Hi Makers,
We're in the middle of Black Friday week. How's it going for everyone?
What's selling best for you? Any surprises in what customers are buying? How's your stock holding up? Anyone having their best sales ever? What trends are you seeing?
Share your Black Friday anecdotes!
Hi Makers,
We're in the middle of Black Friday week. How's it going for everyone?
What's selling best for you? Any surprises in what customers are buying? How's your stock holding up? Anyone having their best sales ever? What trends are you seeing?
Share your Black Friday anecdotes!
Is it a Monday tradition to post something insanely out of touch to the Handmade forum? Last week we got The Benefits of Handmade.
Well... this post feels much like salt in an open wound. You beat me to it @Seller_gwzuNYC3ogYNo and we are in the same boat.
Here's my take.
@Hazel_AmazonWhile the intention of your post may have been to garner excitement about Black Friday weeks sales, you may want to actually read the handmade posts to get a current temperature reading before posting.
How's it going? Well... None of our handmade items are selling or have been selling for quite a while now. No surprises there as the Handmade category and all of its subcategories have mysteriously disappeared (not only from search but also from running ad campaigns making ads virtually unusable). Just like all handmade discoverability data has been missing from CLR since Feb11, 2024. This deadly combination left all of our handmade products stranded in the void of oblivion where no customer can find them.
So that obviously makes our handmade stock at 100% and not flying off the shelves as in previous years.
Best sales ever? The first 6 years of Amazon handmade when handmade meant hand-made and there was an actual handmade management team that drove interest and sales with social media and actually responded to sellers concerns. Sales were over 6 figures until... Spring 2023 (announcement of reclassification project and also the no return policy for handmade items) sales immediately plummeted.
What trends are we seeing! The death of Amazon handmade sales... that's definitely trending.
Does anyone else want to answer or give opinions on this?@Seller_M94fHI9Bg7LMX@Seller_Gd8HNmQJSr4l8@Seller_Qp7D09NCRbW7u
And... because it is highly off-putting when words are used improperly, I am going to leave this here for education as so many mods seem to be overly exuberant in using this word to define handmade sellers concerns and issues.
Food for thought. Improper use of words can be as knife wounds. Be wise and know what a word means before using it. Sellers and forum readers alike could very easily come to the conclusion that the purpose and overuse of this word by mods is meant to be intentionally insulting and condescending.
I'm having great sales on Etsy and Michael's Makerplace
Amazon Handmade? It's crickets. Seriously. This Marketplace has dried up.
You've made it impossible for small businesses to actually "participate" in any sort of deals, or coupon features. Not that you would promote them if we did. It's been YEARS since Handmade has actually promoted handmade sellers on both the amazon.com/handmade and social media profiles.
The Mod's are ignoring all the real legitimate concerns on the forums.
I hate that I have over 200 items in FBA that I have lowered to 75% off their normal retail price (Just barely breaking even after FBA fee's) Just to get them out of FBA because of all the different fees that have started accumulating since sales fell off a cliff last year.
The fact that it's been a year since they "category changes" and they have yet to be implemented. Why not just let us change our own categories?
It really feels like you guys are just waiting for us all to quit...I just can't figure out what the benefit is to stringing along a long painful death instead of just ripping the band aid off.
What does the future hold for Handmade...can anyone tell us? I see on Linked In some sort of changes seem to be happening behind the scenes...I've found a few different employee's names who seem to hold high level positions in Amazon Handmade and yet they have never once come into the the forums or sent out an email introducing themselves.
It's just so weird.
It's been a rough year here Hazel.
Last year was down considerably from 2022 (183 units sold).
Overseas "handmade" (factory) is now in the category I sell. They can source materials, make the product, ship it in bulk from overseas to an Amazon warehouse (it is 30"x22"x1.5" and weighs 10 lbs), Amazon takes their 15% and whatever FBA fees, and the product gets shipped anywhere in the USA... ALL OF THAT for about $10 more than it costs me just to ship the product to the buyer... impossible to compete if they're making a "profit".
Hi Wonderful Artisans,
Same boat here. On a positive note regarding the current metric situation we find our selves in.
Last Year Thanksgiving was on the 24th this year 28th
They can say Black Friday is more then a week long, but I don't think our customers got the memo. My sister who shops on Amazon exclusively for odds and ends as she lives in the middle of nowhere, had no clue. She hadn't logged in for a bit, assumed Black Friday was you know on Black Friday, and lets be real how many people watch commercials anymore. I wouldn't have known if they didn't tell us. Black Friday it seems is now worth very little to the consumers as many retailers hold it for a week-month.
