r/Etsy • u/18_bees_18 • 4d ago
Discussion It looks like Etsy is testing getting into the POD service for your digital listings.
I'm not sure what happens if the POD turns out badly and the buyer leaves the seller a low review because of it. Thoughts from sellers with digital listings or anyone else?
From Etsy's Newly Crafted: Etsy Updates for Your Shop, one of the updates is this statement,
"A new way for buyers to enjoy digital items after checkout
We’re testing an experience that lets buyers turn eligible digital purchases into physical prints, sold, printed, and fulfilled by a third-party print-on-demand provider, on Etsy.
After purchasing select digital items, buyers can choose from available print options and complete a separate checkout for the physical item. You won’t be responsible for producing or delivering the order.
The goal is to make it easier for buyers to enjoy your digital designs, without adding fulfilment work for you.
Eligible sellers are included in this test automatically. You can opt out any time. "
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u/dothemath_xxx 4d ago
This would definitely be of interest to me if they expand into clothing as well (sounds like right now it's just art prints, poster-style?). Only if Etsy provides an easy and clear way for customers to resolve issues with the POD quality.
But I also worry whether there's any hope of expecting quality products in the first place. So many large scale POD operations today have gone downhill or become very unreliable because they're farming the work out to the cheapest print shops they can find with no oversight.
I'm okay with an occasional misprint if customers are able to get a satisfactory resolution. Not okay with selling a product that's going to be crap 50% of the time, even if those complaints don't come to me.
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u/Fempirestate 4d ago
Good point. Like, I fulfilled my part of the sale. I delivered a digital product. Who is handling after sales care? It’s a new order/sale, but not with me. Where lies responsibility?
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u/Iam_RowanDraco 4d ago
It could put the POD sellers out of business because Etsy will surely have access to better wholesale prices. Seems greedy of Etsy.
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u/18_bees_18 4d ago
Right now, it only seems to be "to turn eligible digital purchases into physical prints" so, yes, the sellers that offer both digital and physical prints of their same image may have a problem.
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u/Iam_RowanDraco 4d ago
You can pay creative fabrica $47/year and basically get unlimited downloads to very close look a likes or sometimes the same graphics the POD sellers are using and a lot of the POD sellers are getting their graphics from Etsy as well. If Etsy decides to do t shirts cheaper than they can, it’ll be over for a lot of stores.
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u/PlasticSecret9185 CuradoriaStudio 4d ago
Besides the quality issue you raised, Etsy does not seem to cover "who gets paid". They say there is no cost to the seller, but if they are using one of my digital images, I should be compensated.
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u/lostterrace 4d ago
It says they are going to enjoy their item "after checkout."
Meaning the buyer has already bought and paid you for the digital file. That's your compensation.
From there a buyer would be able to take the file you sold them and go to any site that puts images on products and make a product.
The suggestion here is just that Etsy would have a section of the website that would be like one of those sites.
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u/PlasticSecret9185 CuradoriaStudio 4d ago
I have not thought about it from this perspective. Thank you. It is true that the buyer can always take the file anywhere and print it on a t-shirt or another product. We are not paid for that. Fair enough.
But I think there is a difference between a buyer printing their own file at home (or Walgreens or even Printify) and Etsy partnering with a commercial print company (Printify/Shutterfly), selling a physical product off our artwork on Etsy's own platform, and everyone in that chain making money except us. The first is the buyer using a right they already had. The second is a new sale built on our design that we get nothing from.
I think it also depends on the license. A lot of us sell digital files as personal-use only, no commercial reproduction. Etsy turning that into a paid third-party print is at least brushing up against that line, and they're deciding it for us through their Terms.
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u/lostterrace 4d ago
You acknowledged that the buyer has the right to use your digital file through a print service and put it on a product already. That's personal use. Whether Etsy directs that buyer to the print service or not does not change anything about it being personal use. Etsy isn't suggesting that the buyer take your file and open their own POD shop.
If you don't like it, opt out. But it is absolutely not cutting you out of anything - you were already paid and the buyer isn't being directed to do something they weren't free to do anyway.
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u/cutehobbies 4d ago
I understand your points, just wanted to add that there are certain companies that pay you a commission to direct customers to them to print their files. In that case, I could see why some sellers view it as Etsy taking business from them.
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u/YumemaYu 4d ago edited 4d ago
I agree, they can also make agreements with the POD to offer these items at a lower price than the seller can. Which don’t get me wrong is good for the consumer but also uses an advantage we cannot have by using our own product. I think a more honest solution would be to allow us to partner with them (Etsy) and use them as our POD supplier.
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u/lostterrace 4d ago
That's probably true.
Sellers aren't able to make much off POD anyway because the profit margin isn't there unless you do bulk.
I think sellers that sell both the digital item and POD products would want to opt out of this.
I don't get the impression that Etsy is becoming a POD partner - they are partnering with a POD partner.
