Podcast Episode 30: The Top Reasons Etsy Shops Get Suspended, And What To Do If It Happens To You

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4awV2O_6UOQ 

Hey hey friends!! Welcome back to the show this week! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been here behind the mic alone—and it feels kinda strange. Hahaha! BUT I’m not really alone, am I? You guys feel so much like family to me now and I’ve interacted with so many of you that I just think of your faces and smile while I’m writing and recording these episodes!

So-- I thought it was time to do a solo show for you guys on a really important topic that I get asked about all the time: Etsy shop suspensions. Queue the sinister music. LOL

You know, when I got started on Etsy, the platform was a lot smaller and simpler than it is today—so we didn’t hear about suspensions a ton, but now it’s a very common thing to hear when new shops are getting launched. And I really want to help you guys prevent this altogether if we can OR at least help you get your shop out of the doghouse if something happens.

We also need to talk about some really dangerous things that I’m seeing a lot of new sellers do that can get you into a whole heap of legal trouble—far worse than a shop suspension. So I’ll do my best to make this all as interesting and painless as possible. I know it’s not as fun or sexy as an Etsy success story but this is so so important and I want to protect you guys as much as I can.

A couple of disclaimers just to be fair and transparent with you before we get started: I can’t give you legal advice and you should not interpret what I share in this podcast to BE legal advice. Etsy hasn’t commented on this although I have linked their article about this in the shownotes for you.

I guarantee I’ve missed stuff here. But I did my best to research this whole topic and see what the most common issues are. So this is my best effort to give you some insight into why suspensions happen—especially at the frequency we’re seeing them for new shops. AND some ways you can hopefully get your shop back up if it does! (INCLUDING—I have an email address and phone number for Etsy which are so hard to find! So listen for those or you can find them down in the shownotes right away.)

Let’s start with why this is even a topic of discussion—because I know there’s a lot of confusion out there and I want to clear the air.

The background is that in 2020 when the pandemic hit and people were quarantined in their homes, Etsy experienced explosive growth. It makes a lot of sense right? Tons of people needed more income right away and others were looking for a creative outlet or community or new possibilities.

And it’s actually a GREAT thing—because while Etsy was growing in sellers—it also grew exponentially in SHOPPERS too! My personal Etsy sales were the highest they’d ever been from mid-march of 2020 through May when I put it on vacation mode for the summer.

And you can imagine—you know any time there’s a huge crowd doing anything—there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly, right. Which means there were tons of new amazing and talented artists and shoppers on the platform. And there were also, I’d imagine, an unprecedented amount of spam, copy-cats, Karen customers, and trouble makers.

One thing I totally love about Etsy is that they’re careful to maintain really high community standards which makes me feel protected as an artist and a shopper myself--- and just creates a really nice environment when it works. Like, just think of the best possible HOA—they let you have creative liberty in your space--- but if you’re doing something dangerous, destructive or frustrating for your neighbors, they step in to maintain the well-being AND property values of the neighborhood. That’s the purpose of Etsy’s community guidelines.

So—in response to this swell of new characters joining the Etsy family---- and also—just think of this—we’re talking peak covid lockdown and the months that followed—so we can only imagine what this was like for their workforce as they’re figuring out work-from-home for the first time, navigating people or their family members being sick, and all of these new factors to juggle—it was just a lot. For all of us, right? They absolutely HAD to automate some of this if they were going to have a chance of keeping up. So Etsy developed bots—which are automated systems that scan for suspicious activities or violations to protect the safety and security of our Etsy marketplace.

And the reality is, that as an automated system, they make mistakes—they flag stuff that really isn’t a violation. But the good news is—those situation are easy to resolve. We’ll talk about how in just a little bit.

This totally explains, though, why newer shops are having issues with suspensions and warnings that 5-6+ years ago we just didn’t see.

So I found in my research that there appear to be 8 reasons why Etsy shops get suspended. The first 3 are largely bot-related. The rest are more due to operations and the way the seller conducts business.

