Hey! How’s your Saturday going?
I’ve put my Etsy shop in vacation mode. I don’t know when (or indeed if) I will re-open it. I’ve been considering this for some time. It seem like a no-brainer that if you’re unhappy with something, you pull out of it. But the problem is that Etsy were the first to offer a proper venue/platform for handmade stuff, so it is the place everyone knows about.
And if I don’t have a presence on Etsy, that may result in less visibility, lost sales and perhaps other opportunities lost. For instance, the recent Cross Stitcher mention of Polka & Bloom came about because they found Polka & Bloom on Etsy, I believe.
I must admit that I’ve.. had a pretty bad feeling about Etsy for quite a while now. The privacy issues are only part of it. If you want to get to know the less hippy-happy rosy side of Etsy, I suggest reading the EtsyBitch blog.
Despite my worries that I could lose out on opportunities, in the end I guess it is better to let that go in stead of being associated with a site which seems to care less about its original purpose and more about goodness only knows what. To be fair, though, I’ve not had any problems with Etsy myself.
Good luck with your new shop! :)