An idea to fix Etsy?
I’m not an active participant in Etsy or eBay communities at all. But I do like to stay well read about online business, marketing, and so forth, so that I can help people that might be, or help guide folks to find the right fit for their project.
Which is to say, most of the following is from the perspective of “observer” more-so than “active participant”.
The claim
I was recently reminded about some struggles of folks in 2024 and 2025 to work with Etsy. The framing of this starts with text from Etsy’s “about page”:
Keep Commerce Human
Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. It’s home to a universe of special, extraordinary items, from unique handcrafted pieces to vintage treasures.
In a time of increasing automation, it’s our mission to keep human connection at the heart of commerce.
The contrast
It doesn’t take much “googling” or searching on YouTube to find a plethora of “make money fast” type claims. Mostly marketed at beginners, to show them how to (allegedly) quickly generate Etsy listings with as little effort as possible. Sometimes fully automating the process.
Opinions on the validity of “AI art” or “prompts as art” aside, setting up a “fully automated, hands off”, drop-shipping storefront in a place that purports to be a community about human-centric, “handcrafted” goods seems counter to the mission of the site itself.
If you want a deeper dive, there’s a pretty great video essay with a lot of details from Chloe Rose Art on YouTube.
Overall, the main problems I observed were that it’s just too easy to churn out listings, and it’s just too easy to post complete fakes.
What’s a platform to do?
So, as usual, I had an idea. This may already exist. It may have already been proven to not work. But what would the internet be without folks putting their ideas out there?
Here’s some foundational rules that I think a platform would have to adopt to even attempt to cultivate a sustainable, human-centric “community” of sellers:
- No automated listing APIs. That’s right. If you want to enter new product listings, you’ve got to do it by hand. If you have the available resources to bulk-create items via an API, you’re probably not the type of seller this community wants.
- No CSV bulk uploads. Yes, another speed-bump. It’s inconvenient if you’ve already got a little boutique and you’re trying to migrate a whole digital shop into the platform. But we’re talking hand-made, human-centric “as a platform”.
- Rate-limited product listings. So, you’re very clever, and you know that just because a website doesn’t offer an API, and just because you can’t upload a CSV as a shortcut, does not mean that you can’t automate listing items. But, the platform itself has a “speed limit” built-in. Two interns sitting side-by-side can probably do the data-entry pretty quickly and enter a new item every 15 minutes or so. And that’s probably a fair-enough speed.
A platform would need to launch with and promise to never alter these commitments.
Going back on those tenants would immediately open the door to becoming the thing you set out to compete with.
Incomplete or impossible task
None of the above addresses blatant forgeries, fakes, or infringements.
An additional measure that would be nice to have is a very clear policy and procedure about how alleged fakes/infringements are handled, and consistent application of said procedure.
For example, it sounds like Etsy has moderation in place for handling fake listings. But it sometimes come down on legitimate artists who’ve had their own images and copy stolen and used on third party sites. I’m not confident there’s a great way to solve that, other than to be extremely transparent about the process itself, and apply it extremely consistently.
Are there still so many ways to still post junk on this kind of platform? Without a doubt.
But I’m also instinctively “bearish” on the idea that content moderation can work at scale. (That’s a post for another time).
Personally, there are additional measures that I do not think I’d want in place, such as
- Proof of process. Where you have to upload work-in-progress images or video with each listing.
- Real human verification. Where sellers would verify themselves with video intros, studio tours, government issued IDs, or some such.
Those are going a bit too far, in my opinion. I think they push too much inconvenience where it doesn’t belong. At least for the shape of the problem I’m currently holding in my mind.
So what about fakes? I dunno. My idea was more about thwarting some amount of bulk/automated shops. Sorry if you’re disappointed at this point in the post.
Alternatives, and an abrupt wrap-up
I’m aware there are platforms probably trying to compete and address these kinds of issues.
I’d heard about Michaels “MakerPlace” but they immediately failed one of my first checks:
Their Seller Support Center has a big button for a “bulk listing upload tool” for uploading CSV files full of product listings.
At the time of writing, I haven’t yet bothered to go looking for dedicated, human-centric “community” platform for independent artists/sellers.
And I’m skeptical that any such platform could survive “at scale”, and so should instead aim to become “sustainable”.
And… that’s all I have to say about that at the moment.