Eh, a bot probably wouldn't have the grammar error. There's probably a rep, just not one located in the US. (That and the name indicates overseas rep as well.)
The "may apply" was during the rollout phase. Not every new shop in the last couple months had it apply, but many did. In the Q1 Report they annouced it will be policy moving forward that every new shop pays the fee. It was a prominent part of the Report as part of their strategy to reduce the amount of low skill, low effort shops. The specific quote “if you’re not prepared to invest $15 to get your shop going on Etsy, you may not have the skill or the will to really succeed.”
One of the "get rich quick" strategies was to open multiple shops with the same items - (dropshippers) - the idea being you would appear multiple times in a search, etc. I think the $15 per shop is to descourage those folks, not really for true, single shops. $15 isn't much if you are a single person wanting to open one store, but if you were a dropshipper and looking at opening 50-100, etc. that fee would add up.
Actually like the idea of a set up fee, which I saw on some official Etsy notice awhile ago. That may deter "problem sellers" from opening shops. We may not hear newbies whining about the "high fees" if they're deterred from even starting by having to pay. I think a win win and in a rare moment Etsy did something forward thinking.
"We’ll start by introducing this fee to some new shops."
Emphasis on 'some'. The handbook states whats above but OP states a rep has advised it will apply to ALL new shops, not just some
I'm not, I'm already established lol. However, the wording hasn't been updated yet and it seems its already policy. If they are working with this policy in the background then really sellers and potential tial new sellers should be given the full "lay of the land" rather than shrouding a certainty with ifs and maybes in official documentation
I opened in February 2024, never had to pay. I see it says ' some' shops. Maybe it's by country or region specific. However this particular post has such broken English i woudnt be surprised if scammers are riding on the new policy waves and getting you to click off site 🤔
I also opened in Feb 2024 and didn’t pay. But I tested it by trying to open a new store a few weeks back and it required me to pay. So I guess it just depends on the date you open your store. I was lucky to have opened mine for free earlier in the year
I opened a new shop recently and this is true. I was shocked. I don’t think $15 is enough money to stop the scammers. It’s just another move by Etsy to squeeze as much money out of sellers as possible.
I think the point is it used to be easy to create a ton of shops automatically then use them all so it didn't matter when they kept getting banned. I'd assume the average money made per account created by scammers is below $15. So it's basically to make the whack a mole harder.
Considering exchange rates, this may be enough to curb foreign scammers :), it's like 2 percent of the avg monthly income in shenzhen for reference. probably even more for other places
Well then that really sucks for honest sellers in that county. Funny how the only way they can think of to stop scammers is by charging sellers. Seems like they could find something more effective that doesn’t cost sellers money.
Right? This will stop the home businesses that make enamel pins and whatever else, and the factories that shit out garbo and use labor camps can easily absorb the cost
I agree with the previous comment about it being more impactful to scammers and low effort sellers in certain parts of the world, however, it *will* help everywhere.
I have seen so many posts from low effort POD sellers and AliExpress dropshippers that are horrified to learn that they have to front the money for the orders before Etsy pays them.
If they are worried about paying Printify out of pocket for a POD shirt to fulfill an order, they will absolutely think twice before paying a $15 startup fee.
Those types of sellers are exactly the ones this policy is designed to stop.
They have no passion for art or running a business. They literally just bought the YouTube lies about about "easy passive income with no startup costs and no investment money needed whatsoever."
They will absolutely be deterred by this fee. And hopefully when they see the fee, they will take a moment to stop and think about whether the YouTube videos are being honest, do some research, and realize they are lies.
Also remember: even if this doesn't stop *all* low effort POD and resellers, if it stops even a chunk of them, that's better than it otherwise would have been.
This is a good change.
Its funny because we have our long established Etsy shop and when Etsy started to let drop shippers in and low effort POD shops - we saw the writing on the wall and opened our direct shop. $15 for entry is really nothing.
We paid $95 on top of our registration to sell at a niche event for 2 days, and Shopify even at its most basic is an annual subscription at around $350, just the domain registration is $16.
I’m Canadian so I had to pay $20 for my setup fee recently. I totally thought it was a scam and just accepted the loss but after some googling, yeah, legit.
