Made a Marketing Decision

[Dave Hoskins]

On December 31st, or maybe a bit before, I will be leaving Etsy. All online sales will be done on my main website, instead of providing a link to the Etsy storefront. A fair amount of my traffic to the Etsy site comes from the other site, so keep a middleman? Etsy is also slowly gearing their thinking that everything that is being sold on there is small and lightweight and can be stuffed in a padded envelope for shipping. Not so with wood bowls, platters, etc.. I once talked to a rep at Etsy about their free shipping policies they almost force you into and it was like talking to a wall. So, it will be bye bye Etsy. I'll be working on the the other site setting up the eCommerce part of it and getting rid of the Etsy links and all that stuff. Wise decision? Me thinks so. Worse to worse is go back, but I really hate, despise, detest backtracking.

 

[Darren Wright]

Do they have any analytics to show if you are getting traffic from them to your site? Just wonder if doing maybe some small items that fit their trend would get you traffic still, use it to your advantage.

 

[Dave Hoskins]

Etsy has analytics as well as my website. The traffic level on my site is a whole lot better. A lot of traffic that Etsy shows does come from my website. That's another reason I am making the change.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

Be interested to hear what you end up setting up.

BTW your domains ssl cert seems to be for your hosting provider as I got an SSL alert trying to go there and looking at the certificate it says if's for domains:

• vivitiapp.com
• *.vivitiapp.com

I can get there without the https fine of course.

If you're looking at paypal, I'd suggest having a separate bank account just for them that you drain the funds out of on a regular basis. They're not as difficult to work with as they used to be, but I still don't trust them very far for the most part.

 

[Rennie Heuer]

I have pared down my Etsy offerings for exactly the same reasons. They cater to the padded envelope crowd selling cheap. I’m down to only one item I sell around Christmas. The store is empty the rest of the year. Between the free shipping and commissions and fees it’s just getting to be too much. I have a friend that sells seed packets on Etsy, he does well. Most of my work now comes from past customers, referrals and CustomMade. This site, CustomMade, caters more towards larger handmade items, but their commission rates are rather high and their website is a bit clumsy, especially the customer communication section.

 

[Dave Hoskins]

Not sure what to say on that Ryan. I'll look into it, of course. See what I can see. In the meantime, more coffee!

 

[Leo Voisine]

It's not just ETSY or EBAY or whatever other place you can think of. They are ALL the same.

Start out as a small company. Mom and Pop shop if you will.

Grow a little - hire an EGGSPURT or two, grow a bit more - get more EGGSPURTS - more bigger - more bigger - lose control of the Mom and Pop - now it's a CEO. Board room - EGGSPURTS in board room talking market share and profit and market potential.

Customer? WHO?

What happened to sears?

We can make a REALLY REALLY long list of this repeat history.

I have absolutely no ill feelings about making profit, or even growing a little. BUT, when companies grow to a point - they loose their efficacy.

I wonder about other countries. I wonder about Bosch, VW, Toyota, Volvo and others.

OK - that's my rant.

 

[Dave Hoskins]

It's the same ol' story, ain't it? Like Direct TV. Was a nice company to deal with until they became part of AT&T. By the way, I HATE,HATE,HATE AT&T. Now, back to drinking coffee.

 

[Leo Voisine]

Ohhhh - coffee sounds goooooddd

 

[Ted Calver]

Had the same issue with your site as Ryan.

 

[Jim DeLaney]

Had the same issue with your site as Ryan.
View attachment 119068

I got a similar warning using MS Edge, with Trend Micro AV. Certainly not a message you'd want prospective customers to encounter.

 

[Darren Wright]

Same here. You may have an option if they provide you a cpanel to renew ssl certs, otherwise your host should be able to help you get the ssl cert corrected.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

You may have an option if they provide you a cpanel to renew ssl certs, otherwise your host should be able to help you get the ssl cert corrected.

I don't think it's an expiration issue, I think it's a domain mismatch issue. It looks like the cert is for his hosting provider / content builder (main hosting looks to be through BRAVEHOST.COM based on whois data but I think vivitiapp.com is the content builder...).

Anyway your hosting service should be able to help sort it out pretty easily.

Mostly just wanted to drop the FYI so you knew to talk to them AFTER COFFEE!

 

[Dave Hoskins]

OK. Back from running errands and tamales. Gonna see what I can do on this in a bit. After some lemonade.

 

[Dave Hoskins]

I gather all of this is referring to a SSL Certificate that you purchase for the domain. Is I right or wrong? All the tech guys tell me, tell me, tell me.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

I gather all of this is referring to a SSL Certificate that you purchase for the domain

The general case answer is "yes" and the specific case is "yes" but the problem is that the cert is not in fact for your domain. There are questions about how and why the certificate is being presented for your domain I suspect only your hosting company can answer

Here's a snapshot of what I see about the certificate if that's helpful in communicating with them (although I'd hope they can iron it out for you pretty quickly).

 

[Dave Hoskins]

OK. I have not paid for the ssl certificates as of yet. Which might be the issue. I'll take care of it after Christmas.

 

[Dean Willson]

Thanks. Having more control over your sales and customer experience can be super rewarding.

 

[Mike Stafford]

Dave, I left ETSY for some of the same reasons. I became quite angry when they decided to advertise my items and then take a larger cut of the sale because they told me it sold because of their advertisement. I also became quite angry when they decided to take the same percentage of the cost of shipping as they did for the sale of a product. They pushed the free shipping because they knew the price shop keepers would be charging would increase and they would get a larger part of the sale. So they went ahead and screwed those of us that did not provide free shipping. They even claimed that repeat customers were driven to my shop by their ads. If someone clicks on a picture of your product they take credit for any item that someone buys and take a larger cut of the sale.

They did this without my permission and even violated their own rules which stated that such actions would not be taken without the shop keeper's permission or to shops with sales below a certain monetary threshold. I never came close to reaching that threshold. I had to jump through hoops to get them to stop taking this money from my sales. Of course they did not refund the money they took from my sales in violation of their own policies.

My sales came about directly because of my wife's activities in the needlepoint community. She is well known and her posts on various needlepoint websites and groups in Facebook were responsible for every one of my sales.

 

[Chuck Ellis]

I dropped ETSY last year when I went back to the farmer's market...I dropped my stand along website too... it was costing more than I was making... thinking about dropping out of the farmer's market too and going back to either ETSY or a stand alone website. not sure which will work best for me and if I really want to go to all that trouble... I could put my bowls and mills back in the museum market place locally, but sales tend to be very slow there as well.