F5 Design Studio

You opened Shop Manager and a listing is gone. Maybe it was your best seller. The message mentions intellectual property, or a policy, or both, and does not say which word caused it. Your instinct is to open every listing you own and start deleting. Wait. Deleting is the one move you cannot undo, and it is usually the wrong one. Most articles hand you a list of trademarked words and stop. A list helps before anything happens; it does nothing now. What almost nobody explains is the part that decides how this ends: two entirely different processes both get called "getting flagged," and they have different appeal routes. Sellers appeal the wrong way and burn their one attempt. Quick answer: First work out who removed the listing — a brand that filed a report, or Etsy's own policy enforcement. Check the Policy violations page in Shop Manager and read the notice wording. If a rights holder reported you, Etsy will not overturn it: your route is the brand, and Etsy accept...

Most sellers turn on Etsy's free shipping guarantee because it feels obligatory. Other shops in the category have the badge, so the switch gets flipped, and the postage comes out of margin quietly, order after order. Almost nobody does the arithmetic first, which is a shame, because it is not hard and it gives a clear answer. At some combinations of order value and parcel weight, absorbing shipping is nearly free. At others it removes most of your profit. Fee rates below were checked against Etsy's pages in August 2026. Quick answer: Work out your postage cost for a typical parcel, add $0.45 for Etsy's fixed fees, and divide by your average order value. If that number is under roughly 12%, absorb the shipping and leave your prices alone. If it is 12–20%, turn the guarantee on but raise your prices by the postage amount first. If it is over 20%, do not offer it — charge shipping and try to keep it under $6, which sits inside the same band Etsy documents for search purpo...

Quick answer: Do not edit anything yet. Open Etsy Stats, set the range to twelve months and turn on the previous-year comparison, because most sudden drops are seasonal or sitewide rather than your fault. Then use the "How shoppers found you" breakdown to find which traffic source fell, since that tells you what broke. Only then change one thing, and leave it alone for two weeks. Who this post is for (and who it isn't) This post is for a shop that was working. Steady views, a trickle of orders, a rhythm you could plan around. Then over a day or two your views fell off a cliff, and you changed nothing. That is a specific problem, and the cause is usually knowable from data already in your account. If your shop is new and never had meaningful traffic, this is not your post. There is no baseline to compare against and no drop to diagnose. Read Why Is My Etsy Shop Not Getting Sales? A New Seller Troubleshooting Guide instead. Different problem, different job. Before yo...

You opened a message and your stomach dropped. The buyer wants money back on an order you shipped correctly, and they have told you what happens if you say no. This post is about the next day or so: the sequence, the actual words, and one mechanical detail about review replies that changes the decision. Quick answer: Using a review as leverage to extract a refund is extortion under Etsy's own House Rules, so stop treating it as a grey area. Reply once in Etsy Messages so the threat is on the record, and do not move to email. Report the message, and the review if it lands, citing the policy by name. Before you reply publicly, know that doing so permanently locks the buyer out of editing the review. A dispute is won by the record you kept, not the reply you wrote. What you are actually looking at This has a name, and Etsy has written it down. It is extortion, prohibited under the House Rules. Etsy's extortion policy is short and unusually blunt. It lists as prohi...

A buyer bought a digital file from your shop. The file downloaded. Now there is a message asking for the money back. Sometimes there is a second line under it. Something about how they would hate to leave a review, or a plain statement that a one-star is coming if you say no. This feels worse than a physical-order dispute, for a reason unrelated to the money. With a physical item there is a thing that can come back. With a file there is no version where you are made whole. They keep the download either way. The fear underneath is specific. It is not "will I lose eight dollars". It is "Etsy will take this out of my account whatever I say, and there is nothing I can do". Half of that is right. Etsy can refund a buyer over your objection. The other half is wrong: money leaves your shop three separate ways, each decided by a different party, and you hold real leverage at two of the three. Quick answer: Etsy removed sellers' ability to accept returns on d...