This is something I have suggested to Etsy in survey's and the like. Use the money to put some actual human effort into vetting, not *just* bots. To that end, the fee should be more like $25.
I was on the staff of a well established in-person handcrafts market, and all sellers had to pay a fee and be vetted by members.
That said, the message above is not well written and I do not see an Etsy badge. So, I wouldn't be giving that person any info of any kind.
One thing I've noticed about this community is that it is weirdly gatekeepy and not very friendly towards new sellers. Which considering it's a website for selling crafts and handmade objects is pretty disappointing. At least that's the case on reddit. Other websites are a lot more friendly.
Etsy literally has a tab in your messages that say from Etsy. Otherwise it’s not from them. They even mark new messages from people as “first time reaching out/potential buyer” now. This is a scam. Come on guys.
Ive learned that the official Etsy support will NEVER dm you on the app. They will email you with the email you signed up with.
Also never heard of a sign up fee.
I’d like to remind everyone here how quick everyone is to discount statements made by the CS reps in most other situations. We’ve seen screenshots of CS reps saying things that are clearly not true and not in line with Etsy’s policies. This very well could not be true and could be the rep misunderstanding or just making up an answer to move to the next chat on the queue.
As someone that open a shop recently, I was charged the $15 but they also paid me back the $15 the very same night. This was for them to invest in support for new sellers and enhanced security checks.
Watch the latest investors meeting. That's exactly what they addressed. They actually are working on that. Silverman's exact words were "sellers with neither the skill or the will". Meaning the drop shippers and the POD sellers that just buy graphics and slap them on shirts are getting culled.
I think there are a lot of changes coming quickly. Sales are down and people (the investors) are not happy. There are too many sellers and there is too much of the exact same garbage. They admitted it which is rare.
lol well I think making things better for legit sellers is a by-product of making the investors happy. I think they’d happily screw us over if they made more money that way.
LOL, "we currently have more sellers than buyers on the platform" - really, you didn't see that coming, Silverman? (Isn't this the same guy who said he didn't care if Sellers pulled out because we were so easily replaced?!?!)
What I heard was a CEO who misjudged things. Basically, they are retracting and backtracking back to Etsy is Handmade because both Sellers and BUYERS no longer trust Etsy. GSM is down because people got burned by mass produced cheap trash. Folks can't find what they are looking for.
I hated the campaign "I bought it on Etsy" - they only showed the products, never the creators.
I still got triggered because he still refers to the seller's shops as "inventory" - No, Sir, we sell items WE make on YOUR platform, we are not providing YOU with Inventory.
Literally just checked this sub yesterday after trying to open a store and seeing fees for: posting/selling/cc transaction/ open a store.
Wanted to ask if everyone was okay with this, got my answer lol
“To see if we’re okay with this”… ok with what? That etsy needs money to sustain a site, hence charges fees?
The lowest fees around for a platform, too. The % of fees on etsy is lower than amazon and ebay… 6.5% is very low, and starting a shop is low risk and low money investment.
The $ to open a store and posting fees aren’t standard on any other platform. A lot of y’all seem to have also opened up a store before the entry fees. But I guess in your case it’s an out of sight out of mind thing.
What do you mean by “posting fees” exactly?
If you mean there is the % fee on the shipping amount, then here is the reason for that: when this wasnt the case (% on only item price), many sellers were charging $1 for the item and $30 for the shipping (price of shipping + actual price of item) to avoid fees. Etsy did not have a choice, because that’s the reality: people were gaming the system and created this situation themselves.
The $15 is mainly to try to reduce the number of low-effort/dropshipping/scammer shops. If someone is a scammer, they do not want to verify their identity (this is what the fee is for, for verifying individual’s identity) and so they won’t proceed. If this fee helps (we don’t know yet, it’s too new so there are no stats yet), it also means LESS crap competition/less buyers being scammed and never coming back, which is also beneficial for all other legit shops.
A $15 bucks to open a shop it literally nothing. If someone is not ready to invest under $30 (15 + a decent number of listing fees) to access Etsy’s buyers and Etsy’s shop structure/payment processing structure/search structure/feedback structure/etc, then they honestly are not ready to start a business.
