Archive for April, 2008
April 29, 2008 at 9:50 pm · Filed under Marketing, Street Teams · By JB
Etsy is starting a “Team Grants” program where they will subsidize Team projects such as advertising and special events.
This new program is called Etsy Team Grants and will assist creative, dedicated and energetic Teams with Etsy promos and financial resources. This monthly granted funding will help Teams represent themselves at craft fairs, art shows or other local events, help subsidize team advertising (see the Co-Op Advertising Program for a good model of this) or take part in other opportunities. We also want to give Etsy Teams promos (stickers, postcards, etc) to help spread the Etsy message to their communities. The applications are reviewed monthly and we have a set budget for the hundreds of Etsy Teams, so make your application shine! Here are some tips:
1. Elect one person from your team to be the leader of this project, communicate well with your Team, and have them apply on the Team’s behalf.
2. Make sure to include detailed descriptions of Team promotions and events your Team has successfully completed.
3. Tell us why and how your grant would help spread the Etsy message in the most effective way.
4. Be creative! Let us know how your Team will be creatively using the Grant, or contributing more to it.
5. Make a promise to us that you will document the promotion with photos, blog entries or even video!
Funds are allocated on a case-by-case basis, and the article doesn’t specify which Etsy admin(s) make the choices.
q: How do you decide who gets a grant?
a: We can only give so much each month. We will make decisions based on the activity level of your team, the location and focus of your team (i.e. if we haven’t already subsidized an event or Team close to you geographically, or a Team with a similar reach and market, your chances are better), the number of Team members that the grant will assist, and the overall benefits to Etsy.com.
In the Storque article comments, sarawearsskirts says:
we’ll be publishing the grant winners and a follow up on the previous months’ allocations here in the Storque (and likely, also on the Team pages).
For more information, see this Storque article.
Fill out a Grant application here.
May 20 update by JB
The winners of the first team grants have been announced here
April 29, 2008 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Categories, Search · By quirke
This Storque article answers some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the upcoming changes to search and categories.
The discussion is still continuing in the related forum thread here.
April 28, 2008 at 12:09 pm · Filed under Categories, Search · By quirke
In this Storque article, Marymary describes the long-anticipated separation of vintage and supplies from handmade items in the Etsy search function, as well as other important changes to categories and search. An excerpt from the article:
Hello Etsians!
On Monday, May 5, 2008, some important and exciting changes are happening with searching and categories. These changes are in response to feedback from all around the Etsy community, and were first introduced back in February with Rob’s Focus on Handmade Storque article. Here’s a rundown of what is to come:
We’ll be separating item search into three new searches: Handmade, Vintage, and Supplies.
Handmade Items – This is the default search. This searches all items on Etsy that are not tagged with “commercial” and do not have “vintage” as the first tag. Handmade supplies will still appear in this search. You can search tags and titles or tags, titles, and descriptions.
Supplies – This will search all of the supplies on Etsy, both handmade and commercial. Any item tagged “supplies” will show up in the results.
Vintage – This special vintage search returns only items within the Vintage category. This means items with vintage as their first tag (selected from the dropdown menu in the listing process).
The existing search will also remain available. Just select “All items” from the search bar to search handmade, supplies, and vintage all at once.
We’ll also be making changes to the category browser. Currently a top-level category such as Jewelry shows only items within the Jewelry category. The subcategories and sub-subcategories contain any items that have the tag “jewelry,” but are not necessarily in the Jewelry category. We call this “category bleed.”
The changes on May 5 will eliminate category bleed. All subcategories will only show items from within that category. Meaning the subcategories of “jewelry” will no longer pull up jewelry supplies.
The Patterns category is also gearing up for change, although this will not be part of the May 5 update. In order to help keep things organized, Patterns will be moving into the supplies category. A new drop-down will appear in the listing process for Patterns, prompting you to select handmade (if it’s your own pattern) or commercial (if it’s someone else’s pattern)
There is an accompanying forum thread here.
April 23, 2008 at 12:40 pm · Filed under Customer Service, Email Notifications, Etsy Communications, The Storque · By GreenMamba
It’s here! The News you can Use! According to this Storque article by admin Vanessa, this improved version of Etsy News Alerts will be more streamlined and site-news-oriented, as well as being delivered more swiftly to in-boxes as the news ‘breaks’.