Last year was weird for us. More November sales less December sales and more January sales. I think this is going to be more of a typical year, where things don't really get going until Black Friday-Cyber Monday.
There hasn't been a lot of bad press on USPS ship times get your stuff early like there was on the news a couple years ago.
With that in mind I am sure I am like most of you just dinking on the back end trying to do what I can to make what I can. Good luck to us all and may Black Friday come for handmade this Friday.
Have a Magical Day!
Wendy W.
Head Elf
Sales are garbage thanks to Amazon screwing up search results. Looks like Amazon doesn't know the difference between Wood, metal, neon or cat toys when searching for our products. We moved our ad money OFF of amazon and on to google and Etsy. Sorry, We're not paying for Bezo"s new boat.
HORRIBLE- You guys decided to change our handmade categories at the start of Q4- WHY ON EARTH would you do that?- We literally do not have categories connected in the backend of our listings- So what sales? How does a seller go from 6 figures a year for years and years...FIGHT for my organic ranking and then you have really smart engineers who destroy hundreds of thousands of handmade sellers small businesses because you want to " put our items in the regular amazon catalog" So there is no black friday. There will be NO CHRISTMAS sales. I had a shred of hope you all would have this mess cleaned up by now considering it started last year. So NO. ITS GOING HORRIBLE. And I can't even run ads because you don't have our browse nodes connected to the correct categories!
Hi Makers,
We're in the middle of Black Friday week. How's it going for everyone?
What's selling best for you? Any surprises in what customers are buying? How's your stock holding up? Anyone having their best sales ever? What trends are you seeing?
Share your Black Friday anecdotes!
Hi Makers,
We're in the middle of Black Friday week. How's it going for everyone?
What's selling best for you? Any surprises in what customers are buying? How's your stock holding up? Anyone having their best sales ever? What trends are you seeing?
Share your Black Friday anecdotes!
Hi Makers,
We're in the middle of Black Friday week. How's it going for everyone?
What's selling best for you? Any surprises in what customers are buying? How's your stock holding up? Anyone having their best sales ever? What trends are you seeing?
Share your Black Friday anecdotes!
Is it a Monday tradition to post something insanely out of touch to the Handmade forum? Last week we got The Benefits of Handmade.
Well... this post feels much like salt in an open wound. You beat me to it @Seller_gwzuNYC3ogYNo and we are in the same boat.
Here's my take.
@Hazel_AmazonWhile the intention of your post may have been to garner excitement about Black Friday weeks sales, you may want to actually read the handmade posts to get a current temperature reading before posting.
How's it going? Well... None of our handmade items are selling or have been selling for quite a while now. No surprises there as the Handmade category and all of its subcategories have mysteriously disappeared (not only from search but also from running ad campaigns making ads virtually unusable). Just like all handmade discoverability data has been missing from CLR since Feb11, 2024. This deadly combination left all of our handmade products stranded in the void of oblivion where no customer can find them.
So that obviously makes our handmade stock at 100% and not flying off the shelves as in previous years.
Best sales ever? The first 6 years of Amazon handmade when handmade meant hand-made and there was an actual handmade management team that drove interest and sales with social media and actually responded to sellers concerns. Sales were over 6 figures until... Spring 2023 (announcement of reclassification project and also the no return policy for handmade items) sales immediately plummeted.
What trends are we seeing! The death of Amazon handmade sales... that's definitely trending.
Does anyone else want to answer or give opinions on this?@Seller_M94fHI9Bg7LMX@Seller_Gd8HNmQJSr4l8@Seller_Qp7D09NCRbW7u
And... because it is highly off-putting when words are used improperly, I am going to leave this here for education as so many mods seem to be overly exuberant in using this word to define handmade sellers concerns and issues.
Food for thought. Improper use of words can be as knife wounds. Be wise and know what a word means before using it. Sellers and forum readers alike could very easily come to the conclusion that the purpose and overuse of this word by mods is meant to be intentionally insulting and condescending.
I'm having great sales on Etsy and Michael's Makerplace
Amazon Handmade? It's crickets. Seriously. This Marketplace has dried up.
You've made it impossible for small businesses to actually "participate" in any sort of deals, or coupon features. Not that you would promote them if we did. It's been YEARS since Handmade has actually promoted handmade sellers on both the amazon.com/handmade and social media profiles.
The Mod's are ignoring all the real legitimate concerns on the forums.
I hate that I have over 200 items in FBA that I have lowered to 75% off their normal retail price (Just barely breaking even after FBA fee's) Just to get them out of FBA because of all the different fees that have started accumulating since sales fell off a cliff last year.
