On his blog today (“Code as Craft”), Fred Wilson quotes the head software engineer of one of his portfolio companies:
At Etsy, our mission is to enable
people to make a living making things. The engineers who make Etsy make our living making something we love: software. We think of our code as craft — hence the name of the blog. Here we’ll write about our craft and our collective experience building and running Etsy, the world’s most vibrant handmade marketplace.
In the comments, I asked:
What percentage of Etsy users actually do that? My inamorata (who has purchased stuff from Etsy in the past) directed my attention to this Slate article a while back, “Etsy.com peddles a false feminist fantasy”. Excerpt:
On the site’s user forums, newbies are forever asking if it’s possible to create stand-alone careers on Etsy. They get some encouragement but the answer from most veterans is no. “Technically … yes,” krugsecologic says, “but I’m a stay at home mom—so REALLY that’s my full-time job. So this is not my family’s only source of income … thankfully:).” Indeed, many posters admit that their husbands are the main breadwinners, and their work on Etsy amounts to little more than a glorified hobby. (Less than a quarter of the site’s sellers describe themselves as full-time artisans.) Kymsart777 is more blunt: “I would be on welfare! LOL … I wish!” And meringueshop advises flatly: “very few people … make a full time income from Etsy.” Yet the same thread gets started again and again. (“I’d love to be able to quit my day job and do this for a living” writes beachflowerdesigns, a mother from the Midwest. “I’m going to keep trying though!”) This is the dream that women express over and over on the site
There’s nothing wrong, of course, with women choosing to work part-time or for less than they could earn in other professions. But like those flyers you sometimes see tacked up on lampposts, or late-night television ads, Etsy actively fosters the delusion that any woman with pluck and ingenuity can earn a viable living without leaving her home. Etsy has a business model that’s akin to the lottery’s. It preys on the hopes and dreams of working moms and other women, while delivering genuine financial success to only the very, very few.
Fred fired back,
Maybe 10pcnt do. But its an aspirational mission. A big hairy audacious goal.
To which I responded,
10%? The next paragraph in that article says that Etsy lists 50 users (out of 250,000) who make a full time living of it. It also says that Etsy puts downward pressure on crafts prices, by putting local craftswomen (e.g., at fairs) in competition with those elsewhere.
Not that users should find this surprising, though — it takes a long time to knit a pair of gloves, and it’s tough to sell your own wares at a large premium if you don’t have some sort of brand or cachet. The way to make any money off of this situation is as a capitalist, skimming a little vig off of every transaction — like Etsy (or eBay) does — not as a craftswoman/laborer. I’m guessing folks who haven’t figured that out never heard of the phrase “big hairy audacious goal” because they don’t read Jim Collins.
Fred again,
I said ‘maybe’ and it was a guess. I am sure it is more than 50. And it also depends on what ‘make a living’ means. Does it mean supporting a primary wage earner while being a stay at home parent?
And please don’t base all you know about etsy on a negative story about them
Its a terrific company and very inspiring in so many ways
Me,
“I am sure it is more than 50.”
Not to put too fine a point on this, but there’s an orders of magnitude difference between your initial guess and the number the article got from Etsy itself — 10% versus 0.02% ( 50 / 250,000 x 100%). Checking Etsy now, it looks like the number of full time sellers is up to 101, so if the number of Etsy sellers has remained constant at 250,000 (has it?), the percentage of sellers who do this full time would seem to be about 0.04%.
More excitement in the comments over there (ah, comments: would be nice to have some here, but it’s not to be fated, apparently — not even the prospect of a free lunch at McCormick & Schmick’s changes that).
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