Author: auralynne

On most nights, I conk out mid-page on whatever fantasy novel I’m reading by 8:30PM at latest.  Last night, Etsy-induced insomnia kept me up until close to 1AM.

I had received an order from a lovely customer for one of my pirate hats.  This one, to be exact:

It’s one of many items I complete-to-order.  I had been looking forward to getting out the purple trims and purple feather sprays and attaching all that prettiness to the hat.  Until I saw that the order had been attributed to an Offsite Ad.

What is an Offsite Ad?

Offsite Ads are Etsy Product ads on Google, Facebook, and other sites, which I do not want, but Etsy purchases unilaterally on my behalf.  When one of my sales is attributed to an ad, I’m charged an Offsite Ad fee on top of Etsy’s normal transaction and payment processing fees.  As a result, about 22% of the customer’s payment goes straight to Etsy in fees.

I can’t opt out of Offsite Ads.  I can’t choose which items are advertised, or how much is spent.

Why don’t you just pad extra in to cover Offsite Ads?

I wish that were possible!  But I don’t control them.  They’re controlled by an AI algorithm.  I’ll have zero dollars in Offsite Ad spend for months on end, followed by hundreds of dollars in a single month.  How much, exactly, should I overcharge every single Etsy customer in order to cover that potentiality?

What the heck… is that even legal?

It appears to be illegal in the EU.  I’ve seen multiple reports from EU-based sellers who reached out to Etsy support, citing EU law in their messages.  They were able to get their accounts manually opted out of Offsite Ads.

Here in the US, there are serious questions about whether Offsite Ads aligns with the FTC’s Junk Fees Rule:

Online marketplaces or other intermediaries, including those in the secondary ticket market, responsible for offering, displaying, or advertising the price of a good or service must give sellers the information necessary to calculate the total price. For example, if an intermediary charges a fee to access its platform and the seller passes the fee on to the consumer, the intermediary must give the seller accurate information about the fee so the seller can include this mandatory fee in the total price.

That’s the big issue we have with Offsite Ads as Etsy sellers – the algorithmic nature of the program makes Etsy fees widely variable, and as a result, it’s impossible to price our items accurately.  I’m hoping that a future FTC will take Etsy to task for what seems to me like a clear violation of this rule.

But why lose sleep?

All this typing, and I still haven’t gotten to what was keeping me up last night.  Offsite ads are unfair and annoying, but I am able to sleep even when annoyed!  

Yesterday, however, I made the mistake of looking at Offsite Ad stats in my Etsy shop. It’s felt like quite a few more of my sales are being attributed to these ads, but I hadn’t yet looked at the data.  It was worse than I realized.  So far this year, I’ve paid nearly 10 times in Offsite Ad fees what I paid for all of last year.

Is it just a run of bad luck?  Or is Etsy’s AI getting smarter and figuring out new ways to charge me?

Confession time: I’ve cancelled a couple Offsite Ads orders this year.  It’s literally the only way I can have any level of control.  I can refuse an Offsite Ad sale, and Etsy will refund all the fees when I refund the customer. 

I hate doing this, because it’s a bad experience for the customer.   But this year, I had a couple instances where I just couldn’t stomach it.  In one case, it was a one-of-a-kind item that was getting lots of traffic via organic searches, and based on stats, a few of those shoppers seemed to be going on to purchase other items in my shop. I didn’t want to take the hit on the Offsite Ad sale AND lose all that traffic (and the ensuing organic sales).  In another case, the customer paid extra for express shipping.  I get charged Offsite Ad fees on shipping.  So 22% of the exact-cost that I charge for upgraded shipping went straight to Etsy in fees, and had I sent that order, I would have had to make up the difference out of pocket.

Around 12PM last night, I finally gave in.  I played a trick on myself, and it worked to help me get to sleep.  I clicked “cancel” on that Offsite Ad order, wrote a polite apology to the customer (simply saying I couldn’t accept the order but not explaining why), and then I wrote an email template to explain the situation in full.

I didn’t complete the order cancellation, and the template email text stayed in the spreadsheet where I store those sorts of things.  But I lied to myself, convinced myself I’d be hitting the go-button on both items first thing in the morning.