The fact that it's been a year since they "category changes" and they have yet to be implemented. Why not just let us change our own categories?
It really feels like you guys are just waiting for us all to quit...I just can't figure out what the benefit is to stringing along a long painful death instead of just ripping the band aid off.
What does the future hold for Handmade...can anyone tell us? I see on Linked In some sort of changes seem to be happening behind the scenes...I've found a few different employee's names who seem to hold high level positions in Amazon Handmade and yet they have never once come into the the forums or sent out an email introducing themselves.
It's just so weird.
It's been a rough year here Hazel.
Last year was down considerably from 2022 (183 units sold).
Overseas "handmade" (factory) is now in the category I sell. They can source materials, make the product, ship it in bulk from overseas to an Amazon warehouse (it is 30"x22"x1.5" and weighs 10 lbs), Amazon takes their 15% and whatever FBA fees, and the product gets shipped anywhere in the USA... ALL OF THAT for about $10 more than it costs me just to ship the product to the buyer... impossible to compete if they're making a "profit".
Hi Wonderful Artisans,
Same boat here. On a positive note regarding the current metric situation we find our selves in.
Last Year Thanksgiving was on the 24th this year 28th
They can say Black Friday is more then a week long, but I don't think our customers got the memo. My sister who shops on Amazon exclusively for odds and ends as she lives in the middle of nowhere, had no clue. She hadn't logged in for a bit, assumed Black Friday was you know on Black Friday, and lets be real how many people watch commercials anymore. I wouldn't have known if they didn't tell us. Black Friday it seems is now worth very little to the consumers as many retailers hold it for a week-month.
Last year was weird for us. More November sales less December sales and more January sales. I think this is going to be more of a typical year, where things don't really get going until Black Friday-Cyber Monday.
There hasn't been a lot of bad press on USPS ship times get your stuff early like there was on the news a couple years ago.
With that in mind I am sure I am like most of you just dinking on the back end trying to do what I can to make what I can. Good luck to us all and may Black Friday come for handmade this Friday.
Have a Magical Day!
Wendy W.
Head Elf
Sales are garbage thanks to Amazon screwing up search results. Looks like Amazon doesn't know the difference between Wood, metal, neon or cat toys when searching for our products. We moved our ad money OFF of amazon and on to google and Etsy. Sorry, We're not paying for Bezo"s new boat.
HORRIBLE- You guys decided to change our handmade categories at the start of Q4- WHY ON EARTH would you do that?- We literally do not have categories connected in the backend of our listings- So what sales? How does a seller go from 6 figures a year for years and years...FIGHT for my organic ranking and then you have really smart engineers who destroy hundreds of thousands of handmade sellers small businesses because you want to " put our items in the regular amazon catalog" So there is no black friday. There will be NO CHRISTMAS sales. I had a shred of hope you all would have this mess cleaned up by now considering it started last year. So NO. ITS GOING HORRIBLE. And I can't even run ads because you don't have our browse nodes connected to the correct categories!
Is it a Monday tradition to post something insanely out of touch to the Handmade forum? Last week we got The Benefits of Handmade.
Is it a Monday tradition to post something insanely out of touch to the Handmade forum? Last week we got The Benefits of Handmade.
Well... this post feels much like salt in an open wound. You beat me to it @Seller_gwzuNYC3ogYNo and we are in the same boat.
Here's my take.
@Hazel_AmazonWhile the intention of your post may have been to garner excitement about Black Friday weeks sales, you may want to actually read the handmade posts to get a current temperature reading before posting.
How's it going? Well... None of our handmade items are selling or have been selling for quite a while now. No surprises there as the Handmade category and all of its subcategories have mysteriously disappeared (not only from search but also from running ad campaigns making ads virtually unusable). Just like all handmade discoverability data has been missing from CLR since Feb11, 2024. This deadly combination left all of our handmade products stranded in the void of oblivion where no customer can find them.
So that obviously makes our handmade stock at 100% and not flying off the shelves as in previous years.
Best sales ever? The first 6 years of Amazon handmade when handmade meant hand-made and there was an actual handmade management team that drove interest and sales with social media and actually responded to sellers concerns. Sales were over 6 figures until... Spring 2023 (announcement of reclassification project and also the no return policy for handmade items) sales immediately plummeted.
What trends are we seeing! The death of Amazon handmade sales... that's definitely trending.
Does anyone else want to answer or give opinions on this?@Seller_M94fHI9Bg7LMX@Seller_Gd8HNmQJSr4l8@Seller_Qp7D09NCRbW7u
And... because it is highly off-putting when words are used improperly, I am going to leave this here for education as so many mods seem to be overly exuberant in using this word to define handmade sellers concerns and issues.
