Yup, that’s correct. My Etsy shop got suspended overnight at the start of February 2017. At this point my Etsy store had just hit it’s 2 year mark and was 100% passive except for the 2-3 hours a week I used to check up on it.
At it’s peak it was bringing in $1000+ each month for me, but when it was truly passive it was making a steady $600+ each and every month in profit. Not exactly a lot, but when you’re making that amount for a total of 8 hours collectively in a month. Well. I don’t think anyone would complain about those numbers, am I right?
So how did I get my etsy shop suspended? To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure. Etsy sent an email saying my store didn’t follow their policies, but I read everything on their site to verify this and I couldn’t find anything that would make my store “illegal” on the site. However, now that it’s been over half a year since the incident, I do have my theories and I have learnt a lot of lessons that I want to share with you Hustlers also.
I didn’t do my homework
What I mean by this is, I didn’t know what it truly meant to manage a passive income stream. I didn’t even know what passive income was at the time. I just knew I had this online business that I barely needed to work on and it was consistently making me money month after month.
It didn’t even occur to me there’s an entire set of skills I needed to learn to run a passive income stream successfully. It would be too late by the time I found that out. My first passive income stream I built over 2 years vanished overnight. I was really naive and thought I could genuinely just leave it. I let the customer service slide to the point where I just didn’t care anymore.
I was progressively receiving more 3 star or 2 star reviews from unsatisfied customers. I didn’t take their feedback on to make the needed changes to my business. And I later found out that Etsy keeps tabs on negative reviews. Stores that get a sudden increase in negative reviews or complaints are subject to extra scrutiny.
This is my first theory on why I was shut down overnight. I was being irresponsible to my customers and Etsy must have taken note on this sudden decrease in customer satisfaction. What platform would want a irresponsible seller ruining their brand? In that sense, it made complete sense that my Etsy store got suspended.
I was dependent
I took over and dominated several of the biggest keywords for my niche, which obviously meant I stole a substantial amount of business from some competitors. It also meant I shone the spotlight on my store within my niche as well. It’s a small niche with maybe only
At the same time, there were threads popping up in the community section about stores getting reported for no reason. Or stores getting closed overnight. You’re probably asking what is a report. Well, everyone who has an account on Etsy can “report” a store to Etsy for a number of reasons, but all the reasons can potentially suspend the Etsy shop. You don’t need to provide any proof of your accusations and it will be logged on their database. If enough reports get sent in for your store, then Etsy will have to take necessary actions.
It’s not hard to see how easy it is for a store to get shut down even if they didn’t do anything. This is my second theory of how I got shut down overnight.
You have to understand that starting a business on a platform, such as Etsy, will always put you in a spot of vulnerability at the end of the day.
Etsy has an image to uphold and the final word is in their hands. They can easily change policies, change their search engine algorithm and the like. Sellers will come and go, because Etsy understands the importance of being brand consistent, no matter what direction they want to take as an organization. As an individual seller, you’re helpless to their decisions.
I was 100% dependent on the traffic Etsy gave me to get sales. I didn’t drive any other traffic and it made me completely helpless to sudden changes. I was foolish to not nurture my customers by directing them to an online store I owned! I didn’t even have a store that I owned!
I closed my shopify store once Etsy took off, thinking why should I invest my time and effort on Shopify if Etsy was progressing so well.
I couldn’t have been more ignorant and wrong. ALWAYS have a shopify store to direct customers to. They aren’t really your customers if they are buying your products from a third party platform.
The lessons to be learnt!
- Never neglect your customers. These are the people who have already gone through the entire sales process and are the best people to give you feedback. Take it, listen and make the needed changes if the same issues keep coming up.
- Do your homework. Never stop learning about how to run your business. You don’t know what you don’t know, and the only way to counter it is to always actively search for knowledge. Use what you already know to let it lead you to other things you can learn.
