Latest posts
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Holiday Message Templates: Handling the Questions That Spike This Time of Year
Etsy’s Star Seller program requires a 95% response rate to buyers’ first messages within 24 hours to earn the “Speedy replies” badge. That bar gets dramatically harder to clear in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when message volume and order volume climb in lockstep. Table of Contents Introduction These are the exact templates…
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Week in Review — October 12, 2025
Halloween’s peak week is here, and the Star Seller changes from earlier this week are already generating real seller reaction. Star Seller update: early reactions largely positive Following Monday’s coverage of the lowered order minimum and combined messaging threads, several smaller shops reported this week that they now qualify for the badge under the new…
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Star Seller Just Got Easier — the New Bar, Explained
Etsy’s Star Seller program includes criteria aimed at addressing some of the most common pain points sellers have raised about the badge. We weren’t able to independently pin down a single confirmed announcement this week for the specific changes below, current seller-facing guides describe these as the program’s standing criteria, so treat the “why now”…
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Star Seller and Q4: Keeping Your Standing as Order Volume Climbs
Star Seller requires a 95% message response rate within 24 hours, 95% on-time shipping, and an average review rating of 4.8 or higher, all measured over a rolling three-month window that Etsy re-checks on the first of every month. None of those thresholds move for Q4. Your margin for error does. Table of Contents Introduction…
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This Week on Etsy: Messaging and Inbox Changes
A small refinement to Shop Manager’s messaging interface this cycle, relevant to anyone tracking Star Seller response metrics closely. What changed Etsy made a minor adjustment to how message threads display in the seller inbox, improving how multiple messages from the same buyer within a short window are grouped and labeled. This builds on the…
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Message Templates for the Most Common Back-to-School Deadline Questions
Message response time factors directly into Star Seller standing, and this is exactly the week message volume peaks while production time is most valuable. Table of Contents Introduction This is the exact set of templates we use to answer the back-to-school messages that spike hardest in the season’s final week, the ones asking whether an…
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Week in Review — July 20, 2025
A more scattered week than usual — nothing dominated the way Creativity Standards has the last few weeks, but a handful of smaller things are worth flagging. Boycott chatter is building We’re watching a growing thread of buyer and seller frustration this week tied to a specific controversial listing category that’s drawn public attention, with…
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Week in Review — July 13, 2025
The Creativity Standards story kept growing this week, and it wasn’t the only thing sellers were talking about. The mailbag is full of one topic We ran a reader question Friday about mysterious listing removals, and honestly could have run ten more just like it. If there’s a single theme running through every seller group…
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How to Adjust Listings for 4th of July & Peak Wedding Season
Late wedding orders generate the most damaging reviews of any category on Etsy, because the item carries a hard deadline that a birthday gift or a piece of home decor simply doesn’t have. Table of Contents Introduction The holiday’s over, and if you sold anything patriotic-themed, that inventory needs handling this week, not next month.…
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Week in Review — July 6, 2025
A short week for most of the US, but not a quiet one in seller forums. Here’s what actually mattered if you sell on Etsy this week. Creativity Standards fallout is still spreading Nearly a month after Etsy quietly rewrote its Creativity Standards to cut “templated designs or patterns” from what counts as original work,…