Etsy is somehow being even worse, do not click etsy ads

avaantares:

three–rings:

plushmayhem:

Etsy is now forcing shop owners to be part of their ads. We can not opt out.

To anyone who buys from etsy: DO NOT EVER CLICK THEIR ADS

They are rolling out a program where if you get a sale from an ad they put out, they’re taking 12-15% of the profit(probably on top of the like, 5%ish+ they already take). Even worse, if you have clicked an Etsy ad in the last 30 days ANYONE YOU BUY FROM ON ETSY IN THAT PERIOD WILL BE BILLED THAT FEE. 

So please, if you see an ad for something you like off etsy, do not click it. Just go on etsy and search for it.

This is somehow worse than what storenvy used to pull. 

Please go directly through an artist or see if they have their own storefront (I use bigcartel) instead of purchasing off etsy. And if you must, just please, please, never click an etsy ad.

Hey I opened my etsy shop back up after years to destash some stuff and make a little extra money and so I ran smack into this myself.  DO NOT CLICK ETSY ADS to buy something.  It charges the seller a huge fee that that did not expect or agree to.  In my case it was pretty much large enough to eat all my profit.  The only way to fight against this is to increase all your prices a lot in case anyone buys your stuff after clicking on an ad, therefore driving all prices up. 

And it’s not 12-15% of the profit, it’s 12-15% of the PRICE.  There’s no way Etsy knows the cost of the actual item before profit.  So if you price your wares with 15% profit for yourself, congrats you’ve lost money on the transaction. 

Just a reminder for holiday season and in general.

Let me break this down with actual numbers:

Etsy charges the following fees on every single item sold (and they stack):

  • $0.20 listing fee per item (that’s per individual item in a listing, so if I sell 10 stickers from the same listing, that’s $2.00 in fees)
  • 6.5% of total purchase price
  • 6.5% of shipping (this is DEADLY on international purchases. I’ve had to stop shipping some items internationally because Etsy’s cut of shipping alone was more than the price of the item!)
  • 2.9% + $0.30 of all transactions for credit card processing
  • 15% of sale price and shipping for all sales to a shopper who clicked on an ad – this percentage only drops to 12% once you cross a threshold of $10K in sales in one year (which most sellers don’t). THERE IS NO OPT-OUT for sellers, and no way to control what products Etsy chooses to feature in ads.

So how does that shake out in actual cost? Here’s an example:

Let’s say I make a handcrafted item for $15 in materials, sell it on Etsy for $35, and it costs $8 to ship – not bad, right? On the surface, it looks like I’m making $20 for the time and labor I put in to make the thing.

Except right off the top, Etsy skims $4.26 in base fees from that transaction. Etsy’s free shipping guarantee (which technically has an opt-out, but they penalize sellers heavily in search results for not offering it) kicks in at $35, so that makes me responsible for the shipping costs – now I’m down another $8. If the buyer clicked on an ad, that’s $6.45 on top of listing/processing/shipping fees. Now I’m potentially paying up to $16.20 in fees and shipping for that sale.

That leaves me, the designer and craftsperson, making only $3.80 on a handmade item that sells for $35.

My time and labor should be worth more than a Starbucks drink, y'all.

And that’s before you get to Etsy’s predatory sale structuring, or their paywall-locked “Etsy Plus” features, or the way they take over your credit card processing once your account is linked (I can’t use my Square account for point-of-sale card processing without Etsy charging all of these fees, even on sales I make in person at craft fairs)… Basically, Etsy hides fees at every level of the sale process and is essentially nickel-and-diming small businesses and hobbyists to death.

We all know Etsy is garbage – but the unfortunate truth is that a lot of people choose to shop there for handmade and niche goods, and buyers are often reluctant to purchase from an independent website without big-name purchase protection. Everyone’s afraid of being scammed, so they flock to giants like Etsy and Amazon and eBay for their satisfaction guarantees (even when the price of customer dissatisfaction comes straight out of sellers’ bank accounts).

As sellers, our only recourse is to pass the exorbitant fees on to the buyer, which 1) prices us out of much of our target market, and 2) annoys shoppers (many of whom have come to expect mass-market Walmart prices rather than handmade boutique goods) into complaining about how expensive everything in our shop is. You wouldn’t believe how many “I love this but you’re charging too much” comments I’ve gotten. My dude, I can’t charge less. I have listings that literally only net me a profit of 54 cents per item, and I can’t live on that.