Food for thought. Improper use of words can be as knife wounds. Be wise and know what a word means before using it. Sellers and forum readers alike could very easily come to the conclusion that the purpose and overuse of this word by mods is meant to be intentionally insulting and condescending.
Well... this post feels much like salt in an open wound. You beat me to it @Seller_gwzuNYC3ogYNo and we are in the same boat.
Here's my take.
@Hazel_AmazonWhile the intention of your post may have been to garner excitement about Black Friday weeks sales, you may want to actually read the handmade posts to get a current temperature reading before posting.
How's it going? Well... None of our handmade items are selling or have been selling for quite a while now. No surprises there as the Handmade category and all of its subcategories have mysteriously disappeared (not only from search but also from running ad campaigns making ads virtually unusable). Just like all handmade discoverability data has been missing from CLR since Feb11, 2024. This deadly combination left all of our handmade products stranded in the void of oblivion where no customer can find them.
So that obviously makes our handmade stock at 100% and not flying off the shelves as in previous years.
Best sales ever? The first 6 years of Amazon handmade when handmade meant hand-made and there was an actual handmade management team that drove interest and sales with social media and actually responded to sellers concerns. Sales were over 6 figures until... Spring 2023 (announcement of reclassification project and also the no return policy for handmade items) sales immediately plummeted.
What trends are we seeing! The death of Amazon handmade sales... that's definitely trending.
Does anyone else want to answer or give opinions on this?@Seller_M94fHI9Bg7LMX@Seller_Gd8HNmQJSr4l8@Seller_Qp7D09NCRbW7u
And... because it is highly off-putting when words are used improperly, I am going to leave this here for education as so many mods seem to be overly exuberant in using this word to define handmade sellers concerns and issues.
Food for thought. Improper use of words can be as knife wounds. Be wise and know what a word means before using it. Sellers and forum readers alike could very easily come to the conclusion that the purpose and overuse of this word by mods is meant to be intentionally insulting and condescending.
I'm having great sales on Etsy and Michael's Makerplace
Amazon Handmade? It's crickets. Seriously. This Marketplace has dried up.
You've made it impossible for small businesses to actually "participate" in any sort of deals, or coupon features. Not that you would promote them if we did. It's been YEARS since Handmade has actually promoted handmade sellers on both the amazon.com/handmade and social media profiles.
The Mod's are ignoring all the real legitimate concerns on the forums.
I hate that I have over 200 items in FBA that I have lowered to 75% off their normal retail price (Just barely breaking even after FBA fee's) Just to get them out of FBA because of all the different fees that have started accumulating since sales fell off a cliff last year.
The fact that it's been a year since they "category changes" and they have yet to be implemented. Why not just let us change our own categories?
It really feels like you guys are just waiting for us all to quit...I just can't figure out what the benefit is to stringing along a long painful death instead of just ripping the band aid off.
What does the future hold for Handmade...can anyone tell us? I see on Linked In some sort of changes seem to be happening behind the scenes...I've found a few different employee's names who seem to hold high level positions in Amazon Handmade and yet they have never once come into the the forums or sent out an email introducing themselves.
It's just so weird.
I'm having great sales on Etsy and Michael's Makerplace
Amazon Handmade? It's crickets. Seriously. This Marketplace has dried up.
You've made it impossible for small businesses to actually "participate" in any sort of deals, or coupon features. Not that you would promote them if we did. It's been YEARS since Handmade has actually promoted handmade sellers on both the amazon.com/handmade and social media profiles.
The Mod's are ignoring all the real legitimate concerns on the forums.
I hate that I have over 200 items in FBA that I have lowered to 75% off their normal retail price (Just barely breaking even after FBA fee's) Just to get them out of FBA because of all the different fees that have started accumulating since sales fell off a cliff last year.
The fact that it's been a year since they "category changes" and they have yet to be implemented. Why not just let us change our own categories?
It really feels like you guys are just waiting for us all to quit...I just can't figure out what the benefit is to stringing along a long painful death instead of just ripping the band aid off.
What does the future hold for Handmade...can anyone tell us? I see on Linked In some sort of changes seem to be happening behind the scenes...I've found a few different employee's names who seem to hold high level positions in Amazon Handmade and yet they have never once come into the the forums or sent out an email introducing themselves.
It's just so weird.
It's been a rough year here Hazel.
Last year was down considerably from 2022 (183 units sold).