Number 1 is the MOST COMMON and MOST DANGEROUS reason that Etsy shops get suspended:

 1) Trademark violations or Copyright Infringement

Many of us have made this mistake before, myself included—I have a couple stories for you—so if this is you—don’t beat yourself up, just fix the mistake ASAP or pivot your shop if need be.

Let’s start by clearing the air on what these things are:

A copyright is something a creator can claim for an original work—and these can be hard to protect and prove.

A Trademark is a picture, word, logo, design or phrase that someone has registered with the government. It’s easy to prove or disprove that it exists because there’s an active document that you can find that shows you.

I’m going to include a youtube video in the shownotes of how you can do a trademark search using google and uspto.gov so you can make sure something you’re trying to use in your Etsy shop isn’t trademarked. https://youtu.be/Vq4mfFj0Nis 

Honestly I was shocked by how many things are—for instance—you can’t put the word “mama” m-a-m-a on clothing. That’s currently trademarked. A few others are “onesie”--- Gerber has a trademark on that word. Peleton, Spinning, Crossfit, Mom so hard, happy camper—there are SO MANY you guys. PLEASE be careful. Eventually some of these things kind of graduate to “common use” where they can’t be trademarked anymore—but for now, more things are than you’d expect.

ALSO—you can’t just get in trouble if you put the trademarked thing ON a product—you can get flagged for just having it in your listing titles and descriptions.

Ok so story time. In the first couple years of my shop, I did NOT know all of this stuff. Like, I knew --don’t try to sell a knock-off Winnie the Pooh or Elsa doll—but since I was handmaking my signs, I thought I could put whatever phrase I came up with on my pieces.

Around that time, there was a reboot of show called Gilmore Girls—which I’ve always been obsessed with—my daughter’s name is Lorelai which will totally entertain any of you who’s watched the show. This was a big stinkin’ deal for me lolllll and so to celebrate the reboot, I came out with a line of signs that featured a bunch of the iconic fan favorite quotes from the show.

They were super cute and sold like hot cakes! In fact--- I had a sign with the quote “Do you like coffee? Only with my oxygen” which was just a beloved classic dialogue from the show--- that was so popular it ended up being featured on Huffington Post and Buzzfeed.

You can’t even imagine, yall. I was bananas it was so exciting and I sold just a ton of them.

So I call up my Dad because I am 100% sure he is going to be so proud. LOLLLL and he was – but he then asked me how I got around violating the trademark.

I thought I was going to throw up you guys. LOLLLLLLL I was like uhhhhhhh but everyone else does this all the time.

My Dad is the ultimate rule follower/risk avoider and he said “I’m sure they do, but they won’t get away with it forever. And you could get sued for this – including for all the money you’ve made using their phrases.”

I was so bummed yall but he knocked sense into me and I took them all down right away and told anyone else who inquired that I wasn’t making them anymore.

I never heard anything from them, never got into trouble Praise God, but I learned my lesson.

And there are few lessons in there—thank Bill! (That’s my dad’s name and he’s quite famous amongst my sisters’ friends and my friends for his one liners.)

#1 Just because everyone’s doing it, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. No one gets away with it forever and even if they do for a long while, they could end up having to pay the trademark owner for all the money they made on it.

#2 Check for trademarks before you sell anything. Anything pop-culture related is going to be trademarked: movies, shows, brands, music, names, the likeness of a character, logos, sports teams, hopefully you get the idea. I know it’s a bummer because these things sell so well, but you are literally stealing and making money off of someone else’s work—which is an integrity issue. AND you can get into massive trouble for doing it.

Let’s chat a bit about what can happen.

Typically--- especially if you’re new and you get caught for something like this or flagged by a bot--- they’ll just deactivate your listing and you’ll get a warning.

Or you might get a message from the trademark owner sending you a cease and desist warning. This actually happened to me several years ago. I had a printable shop where I sold stuff for wedding and baby showers and this customer asked if I could create a printable that said “count the legos in the jar” for a baby shower game. So I sold that to her and then listed it in the shop—because if she wanted it, most likely other shoppers would too.

