Etsy Haters

Okay this post is coming out of a situation that one of my fellow sellers from Team EcoEtsy experienced. She was interviewed by CNN in what at first seemed like a story about being a stay at home mom with an at-home business. It turned out to be yet another attempt by CNN to bash Esty. This time they were focusing one Etsy's Quit Your Day Job Series.

Now, there is no guarantee that when you open a business on Etsy that shortly after you will be able to quit your job and make tons of money off the crafts you make. Etsy never made that promise. . . and really, there is no company in the world that can make that promise. With any job- selling Mary Kay or Avon, auctioning baseball cards on Ebay or selling knitted finger puppets on Etsy- some people really can succeed and make a decent living doing it, while many others will not. That's just a natural fact of life.

I have never seen the Etsy's QYDJ series as any sort of scheme or false advertisement. The series is set up to help inspire and encourage. Each person that is interviewed offers advice that they themselves have applied to their business as well as warnings on the mistakes they made along with tips to avoid the same mistakes.

Why the CNN seems intent on bashing Etsy lately, I do not understand. No online company is perfect. If they looked at Amazon, Ebay, ArtFire and other online outlets for sellers they would find flaws in those sites too. You just can't please all of the people all of the time.

Hopefully the interview that was done will be overshadowed by more pressing and more important stories like the relief efforts in Haiti or our health plan. Let's focus on real issues rather then spending our time trying to use lies to smear the name of a decent company.