Was Etsy too good to be true?

Re:Was Etsy too good to be true? by mcguire on Friday September 06, 2019 @10:21AM (#20895852)

"It doesn’t help that Etsy changed its transaction fee from 3.5 percent to 5 percent last June — fair enough, it had been flat for 13 years, but still, the timing."

Wait. That's not how this works. This is not a price, it's a proportion.

Anyway, it sounds like Etsy has decided to become a more general online retailer, which does open it to a much larger market. It also removes any barriers protecting Etsy from being marginalized by larger retailers. I hope the management really is smarter than everyone else in the field.

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Re:Was Etsy too good to be true? by daedalus6174 on Friday September 06, 2019 @10:55AM (#20896188)

I think the author meant the 3.5% was flat in the sense that it hadn’t increased in thirteen years.

It’s not very clear English either way.

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Re:Was Etsy too good to be true? by sweeneyrod on Friday September 06, 2019 @12:43PM (#20897204)

Usually if you say you're raising prices because they've been flat for years the implied justification is that it's to match inflation. But that doesn't apply to a percentage fee.

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