I was asleep within 5 minutes.

Then I woke up this morning, and made the decision I knew I would make – that is, to go ahead and take a paycut on this order, and hope that in the future I receive enough orders without attached Offsite Ad fees to cover it.

For items that are listed both in my Etsy shop and on my website, I offer a 10% discount on my website.  I really like 10% – it’s a nice easy-to-calculate number!  But I was starting to worry that it wouldn’t be enough in the future.

So today, I took the time to do the complicated math to figure out the exact percentage of Offsite Ad sales which my current Etsy upcharge covers, and I’m still okay, so long as the ad fees don’t keep increasing exponentially.  

While in math mode, I took a couple seconds to do some calculations on this particular Offsite Ad order. If my pirate hat customer had shopped on my website, she would have paid $19 less for her hat, but I would have received $16 more in payment!

Jewel of the Sea Pirate Hat – Peacock Feather Tricorn

Plunder the high seas, Victorian style, in this gorgeous ladies pirate hat. It’s made of a soft cotton poly blend and trimmed all around with lace and pleated ribbon. The sides are permanently attached to the crown so it will keep its beautiful tricorn shape. Each uptake point is adorned with a skull and crossbones set in an ornate frame.

$185 Original price was: $185.$166Current price is: $166.

Learn More

Welp, looks like the fuckers at Etsy are onto me…

Did I actually violate Etsy’s off-platform transactions policy?

No, in fact, I did not.

The listing in question, like every listing in my shop prior to today, had an image that let customers know that additional items that are not on Etsy are available on my website. Do you like this hat? I offer a custom-made gown that matches it at auralynne.com. Do you like this skirt, but need a different size or color? Get it made-to-order at auralynne.com.

Did I violate the spirit of Etsy’s off-site transactions policy, that is, their desire to transform me (and all artists trapped on their site) into serfs who can only create at Etsy’s behest, and never in an independent fashion?

Certainly.

But you see, I refuse to live in a world where Etsy fees can be 10% or 22% of each sale (I never know which it will be until after a customer pays) and then force me to offer bulk or wholesale discounts via their site.

So when one of my lovely hat-base customers (who are often costumers for local theater productions) wants to order in bulk, they need to know:

I refuse to live in a world where Etsy can penalize me for agreeing to delay creating a purchased item (when a customer’s special event is delayed, or they’re on a diet and want to hold off taking their measurements) then force me to offer made-to-order items on their site.

Therefore, customers browsing ready-to-ship items in my Etsy shop (I can only stock small through large in my home studio) appreciate knowing:

I absolutely refuse to live in a world where Etsy can offer AI-managed, return-not-required refunds to buyers who submit a claim (and take the money straight from my checking account for any amount over $250) and then force me to sell my exquisitely elaborate custom-made corset costumes and wedding dresses on their site.

So when a customer sees one of the samples I make for photoshoots and is interested in commissioning a similar look in their size, they need to know that:

Mentioning my website in Etsy messages has always been against their terms. If you’ve noticed the “please don’t ask about custom orders, I’ll have to turn you down!” wording on Etsy images and listing descriptions, that’s because the afore-mentioned off-platform transactions policy explicitly prohibits:

Making offers to buy or sell outside Etsy

That wording is vague enough that I’m nervous even acknowledging that I HAVE a store on my website in Etsy messages. I know for a fact that there are bots that comb Etsy messages for seller-sent independent website links – the seller will receive a polite notification from an AI support agent that their shop will be banned if they continue to do so.

Their terms on listing descriptions and images are much more specific:

Encouraging buyers to purchase an item in your Etsy shop through another venue

So until recently, I felt safe putting my auralynne.com address on images, so long as I did so just to share additional options for customers that are available on my website.

Now images are no longer safe. Based on some quick research, it appears that Etsy is scraping all the images on their site with an OCR (Original Character Recognition) program, and taking down listings that the AI finds violate their policies.

