[Art] Mrs Gould's Sunbird, Oriental Dollarbird and Rainbow Bee Eater

[moonvoice]

The animal teacher illustrations continue apace.

I don't know if I'm burnt out, I'm certainly depressed, and my mental health hasn't been that great. But I don't think it's terribly surprising given things in Western Australia right now (experiencing our first ever Covid peak).

I'm hoping to be able to open the Etsy store some time by the end of the month.


Mrs Gould's Sunbird // Aethopyga gouldiae















Oriental Dollarbird // Eurostomus orientalis














Rainbow Bee Eater // Merops ornatus

Comments

[moonvoice]

Oh yeah, I'm aware of / participating in the strike and have been sharing information on it.

I've been on Etsy for 10 years, I've been participating in strikes re: Etsy for about 8 of those years. If you think this is the first time Etsy has treated its sellers like absolutely *garbage*... well, anyway. They've been treating us like shit for a long time.

But other online shop options require more labour that a disabled person like myself simply doesn't have the spoons to keep up with. And because I have very few buyers overall, I doubt I'd ever sell more than an original piece a year for all the extra labour I'd have to do to maintain a separate online business even through somewhere like Shopify. And if I sell five pieces with a 6.5% fee on each, vs. one piece with a lower fee (or no fee) it still works out to far less income, unfortunately.

There is no other online market like Etsy - especially for small business who don't have the energy to make constant Tiktoks and Instagram reels and put money into ads etc. to make sales - and they know it, and that's why they treat the small-time sellers like absolute shit. They are the Amazon of crafts.

[frith]

I was not aware that Etsy has been rotten to sellers for such a long time! Thus always monopolists, I guess. Like eBay. I remember when eBay was fun. That was over 20 years ago.

[moonvoice]

Yeah it's such a shame re: Etsy. Honestly they may get to a point where I can't use them anymore. The reason my shop is on vacation mode actually is because if a buyer gives you 1 star on postage (even if the parcel arrives within the time you quoted, and a pandemic is happening), and that affects your overall store review, Etsy won't remove that review. They basically refuse to defend sellers for things out of their control, so I shut the store down, because I couldn't handle how rude people were getting for pandemic postage times and the fact that I was completely on my own during that. :/

[frith]

That sounds like what sellers were saying about eBay too. The impatient stinkers get all the attention and eBay tries to automate everything.