Tips for Selling on Etsy is a new video series on the Daydreams of Quilts YouTube channel and a new video is out today on 10 Reasons Why a Shop Might Get Banned on Etsy.
I see so many posts in the Facebook Etsy sellers groups about how their shop has been shut down and they don’t know why.
There are 10 reasons I discuss in my video but I will list a couple here that I see happen quite often.
The first is sharing wi-fi. People have their friend over and their friend uses their wi-fi (or their room mate shares the wi-fi) and then the friend’s or room mate’s shop gets shut down. If their shop gets shut down your shop can be shut down too because your shop is associated with the same wi-fi or IP address as theirs. It looks like the shops are owned by the same person.
Likewise, if you own multiple shops and one gets shut down they all will be shut down because they all use the same IP address.
For this reason I recommend not sharing wi-fi with other Etsy sellers and not using public wi-fi services to check your Etsy shop. I always use my own cell phone data to check my shop when I’m out.
The second reason is listing items that infringe on someone else’s copyright. So many sellers do this and think they are fully within their rights to sell Disney characters or Harry Potter stuff. The copyrights for those characters are owned by big corporations (Disney and Warner Bros. etc.) If you list items, even if you made them yourself, that are using those copyrighted characters you run a high risk of having your shop shut down. Just don’t do it.
For more shut-down reasons and advice from me (a 10 year, top 2% Etsy seller) check out my video on YouTube.