And it didn’t take long for Lego’s legal department to message me a cease and desist—and if I remember correctly the listing was deactivated by Etsy too. It just didn’t even occur to me! Sometimes these things feel so everyday to us in our culture that we don’t remember they’re actual companies or trademarked words!

There are times when this escalates beyond just a deactivated listings though and it will cause a shop suspension-- especially if a large quantity of your shop contains trademark violations. You may or may not be able to get that reversed. Etsy takes this seriously because they don’t want to be legally responsible. And like I said—the bots are flagging the newer shops so they’re not squeezing through like they once did.

This can also result in getting suspended if you have repeated violations or you keep relisting the same listings that Etsy deleted and warned you about.

And of course, as discussed, you can end up with legal issues in the end as well. So just don’t play in this sandbox.

That’s a wrap for this section for today! In the coming months I’m actually interviewing an attorney who specializes in this stuff on the podcast and we’ll get even more insight from her. So keep a lookout for that episode.

2) The second biggest reason that Etsy shops get shut down is if you put any inaccurate personal information such as you location, or if multiple IP addresses access your account.

So be careful about having someone else login as you and work on your Etsy shop. If you’re really new, this can get you suspended. Although this should be a pretty easy one to reverse.

3) Another really common one that I hear about is if you do anything that feels spammy. If you put up a ton of listings in one day, or use the “copy listing” feature over and over again in one session on Etsy.

Over time this should all ease up--- I HIGHLY recommend the Copy Listing feature to keep things simple lollll but I do hear that brand new shops are getting suspended if they do it a lot in one day.

I don’t have this down to a science or anything—so I’m super sorry if you follow any of my suggestions and still get suspended—but I’ve been telling my clients, if you want to get a ton of work done in one day—use the copy listing feature and just keep the bulk of them in drafts, all ready to go. Then each day, active 1-3 of them. It’s actually better for you in the Etsy algorithm if you are adding a few new listings a day anyway.

I’m going to quickly go through the handful of other reasons that shops get suspended, and then I’ll tell you exactly what to do if it happens to you, ok. So stick with me a few more minutes and I’ll give you solutions. 😊

These are going to be the more operations type of reasons for shop suspensions:

4) An overdue Etsy balance

If you’ve got a past due balance, they’ll suspend you until it’s paid. It should come back up on it’s own within an hour or so of paying your balance.

5) If you’re selling items that aren’t qualified to be sold on Etsy.

So—Etsy began as a handmade platform and it still has certain restrictions on what can be sold—you can’t sell just anything: you can sell handmade items, things you designed but someone else manufactures (however to be compliant you have to disclose your manufacturing partners), and vintage items that are 20 years old or older.

6) You can get suspended for disrespectful communication

 7) For a high rate of buyer complaints

 8) And for late shipping of your orders.

And that’s the list as I’ve found it! Yall DM me on Instagram or shoot me an email at [email protected] if you’ve discovered others.

Let’s dive into what you can do in the event of a suspension.

First things first. Do not panic. Unless you’ve been breaking trademark or copyright laws left and right--- many shops that get suspended by the automated bots can get back up and running within a few days.

If you received an email from Etsy telling you why you were suspended OR you just have a partial suspension and there’s just a red warning bar in your shop—the best thing you can do is follow the Etsy link they’ll give you. It should say something like, “If you think this suspension happened in error, please click here”—that kind of a thing.

I would do that first and give them 2-5 days. Many times that’s all it takes and they’ll get you up and going again automatically. If you don’t see any progress after 5 days or so—move on to this next step and send an email.

If you didn’t get any kind of notification, you should submit for a manual review right away via email. (Just a note—if you were suspended for violating copyright or trademark laws, this is probably futile. Suspension is sort of a last resort for Etsy so you’ve probably crossed the line too many times.)