- Have a backup plan. Don’t just sell on Etsy alone, diversify your streams of traffic. Ideally start your own online store and not just have another store on a different platform like ebay, amazon or the like. I would recommend using Shopify as it’s such a seamless and easy to use service. Most importantly you don’t need to know any advance programming to create an SEO optimized website.
Shopify is a e-commerce software service provider for store owners to manage their business. It’s easy to use and extremely seamless. Shopify has risen up the past few years to be the go-to service provider for creating your own online store.
And rightly so, there’s an app store full of free and paid apps. In fact most e-commerce apps are compatible with Shopify. A theme store full of ready to use designs that that are easy to edit and customize. You can get started with a free theme and still have a professional looking website.
But the two key features why I recommend Shopify is the SEO optimized code Shopify uses for all their themes. As long as you use a theme from the theme store on Shopify you know your website is SEO optimized.
Having your website SEO optimized cuts out a lot of the grunt work in trying to get your website ranked and indexed by search engines manually. The way Shopify allows you to create pages, shop categories as well as organize your sitemap means it will automatically be SEO friendly. All you have to do is use your keywords and Shopify will do the rest for you.
Another feature, or reason is Shopify’s size in the industry. They’ve gotten so big that it’s impossible for other complementary service providers to not make their products compatible for Shopify stores. If you use other service providers such as Woocommerce, you’re instantly shutting yourself off from a lot of awesome apps and services. The same apps and services that could increase customer retention, decrease basket abandonment or even outsource your logistics out.
BUT, saying that woocommerce is free to use. So you do get what you pay for.
If you want to check out any of the resources mentioned in this post, please click on the links below.
Shopify (Get an exclusive 14 day free trial with this link)
This Post Has 19 Comments
CAN YOU PLEASE SING ME UP FOR YOUR NEWSLETTERS
Hey Jethro, are you having problems with the signup form in the footer? Let me know.
Also, if you want to be updated when a new post is up then the push notifications is the best way to get notified because I don’t use newsletters that often unless I have big news to share.
I’m about to open an ETSY store but I’m reading horrible stories about shut down overnight without warning nor explanations. Thank you for your article. I’ll think twice. Shopify is 29 USD/month without traffic, not good for beginners without sales. What if Shopify doesn’t like your products and shut you down, ban you from using their platform ?
Great point! Shopify isn’t a market place, so they don’t provide you traffic. The best thing to do is to leverage both platforms to your advantage. Start on Etsy and grab the traffic there to divert them to your Shopify store so they are 100% yours. Over time, that diverted traffic will help you gain SEO brownie points with Google and you’ll get organic traffic to your Shopify store. You find my guide on how to do this here: https://milliondollarwinnie.com/free-learning-resources/
Also, it’s important to note Shopify can’t close you down. AS LONG as you don’t sell anything to do with drugs, porn or gambling. These are the big 3 taboos for online business. Not many platforms or services will help you or allow it. You wouldn’t even get a payment system to accept you as a merchant.
Same here. My Etsy store was shutting down overnight and I have no clue why.
Since then I have move on to amazon fba and things were getting better.
Amazon FBA? I didn’t know that business model worked for craft items of digital downloads. Are you sure you didn’t break the rules of what type of products can be sold on Etsy? I’m not trying to offend, I’m just genuinely curious because from my understanding FBA doesn’t and wouldn’t work for ETSY sellers. Ebay or your own online e-commerce store would be the only alternatives to selling your wares online from my research. Ebay is rather saturated and it only works if you are able to sell in volume to get enough attention. Out of all the ways to create and e-commerce platform, Shopify seems to be the most worth it in value and utility. I’ll be very interested to hear more about how you transitioned to FBA from Etsy.
I am surprised that you have never heard Amazon Handmade. Third parry sellers sell handicrafts at Amazon Handmade.
Thanks for letting me know. I checked it out and I think Etsy is better than Amazon handmade because the platform seems to be flooded with mass produced products from China while Etsy regulates “slightly” better.
