How I got banned by Etsy

Hi there!

If you’re a fellow creative thinking about starting your online business, I hope you find my story helpful and insightful in some way. In an earlier post, I shared how and why I decided I wanted to start a business. Today, I will be sharing exactly what happened in those early days.

I still get asked why I don’t sell on Etsy, or have people tell me Etsy would be another good platform to sell my products. It’s not that I haven’t tried! I just got banned :)

Deciding to start on Etsy

When I first decided to officially start the Yumismade business in 2024, I decided I wanted to open a shop on Etsy first. I did a lot of research on the pros and cons of being on Etsy vs your own website, and concluded that starting on Etsy felt like a good first step; it was a popular marketplace with a big audience and I knew many people who had Etsy shops. Although I eventually wanted my own e-commerce website, I thought starting on Etsy fit my financial situation best.

I spent a couple months drawing my first 7 greeting card designs, creating inventory, buying supplies and reserving a PO Box. Once I was done preparing, I created my Etsy store one evening and uploaded my first 7 listings. I was so excited to finally start selling my work. The next morning, I logged into Etsy only to find that my store had been suspended. 

The Appeal Process

For a moment I was just confused. Then slowly panic began to set in. I appealed immediately and then just had to wait it out. As I waited, I did more research online about “Etsy banning”, and was shocked to see so many testimonies of people’s shops being suspended, and then permanently banned. Despite what I thought was thorough research before my launch, I had somehow missed this side of Etsy.

Apparently there is some automation in place that reviews new Etsy shops for risk factors or breach of terms. And apparently there are a lot of false positives. I went through the terms and conditions over and over, in case I had missed anything, but I was confident that I had not broken any rules. I called customer service and appealed multiple times, only to receive the same messaging: that they couldn’t reveal the reasons why my shop was flagged and I was not allowed to sell on their platform.

After a few appeals, I saw that my shop was formally banned. I knew it wasn’t the end of the world, but I felt defeated. Especially since it took so long to get to a point where I felt okay selling my work, and I also spent months preparing.

Managing the Discouragement

I was disappointed, but mostly frustrated with not knowing what I had done "wrong" and how I could learn from this. The fact that this prevents me from using their platform entirely, was really discouraging. There are people online that share how you can bypass this Etsy ban, but after much research, I decided the cumbersome workarounds were not worth my time. 

My natural instinct was to believe that this was just a sign that I shouldn’t pursue my creative dreams. But my husband gently reminded me that this could just be redirection to a better path. Etsy may have seemed like a great place to start, but it’s not the only way. He encouraged me to consider another platform or method of selling.

I was convinced Etsy was a great platform to start since there was organic traffic on their marketplace, but with any marketplace, it’s a mixed bag. There will always be some benefits and also challenges with selling on their platform.

I was hesitant to start my own website right away since it was a huge financial investment, and I didn’t have a way to bring traffic to my website yet. I was getting more discouraged, but a new thought occurred to me: I can try selling in local shops.

Unexpected Doors Opening

I had no idea that this was called “wholesaling”. I simply emailed a couple of my favorite local shops and included a picture of my cards (see below for the picture I attached!) and asked if they were interested in selling some of my cards. To be honest, I sent them without much expectation.

Just days after I got was permanently banned by Etsy, the owner of one of my favorite local flower shops replied. She complimented my cards and asked how much I was wholesaling them for.

Wholesale was an entirely unfamiliar territory for me, but it was a new door opening as another one was closing. I researched the basics of wholesaling, and was lucky enough to make my first sale to the retail flower shop! I will forever be grateful that someone would take a chance on me, and to invite my products onto their store shelves. It was a pinch-me moment, and it was so surreal that I got my start in business by wholesaling! Over the next months, I invested more into learning about wholesaling (Paper Camp alum!), and it's become one of my main sources of revenue. There's still so much to learn with wholesaling, but it's been an amazing journey. Selling wholesale to retail shops has increased my reach, and has put my work in front of more eyes.

Keep Pushing

I wanted to share this part of my early journey, because when I was preparing to open my Etsy shop, there were abundant examples of people running successful businesses on Etsy. At the time, there weren't as many examples of people outright getting banned and having to pivot. If I had found those examples, maybe it would have helped me mentally prepare for something like this to happen.

I haven't done extensive research on how to prevent being banned on Etsy since I'm no longer looking to sell on their platform (if you're looking for practical things you can do, there's great info on Youtube), but my hope is that if you find yourself in a similar situation, that you would find the courage to push forward. Whichever platform you use to start your business, you will most likely have to pivot at some point (sometimes unexpectedly), and when that time comes, I hope you know that your journey can still be redeemed and more amazing after enduring those challenges. Keep going, put yourself out there, and it'll be worth it!

Today

Thank you for reading this story time! Fast-forward to now, and I am still selling mostly wholesale, but also direct-to-consumer on my own website using Shopify :) As these are two very different models of selling, there’s been many challenges with growing both, but I’m excited to share more about what I’ve learned and how I’ve navigated some of these challenges.