Etsy has made some clarification / changes which have muddied the waters in terms of what can and cannot be sold now. This may impact some of us. Etsy support is making statements that are contradictory to what the policy states. I suspect things will become more clear in the coming weeks, but this is all causing a lot of confusion for sellers.
So according to the written policy, this would mean that sellers cannot purchase a file somewhere and then print it and sell it on Etsy (unless it’s personalized or changed I suppose, which would make it original again, of course that’s open to much debate, a big can of worms).
What doesn’t seem to have changed
There doesn’t seem to be any changes to selling designs. (I don’t know if this will help prevent designs from being purchased + resold or stolen + sold, but I’m wondering if maybe they are trying to buckle down on this stuff? I don’t know.)
I guess we have to either contact Etsy support, post on their community forum, or just wait and see how this plays out. My gut feeling is that if the item being sold is unique, it will be fine. But when you see tons of listings from different sellers of the same design just printed out with a laser or other equipment, that might be what they are targeting.
I saw this video on YouTube, which prompted me to start looking into this more myself. If you sell on Etsy, you might want to check it out and deactivate any listings that might jeopardize your Etsy store.
What they mean by something being your design is probably that it is legally your design to sell.
That means that you should be able to purchase designs with commercial licenses and then sell them, but I guess you should see what Etsy has to say about that.
Personally I interpreted it as the broader definition but then I don’t work at Etsy.
Yeah, hopefully that’s what they mean, but it is NOT what the policy states. That’s the problem, and that’s what the video talks about, too. We’ll see how it plays out.
From what I have read elsewhere, it sounds like Etsy support is giving conflicting responses on specific use cases. People who had purchased, for example, rights to sell prints from models of gaming miniatures (“minis”) are being told that’s no longer okay.
I don’t use Etsy. This is from stuff I read last week. Not sure if they have stabilized on their support answers or clarified this since then.
Yeah, exactly! And then some customer support staff was saying it WAS ok. Ugh. What a headache. The danger, too, is that a store can be shutdown forever for violating policies. But this is not clear. Hopefully this gets worked out quickly. (There was a post clarifying from someone at Etsy but then that post got removed!)
Etsy does a LOT of market research in the form of surveys, focus groups and direct calls between research staff and buyers/sellers.
I wonder if some of the feedback they’re getting about why people leave Etsy without buying anything is that customers are scrolling past the same product over and over in the search results. That makes Etsy look like Temu or Aliexpress instead of a handmade marketplace of artisan sellers. It cheapens the site, detracts from its core value proposition, and frustrates buyers that have to scroll past lots of dupes to actually see different products available.
Search result pages looking like this is what I’m talking about:
This policy change, if interpreted strictly, would attack that problem head-on. They could do something as easy as an image similarity check on their own product catalog to find millions of listings from sellers that are buying designs (whether it’s for lasers, 3D printers, or digital templates) and reselling them using the designers’ promotional photos rather than taking their own. E.g. buying this, then listing this:
It would be frustrating for people that buy designs but spend a lot of time assembling and decorating, but there are perhaps many more people buying designs and just printing them and putting them in a bubble mailer.
Ironically it says it’s ok to use manufacturer or distributor photos for some other things, so that seems confusing. I understand the reasoning, for example, POD sellers need that. (But if they are using their own unique design, then that won’t be a problem.) It is just all very messy, though. It will take time for it to all get worked out.