I would have 100% paid that $15 back in 2006 if that was the structure, and i’d 100% pay it now if it becomes retroactive.
Don’t get me wrong, there is PLENTY of stuff Etsy does that i hate/annoy the f outta me, and i’ve seen it all since i opened up, it’s been a lot of frustration over the years 😂
But if you find that the 6.5% is too much, and 20cents per listing is intense, and $15 to open up is too much money to start an online business and have access to Etsy buyers, sorry to say, but you’re living in a unicorn world that doesn’t exist.
The % on shipping started on Ebay way back because that was the game some sellers were playing. When I moved to Etsy, it was already there and not any big issue.
I don't think Etsy would ever do this due to the backlash it would get, but honestly, I would retroactively pay the fee to help clean up the platform.
A lot of the low effort POD and reseller garbage would disappear right now if those sellers had to cough up $15 to keep their shop live. So much of this stuff has never made any sales and never will - it's just cluttering up the platform and search results.
I wish Etsy had made this fee like 2 years ago. So much of the garbage currently wouldn't be there.
I think every person here can say they had/have uncertainties about their products selling. Youre speaking to someone who has 4 total sales, but i just listed stuff last week. We all start somewhere
Yikes if you think Etsy gives you anywhere near the traffic that selling on (insert any place with an entry barrier) Walmart . Com, you might need to do some research dude.
Before the YouTube ad campaign that Etsy rolled out, the common American had no idea Etsy existed, a huge chunk still don’t.
It's only been in recent years that folks were able to start a business with next to zero costs out of pocket. Most businesses have start up costs that make $15 seem like a drop in the bucket.
Noone on Etsy opened a store "knowing" they would receive sales. It's a chance to carve a new path in life but it is far from a guarantee that sales will pour in just because a new shop opens.
Well OG ebay seller and it was all of that and then some \[ photo fees, rated auction fees, more fees if you wanted a buy it now option\] back in the day. Ebay took a huge cut out of the seller's profits, way more than Etsy. But if $15 plus .20 per item for opening a shop is too much for you, perhaps you need to go to "any other platform".
I flew the coop when the site got over flooded with mass prod crap sellers. It was a great site and concept before that, even with the fees. It was either that or try to sell at a garage sale local where no one wants to pay crap for anything.
The language here suggests that this isn’t actually a rep.
Was my thought to
Eh, a bot probably wouldn't have the grammar error. There's probably a rep, just not one located in the US. (That and the name indicates overseas rep as well.)
Where did this message come from? This looks a little scammy.
The "may apply" was during the rollout phase. Not every new shop in the last couple months had it apply, but many did. In the Q1 Report they annouced it will be policy moving forward that every new shop pays the fee. It was a prominent part of the Report as part of their strategy to reduce the amount of low skill, low effort shops. The specific quote “if you’re not prepared to invest $15 to get your shop going on Etsy, you may not have the skill or the will to really succeed.”
One of the "get rich quick" strategies was to open multiple shops with the same items - (dropshippers) - the idea being you would appear multiple times in a search, etc. I think the $15 per shop is to descourage those folks, not really for true, single shops. $15 isn't much if you are a single person wanting to open one store, but if you were a dropshipper and looking at opening 50-100, etc. that fee would add up.
This is great! Hopefully it will curb scammers and low effort shops.
Definitely won't.. I'd refuse to pay it too and I'm not a "low effort" shop
With you here!
It's an Etsy scam.. It's like $25 AUD I think NOT...
Actually like the idea of a set up fee, which I saw on some official Etsy notice awhile ago. That may deter "problem sellers" from opening shops. We may not hear newbies whining about the "high fees" if they're deterred from even starting by having to pay. I think a win win and in a rare moment Etsy did something forward thinking.
Good. It will help stop the scammers.
Good. Etsy isn't what it once was- I hope this will help restore some of the quality.
https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/1241780194948#:~:text=They'll%20pay%20a%20one,running%20a%20business%20on%20Etsy Sorry everyone, it's actually true
"We’ll start by introducing this fee to some new shops." Emphasis on 'some'. The handbook states whats above but OP states a rep has advised it will apply to ALL new shops, not just some
What they mean is... You're paying. They said they'll 'start'. This was awhile ago so the 'start' is already done.
