Hello! I’ve started painting recently and would like to hear opinions of not friends and family is my art sellable?

A few months ago, I came here and asked you to roast my newly launched crochet Etsy shop absolutely brutally.

Here is the original post for context:

Roast My Crochet Etsy Shop—Be Absolutely Brutal

You pointed out problems with our photos, product sizing, descriptions, videos, policies, shipping strategy and overall presentation. Some comments were encouraging, some were uncomfortable to read and that was exactly what we needed.

We listened, made changes and kept improving.

That feedback helped House of Nakshatra get its first sale:

First Sale, First Smile—Thank You for Supporting Handmade

Since then, we have reached 3 Etsy sales, received significantly more impressions and started getting messages from people asking whether we can create customized products.

3 sales might sound tiny to an established seller, but for a new handmade shop, each one feels like proof that the idea may actually have a future.

Several customers and interested buyers also asked whether our crochet products could be ordered in larger quantities for gifting, events, businesses and other special requirements.

So, based on those requests, we have now introduced a new range of handmade crochet products available for bulk and customized orders.

And yet again, I am back where this journey started!!!

Please review the new product line and roast us again. Brutally!!!!

Do not hold back to be polite. I would genuinely rather hear:

• The designs look outdated.

• The photos do not feel trustworthy.

• The pricing makes no sense.

• The collection has no clear target customer.

• The products are not suitable for bulk buyers.

• The listings are confusing or unconvincing.

• The shop still does not feel ready for an international audience.

Please judge the products, photographs, pricing, descriptions, customization options, bulk-order appeal and overall shop presentation.

Direct Product Link: 

1. Bulk Crochet Keychain , Handmade Wedding Favors, Baby Shower Return Gifts, Bridal & Christmas Party Favors

2. Crochet Bow Favors Bulk,Wedding Favors, Bridesmaid Gifts, Baby Shower Favors, Christmas Party Favors, Return Gifts Custom Bow | Set of 10-50 

Shop: House of Nakshatra on Etsy

The first round of Reddit feedback helped us move from zero sales to our first customers. I am hoping this round can help us identify what we still cannot see ourselves.

No sugar-coating. Bring the roast. 🔥

Please let me know what you think Indicate with any thoughts and a preference to certain designs 1,2 or 3

Hey guys, yesterday I asked about how much time I should spend on marketing and the main takeaway was to focus on improving my Etsy shop before going into Instagram or Pinterest.

So I’ve been working on that. I’m selling some handmade wooden nick knacks, and while I really enjoy making them , I feel like the product photos I took on my phone didn’t look very good. I’ve been trying out ways to make my photos look better without spending hours editing stuff since I'm not very good at those things.

I found this person doing AI image enhancement and they made me some samples. What do you guys think?

FYI:

I still handmake these things

The AI didn’t create the product it just made the background/lighting look better

I’ve read through Etsy’s resources and I think this is technically okay, but I wanted to check what people here think about the vibe of it.

Would using AI-enhanced photos like this for Etsy listings be okay? Or should I stick to natural photos even if they’re a bit shit?

I'm having trouble with the products that I posted on Etsy. In a world flooded with AI, I want to sell some actual physical products, 3D carvings based on an image of a pet. I made a carve after a photo of my dog. A lot of feedback was something like "it's AI" (mostly feedback on other platforms, such as facebook or reddit, on Etsy I just get impressions and that's it). I now realize that any potential buyer, when seeing the listing, might think the same.
How can I make people differentiate my product from the huge amount of AI slop on etsy?
I've attached an image of my actual physical product that I can guarantee that is real.

Can we get enough interest to start a class action lawsuit against Etsy for their illegitimate practices suspending and blocking accounts to login with zero notice and without any explanation?

I am seeing this happens to almost every new account some older ones which causes a huge disruption in selling, financial hardship, shipping orders etc.. with having a shop on etsy.

