Hot Weather, Hot Metal, Cool Chat - The August Thread

[#1]

Ah, summer. How fleeting you are.
All are welcome to chat with us! Carry on...
(thank you Matthew, for the title of this thread, which I recycled)

[cgwhitfield]

Not much rain yet, but more of the fires in the area are more under control. It's been a trying summer.

[heartsabustin]

I got a nap. And the phone didn't ring, and the baby took her nap, and I feel a little better now. :)

[SToNZ]

It'll be snowing there soon enough.

Twin #1 is back in the big city.
It was a nice visit.
Twin #2 is also back in NYC after a ten day trip to Alaska and Vancouver with her boyfriend and his family. They take her on all sorts of fun adventures. Looking forward to hearing about it. I did see many spectacular photos.

Jen says
It was just me and the dh. His cousin holds season tickets for those seats He lives in Baltimore, so doesn't even use them most of the time 🙄

We'd take a pair off of his hands one night if he doesn't want them to go to waste. ;)
My dh loves the Indians.

<<<Food in that stadium is practically gourmet.

The first time we went there after they built the new ball park, dh asked me what he could get me to eat. I told him I was actually craving a caesar salad, but I'd settle for whatever her could find. He came back with a lovely caesar salad.

[PureDichotomy]

This is a strange day.

honestly.

do over please. or just a cocktail.

[SToNZ]

Did anyone catch the Q & A with Josh?
Just read the transcript.

Might interest you. He did not answer Pennee's question about calling metals the right name (which I voted for) but there is a response to whether there are rolling black outs:
---------------------------
Mr. Silverman: I will speak here about one issue that I have not seen addressed. I may go for a week and have no sales. Then, suddenly, on the same day I will have five sales. The even more ironic part is that these five sales all come from the same part of the country. Since almost the beginning of Etsy, I have read forum threads where the issue of "Black Outs" were discussed. Etsy denied that this was happening. It's just all so ironic, though, that it does give one pause to stop and wonder. Will you speak upon this issue, as honestly as you have ever spoken, and tell us whether Black Outs do or do not happen. If not, can you give an explanation of why the dead silence, and then the rush of orders, and then the orders from the same part of the country when they do come in?

****

Hi, Wanda. This is a very important topic, and so I’d like to speak extremely clearly: there are absolutely no “Black Outs” or any other effort to prohibit any shop from making a sale. Etsy’s success is dependent on your success as a seller, and we’re devoted to helping all sellers grow their business on Etsy and get more sales.

Sales fluctuate for sellers of all sizes, based on a number of factors, but our goal is to help you get more sales across the board. As to why you might get a number of sales from a particular area, that’s one of the fascinating parts of e-commerce! You never know where your next sale will come from, and it’s possible to see interesting geographic patterns emerge, as happy buyers might share their purchase with friends and family. You could try asking your customers how they came to your shop. You may find that a happy customer shared your shop on social media. It could be interesting to find out.


The whole transcript:
https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/18446399/page/1?campaign_label=etsy_success&utm_...

[SToNZ]

Wendy, it's almost rum o'clock.

[heartsabustin]

He is an enormous, bonus-sized lying strawberry douche bag.

Jyst throwing that out there.

[SilverCedarJewelry]

Erin, is that your way of saying that there are rolling blackouts? I have never experienced them. The longest I have gone without a sale in the last 3 years is 3 days and that has only happened a few times a year.

[heartsabustin]

I just think he's like everyone else at that level and, yes, I believe Etsy has been lying about rolkung black-outs for years. Ebay has done them, and didn't he serve time with Ebay?

I think you and CG are exceptions to the rule - somehow, your products defy the algorithms and whatever else they do here. I'm doing better, but I used to go weeks without sales, and then it would seem like they were ckustered. I know that last month, after a dry spell, I had a rash of sales from California, and then nothing. Then my next round of sales were from the Northeast. So, yeah. I believe the black out theory.

