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AryanArts33

Posted 3 months ago · Edited 3 months ago·Last reply 3 months ago

3 comments

DanaswariPaintings

·3 months ago

https://danaswaripaintings.etsy.com/listing/1145994723/balis-rural-landscape-painting-with-old

uncostumed

·3 months ago · Edited

Etsy no longer allows promotional games on the forum. That's why the Art Team plays similar games on other sites. Personally, I don't play them on any site as the way Etsy calculates stats it makes most promotional games negatively affect sales. If you find them beneficial, Mike can direct you to them.

Here is link to another post I wrote on a different discussion explaining this further.

*****

Here is an updated version of what I wrote on another team as an alternative to the classic promotional games:

Etsy's community page ( https://www.etsy.com/legal/community ) rules state:

The posting of promotional content is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, promotional games and threads. Promotional content includes any post, comment, or thread, regardless of name or format, that is intended to advertise, market, solicit, or drive traffic or sales to listings, shops, offsite links, discounts, swaps, giveaways, or social media. Promotional content is subject to moderation by the Team Captain or Etsy’s Community Moderators. Etsy may remove such content and take enforcement action consistent with Etsy policies, including removal of Team Captain status or team deactivation.

[Last updated on Mar 31, 2026]

Instead of playing promotional games and possibly getting in trouble, here is what I learned and focus on:

Whether the powers that be allow us to play these games or not is less important than the fact that these games affect our listing engagement rates, which then greatly lowers our sales conversion rate, which affects our overall shop stats, which then lowers our search rankings, which then lowers our chances for sales. You do you, but it causes too many negative dominos to topple for me to participate. As much as I love other sellers, unless I sell supplies (which I don't), sellers are not my target audience; so I get a lower return on my effort by marketing to other sellers than I do marketing to my target customers.

Etsy also changed how our stats affect our search ranking so the most important stat is conversion rate, not the ones some of the games focused on. Just visits, views, and hearts with no sales can lower your search ranking making the old games less helpful. They did this to encourage us to focus on quality stats (and of course quality shops/listings too) not quantity stats. They're pushing shop improvements. They want to promote higher converting shops and listings as more sales equals more income for everyone, sellers and Etsy alike.

These are the stats that they say matter:

Five Shop Stats You Should Be Tracking

( https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/22398388701?ref=handbook )

In section 1 it says:

"Your views to sales ratio, also called your conversion rate, is best measured over longer periods of time. Look at your views to sale ratio for January through June, for example, and measure it against the same six month period last year. Imagine you had 1,000 views and two sales last year but only 800 views and two sales this year. At first glance, you might think you’re not doing as well because your views decreased. In fact, those numbers mean that more of your items are selling per view.

Shift your focus from getting more views to turning more views into sales. How? …"

"Most successful Etsy shops maintain conversion rates between 1-5%, with the average hovering around 2-3%. If you’re falling below 2%, your listings likely need some attention." Quoted from an article on Marmalead (they're an approved third party partner) https://blog.marmalead.com/etsy-listing-quality-score/ that has lots of other great info.

Also, visiting a shop's main page, favoriting a bunch of listings without viewing the individual listings, and leaving, with the intent to help fellow sellers actually harms them by lowering their "That's an average of ___ listing views per visit." stat as you're only visiting one page and again that lowered stat can affect search results. However, if you spend the time to look at all the listings you favorite, it will increase that stat, but sadly without buying anything it will still negatively affect their conversion rate. We have to work thoughtfully to help each other.

After learning all of this this, I'm personally less interested in playing games with the sole purpose of increasing our views and favorites as they're not as helpful as making friends and together improving our shops, marketing to our target customers, and increasing our conversion rates. Etsy is focusing on quality over quantity. I'm not a star seller, but I aim to be; and reading up on how Etsy works and modeling what I do after high volume sellers with quality listings will go a long way to getting there. Big sellers tend to market towards their target customers more than to other Etsy sellers and I think that's what Etsy's nudging us to do.

It's works the same with bigger online department stores (Macy's, Nieman Marcus, etc.) that position themselves as mid to higher end. They don't market to other similar businesses. They market to their target customers. I say, act the way you want to be and you will become it. Think like your target customers (majorly important when doing everything from tagging to shop sections, it builds trust and trust builds sales) bookmark articles in the Seller handbook, read up, watch videos, and learn how to use every tiny feature to improve your shop and search positions. I made a draft listing that I will NEVER publish with all the notes and shop improvements I need to implement and when I have time I skim through and pick a task. I'm doing that now and I'm seeing the results pay off.

Since I don't sell supplies, my target customers are not other sellers. Because of this, I use the forums more for making friends and learning to improve my shop. Shop improvements help me reach the peaks and friends help me weather the valleys. If sales come from the forum, I am truly grateful - but not hoping on it.

I don't want to discourage people from playing games that follow the rules, but for me, I only have so many hours in the day and there are far less time intensive revenue streams I'd rather focus on. My priorities have shifted. Now I work on things that give me the biggest return on my time investments. Everyone's point of diminishing returns is different.

Remember everything is always a work in progress and today is the the best day to be 1% better than yesterday. Thank you for listening to my stump speech. Seriously, you got this and soon your shop will soar!

AryanArts33

OP3 months ago

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1725626243