Etsy is a toxic place.

I used to be an Etsy ra ra cheerleader. But going to Canada over Labor Day weekend had this funny effect.

See...I made the magical 100 Etsy sales a couple days before we left. And then sales dried up and DIED.

Upon my return from Canada, I couldn't figure out why my shop, which was almost at the 1-sale-a-day point had no sales in 2 1/2 weeks. Closer inspection revealed that there was a 15-60 second lag in the search results return and sub-category load in most of the saturated sub-categories. Jewerly>Earrings. Art>Prints. Supplies>Buttons. You get the idea.

Well over 2 months later these issues are not resolved and Etsy continues to roll out changes when search priority on any other e-commerce site with common sense would have been priority #1. We've gotten a poorly thoughtout Vacation Mode for sellers. We got the Dolls and Miniatures category. And now the front page design has changed in the middle of the holiday shopping season, and not for the better.

Meanwhile, Artfire.com looks promising. I haven't really set up shop there at all yet, but if there's any site that might be able to give Etsy a run for its money (Shophandmade, Ecrater are others) this one looks like the place I might run to. I'm going to bail out of Etsy. I'll leave whatever I've got up there, maybe keep vintage and supplies there, but for that to be my only shop...no. I'm sick of the perpetual bitch-slapping and fingers-in-the-ears policies around there.

The warm fuzziness of Etsy wore off a long time ago. At this point I have to stop caring because it's simply unhealthy to care this much about some place that obviously doesn't care about you.

New post coming soon about sea glass!