Unsurprisingly, there is no appeal if the AI makes a mistake:

And multiple infractions will result in a shop closure – which for me, would mean losing about half of my income…

I spent a significant amount of this past holiday weekend deleting hundreds of images in my Etsy shop, instead of taking a break to spend time with my family. It wasn’t just the image types mentioned above. Every. Single. One of my size charts used to be something like:

A few months back my computer died and there was no way to salvage anything from the hard drive (as that was the part that failed!) Thanks to cloud storage, I lost very little. Only one folder of items was saved to the computer without a backup – but it included my templates for making size charts. So this latest round of Etsy shenanigans means I have to re-create all of my size charts from scratch! I still have all my hand-drawn instructional sketches, thankfully. But if you’ve been browsing my Etsy shop and wondered what the heck happened to all the size charts, that’s why! The info is still in the listing descriptions. x.x

Now the next step is to hope, like hell, that I have successfully located every image that contained “auralynne.com” and successfully deleted them. I did check everything over very carefully… twice.

If not, and they shut down my shop, I suppose you’ll see me on the news!

Historically, I’m not very good at suffering in silence when Etsy screws me over…

My next blog post was SUPPOSED to be “All About my Vintage Diva Skirt” – but I must interrupt this planned series about my custom made Victorian Bustle Dress Designs to share some exciting news with you…

We’ve been looking for quite a while! For a variety of reasons – the fact that we really wanted to purchase a historical home, the state of the housing market in the area of New England that we live in, the amount of space we would need for my business, and admittedly my own pickiness, it’s been quite difficult to find something within our price range.

But we finally found something! It’s technically a Colonial-era home, but it was updated and expanded during the late-Victorian era, thus there are a lot of historical details to it that I absolutely love! It’s an extreme fixer-upper, and I’ll be sharing photos of our projects here as we undertake them – the ones that relate to my business or the Steampunk/Victorian themed ones, that is!

There’s a standalone garage building – with a story and a half over top that will will be utterly amazing for my business since it’s 100% separate from our home. Any home-based business owners out there will be very familiar with the challenges – it can be hard to separate working-time and relaxation-time well enough to truly be able to relax when you work from home. The over-garage studio is a long-and-involved project for the future, however. Like – it needs more than just paint, it needs non-plywood floors!

The house has a walk-up attic that’s finished, however, and it’s really a neat-looking spot! Eventually I’ve promised the kids that it will be their “video gaming room” – but for now, I can store most of what I keep ready-to-ship in my business up there. Our first project was to repaint the steeply sloped ceiling and the dormer walls to white:

The existing paint job was in good shape, but it was yellowish beige, which is very bad for taking photos! It makes silver accents look tarnished, turns purple shades to plum, and gives reds this weird orange sheen. It’s SO much better if I have the option to take a quick photo to show someone something (or to share on social media) with accurate colors, and without having to set up a lightbox!

My favorite part – even now in this temporary setup, my dress form mannequin is able to have a permanent location where I can put things on it to take pictures:

I used to have to pull it out from a corner behind other things and set up a temporary backdrop to be able to take pictures!

My sewing room is going to be our spare bedroom for now, and that’s the next project on our list. The people who lived in our house before attached a bunch of stuff to the walls and ceilings with a staple gun! I’ve already gone over every square inch of the spare bedroom with a variety of tools (pliers, a flathead screwdriver, and a paint scraper) in order to remove an absolute cubic butt ton of staples and broken staple bits – but that left behind a landscape of scratchy poky plaster. AKA death to lace. ☠️

I put all my fabric rolls inside heavy duty long bags to move them, and they’ve gotta stay in the bags until that room is safe!

Until my husband and I are able to set aside enough time to complete the sanding, hole-filling, and painting, I’ve been catching up on computer work – both for my business, and for the Indie Sellers Guild – the nonprofit advocacy organization for creative small businesses that I helped found.

And I’ve done some sewing from my dining room, which is honestly what I’m used to, as that’s where I used to sew when we lived in the apartment.

I will be ecstatic to finally have truly dedicated space for my very space-intensive business!

…For real this time!

I actually made this announcement (and shared this photo) the first time back in June of 2020. Now here I am, two and a half years later, making it again!

>.<

The whole story (14 parts! O.O) is posted here – but here’s a short explanation of why I stopped offering custom orders for so long – just in case you don’t have hours to read my babblings!