All this to say: Please, PLEASE do not click on Etsy ads. If you want to look at an item you saw in an ad, search for it by name/description from the Etsy site (and you may find more things you’re interested in that way, anyway). If you do accidentally click on an ad, go to your address bar and remove everything after the first “?” in the URL and reload to turn off link tracking, and delete any Etsy browser cookies before making a purchase.

And if the seller you’re interested in has a storefront that’s not on Etsy, consider buying items from there instead. It might turn out to be cheaper than buying the item on Etsy, and even if it isn’t, you can feel better about the purchase knowing that more of the price is going to the person who made the item rather than into Etsy’s pockets.

Reblogged from TEMPLE BETH DISCOURSE

manicbones:

sadiepickles:

“Don’t use your mental illness as an excuse” means “Change your behavior, apologize, and do better next time.” 

“Don’t use your mental illness as an excuse” DOES NOT mean “Your symptoms are your fault, your disorder is not even an explanation, and you are a bad person if you behave less than neurotypical”

it’s totally possible to have healthy, meaningful relationships no matter your diagnosis, but that means taking responsibility for your actions, finding diverse support systems, and doing the work when you’re stable to make sure you and everyone who cares about you will be okay in a crisis. don’t perpetuate cycles of trauma. you have the power to build a healthier life and a healthier world.

Reblogged from Poems & Words
Reblogged from

throwaninkpot:

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

—

Ephesians 4:29 (ESV)

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[Image description: Two small figures of Will Smith are set opposite of each other on a white background, gesturing to a wall of red text between them. The text reads, “THIS APPLIES TO RACIAL, SEXUAL, ETHNIC, AND GENDERED SLURS. IF YOU’RE A CHRISTIAN WHO USES SLURS OF ANY KIND, THAT’S BAD. STOP IT.” End image description.]

fedis-coffee:

Ok but why is body positivity so focused on telling people that they’re beautiful, rather than telling them that beauty is not the highest achievement for human beings?

lastoneout:
“ rosered3:
“ imfemalewarrior:
“ irondad-not-ironsad:
“ aurora-nerin:
“ tea-rabbits:
“ ultimate-science-nerd:
“ positivelyqueerace:
“ dreamsrainandwitchythings:
“ intp-again:
“ muslimintp-1999-girl:
“ asexualchristian:
“...

lastoneout:

rosered3:

imfemalewarrior:

irondad-not-ironsad:

aurora-nerin:

tea-rabbits:

ultimate-science-nerd:

positivelyqueerace:

dreamsrainandwitchythings:

intp-again:

muslimintp-1999-girl:

asexualchristian:

mentalmentalhealth:

girlwhorpsalot:

I needed this.

Thank you to all the people who posted this so I ended up seeing it. I really needed this right now. Thank you!

Yeah… Not gonna lie… I cried…

We need more people like this

Goddamn it stop making me feel human

The therapist I wanna be.

Text in the image:

“I’m a therapist and keep this poster in my waiting room, apparently it’s saved a few lives.”

I don’t like the phrase “a cry for help.” I just don’t like how it sounds. When somebody says to me, “I’m thinking about suicide. I have a plan: I just need a reason not to do it,” the last thing I see is helplessness.

I think your depression has been beating you up for years. It’s called you ugly, and stupid, and pathetic, and a failure, for so long that you’ve forgotten that it’s wrong. You don’t see any good in yourself, and you don’t have any hope.

But still here you are: you’ve come over to me, banged on my door and said, “HEY! Staying alive is REALLY HARD right now! Just give me something to fight with! I don’t care if it’s a stick! Give me a stick and I can stay alive!”

How is that helpless? I think that’s incredible. You’re like a marine: trapped for years behind enemy lines. Your gun has been taken away, you’re out of ammo, you’re malnourished, and you’ve probably caught some kind of jungle virus that’s making you hallucinate giant spiders.

And you’re still just going, “GIVE ME A STICK. I’M NOT DYING OUT HERE.”
“A cry for help” makes it sound like I’m supposed to take pity on you, but you don’t need my pity. This isn’t pathetic. This is the will to survive. This is how humans lived long enough to become the dominant species.