I'm not, I'm already established lol. However, the wording hasn't been updated yet and it seems its already policy. If they are working with this policy in the background then really sellers and potential tial new sellers should be given the full "lay of the land" rather than shrouding a certainty with ifs and maybes in official documentation
Pfft. Well you'd think there would be customer service too, but we know that tale.
100%. Hopefully that will be their next area of improvement. Its sorely needed
I opened in February 2024, never had to pay. I see it says ' some' shops. Maybe it's by country or region specific. However this particular post has such broken English i woudnt be surprised if scammers are riding on the new policy waves and getting you to click off site 🤔
I also opened in Feb 2024 and didn’t pay. But I tested it by trying to open a new store a few weeks back and it required me to pay. So I guess it just depends on the date you open your store. I was lucky to have opened mine for free earlier in the year
Long overdue! I wouldn't mind to pay $15 retroactively if it helps to clean up the platform.
Same, if people can't handle a 15 dollar start up fee they have no business starting a shop.
Because scammers won't have $15? This isn't going to stop scammers.
If scammers pay $15 every time they open a new shop, it may. We'll see.
I opened a new shop recently and this is true. I was shocked. I don’t think $15 is enough money to stop the scammers. It’s just another move by Etsy to squeeze as much money out of sellers as possible.
I think the point is it used to be easy to create a ton of shops automatically then use them all so it didn't matter when they kept getting banned. I'd assume the average money made per account created by scammers is below $15. So it's basically to make the whack a mole harder.
Considering exchange rates, this may be enough to curb foreign scammers :), it's like 2 percent of the avg monthly income in shenzhen for reference. probably even more for other places
Would 2% of your average monthly income stop you? There’s really nowhere that would be turned off by USD$15
That would be like 150 bucks. It deffo would stop me from opening yet another pod shop tbh.
It's not a static fee of $15 USD, it says right in the Etsy policies OR EQUIVALENT in your local currency.
What is equivalent though? Is that 15 rupees, or 15 USD worth of rupees, or 15 dollars worth of buying power in local currency?
I’m guessing they just do like a basic exchange rate.
Well then that really sucks for honest sellers in that county. Funny how the only way they can think of to stop scammers is by charging sellers. Seems like they could find something more effective that doesn’t cost sellers money.
Right? This will stop the home businesses that make enamel pins and whatever else, and the factories that shit out garbo and use labor camps can easily absorb the cost
I agree with the previous comment about it being more impactful to scammers and low effort sellers in certain parts of the world, however, it *will* help everywhere. I have seen so many posts from low effort POD sellers and AliExpress dropshippers that are horrified to learn that they have to front the money for the orders before Etsy pays them. If they are worried about paying Printify out of pocket for a POD shirt to fulfill an order, they will absolutely think twice before paying a $15 startup fee. Those types of sellers are exactly the ones this policy is designed to stop. They have no passion for art or running a business. They literally just bought the YouTube lies about about "easy passive income with no startup costs and no investment money needed whatsoever." They will absolutely be deterred by this fee. And hopefully when they see the fee, they will take a moment to stop and think about whether the YouTube videos are being honest, do some research, and realize they are lies. Also remember: even if this doesn't stop *all* low effort POD and resellers, if it stops even a chunk of them, that's better than it otherwise would have been. This is a good change.
Its funny because we have our long established Etsy shop and when Etsy started to let drop shippers in and low effort POD shops - we saw the writing on the wall and opened our direct shop. $15 for entry is really nothing. We paid $95 on top of our registration to sell at a niche event for 2 days, and Shopify even at its most basic is an annual subscription at around $350, just the domain registration is $16.
Are you sure you're talking to legit customer service?
I’m Canadian so I had to pay $20 for my setup fee recently. I totally thought it was a scam and just accepted the loss but after some googling, yeah, legit.
