Today Etsy began selling showcases for all categories. You can read more about it in this Storque article.
The showcase gateway, where showcase spots are booked by sellers, now displays the following message:
Please note: items in the Category Showcases must be in the correct Category, or they might be removed. Please see read our Showcase Help Guide FAQ for more info.
November 15th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Well, I won’t be doing anymore. I rotated about 5 different items throughout the day, and none of them got more than a couple of views each. No new hearts and no sales. I have to say I get better results renewing and listing new stuff. throughout the day.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Little Pies, also try on another day renewing that same item every few hours, or a similar item if you don’t have the same item anymore.
November 15th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Ok, here are my results from the category showcase, day 1.
24 new views, 3 hearts, 1 sale. That sale was 9.00, so a 2.00 margin. Is the exposure worth that 7.00? Probably not… as I think I have a pretty good name for myself and my products… we’ll try again on the next showcase day… see what happens.
November 15th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Well I heard back from Etsy around noon saying they’d look into it, but the mistagged item was not removed from the glass category showcase. :(
November 15th, 2007 at 1:12 am
It resembles a pyramid scheme in the sense that it needs constant infusions of new, naive sellers to keep supporting it.
It also reminds me of these people selling “get rich quick” schemes or books or seminars. They get rich by people buying their books or seminars, not by practicing their own system. They are selling the dream too.
Etsy isn’t getting rich, but they do seem to make more money from people trying to sell things (listings and ads) than from actual sales. This way Etsy the Company can “succeed” even if most sellers do not succeed. This may also be why Etsy is so slow to add new features to aid buyers, because their financial model isn’t dependent on items actually being bought.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:33 am
yup…i agree deja vu…
i also agree that people will buy them. etsy has, in certain ways, sold people a dream. a dream that they could make a living doing what they already do as a hobby. it is not a dream that is likely to be true for hardly anyone, but, people are willing to try for $15.00 a pop…and after they give up….there are hundred of new people in line behind them to try too.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Exactly my point, Rita. However, I suspect they will resist paying for any external links as long as there are people who will pay for it without it being linked externally. And the Etsy Nation will support that for a fairly long time, I think.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
yeah…but if they were getting regular external clicks that should be the goal right? They just started the showcase so sellers were looking at it every two seconds. I suspect that if they external links now, they’d see different results today.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Haha, JB, a couple weeks ago I gave into the temptation right on the forum.
“What’s that old saying? …there’s a seller joining every minute. Something like that.
There will always be people willing to pay for showcase. And then they’ll be disappointed and disillusioned when they realize that for that much money they could have gotten greater exposure in both the Time Machine and the “Fresh Items” by renewing or listing new items.”
And I stand by that. I still think that if the Showcases were linked to decent external advertising, *then* there might be some value in it. I know they said they didn’t get as many external clicks as they did internally, but I’m guessing that the external clicks were more likely people who were new to Etsy. Not just existing users just checking each other out. Also, back when they were externally linked was when the site was experiencing so many problems. It’s much more stable now. (Hey, it is much more stable now. I just realized that.)
November 14th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
i think the $15.00 cost is insane. I had tried the regular showcase with little results. I decided to go ahead and try the category showcases…honestly more as market research than anything else. ( i want to see whether knitting or supplies gets more attention–i’m still trying to figure out the best place to put yarn–eventually etsy may move my stuff but in the meantime i want to know which is better) hehe