Same here ….but Etsy is totally ‘flooded’ with commercially manufactured goods mostly from China…disappointing as I have been on Etsy for over 9yrs
Yeah, it was already the case 5 years ago when I was still on the site. Do you have steady traffic? An established customer base? If you do my advice would be to start your own e-store as a security blanket from unfair competition on Etsy.
I am shocked that Etsy can shut you down as described. Since customers are expected to go back to the seller first, surely you should have only had your business suspended and been given the reasons. Then an owner could rectify the issues and get another chance. I can’t leave feedback on Amazon as they state they had issues with my account. I have never given a bad review but can’t find a way to find out the exact reason. I think their must have been a mix up somehow. So, while I buy lots of things from Amazon, I can’t compliment the goods and service I get. I’d be devastated if I had my account closed without getting the chance to address the issue(s). Thanks for your helpful account.
It has been a number of years now, so I don’t know if they still run the same way. Although the amount of communication with Etsy or feedback was very low while I was there. A rule of thumb when I do anything is to ensure if I have a question of if I need to speak to someone, I can and I’m not left helpless to the situation.
This is what happened to me last night. I was suspended for good after being warned in 2017 and one month ago. They have not and do not plan to tell me why they shut me down. I suspect it was ONE buyer who put th enail in the coffin. I have 300 customers a month and completed 6950 orders. I brought $5K into eTsy a year and was growing fast. But they do not have their math correct and chose to kick me off lest some 4 POTENTIAL buyers run away from eTsy causing them to lose some $14 in POTENTIAL fees. Also, their protocol is to hang the phone up on someone who was suspended for good. Very unprofessional. They do not even bother reading emails and just respond with generic messages. We need an alternative to eTsy. A bunch of incompetent admins.
Hi Winnie! Thanks for the blog! Are you still selling on Etsy? My shop is now at the mercy of Etsy and I fear it might shut down anytime soon for alleged violations that they say I committed. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into my shop just to have it up and running, and one person can truly ruin it all. I would like to ask if you selling on Shopify has become more successful than your Etsy shop? I would like to give Shopify a try as well. How was it for you since the time of its writing?
I don’t sell my printables anymore. I think Shopify is still the better choice for anyone looking to build a real business that can grow. But Shopify’s initial set-up time is a lot longer and takes more effort and resources. It’s harder because there’s more to learn. As with anything in life, there’s a trade off. Long-term stability and control over your business with higher profit margins for a slower, harder, less rewarding beginning. OR fast progress from the get-go but very real limitations to growth and control.
This is absolutely great, right on time, much needed insight. I’m super grateful for this as I am currently in the process of launching my Etsy shop and crazily told myself yesterday that I would just shut down my Shopify because I didn’t want to continue paying the monthly fee when I can just stream everything thru Etsy….pretty much exactly what you said not to do; and your suggestion definitely makes much more sense. I’m saving this pin directly to my phone for reference.
Sorry if this is a silly question, how did you divert your traffic from Etsy to Shopify?
you specifically give Etsy customers an incentive to go visit your Shopify store the second time they buy something from you. The incentive is most often a special one-time discount.
This was a very enlightening read! I’ve decided to become my own boss and I’m still in the “research” phase of selling my handmade/sewn items online. In the last 3 days alone, I’ve read a lot about etsy shutting down stores from 1 day to the next for various reasons. What has me concerned is what some of those reasons seem to be: ie – a competitor claiming copy right infringement, even if the complaint is absolutely baseless, but someone can be shut down for 2 weeks or permanently. I’m not very savvy on many things “on line” or “technical” (that’s what my husband is for haha), but I think I would rather go the Shopify route after everything I’ve learned, even knowing it’s going to be more difficult for me to navigate. Doing something the “easy” way isn’t always the best choice. What are your thoughts on using Shopify for handmade/sewn items for a beginner like me? I’m not even out of the gate yet.