…It is time for me to move on.

The latest 30% fee hike was the kick I needed to finally close my store and move on from that chapter in my life. So I will be joining the Etsy Strike this week and then I will be closing my shop for good.

I joined Etsy in 2011. I never made a huge number of sales, but at the beginning, I enjoyed having my work for sale online, connecting with other sellers on the site, and being part of something I believed in.

I have not felt any of those benefits for a very long time and I’ve found that I had a better time reaching my audience through social media, art exhibits, and fairs.

My store went through many phases of activity alternating with benign neglect, but I always made sales every now and then… well, at least until the pandemic, when my sales dried up all together. Until now, Etsy officially held fees at 3-5%. In reality, to gain any visibility on the site, sellers needed to spend more and more on ads to gain any visibility. Given that, the enormous amount of time spent on listings, taking and editing photos, and a 30% cut on top of everything makes it untenable for me to stay on the platform.

And let’s face it. Etsy is not where my audience is. It is a place to buy snide t-shirts, fan art, and dog tags. Nothing wrong with that! But those aren’t my collectors!

So, I’m going to close my shop and concentrate on selling through my website, fairs, and shows, starting with American Craft Made Baltimore, which is both online and in person, coming up in May! And I’m actually very excited about letting go of the past so I can commit to the work I am making now!

In the meantime, I’m looking at some of my first sales on Etsy all those years ago when I was first working on becoming a full-time artist and painting in a very realistic style. These little paintings strike me as quite sweet, just as I think Etsy was during that movement toward handmade that made it so popular.

Thanks for the memories!