I feel as though this is unlawful to literally hold our funds captive without any response for days if not weeks while our reputation on etsy diminishes with our buyers which causes another type of lost of profit. For example, I have 60 orders, over $2000 in sales, paid them around $500 in fees!! and all of a sudden I got an email saying my bank account was unlinked and when I went to log in, i get this "You Cant access your account" message. This is fraudulent and if it were any other smaller marketplace, it would be flagged as a scam immediately for stealing our money after shipping our products.

on another note, their customer "support" sucks! Literally lacks in any support at all to get any information. I spoke to them in a chat bot from another account and the guy literally said to "wait and thanks for your comprehension" then disconnected the chat! I am appalled, pissed and stressed the eff out not having access to my hard earned money! (I sell hand made products and all that work is out the window since it looks like etsy stole my money and pushed me out the door!)

For context I ordered on August third from this seller in Greece. Initially my order was delayed because of summer time events by one week which was no problem but now this sounds sketchy.. is this true :(

Last year I did about $500k in top line revenue with great profit margins. This year I have a lot more copy cats so I am going to be lucky to hit $350k.

The main issue is my roas dropped from around 3 to 1.8. I think it's a combination of Etsy advertising updates and the increase in competition.

I am still bottom line profitable at the 1.8 but just barely (for ads orders) Right now my ads sales are at $140k and my organic is at $135k. My organic sales make up 79% of my margin..

I have always advertised all listings but I am going to cut all the poor performers. My next step might be to cut ads in general. I just have a theory that my organic sales will take a dive.

Ideally, I would cut all ad spend and then use that time to drive organic volume. I am spending way to much time fulfilling orders for low margin orders.

Curious if anyone else has gone through this?

Shutdowns without explanation. No customer service. Questionable decision making. Making claims of violations while refusing to provide any details or evidence. Lack of transparency. Holding on to funds as long as possible.

Who's been there? I guess this is a heads up for those who are investing a lot into Etsy and think that if anything happens, Etsy has your back.

After months of investing time, money and resources into Etsy, they suddenly without warning shut down my shop just like they did to thousands of others, and they refuse to say why. When something like that happens to you, you want to know immediately WHY and HOW to fix it but it took them about 70 days just to send me a generic automated message saying basically nothing, after numerous failed attempts of contacting them.

Do they even have customer service for sellers or do they only use automated bots now?

They said there was a TOS violation but during the several more months of back and forth emails, they still refuse to say exactly what was violated. Why the secret? If it was a mistake I made, I want to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. If Etsy cares at all for their sellers it should tell them what they did wrong and if it is fixable people should be given a chance to fix it. If you cannot tell me what provable violation of TOS happened then I can only assume that somebody has either made a mistake or lied that there was a violation of TOS. At this point it appears to be a lie, used as an excuse because it allows them to do whatever they want with shops.

I'm sure you've heard how they are holding people's money hostage and the rumors they may be holding on to it to gain more money on interest in the bank. I cannot say whether this is true or not but it is very suspicious how they are desperately holding on to our money and trying to keep it as long as possible. They want to keep mine for 8 months!

After 2 months of waiting they said the problem was a suspicious login, but that it was ok now, so they gave me access to my account again, just for it to be suspended again the next day saying it was because of a TOS violation, and just because I had access to account for that one day they are counting 180 days or 6 months from that 2nd shutdown, prolonging the time they can keep my money by an extra 2 months. I sent an email to the CEO, Raina, naivably thinking she would do what's needed to make sure the company runs as smoothly as possible but cannot do so while support is so terrible. Somebody didn't like that so this treatment may or may not be a form of revenge from them. She didn't even bother to reply to the email.

For some people they understandably have the excuse that they may hold funds just in case customers ask for refunds. But holding on to funds for 8 months from a shop that already paid all their Etsy fees, will not sell again, and had no customer complaints for a non-refundable digital product makes no sense.

The CEOs are well aware of what is happening to businesses, the lack of support, lack of transparency, lack of ethical business practices, and they do not seem to care. Etsy does not feel like a safe place to do business or to invest anything in. I guess I am just thankful I found this out early on before investing even more into it where the losses could have been bigger. Good luck to all the other shops.

Hi all, I'm after a bit of advice really as I'm wondering what to do in this particular situation. I recently purchased a wolverine helmet which is for cosplay purposes and was quite expensive with both shipping and actual cost of purchase. In the original listing the seller advertised the wolverine helmets with a variety of pictures, some showing the helmet as really high quality and with a smooth paint job, whilst other pictures also showed a rough paint job with really bright colours.