Since mid 2020, Etsy has a mandatory ads program. They force me to participate, and randomly take an extra 12% out in fees for any sale “attributed” to one of these ads. I can’t choose what to advertise. And yes, it can apply to a private listing that I make for a customer, if that customer clicked on an Etsy ad for any of my listings at any time in the last 30 days. Or if Etsy’s bots think they have for some reason!

ALL of my custom orders used to come from Etsy. And there’s another policy on Etsy, where if I ask a customer in a message to purchase from me off the platform, I can get banned.

What should I do? That was the question running through my head for the last two and a half years. Do I overcharge everyone, or sometimes take a paycut?

It’s a big paycut. The fee is 12% of the order total, and I still have to pay for everything else – materials, shipping, all Etsy’s other fees. When I get an offsite ads order, it works out to about a 25% paycut. A fancy custom gown can take me weeks to make.

A LOT has happened in 2022, and I wound up taking a long break from Etsy. It gave me the time to really think of how to get around the problem.

I would leave Etsy in a heartbeat if I could – but I can’t, and since founding the Indie Sellers Guild I’ve discovered that nearly every other creative indie seller is in the same boat with me. Tiny online shops simply don’t have the power to dominate Google searches like a giant tech platform. But there are a lot of ways I can make sure my Etsy shoppers know how to get a custom order that aren’t likely to get me banned – mainly in my images!

As I reopen my Etsy shop, I’ve been careful to create multiple images to let people know I have a website, and on the things I make that tend to inspire people to ask for custom made, I make sure one of the photos specifically says that custom orders are only available at auralynne.com.

If anyone contacts me on Etsy to ask about a custom order, I will have to turn them down entirely so that I’m not breaking Etsy’s terms of service. But I’ve always received a few more custom requests than I have time to fill.

With this plan, I’m finally feeling confident enough to open custom orders again. I feel like I won’t spend TOO much time turning people down because they reached out on Etsy. I hate saying no, and it would be particularly aggravating if I had to keep doing so while my schedule was open!

On my website I have options for custom orders that aren’t possible on Etsy! I’m still working on this, but I think I can add a “Request Made-to-Order” button on everything I post here, so you can sign up to be notified the next time I make a batch of any of my skirts or jackets.

I’ve run out of a lot of my most popular skirts and underpinnings – so my plan is to restock those first. Next, I’ll work on getting options for made-to-order costumes, and the made-to-order gowns I offer that take less time to make. Haha, dress jacket gowns will have to come last!

I have updated the custom orders page on my site with commonly asked questions, and I anticipate that they will be fully available again by spring of 2023.

I’m looking forward to creating one-of-a-kind creations again!

I’ve held out for as long as I possibly can. I’m reopening my Etsy shop today. Even though I spearheaded an internet based activism movement that grew to 82 thousand people in 4 weeks time, somehow I can’t figure out how to earn enough on a standalone website to keep from being forced to return to Etsy — at least, not yet. Maybe that says more about the state of the world than it says about me.

I had to register a “throwaway” bank account to reopen my shop. Etsy’s latest anti-creator policy is to require each and every one of us (in the US at least) to give our bank account info to what’s been described as a “legal phishing” service in order to keep getting paid.

We tried everything to fight back against being forced to sign up for Plaid and agree to their privacy policy, which states that Plaid can do whatever the heck they want with financial data from our bank account. We filed formal FTC complaints, and some of us took it to our state attorney generals too.

Just last Friday, we received a reprieve of an extra 72 days to verify. We think it’s likely that so many sellers were upset by the policy that Etsy was worried about it cutting into holiday season profits. The reprieve came too late for me — as I had already connected Plaid to my “throwaway” bank account.

And now here I am, back on Etsy. Back to being on call for messages every single weekend so I don’t lose Star Seller status. Back to sending hundreds of dollars every month to a platform that does not care about me or the success of my business. Back to waiting for the next anti-creator change I’ll have to spend unpaid time adapting to.