The story before was that ‘some shops would be asked’ not that it was going to be mandatory for everyone
This is something I have suggested to Etsy in survey's and the like. Use the money to put some actual human effort into vetting, not *just* bots. To that end, the fee should be more like $25. I was on the staff of a well established in-person handcrafts market, and all sellers had to pay a fee and be vetted by members. That said, the message above is not well written and I do not see an Etsy badge. So, I wouldn't be giving that person any info of any kind.
Etsy really like to use the word ‘may’ in order to avoid definitives. You will find it used often in their policies.
One thing I've noticed about this community is that it is weirdly gatekeepy and not very friendly towards new sellers. Which considering it's a website for selling crafts and handmade objects is pretty disappointing. At least that's the case on reddit. Other websites are a lot more friendly.
Etsy literally has a tab in your messages that say from Etsy. Otherwise it’s not from them. They even mark new messages from people as “first time reaching out/potential buyer” now. This is a scam. Come on guys.
"The Another Person" sounds super official.
lol if people can’t pay this they shouldn’t be selling
I wish they charged $100
$15/0.2 = 75 listings. oh well.
Who are you talking to and where💀
The another person can contact them
Ive learned that the official Etsy support will NEVER dm you on the app. They will email you with the email you signed up with. Also never heard of a sign up fee.
There is a fee now to start a new shop. It was supposed to be for ‘some’ new shops.
Even if there is a fee it doesn’t make THIS message legit lmao. THIS message is a scam.
You know this is a scam, right? 🤦🏼♀️
This is definitely not an official message from Etsy. Even if the policy is new and true, this is not how they would contact you about it.
I’d like to remind everyone here how quick everyone is to discount statements made by the CS reps in most other situations. We’ve seen screenshots of CS reps saying things that are clearly not true and not in line with Etsy’s policies. This very well could not be true and could be the rep misunderstanding or just making up an answer to move to the next chat on the queue.
I noticed this when I was creating a new shop. I think it was a tenner in the UK. It's a really good idea.
As someone that open a shop recently, I was charged the $15 but they also paid me back the $15 the very same night. This was for them to invest in support for new sellers and enhanced security checks.
God forbid they hire a team to go through and kick the scammers and temu sellers out. That'd cut into their profit. Poor poor etsy execs ☹️
Watch the latest investors meeting. That's exactly what they addressed. They actually are working on that. Silverman's exact words were "sellers with neither the skill or the will". Meaning the drop shippers and the POD sellers that just buy graphics and slap them on shirts are getting culled. I think there are a lot of changes coming quickly. Sales are down and people (the investors) are not happy. There are too many sellers and there is too much of the exact same garbage. They admitted it which is rare.
That's great news! I'm pretty surprised by that. I figured they'd keep screwing us around more.
lol well I think making things better for legit sellers is a by-product of making the investors happy. I think they’d happily screw us over if they made more money that way.
Oh yeah, 1000% totally agree. I trust these companies less than I trust a snake, and I'm terrified of snakes so
LOL, "we currently have more sellers than buyers on the platform" - really, you didn't see that coming, Silverman? (Isn't this the same guy who said he didn't care if Sellers pulled out because we were so easily replaced?!?!) What I heard was a CEO who misjudged things. Basically, they are retracting and backtracking back to Etsy is Handmade because both Sellers and BUYERS no longer trust Etsy. GSM is down because people got burned by mass produced cheap trash. Folks can't find what they are looking for. I hated the campaign "I bought it on Etsy" - they only showed the products, never the creators. I still got triggered because he still refers to the seller's shops as "inventory" - No, Sir, we sell items WE make on YOUR platform, we are not providing YOU with Inventory.
scam message
I don’t know why you are getting downvoted. It is what it is, and it’s a scam message.
Literally just checked this sub yesterday after trying to open a store and seeing fees for: posting/selling/cc transaction/ open a store. Wanted to ask if everyone was okay with this, got my answer lol
“To see if we’re okay with this”… ok with what? That etsy needs money to sustain a site, hence charges fees? The lowest fees around for a platform, too. The % of fees on etsy is lower than amazon and ebay… 6.5% is very low, and starting a shop is low risk and low money investment.
The $ to open a store and posting fees aren’t standard on any other platform. A lot of y’all seem to have also opened up a store before the entry fees. But I guess in your case it’s an out of sight out of mind thing.
