Recently the Etsy platform has undergone some fairly substantial changes to the way sales as a whole work. We at Wayfarer Printing wanted to take some time to talk about the issues we see on the platform as an explanation for those who might have heard something and been confused. Wayfarer Printing began as an Etsy shop, and still receives a large percentage of our sales from there. WayfarerPrinting.com started out of a desire to have more control over our brand, along with a way to help keep fees in check so we can deliver the lowest prices. However, Etsy has taken steps to make this more difficult over time.
Recently, Etsy announced that they're going to move to a new advertising model. Traditionally online advertising works with a pay-per-click (PPC) model, where advertisers pay when someone clicks on the link to visit a page. Etsy is moving sellers to a model based on sales that result from the ads they create. The new model allows sellers to pay only for ads that successfully generate a sale. To make this profitable for Etsy, they're planning on charging a 15% fee on any order that originates from one of their ads within 30 days of a user clicking on the ad. Under this system, a potential buyer could click on an advertisement on the first of the month and decide not to purchase the product. They could then come back on the last day of the month, even directly to a product, and the seller would still be charged for the ad. This policy will be mandatory for any shop that makes more than $10,000 per year; there's no way to opt-out. A 15% cut of a sale may be larger than most sellers spend in advertising across all their products resulting in a lower income per product sold. However, this isn't the only change to the platform making things more difficult for sellers.
Changes in the advertising policy come after several changes to the fee structure, making Etsy more challenging for sellers to make a profit. In July of 2019, Etsy increased the seller fee from 3.5% to 5% in addition to the $0.20 listing fee they charge on every item sold. The 5% now also applies to shipping fees. Another significant change to the platform occurred when Etsy declared that shops that did not offer free shipping for orders over $35 would be de-prioritized in search results. Placement in search results is often critical to success forcing sellers into offering free shipping or have difficulty surfacing in search results. The free shipping requirement forces sellers into either increasing prices or eating the cost of shipping since someone is always going to pay to get products to customers.
At Wayfarer Printing, we chose to compensate by increasing the prices of our items due to the high cost of shipping our organizers. Now a typical organizer on our Etsy store previously costing $24.99 now costs $34.99. On a single item purchase adding the cost of shipping isn't a dealbreaker. However, when a customer purchases multiple items and that extra $10 is added to every item, whereas before the shipping was a flat rate. Etsy has no way to compensate for this other than manually applying codes which we make available in our shop description. Unfortunately, these are percentage-based and often fall short of the actual increase making things more expensive on Etsy. Charging shipping as part of the item also creates an issue with sales tax in the state of California. Typically, shipping is not subject to sales tax, further increasing the price. As if the fee and shipping changes haven't made Etsy more difficult, Etsy has made other policy changes to make things harder on sellers.
In November 2019, Etsy changed its Order Dissatisfaction Rate (ODR) policy to make things more difficult for sellers. Etsy is taking action against shops based on star ratings received on orders. If you receive more than one or two one or two-star reviews per 100 orders, they're putting shops on probation to boast their satisfaction rating. Etsy can now potentially close a shop due to an unhappy customer that had a lost package or any number of issues outside of the seller's control. Sellers can begin to have problems with an ODR rate of 1% for issues often beyond their control. This policy turns Etsy into the corporate overlord many sellers are hoping to avoid.
The policy changes on Etsy have led to several changes in Wayfarer Printing's policy towards Etsy. The most apparent is the price differences on our Etsy site. All products on Etsy now have the cost of shipping included in the item, making them appear high priced, but at least there's free shipping. The second change an increase to the item price to compensate for the seller's fees along with the mandatory advertising. When looked at as a whole, buying directly from WayfarerPrinting.com will always enable customers to get the best price while still getting the highest level of customer service.
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