Hi Kathy, similar to Rock Artiste. I am in the jewelry area and as we know, it is the most saturated of the over-saturated craft world, with the same difficulty of exposure and downward pressure on prices. I too keep my shop up basically as my website. Once every few months or years, I get a sale. But I found the amount of time and energy it took to engage in efforts boosting the shop's profile did not translate into results.
A couple of years ago, my friend Mary Phillips and I circulated a petition to try and get Etsy to curate a special higher-end handmade section, but it went nowhere. Among other issues, it would have forced Etsy to acknowledge the sheer volume of non-handmade and/or mass produced items. These listings result in higher revenue for Etsy but of course completely crowd out the truly handmade. I know we were not the first to try and address this problem, and clearly there is no real interest on Etsy's part.
So there you have it! Nothing personal to you or this thread. I understand efforts such as yours worked better when Etsy was strict about limiting their site to handmade items. I also understand the desire to allow artists to go into production. However, that decision opened the door to non-handmade and/or mass producers, and it seems that door cannot be closed again.