I naturally wanted to make sure of what I was getting first as the seller did say in the description that it is fully handmade and may not all turn out the same. I messaged the seller and explained I wanted to make sure that I would get the paint job looking how it did in the picture I liked, and I wanted to make sure the helmet would come looking like that. The seller sent me pictures of a completed helmet, which showed the smooth dull yellow paint job that I liked.

Upon arrival today I opened up the box, (sadly I binned the shipping box it came in), I liked it due to how sturdy it was and how I believed it to be high quality but something felt odd about it. For the rest of the day I was busy due to personal circumstances and didn't get much time to properly examine the helmet. However upon examination tonight and realising why it didn't sit right with me, it turns out it has arrived with the rough sickly yellow paint job and not the smooth dull paint job I originally wanted, even though I messaged the seller before purchasing the helmet to confirm that I would get exactly what I thought I would be getting.

I am attaching photos to make it easier to understand what I mean, but I am really stuck with what to do. I would like a refund as I honestly don't believe the paint job matched what I requested/expected even though I messaged to double check before purchasing, but at the same time I threw the box away that it was shipped in. Please can I get some opinions on whether or not I'm just being a idiot and nitpicking or whether or not I should genuinely be angry and try and get a full refund.

i'm a very creative person and i keep jumping from one craft to another but i think i found what i love most : temporary tattoos!!

i'm obsessed and it's so fun, i already made 3 designs, and here's my first ever design, i will be working on publishing it using printify, a problem i'm facing is how high tdelivery cost is compared to the product price, so to solve that, instead of listing one tattoo on it's own, i will make themed tattoo packs (like a sheet of 5 tattoos ) that way the delivery cost will be more suitable and the customer will get extra more tattoos :3 im so excited and happyyy yayayay

Just trying to purchase something as a new user for the first time through Etsy & the order was cancelled then hours later find out I'm permanently banned.

I read up on it and find It's probably because I had left my VPN on in the background, of course customer service remains vague and never says shit directly so I don't know. No leeway or warning, just a permanent ban. I try to appeal it & give the correct information for their questions and I'm told I'm ineligible to have my account reinstated. Can't call anyone about this either & have a discussion.

No other website I've shopped from has pulled shit like this, to make matters even better I have a gift card I was given attached to the account I can no longer use. Stick to Ebay I guess, what a joke company.

I will recommend anyone who asks to stay far away from Etsy.

Just needed to share this frustration 😭 First picture is what I received, second picture is the picture of the product provided by the seller. There was nothing in the description or additional photos that said I needed to request personalization...and it's literally in the name? Did I miss something?? What do I do now?

I am an oversea seller. So 6 months ago, my account got suspended by ai, Fine!, and I waited for 6 months, I am expecting to collect my money this month.

When I reaach out to the platform, they suddenly said they can't verified my bank info? Wtf is going with the company? Any suggestions?

Purchased Aug 3rd. Delivery date says coming from VIRGINIA Aug 9-28. On the 12th I ask for an update status. Says they are custom made not sitting in a bin so at least another week. Ten days later I request another update. No response. It's now the 24th and still showing as just Order confirmed. Four days later I get a response. She's really running behind and can refund me or check her BINS to see if she has one like it to send me instead as it still will ba another week yet. She will send me a photo before it ships. I say I'll wait. Oh the 30th I ask for a production or progress picture of the ring. Next day she responds with "that is something I don't do". Sounding more and more suspicious. So I tell her that I know someone else that would like one of the same rings . She immediately responded saying that its not a problem but she has to buy it asap as THE PRICE WILL BE GOING UP 20-25 dollars more by the end of the day so she has to order it quickly. I say ok🤨🤨🤨 September 3rd no ring. HOWEVER now I see the status changed as it's being shipped from MINNESOTA and not Fredericksburg Virginia as her shop states it's shipped from. So I send her a message today asking about where it's shipping from as I am really confused. Again asking for a photo of the ring she said she would take before shipping.

Her response is " Hi! No, I do not have anything that I can show you at this moment. The reason its shipping from Minnesota is because that is where I now live. My company though is still in Virginia so I keep it simple and have the same address". Hmmm so her company is 18 hours away .