For every 100 dollars I earn in sales in my shop, Etsy fees could cost me anything from $10 to $22. Not knowing how much I’ll pay per sale really sucks. I’m adding a 15% surcharge to my Etsy prices in comparison to the prices on my website — but I know that if there is a week or month when too many of my sales are attributed to their offsite ads program, I won’t be charging enough to cover their fees, and they will come out of my income instead.

I became a leader of the Etsy strike movement on February 28th. My indie online business has a social media following of nearly 17 thousand people on Facebook. The first time they heard about the Etsy strike was on April 1st. Together with many other people in our movement, I shared this image:

For 4 years, while I watched Etsy kill my online business, I was that woman in the photo. I felt like I couldn’t speak out about the things happening on the platform. I felt like no one would listen, like no one would care.

I am so glad to have been so incredibly wrong about that.

Our customers shop on Etsy to support US. They are universally not-happy to learn of all the ways Etsy is screwing over its sellers. And so, until Etsy decides to stop screwing over its sellers, our customers will know.

I will continue to sell on Etsy, as I have no other choice, no other way to reach enough people in this tech-platform-dominated world. But that doesn’t mean I have to suffer in silence.

Each and every time an order comes through from an Offsite Ad, and I find myself with 78% instead of 90% of the funds from the sale, that package will contain a note to the customer, something like:

Hi! Thank you so much for supporting my handmade business. I want you to know that I have a website (auralynne.com), where I’m able to offer you much better prices, as Etsy fees more than doubled in less than 4 years, and I had to raise prices to compensate! For instance, since your order came though with an extra advertising fee, 22% of your payment went straight to Etsy.

I appreciate every single order from every single beautiful customer, including the ones who shop from me through Etsy — but over the past year, I’ve learned that you all don’t want to be kept in the dark about this! Knowledge is power. Thus this note. 🙂

Thanks again for your patronage, and happy costumed adventures!

Each and every time I receive a message on the weekend or on a day off, there will be an auto-reply:

Hi! This is an auto-reply. Sorry to do this, I swear I am a real person who offers individualized customer service! Etsy has this Star Seller Program that forces me to either be on call for messages 24/7, or set an autoreply every single time I want to take a full day or a weekend off. Since I like to unplug and be with my family from time to time, autoreply it is!

Thank you for your patience, and I will get back to you ASAP!

Other guild members have come up with creative ways to let shoppers know, like these labels by Lightbringer Designs:

During our fight not to be forced to share our bank account history with Plaid, we learned that the US government doesn’t consider us to be consumers, and so, consumer laws don’t apply to us. While setting up our labor organization, we learned that US labor law doesn’t consider us to be employees, and therefore labor laws don’t apply to us. Every law that exists to protect individuals against the excesses of giant corporations does not protect us.

There is nothing out there to help us. The only answer is for us to start helping ourselves.

Luckily, we’re doing just that, with the Indie Sellers Guild, our all-volunteer, free-to-join union for online sellers.

Before the Etsy Strike, I was alone, and I was powerless.

Today, I have no idea what the future holds. But I feel so much stronger now that I have found camaraderie, and community, with other members of the guild.

Individually, we are one drop.

Together, we are an ocean.

I’m closing this article with a note for all the lovely customers who have supported me on my website during this time. Thank you! Thank you all, so much. There have been moments since August when I thought I’d have to re-open my Etsy shop – but each time, I’d get a new order or two, and be able to hold out for that much longer!

Because of all of you, I feel confident that I will be able to keep custom orders and really limited edition things off Etsy (those are the types of things that their anti-creator policies hurt worst), and that will make things much easier.

Now that I’m finally done with the Etsy Strike series, I’ll be glad to be able to go back to my usual light-hearted style and babble about pretty things!

This post is part of a series telling the story behind the 2022 Etsy Strike. Click here to start at the beginning.

I knew what was coming. I was dreading it. It was the one part of my role in the Etsy Strike movement that I was not comfortable with, in the slightest.

I would need to appear in interviews to talk to people. On video. In front of a camera. I would need to talk to people without tripping over my tongue. Or giggling like a fool. Or any number of other things I was certain I would do.

