I guess maybe it depends on what you're selling, but we found we badly needed the discoverability of the Etsy marketplace. Which sucks, because as of late they

I guess maybe it depends on what you're selling, but we found we badly needed the discoverability of the Etsy marketplace. Which sucks, because as of late they've been doing a lot of things to annoy sellers. We (mostly my wife) have three Etsy shops, all paying Etsy+ customers. Each shop does probably 30-50 orders a month, so we're not tiny potatoes. We received two low ratings (one three star and one one star) across 6 months in one of our shops. The one star was because Etsy didn't wait until the order was mark delivered by USPS to solicit feedback from the user, so they said "we haven't gotten it yet so I don't know." The other was an issue that the buyer didn't read the listing at all (they complained about the item being smaller than expected, but the measurements on the listing were actually a good bit smaller than what they got so it should have been too big...?). Either way, two somewhat off feedbacks in like 200 sales. Etsy sends an email that basically says we've fallen below their standards for customer satisfaction and we need to get back on track. When we asked what they were talking about, they said they'd gotten a "significant number" of customer dissatisfaction reports. When pressed, it was those two reviews. When we pushed back that those were kind of unfair negative feedbacks, they just brushed it off and, basically, said we need to get our act together. What the heck? The kicker? That shop went from 2-3 sales a day on average to zero. For like, weeks. It's finally back and selling things, but I think we were being removed from search results or at least ranked much lower as punishment or something. They've really pumped up this gatekeeping behavior lately, and it's really starting to chafe me. :/ I'm 99% sure because we're paying Etsy+ customers that we get preference in search rankings. I know they definitely prioritize shops that offer free shipping even if the price is higher because they've said so (which is a really annoying way to squeeze your sellers for more money while inciting them to raise prices and thus increasing your percentage take on the final value fees...). I wish they'd stop trying to influence people's discovery so much, but I'm guessing they have to have their data scientists working on something to make money? But like I said, without the community (which is great) and discoverability of their marketplace, our sales are junk (we've tried). I know we could invest in marketing this or sales that or promoting locally, but frankly we're very small and don't make enough to invest in that sort of stuff to get an equal return. It just sucks that it at least feels like Etsy has become a lot more seller hostile in the past year. :(