Excerpt:
Many Etsians have been asking for a cut and dry way to get only the important site news from admin. The Storque is great and all, you say, but there’s so much content, it’s hard to pinpoint what’s what in the Etsy News Section.
We over here at the Storque are up for the task. We are converting the Etsy News Email list to be an Etsy News Alert system. In the past, Etsy News was about a weekly or so collection of headlines from the Storque. Pleasant enough, but not instantaneous! Not hard-hitting!
That was then, this is now: just sign up for the Etsy News Emails listserve here, or by clicking on the envelope icon on the homepage of Etsy.
You will get breaking news headlines straight from Etsy Central, as they are published on the Storque, delivered to your email inboxes. Hello, synchronicity!
Included Topics:
- Downtime & site outages
- Cooperative Advertising announcements
- New site features launched
- Statistics
- Showcase announcements
- Policy & legal announcements
- Important Customer Support how-tos
- Major posts from Etsy’s founder Rob Kalin, aka Rokali
- Town Halls or other community-wide events
- Other news important enough for us to bug you
Sign up for this (and other) Etsy E-mail Alerts here. You can also find a graphic link to the sign-up page on the Etsy front page, beneath the ‘Ways To Shop’ left sidebar. The forum announcement thread can be found here.
April 21, 2008 at 5:31 pm · Filed under Listings, Site Terms · By GreenMamba
In this Storque article Etsy admin bethela announces a change in listing times for all items renewed, from today (April 21, 2008) onward.
Excerpt:
Currently, when you renew an item, 4 months are added to the end of your existing listing.
Example: An item listed on February 9, 2008 will expire on June 9, 2008. If you renew today, April 18, 2008, your listing would expire October 9, 2008. Renew again, another four months are added and the item will expire February 9, 2009, and so on.
As part of our ongoing initiative to upgrade the site’s ease of use and improve everyone’s experience, we want to avoid this problem and have made the following change: if you renew an item, four months will be added to the item listing from the date of renewal.
Example: An item listed on February 9, 2008 will expire on June 9, 2008. If you renew today, April 18, 2008, the listing will expire on August 18, 2008.
Current listings with expiration dates beyond four months from today will not be affected. This will only impact listings renewed from today forward. You can read more about this and other upcoming changes in Rob’s summary of our recent Town Hall meeting.
April 11, 2008 at 4:58 pm · Filed under Etsy Communications, Events, Features, Miscellaneous, The Future · By quirke
Today’s Town Hall meeting in the Treehouse of the Virtual Labs was attended by over 130 people. While a transcript will be available later in the Storque, here are a few notes in advance:
General notes:
-Etsy currently has 73,478 shops with at least one item
-There are currently 60 Etsy employees
-Engineering comprises ½ of the company
Rob said that they are developing 2 major changes for the near future and 6 other developments for further down the road.
The 6 future developments are:
-currency conversion
-shop stats for sellers
-dynamic Team sections
-“stuff with video”
-“real-time multi-user stuff” (like the virtual labs)
-an in-house payment system
The 2 upcoming changes are:
Changes to Listing Periods for Renewals – This change will mean that when you renew an item, instead of adding 4 months from the previous expiration date, the additional 4 months will start from the date of renewal.
Changes to Search/Categories – Top level categories will be clarified, and “filters” will be added, such as “who is it for?” and “what is it made of?”.
Other items of interest:
-revamping the forums is being looked at from a database perspective right now and remains under development
-the “first draft” of the separation of supplies/vintage from search is completed
-supplies/vintage will hopefully get their own place by the end of the year
-when shop stats are provided there will be different levels of stats available starting with free, and then more detailed stats costing “a few bucks”
A great many other smaller issues were discussed – we will link to the transcript once it appears in the Storque.
UPDATE April 15 by JB
The transcript of the town hall meeting is posted here
The Storque article summarizing the meeting is here
April 11, 2008 at 3:18 am · Filed under Bugs, Images · By JB
Etsy is working on a solution to the problems that Mac Safari users are having trying to upload images.
In this forum thread, Revolving Dork says:
Last week we implemented a change on the photo uploading pages that prevented users from clicking the “upload” button more than once. This was done because pressing the button multiple times sends the same data multiple times, slowing down the file transfer and eating up server resources.