With NO hope, running on NOTHING, you’re ready to cut through a hundred miles of hostile jungle with nothing but a stick, if that’s what it takes to get to safety.

All I’m doing is handing out sticks.

You’re the one saying alive.

I legit cried at this. I’ve needed to hear it put this way. Bless this post.

Every time I see this post I stop to read the whole image. It always helps — even on the good days.

Because it wasn’t weakness. It wasn’t shameful to seek help. It wasn’t pathetic to “cry for help”. I was looking for a stick, be that from myself or from someone else. I was trying to find a way out. I was trying to heal myself.

this is fuckin incredible. 

I’m sorry if I repost to many of these, but if it could be someone’s “stick” then it’s worth it

For anyone that needs to read this today. 

-FemaleWarrior, She/They 

image

They also have this one and I think quite a few others but these two I keep on my phone and pull up on my bad days.

Text in the second image:

“Why are you so lazy?”

But you’re not lazy. Lazy is when you shrug things off because you can’t summon up the give-a-damn. When you’re curled up tight on your chair, at your desk, alone and grey and desperately wishing that you had your life in order, that you did all those things that you had to do, that it didn’t feel like breaking rocks just to feed and clothe yourself and get some sleep, that’s not lazy.

People don’t understand. You tell them “It’s Hard.” They tell you, “No it isn’t. You’re just lazy.”

You start to wonder if they’re right. Is breaking those rocks easy for everyone else? Are they that much stronger than you? They don’t look like they’re struggling. “Just try harder,” they say. But you’re trying. It’s not working. Breaking boulders in your path until you’re spent isn’t lazy, and you do it day after day.

You’re not lazy. Most people don’t have those rocks to break.They don’t even know what it’s like to have to break rocks to get things done. They don’t understand how hard you have to work, and how hopeless you feel, when you try and fail to do what they do easily. Things hard harder for you, they really are. And if those people had to deal with your problems they wouldn’t be doing any better.

You’re not lazy. You’re not weak. You’re fighting hard. I guess I just want you to know that I know that.”

End image text

batmanofficial:

“All this emphasis upon black man and white, does emphasize something which is here, but it emphasizes, or perhaps exaggerates it, and therefore makes us put people together in groups which they ought not to be in. I have more in common with a black scholar than I have with a white man who is against scholarship. And you have more in common with a white author than you have with someone who is against all literature. So why must we always concentrate on color, or religion, or this? There are other ways of connecting men.

I’ll tell you this. When I left this country in 1948, I left this country for one reason only, one reason… I didn’t care where I went. I might’ve gone to Hong Kong, I might have gone to Timbuktu. I ended up in Paris, on the streets of Paris, with 40 dollars in my pocket and the theory that nothing worse could happen to me there than had already happened to me here. You talk about making it as a writer by yourself, you have to be able then to turn up all the antennae by which you live, because once you turn your back on this society, you may die. You may die. And it’s very hard to sit at a typewriter, and concentrate on that, if you are afraid of the world around you. The years I lived in Paris did one thing for me: they released me from that particular social terror, which was not the paranoia of my own mind, but a real social danger visible in the face of every cop, every boss, everybody. I don’t know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only include what they feel from that state of their institutions. I don’t know if white Christians hate N****** or not, but I know we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation. It means I can’t afford to trust most white Christians and I certainly cannot trust the Christian church. I don’t know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn’t matter, but I know I’m not in their unions. I don’t know if the Real Estate Lobby has anything against black people, but I know the Real Estate Lobby is keeping me in the ghetto. I don’t know if the board of education hates black people, but I know the textbooks they give my children to read, and the schools that we have to go to. Now, this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children, on some idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.”

Stream “I am Not Your Negro” Directed by Raoul Peck (2017) On Netflix

nerdycatholic:

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Since I’ve been getting so many of these lately, I thought I’d share!

If you’re pro-choice because of an experience you or someone else has had, that experience and the feelings that come from it are valid! I’d love to have a meaningful discussion about our different experiences and choices.

My belief in the right to life for all human beings, however, comes from scientific, empirical data that doesn’t change.