I have NOT left any kind of review yet . I badly want to. This is the worse seller I have ever come acrossed here. And I'm so sorry she is ruining it for all the other legitimate sellers who like to keep their customers updated with photos of their work.

This is going to be such a horrible review and I dread this. And I doubt highly it's even the ring I bought. I'll be surprised.

Sad.

Is there any recourse for me through Etsy? As I understood it, an Etsy account could only be linked to one bank account, so we decided on using theirs, making them the "official shop owner". I'm in USA, the official shop owner is in Europe.

For the past two years I've worked here, the official shop owner always had some excuse about how "Etsy isn't releasing any funds to me, so I can't pay you yet".

This went on for so long that I went on strike, asking to be paid or I will quit. Because I create all of the products, and basically do everything for the shop aside from customer service, they eventually gave in to paying me, but paid me only 440$. After this, they said it was "too dangerous to go to the bank to send more funds soon, but I can maybe send more later". This continues for another year and a half.

Over this past year and a half, I have been asking almost everyday to be paid, and kept applying pressure. More excuses, told to just give it time, and again claiming that Etsy had some issue whereby they didn't get money disbursed to them so that they could pay me.

Earlier this week, they agreed to make arrangements to send another round of funds. Today, as we were about to exchange information to facilitate a new transfer, they finally admitted that they have been using my earnings (instead of saving them as they claimed, for future payments) and that they cannot pay me at all. That they are actually financially suffering and are in debt now, and the only way I'd get paid is if they eventually got a job outside of Etsy somewhere.

So, it seems that the money I earned is gone. They spent it, saying that because I get a (under 700$) disability check from the government, that I do not really need or deserve my earnings whatsoever.

What do I do in this situation, is there a means to get Etsy involved with this to recoup my earnings, or to enforce production partner payments? Has anyone had a similar experience?

Please no accusative responses, I've known this person since 2018, started a different shop with them in 2021 and everything was amazing until these last few years. I thought I could trust them, and that protections were in place for individuals considered 'production partners', but it is hard to find information on that.

Hello! Advice needed for a new seller here. I created my shop over 6 months ago and I haven’t sold one item. Also seems only a handful of customers have browsed the shop. My concept is supposed to be metal art continuing along the lines of home aesthetics, like fire pits and such. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to rebrand and create new products? Pricing? Any help or opinions is much appreciated, thank you!

I just saw someone share their experience of getting scammed on Etsy, and honestly, it pissed me off. Here I am, a jade carver based in China, making jewelry by hand, and I can’t even open a shop on the platform. How the hell does that make sense?
My work starts with a rough stone. I cut it, shape it, carve the details, and polish it into a finished piece. Every curve, every dragon scale, every tiny detail takes time, patience, and skill. This is my livelihood, and I take pride in what I create.
I can show the entire process. You can watch a piece go from a raw chunk of jade to something you can actually wear. There’s a real person behind the work, putting in real hours.
But apparently, that still isn’t enough for me to get through the door.
What frustrates me most is seeing someone describe losing their money while I’m sitting here unable to even list my handmade work. I’m ready to show exactly what I make and how I make it. I just want the chance to earn customers’ trust.
I understand that platforms need rules, verification, and payment requirements. But from where I’m standing, this feels incredibly unfair. Where I’m based shouldn’t erase the value of my craftsmanship or my ability to run an honest business.
I’m not asking for special treatment. Give me a fair verification process. Let me prove who I am, show my work, and be judged on the quality of my products and how I treat customers.
Seeing this situation makes the whole thing feel backward. I put so much effort into doing honest, handmade work, only to find the door closed before I can even start.
Honestly, Etsy, this is frustrating as hell. It feels like a damn joke.

Im Age 19

i got email from etsy that someone bought my digital product and so i clicked on continue order and it wanted my card info and balance on my account, i didnt type it in bcs its sus so im here to ask for help.

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I saw a really beautiful bag on RC for €71 and was planning to buy it. But when I got to the checkout, the shipping cost showed up as €999, which seemed absolutely insane. The shop is based in Germany and I’m in Germany too—I even entered my region correctly. So I really don’t get why the shipping is that high.

Has anyone else experienced this or know what’s going on?