I’ve always known that video is a medium I should REALLY try to figure out if I want to be successful in my business. I mean, I make stuff that looks like this:

And I get photographs of it by dolling myself (and friends) up, and wandering around various public parks. That’s like, perfect fodder for Youtube or Tiktok!

I’ve tried to video tape photoshoots multiple times. I’m always shy to spend the time clipping and turning them into something to post… because, well, I’m an idiot. A funny idiot, but still an idiot.

For example – tripping across a greenspace seeing how much lift I can get under a wide hoopskirt with each step, while saying “bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy…” yep, that’s me.

I know that idiocy is very entertaining – so it probably WOULD be very good as a channel of some sort. But there’s a line between entertaining fool and just plain fool – and I’m never entirely certain if I’ve crossed it! Video terrifies me, on principle. And I really couldn’t be an idiot on an actual real life news media interview.

It was coming, and I was going to have to step up. And so, I overprepared. Before my first interview, I spent probably about 5 hours memorizing responses to the questions I thought reporters would be most likely to ask.

I didn’t think of everything they would ask. Thus, I learned something very important during my first interview. Afterwards, I watched it, and I realized, I did significantly better on the questions I hadn’t prepared for!

Ah. Don’t overthink it. The thing I have to tell myself with almost everything I attempt.

It didn’t take long to realize that I really enjoyed media interviews. It’s a special combination of getting to talk to grown ups (work at home moms feel me on this one!), and feeling important/official. On April 7, 2022, came an opportunity to realize that I wasn’t half bad at it.

I had an interview with Yahoo Finance. Yes, I know, Yahoo Finance. I somehow didn’t put two and two together, until I was in the breakout room in a zoom call waiting to go on live television. I wasn’t live yet, but I could see what was currently being broadcasted in the call. The broadcaster introduced the segment that would include my interview. He started talking about Etsy’s stock. I saw a huge graph of Etsy’s stock price doing a nosedive.

And I thought, Oh. Shit. Yahoo Finance. Finance as in stocks! As in, a show meant for a bunch of people who aren’t particularly fond of these pesky Etsy strikers having a negative effect on their portfolios! Oh boy…

I was scared to watch that interview afterwards, until it got shared by someone who I was pretty sure wasn’t trying to make fun of me. So two days after it aired, I watched it. My eyes got bigger as I did.

I could see places where the reporter was trying to trap me into a bad answer – places I didn’t fall! For a work-at-home mom with with no professional media training, I think I did pretty damn good.

By 4/11, we were joking about how the interviews were coming in too quickly to keep up. By 4/12, we were too busy for joking! That day alone we posted 13 calls to Discord asking people to reach out to the reporters for interviews. Even with four of us on the core team doing nearly back-to-back interviews, we couldn’t keep up.

I had to download What’sApp, because reporters from other countries wanted to call me. My most epic moment occurred during a phone interview with someone from BBC. He asked what I sell on Etsy. I answered “I’m a gothic Victorian fashion designer!” He replied, “Oh. Wow! I wasn’t expecting that!” in a delighted tone – and I should add that he had the absolute smoothest British accent I have yet to hear. In that moment, I thought, “That’s it. I’ve peaked…”

There are a lot of ways to reach me. I discovered that, when there was a sea of reporters using each and every one of them all at once. My Etsy inbox. Facebook and Instagram inboxes both for my business and for the Etsy Strike project. The chat system, and message system on Reddit. The mod message system for our subreddit. The contact form attached to our petition. The contact form on my business website. Our Discord server. Private messages on Discord. The email I set up for media interviews and linked on etsystrike.org. My cellphone, eventually. One time a reporter called my husband looking for me. We still have no idea how that happened!

Every day during the strike, evening would come, and the Etsy Strike organizers would take a collective breath. Maybe the media frenzy would die down now. The following day we would think it had, until it started back up again late morning.

I really do love appearing on media interviews. By the end of the strike on 4/18, I wanted to turn into a turtle and hide in a shell for a very long time.

I couldn’t do that though. 82 thousand people had signed up for our cause, and the strike was done, but we weren’t done.

The strike was only the beginning.

This post is part of a series telling the story behind the 2022 Etsy Strike. Click here to start at the beginning.