Overseas "handmade" (factory) is now in the category I sell. They can source materials, make the product, ship it in bulk from overseas to an Amazon warehouse (it is 30"x22"x1.5" and weighs 10 lbs), Amazon takes their 15% and whatever FBA fees, and the product gets shipped anywhere in the USA... ALL OF THAT for about $10 more than it costs me just to ship the product to the buyer... impossible to compete if they're making a "profit".
It's been a rough year here Hazel.
Last year was down considerably from 2022 (183 units sold).
Overseas "handmade" (factory) is now in the category I sell. They can source materials, make the product, ship it in bulk from overseas to an Amazon warehouse (it is 30"x22"x1.5" and weighs 10 lbs), Amazon takes their 15% and whatever FBA fees, and the product gets shipped anywhere in the USA... ALL OF THAT for about $10 more than it costs me just to ship the product to the buyer... impossible to compete if they're making a "profit".
Hi Wonderful Artisans,
Same boat here. On a positive note regarding the current metric situation we find our selves in.
Last Year Thanksgiving was on the 24th this year 28th
They can say Black Friday is more then a week long, but I don't think our customers got the memo. My sister who shops on Amazon exclusively for odds and ends as she lives in the middle of nowhere, had no clue. She hadn't logged in for a bit, assumed Black Friday was you know on Black Friday, and lets be real how many people watch commercials anymore. I wouldn't have known if they didn't tell us. Black Friday it seems is now worth very little to the consumers as many retailers hold it for a week-month.
Last year was weird for us. More November sales less December sales and more January sales. I think this is going to be more of a typical year, where things don't really get going until Black Friday-Cyber Monday.
There hasn't been a lot of bad press on USPS ship times get your stuff early like there was on the news a couple years ago.
With that in mind I am sure I am like most of you just dinking on the back end trying to do what I can to make what I can. Good luck to us all and may Black Friday come for handmade this Friday.
Have a Magical Day!
Wendy W.
Head Elf
Hi Wonderful Artisans,
Same boat here. On a positive note regarding the current metric situation we find our selves in.
Last Year Thanksgiving was on the 24th this year 28th
They can say Black Friday is more then a week long, but I don't think our customers got the memo. My sister who shops on Amazon exclusively for odds and ends as she lives in the middle of nowhere, had no clue. She hadn't logged in for a bit, assumed Black Friday was you know on Black Friday, and lets be real how many people watch commercials anymore. I wouldn't have known if they didn't tell us. Black Friday it seems is now worth very little to the consumers as many retailers hold it for a week-month.
Last year was weird for us. More November sales less December sales and more January sales. I think this is going to be more of a typical year, where things don't really get going until Black Friday-Cyber Monday.
There hasn't been a lot of bad press on USPS ship times get your stuff early like there was on the news a couple years ago.
With that in mind I am sure I am like most of you just dinking on the back end trying to do what I can to make what I can. Good luck to us all and may Black Friday come for handmade this Friday.
Have a Magical Day!
Wendy W.
Head Elf
Sales are garbage thanks to Amazon screwing up search results. Looks like Amazon doesn't know the difference between Wood, metal, neon or cat toys when searching for our products. We moved our ad money OFF of amazon and on to google and Etsy. Sorry, We're not paying for Bezo"s new boat.
Sales are garbage thanks to Amazon screwing up search results. Looks like Amazon doesn't know the difference between Wood, metal, neon or cat toys when searching for our products. We moved our ad money OFF of amazon and on to google and Etsy. Sorry, We're not paying for Bezo"s new boat.
HORRIBLE- You guys decided to change our handmade categories at the start of Q4- WHY ON EARTH would you do that?- We literally do not have categories connected in the backend of our listings- So what sales? How does a seller go from 6 figures a year for years and years...FIGHT for my organic ranking and then you have really smart engineers who destroy hundreds of thousands of handmade sellers small businesses because you want to " put our items in the regular amazon catalog" So there is no black friday. There will be NO CHRISTMAS sales. I had a shred of hope you all would have this mess cleaned up by now considering it started last year. So NO. ITS GOING HORRIBLE. And I can't even run ads because you don't have our browse nodes connected to the correct categories!
HORRIBLE- You guys decided to change our handmade categories at the start of Q4- WHY ON EARTH would you do that?- We literally do not have categories connected in the backend of our listings- So what sales? How does a seller go from 6 figures a year for years and years...FIGHT for my organic ranking and then you have really smart engineers who destroy hundreds of thousands of handmade sellers small businesses because you want to " put our items in the regular amazon catalog" So there is no black friday. There will be NO CHRISTMAS sales. I had a shred of hope you all would have this mess cleaned up by now considering it started last year. So NO. ITS GOING HORRIBLE. And I can't even run ads because you don't have our browse nodes connected to the correct categories!