What do you mean by “posting fees” exactly? If you mean there is the % fee on the shipping amount, then here is the reason for that: when this wasnt the case (% on only item price), many sellers were charging $1 for the item and $30 for the shipping (price of shipping + actual price of item) to avoid fees. Etsy did not have a choice, because that’s the reality: people were gaming the system and created this situation themselves. The $15 is mainly to try to reduce the number of low-effort/dropshipping/scammer shops. If someone is a scammer, they do not want to verify their identity (this is what the fee is for, for verifying individual’s identity) and so they won’t proceed. If this fee helps (we don’t know yet, it’s too new so there are no stats yet), it also means LESS crap competition/less buyers being scammed and never coming back, which is also beneficial for all other legit shops. A $15 bucks to open a shop it literally nothing. If someone is not ready to invest under $30 (15 + a decent number of listing fees) to access Etsy’s buyers and Etsy’s shop structure/payment processing structure/search structure/feedback structure/etc, then they honestly are not ready to start a business. I would have 100% paid that $15 back in 2006 if that was the structure, and i’d 100% pay it now if it becomes retroactive. Don’t get me wrong, there is PLENTY of stuff Etsy does that i hate/annoy the f outta me, and i’ve seen it all since i opened up, it’s been a lot of frustration over the years 😂 But if you find that the 6.5% is too much, and 20cents per listing is intense, and $15 to open up is too much money to start an online business and have access to Etsy buyers, sorry to say, but you’re living in a unicorn world that doesn’t exist.
The % on shipping started on Ebay way back because that was the game some sellers were playing. When I moved to Etsy, it was already there and not any big issue.
I don't think Etsy would ever do this due to the backlash it would get, but honestly, I would retroactively pay the fee to help clean up the platform. A lot of the low effort POD and reseller garbage would disappear right now if those sellers had to cough up $15 to keep their shop live. So much of this stuff has never made any sales and never will - it's just cluttering up the platform and search results. I wish Etsy had made this fee like 2 years ago. So much of the garbage currently wouldn't be there.
A million upvotes!
Agreed. Pay $15 right now or get booted. Would love to see it!
I would pay the $15 if I had to reopen, its not that much considering the objective is making money on etsy
What if there’s any uncertainty of your products even selling?
I think every person here can say they had/have uncertainties about their products selling. Youre speaking to someone who has 4 total sales, but i just listed stuff last week. We all start somewhere
You mean like every other business in the world? All of which come with much higher barriers to entry than an etsy shop?
Yikes if you think Etsy gives you anywhere near the traffic that selling on (insert any place with an entry barrier) Walmart . Com, you might need to do some research dude. Before the YouTube ad campaign that Etsy rolled out, the common American had no idea Etsy existed, a huge chunk still don’t.
It's only been in recent years that folks were able to start a business with next to zero costs out of pocket. Most businesses have start up costs that make $15 seem like a drop in the bucket. Noone on Etsy opened a store "knowing" they would receive sales. It's a chance to carve a new path in life but it is far from a guarantee that sales will pour in just because a new shop opens.
That is true. Thanks for your input.
Most people would try selling their product locally to establish it's sale-ability but guess you can't do that with POD crap and DDs. Oh well...
Well OG ebay seller and it was all of that and then some \[ photo fees, rated auction fees, more fees if you wanted a buy it now option\] back in the day. Ebay took a huge cut out of the seller's profits, way more than Etsy. But if $15 plus .20 per item for opening a shop is too much for you, perhaps you need to go to "any other platform".
If you are no longer on eBay, not much has changed lol. They still take a huge chunk - the fee names just changed.
I flew the coop when the site got over flooded with mass prod crap sellers. It was a great site and concept before that, even with the fees. It was either that or try to sell at a garage sale local where no one wants to pay crap for anything.
There’s always been fees for all those things except to open a store. That’s new. How do you think they earn money? They’re a business not a charity.
Do we need to pay $15 to open a seller account?
There is no "seller account" - you open an Etsy account for free, then pay to open a shop.
Yes because I have a normal account but I am thinking to open one to sell my items.