Etsy’s email: [email protected]

UPDATE: I have heard that this email address may no longer work. 

Instead try: [email protected] 

*Make sure you email them from the same email address that’s connected to your Etsy shop.

It’s super important that you keep your communication extremely respectful and professional if you want to get results here. You’ll for sure get more bees with honey than vinegar as the old saying goes!

You can use this phrasing as a template to get you started:

“Hi there! I’m reaching out today because I believe my store was shut down by an auto-bot. I would like to request a manual review of my Etsy shop.”

Once again—give this at least 3-5 days. They are swamped over there and hitting them up again right away won’t make it get resolved any faster.

Wait a few days to hear back via email before you try calling them. But in a ditch effort, I found a phone number for Etsy corporate that can supposedly reach a human if you need to. Don’t abuse this guys! Haha! We don’t want to lose this lifeline because we all bombarded them too much!

Etsy’s phone number: (888)659-3879

UPDATE: Since the airing of this episode, this contact number for Etsy has been deactivated.

And that’s what I’ve got for you! As in most things, your best bet is to proactively avoid breaking any guidelines or laws. 😊 But if you do get shut down and you haven’t done anything wrong, just be encouraged that lots of people are getting their shops turned back on again in a few days. I know how scary and demotivating it can be! Just keep your cool, stay patient and hopefully it will all be behind you soon.

I’ll see you guys again next week with another wonderful Etsy success story! Until then—go make something awesome!

EPISODE DETAILS:

Have you been hearing about the rise of Etsy shop suspensions recently? It can be a bit scary to take that leap with a new Etsy shop with all the rumors floating around—BUT today hopefully I will set your mind at ease! I’m teaching you how to avoid the most dangerous mistakes Etsy sellers make, what actions are most likely to cause a shop suspension, AND what you can do to get your shop back if it happens to you.

**“How to Sell Your Stuff on Etsy” is not affiliated with or endorsed by Etsy.com

STUFF I MENTIONED:

Link to Etsy’s article about suspensions: https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015672628-How-to-Unsuspend-Your-Account

Youtube Video Tutorial on Trademark searches: https://youtu.be/Vq4mfFj0Nis 

Trademark website: www.uspto.gov  

My email: [email protected]

UPDATE: I have heard that this email address may no longer work. 

Instead try: [email protected] 

Etsy’s email: [email protected]

*Email them from the same email address connected to your Etsy shop

“Hi there! I’m reaching out today because I believe my store was shut down by an auto-bot. I would like to request a manual review of my Etsy shop.”

Wait a few days to hear back via email before you call them. Use this number to call Etsy corporate if you don’t get an email response:

Etsy’s phone number: (888)659-3879

UPDATE: Since the airing of this episode, this contact number for Etsy has been deactivated.

Sale Samurai – my secret weapon for SEO on Etsy:

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HOW TO SELL YOUR STUFF SHOWNOTES: 

https://www.howtosellyourstuff.com/blog/etsy-shop-suspension 

DISCLAIMER: I can’t give you legal advice and you should not interpret what I share in this podcast to BE legal advice. Etsy hasn’t commented on this. I guarantee I’ve missed stuff here. But I did my best to research this whole topic and see what the most common issues are. So this is my best effort to give you some insight into why suspensions happen—especially at the frequency we’re seeing them for new shops. AND some ways you can hopefully get your shop back up if it does!

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THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY:

Sale Samurai – my secret weapon for SEO on Etsy

My YOUTUBE Video Link: https://youtu.be/HIw0oqF1aJc

𝗚𝗲𝘁 Sale Samurai https://salesamurai.io/324.html

𝗣𝗟𝗨𝗦 use my 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗧 𝗖𝗢𝗗𝗘 to get 𝟮𝟬% 𝗢𝗙𝗙! ▶ howtosellyourstuff (all in lowercase)

*Some of the links above are affiliate links which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you. You can see my affiliate disclosure here: https://www.howtosellyourstuff.com/affiliate-disclosure