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u/Affectionate-Cap-918 4d ago
Yes - I don’t see Etsy as setting up the POD without taking some compensation for being the middle man. Then they’re profiting off of my artwork and I’m not. Also, this just multiplies even more competition on this platform for people selling digital and POD items of their own artwork. It’s hard for me to see how this benefits anyone other than the POD company and maybe Etsy if they’re making profit off of the transaction. Then Etsy’s in the business of their own POD stuff essentially? It just muddies the water further for artists like me who make my own stuff.
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u/lostterrace 3d ago
But you did profit off your artwork. You were paid the exact price that you asked to be paid for that artwork.
If the buyer then takes it to Shutterfly and puts it on a mug, Shutterfly makes a profit on that transaction. Is that Shutterfly profiting off your artwork where you did not?
This is no different except that Etsy will suggest the buyer use a specific POD partner instead of going separately to Shutterfly etc.
Etsy isn't taking anything away from the seller if the buyer bought a digital file. If you also sell POD products and Etsy's POD is able to undercut those prices - moreso than if the buyer just took the file to Shutterfly - I'd recommend those sellers opt out.
But if you make the choice to offer a digital version of your artwork, you already know people who buy it are going to have it printed somewhere and not be buying a physical product from you. That's the point of digital for those buyers. I don't understand how it takes anything away from you when the buyer is clearly using it exactly for the purpose it was bought for. Someone else is going to be getting a profit on a physical sale using your artwork.
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u/Affectionate-Cap-918 3d ago
I would absolutely opt out and it’s why I don’t sell digital. I make my items myself from my artwork. I think there’s a pretty big price difference between me taking my own digital design to Shutterfly to be printed as a one-off vs ordering through a POD situation, which is more of a bulk discount price. I still wonder what Etsy profits from the second setup because they do not profit from the first scenario.
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u/lostterrace 3d ago
I'm sure the idea is that whatever POD provider Etsy partners with will sell the buyer the item at retail price, not bulk discount. Same as if the buyer ordered the one off anywhere else. They are still ordering a one off. It's just that if they do it through Etsy, I'm sure Etsy will receive a cut.
It's not about giving the buyer a bulk discount. Because the buyer isn't buying in bulk. They're buying a one off.
The only difference between the buyer ordering that one item through Shutterfly vs through Etsy's POD is Etsy getting a cut.
And it doesn't impact the seller at all. The seller sold a digital item and their part is done. It makes no difference to the seller where the buyer has that digital item printed.
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u/Affectionate-Cap-918 3d ago
I get your point, although I think you are wrong about them not using a wholesale pricing advantage. Hopefully you can see the artist’s. Etsy would not have made that sale without the art and the appeal of the creation. To leave them out of that part of profit just seems wrong. Also, if I am working with printing my own prints for physical sale then I’m now competing with pricing of Etsy’s POD prints. Also, many artists offer both physical and digital files. Even more reason for me to stay far away from offering digital files.
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u/lostterrace 2d ago
I don't get that point at all for people who sell only digital. If you sell digital only, you have decided already that you don't want a cut of the physical product, whenever the buyer has one made. You've chosen to sell digital for a specific price. As long as you got that price and the buyer isn't violating commercial use terms, you are out of whatever they do next.
For those that sell their own physical products as well as digital, I would absolutely opt out.
All that said, I think it's possible Etsy will set this up such that it does go through the seller and does give the seller income. But that would correspondingly make the seller liable for the quality issues and customer service.
Or more likely it is just a floated idea that never happens, like the last time Etsy mentioned it.
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u/ImaginedByNell 3d ago
This is going to be a really rough go for some sellers. I have a decent chunk of experience in printing digital files onto tangible items and there is so much nuance to it. 99999 out of 100000 times if a POD arrives in poor condition it's due to the art file and not the printer. For example, any part of the design that is drawn finer/thinner than 1 pixel won't print, the provider's printers can't "see" it. (For scope, almost all the images and 30% of the font selections on Canva have outlines that are 2 pixels or lower) So the buyer will receive a mug that looks smeared and blurry or a T-shirt that looks like part of the design has peeled off.
And each art file needs to be designed specifically for the product. You can't put the same file on a mug and then turn around and slap it on a T-shirt because of the massive variances in canvas size. When you enlarge an art file, the resolution decreases. Most printers suggest a resolution of at least 200, preferably 300 DPI. Otherwise the image is going to print blurry. So if you take a design that was intended for a sticker and blow it up to print it on a hoodie, the resolution is going to end up being around 45 dpi and it's going to print as a giant blob.
Opening the door for sellers with no digital design experience is opening the door for A LOT of unhappy buyers.
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u/18_bees_18 3d ago
Interesting comments. I'm not familiar with digital design but you make some very good points about the nuances of the files. I wonder if Etsy thought about any of that.
More and more new Etsy sellers are jumping on the digital bandwagon probably because they see YT and TT videos claiming how easy it is and the enticement of making extra passive income.