[SilverCedarJewelry]

Erin is there a correlation between amount of views and sales? Do you get less views during your "blackouts"? Do your items still show up in search?

[cgwhitfield]

Every year I almost predictably - but can be any month but December - have a couple of long droughts, 7 to 11 days. I do still get views during those times, and I take it to be just the vagaries of fate.

[SilverCedarJewelry]

If I didn't make hoops I would have dry spells but they would have nothing to do with Etsy's CEO or algorithms. There are certain items that get searched multiple times a day and other more obscure words (like "such-and-such a gemstone necklace") that only get searched occasionally and have a lot of competition.

[heartsabustin]

Yes, lower views, and no matter how I push my shop, the numbers will stay low. I've often wondered if their "algorithm" that suppresses shops that have had their "fair share" of sales is realky rolling blackouts.

I don't know. I just don't trust anything they tell us anymore, and why should I? They answer every question with incomplete corporate-speak that doesn't say anything and doesn't actually answer the questions asked.

[SToNZ]

Erin says
I just think he's like everyone else at that level and, yes, I believe Etsy has been lying about rolkung black-outs for years. Ebay has done them, and didn't he serve time with Ebay?

____

Josh has only been with Etsy for 3 months.

[heartsabustin]

Yes, but the rolling black-outs question has been coming up for years, and Etsy has had former Ebay employees on the Board long before Silverman came along.

[PPennee]

Irene you are definitely not the Etsy norm. You make hoops, gold and sterling and so do 1000+ other sellers on Etsy. The only other person I know other than you that sells hoops daily is Rachel from 2trickpony and hers are nothing like anyone else's hoops and she's had those kinds of sales for years in galleries and places long before.
Renew sold makes a huge difference in who sells what unless you are pushing from social media like Jen. I can always count on sales after anything sells. I had a small sale this morning and 5 more since, chaching all afternoon. Before that 4 days of silence
I'm not a believer in blackouts per se but I do think they have some sort of "keep everyone a little happy" algorithm. It's just too weird the way things come in clumps for most sellers

[MostlyStoneware]

I do too Pennee and when I was actively selling pottery and participating in discussion groups people were absolutely sure they played around with the algos to keep people happier.

[Untwistedsister]

There has to be something to the fact that sales will clump. It may be that you get a higher ranking for renewing a sold item or just selling something. But then it may reverse itself when you reach a maximum in order to boost other shops. I wouldn't call that rolling blackouts per se.

[Untwistedsister]

I went through my sold outs and found several I should have relisted and never did.

[PPennee]

I just know from watching and listening to others I would never consider putting the amount of work some do into ooak if Etsy was my only source of income. You have got to have repeatables in the higher end to make any kind of money here. Not that there aren't some who do well with ooak- there are lots, but I sure don't want to have to depend on that. I make my ooak when I have the time and an idea- other than that I push things that have a high ROI- little time making, high profit margin. It works for me. I just think about how long it takes m to make a chased and repousse cuff- HA! I could never make a living if I charged what I needed to for my time! I'd have a studio full of dust bunnies

[LauraStasa]

I can only dream about what it must be like to hear chaching all day long!

Pennee, when you get a bunch of sales like that and renew those items, do you sell the same items again or are other items selling? I wish i could tell the impact my renewing sold items has. My sales don't come in clusters like that and the next item sold is never the item I just renewed.

[PPennee]

it's funny Laura- no, not most of the time. The renew sold seems to get people in to the shop but they don't necessarily buy the same thing. example- my first sale today was a palladium white gold ring, then this afternoon a citrine stack ring- then a half dome yellow gold wedding band, a pair of studs and then a custom rose gold diamond ring- does that make any sense? If it does, I sure miss the logic????

[GiftedDesigns]

*peeks in*

[GiftedDesigns]

*peeks in*

[Untwistedsister]

((((Sha)))))