(It’s complicated) A breakdown of Etsy’s complicated fee structure, with examples. It’s hard for sellers to profitably price their handmade wares with a complicated fee structure, and Etsy has 12 different kinds of fees and commissions they can charge on a sale. As we break down in this post, that means that the fees and commissions on an Etsy sale can…

Why Etsy Sellers Are Angry / A post from the team at EtsyStrike.org — Etsy Sellers Organized a “Strike” in Record Time The Etsy Strike of April 11–18, 2022 was an important moment in the history of the handmade marketplace experiment. In just a couple weeks of organizing, nearly 30,000 sellers joined together and collectively put our shops on “vacation mode,” temporarily removing listings from the platform and denying ourselves livelihood-supporting sales…

Amplifying the voices of people who work in creative businesses To further its mission to promote the interests of online sellers of handmade, unique, vintage and craft goods all over the world, Indie Sellers Guild (ISG) has started an online magazine on the popular publishing platform, Medium. The new publication, entitled “Creators Rising” aims to share stories from people who…

Why Etsy Sellers Are Angry / Post from EtsyStrike.org — Crain’s New York Business reported just after the Etsy sellers’ strike ended that Etsy CEO Josh Silverman was awarded more than $40 million in compensation in 2021, or 20 times more than the prior year. We all know that corporate pay packages have been getting obscenely fat, and the gap…

On April 11th, my family business Walnut Studiolo joined the ✊ #EtsyStrike ✊ by temporarily removing our products from the Etsy marketplace for one week. During the strike, our products — our livelihood — couldn’t be searched, discovered, bookmarked, or bought. For a small mom-and-pop crafter that got started on…

I was a long-time meal kit subscriber until one terrible kit changed everything. Now I make them myself instead. Meal kit delivery services like HelloFresh and Blue Apron are growing in popularity, and I was a happy subscriber for over four years. I enjoyed the variety, the time efficiency, and the cooking skills I learned. …

Resurgence of a hopeful childhood memory from Turkey in a time of political strife We filed into the cool, cavernous auditorium with its concrete pews lining the walls. After the heat of the midday Middle Eastern sun, it felt air-conditioned inside. …