing a few listings a couple of days ago. But I still love the venue and the good things you can still find there.
I have an Artfire shop that I opened quite awhile back and never did anything at all with it. Kind of an experiment of what happens if you open a shop and don't work on your listings or pics or promote it. And I have surprisingly sold a few things there without doing anything. (But just a few LOL!)
I have the Zibbet shop where most of my items are listed. But in all honesty...I haven't been doing much there lately as far as promoting my shop or items there. I am patiently waiting the "Rebuild" to launch and until it does I'm just gonna let it sit and see what happens. I still believe this site has major potential. Everyone is so nice and supportive and truly helpful there. You can ask a question and the head honchos will actually answer it themselves. They are still a very hands on group. You can add links to your other venues there. Which to me is one of the biggest reasons that time may be well spent to set up shop there.
And speaking of time.... if I had a lot of time I would spend most of it setting up a personal web site with a shopping cart. Spend some time promoting the venues that you are currently on that you like and that get you seen in the search engines and then spend time getting those people to find your own personal web site. Because let's face it..... all of these venues once started off small time with good intentions and hopes of where they wanted to end up. But the more successful a venue becomes means the odds are that eventually the venture capitalists will end up being the ones running the venue and making all of the rules.
The only chance you have of always resting assured that the rules will never change and that your business is in the hands of someone you can always trust.... is to simply keep it in your own hands on your own web site. It's a lot of work and I haven't yet found the time to start another web site but am now seriously thinking about it. I'm thinking for example ....if you spend 4 hours a day promoting someone else's venue that you are selling on..... why not at least split that in half and spend a couple of those hours setting up and promoting your own venue? And in the same manner that so many sellers on these venues belong to groups and teams promoting shops within those venues..... you could just as easily spend at least half that time promoting each others personal websites .
And that's just kind of where I'm at right now :) Hope ya'll are enjoying the weekend !
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