There is a bug in some versions of Safari that prevents uploads from going through after the upload button is clicked. In the past, sellers got around this bug by hammering the “upload” button until it worked. Now, this is no longer an option.
We have developed a workaround for Safari’s bug, and it appears to have resolved the issue, at least in our tests. If you’re still having issues, it may be best to use an alternate free browser for file uploads on Etsy. You should have no issues using Opera ( www.opera.com ) or Firefox ( www.getfirefox.com ).
Let us know if you are still having issues with image uploads — If you are, please post the following info:
1. The version number of Mac OS you’re using
2. The generation/type of Mac you’re using ( G3 , G4, Intel Core 2 Duo )
3. The version number of Safari you’re using
Thank you for your help!
If you are using Safari and still having trouble uploading images, please post in this forum thread and give your input.
Previous (locked) etsy thread on the same bug.
April 9, 2008 at 9:33 pm · Filed under Etsy Communications, Events, The Future · By JB
The Storque has announced the next Town Hall meeting with Etsy founder Rokali, at 4:00pm EST on Friday, April 11th in the Treehouse room of the Virtual Labs.
A couple caveats:
The room will fill up quickly. We’re working on a Balcony feature, which will increase the capacity greatly. Till then, it’s first come, first served.
Since there’s no single time that everyone in our global community can attend, so each meeting will be recorded and posted in the Storque for your re-viewing pleasure.
editorial- the article says EST (eastern standard time) but I am guessing they actually mean EDT, since New York does observe Daylight Savings time and it is in effect right now. This is important when figuring the time differential from GMT.
Time conversion:
4 PM, EDT Eastern USA
3 PM, CDT Central USA
2 PM, MDT Mountain USA
1 PM, PDT Pacific USA
8 PM GMT/UTC
9 PM United Kingdom (UK is now on Summer / Daylight Saving Time (NOT GMT))
10 PM Central Europe time zone, (+2 GMT), in countries which are currently observing Summer / Daylight Saving Time (which I think is most of them). This covers France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, etc.
April 9, 2008 at 3:36 pm · Filed under Features, Miscellaneous, The Future · By GreenMamba
In this thread admin emilybidwell announces Etsy’s plan to add a dedicated policy page to seller shops.
emilybidwell says:
The community has suggested a Seller Policy Page for better shop organization. We think that sounds like a great idea! If we created a seller policy page, what would you want it to look like?
Here’s what we have been brainstorming so far, but it’s all on the drawing board, so anything can change:
-The link would exist on your Shop Home Page under “Profile” in blue AND at the bottom of each listing.
-The page might look similar to the profile page
-Adding a policy would be optional
-If you don’t add a policy, the page would be blank (like an empty profile page).
-There would be sections for different aspects of policy: payment, shipping, refund/exchange, general
-If you don’t fill out a suggested section, the section will not appear in public in any way
-There will not be a text limit
Posted at 2:16 pm, April 9 2008 EST
Be sure to add your own ideas and suggestions to the Policy Page Wish List.
(At this time, there is no firm ETA.)
April 7, 2008 at 4:48 pm · Filed under Alchemy, Features · By GreenMamba
In this Storque article, admin kfarrell details some new Alchemy features:
Alchemy is almost a month old now, and after gathering feedback from a variety of places we have a round of updates that should make your Alchemy experience even better.
Changes include:
- RSS feeds for Alchemy searches
- A new “Batch Decline” option at the bottom of the bid list, allowing you to decline all undecided bids once you’ve selected your seller
- A new text field to send an optional message when you accept or decline a bid
- Updated text throughout Alchemy to make things easier to understand
- Hotlinking of URLs in bids
- The ability to email an Alchemy request to a friend
- A flagging form to fill out if you come across Alchemy listings that break the DOs and DON’Ts
- General bug fixes
We’re also changing Alchemy a little so a buyer may back out up until the point where the seller confirms the bid. This change has been in response to many requests from buyers who accepted a bid and did not hear back from their seller, finding themselves stuck in a stalemate.
Join the forum discussion going on here.
UPDATE - 9 April 2008 by GreenMamba
Accept/decline bid issue - Status: Resolved
Following the introduction of the new Alchemy features, there were a number of reports from members who were unable to either accept or decline their Alchemy requests. In this thread, RD announced (page 5) that the issue had been duplicated and a fix was being implemented. It has since been resolved.
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