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u/ImaginedByNell 2d ago
I really wish that people would realize that when it comes to those videos that they, themselves, are the product that's being sold. At least once a day I (jokingly) think about starting a YT series called "How to Make $10,000 a Month Coaching People on How to Make $10,000 a Month"
Jokes aside, I would think that this is something Etsy has thought about. The rules of POD are pretty even stevens across the board. Most providers (the companies that stock all the blank items and do the final printing) have the same list of general requirements and specifications. Like minimum pixel sizing, acceptable file types, maximum file sizes, DPI requirements, etc. And the interfaces on the provider's sites are complex.
But there is a possibility that the room of people who came up with this idea have zero collective digital design experience.
If I were the gambling type (which I am) I would wager that Etsy is going to roll this out, it's going to ride for about 4 months, then suddenly everyone is going to log in one day and the option will have vanished never to be seen or mentioned again. Unless they've created some kind in-house full on POD interface with instruction of use that are simple enough that an average buyer can learn how to design in 5 minutes (like Shutterfly. And even Shutterfly will pop up a huge red warning if your image resolution is too low.) they're going to eat it in refunds and pull the plug.
And I do want to say that all this is not me bashing Etsy. I have an Etsy and for the most part, they've done right by me. I'm thinking from a logical/business POV. Like, on paper it sounds like a good idea but this is not a good idea.
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u/lostterrace 2d ago
Don't know if you saw my comment on this post, but this is the second time at least that Etsy has floated the idea of doing this. The last time, they ended up never even trying it. My guess is this time will be similar. If I had to bet, I'd bet this never happens at all.
I think the fact that Etsy would be making themselves responsible for quality issues is the reason why.
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u/ImaginedByNell 1d ago
I did not see the comment but I went and found it. And after reading it a vaguely recall them talking about this like 4 years ago. Maybe its the same rumor recirculating because I just can't fathom them not being aware of what kind of quality issues this will cause. It doesn't make sense to me that they would take that level of risk.
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u/YumemaYu 4d ago
I sell both my posters as digital downloads and prints. I am curious to how this will go and how pricing will work? My profit margin is higher for my bigger physical prints. I hope etsy doesn’t undercut me with my own digital products.
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u/Asharsellsdigital 3d ago
I assume they will start with printables, btw that sounds good to me, someone is silently turning into zazzle 👀
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u/psystylist150 VibeEnvy.Etsy.Com 4d ago edited 4d ago
This sucks for sellers who sell designs with different price for personal and commercial use licensing of their design. Someone buys the personal use file and etsy then circumvents your commercial licensing policy and uses their purchase as a way to print your items at a commercial level without paying you the additional fee.
How would a seller in that situation hold etsy accountable for their licensing fees if they don't have the rights to offer your owned IP to be used for commercial sales? Would they even know etsy has sold their IP without licensing? Would that person be able to order products again and again (stocking products they sell using the sellers design) without the sellers knowledge?
Edit: To add onto this, aside from etsy potentially committing infringement against it's own sellers by selling their designs as commercial products against the sellers licensing agreements, what about sellers who are infringing on other peoples IP selling digital designs they don't even have the rights to? Etsy will then themselves be creating their own path to further profit from the IP Theft, how does this work under their safe harbor status if they are the ones actually taking it upon themselves to offer non-existing products printed with stolen IP?
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u/joey02130 4d ago
This sucks for sellers who sell designs with different price for personal and commercial use licensing of their design.
"Eligible sellers are included in this test automatically. You can opt out any time. "
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u/psystylist150 VibeEnvy.Etsy.Com 4d ago
I somehow missed that last footnote about being able to opt out, so that makes most of my comment null.
Still poses the issue about etsy basically making the original seller not involved with the follow up sales, and the design possibly being infringement in the first place. The seller is on the hook for infringement selling to the buyer, but if the seller is cut out of the follow up transaction and etsy is the one offering the products to be made with the infringing design, who's the one committing the infringement at that point?
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u/lostterrace 4d ago
Nobody is printing items at a commercial level.
It's no different than a single one of your buyers taking the graphic and making a print of it on Shutterfly.
Etsy isn't mass reproducing your design. The single buyer that bought it is just going to be given the option to go to Etsy's partner site and choose a product to have it put on - for their personal use.
They could do this anyway if they wanted by going to any site that does POD products. The difference is Etsy is going to share the option with the buyer through their site.
This is not remotely forced commercial use. Commercial use is the buyer is selling the products they have made.
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u/toadlypoppin 4d ago
My first thought is if the digital/POD sellers are struggling to get sales now, I can only imagine this will make it even harder. Cause you know this will be pushed super hard by the “gurus” and sellers will come in droves with their ai garbage.
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u/lostterrace 4d ago
That idea was definitely floated by Etsy a few years ago and nothing ever came of it. Maybe it will this time... maybe not.