I recently launched my Etsy store with custom watercolor painted Animal Crossing cards however this week Etsy took my listing down claiming it’s against their policy. I made sure I followed their policy to the T. I listed it correctly and read through everything. I submitted a support ticket because there’s no way I was breaking any policies.
They got back to me today claiming it’s because I did my custom art based on a video game. So wait, custom art is not allowed? If you go to Etsy right now and search for any game out there including Animal Crossing, there’s thousands of listings of people doing custom art based on video games and even those who blatantly rip copyrighted material from the game and just slap it on a product and sell it. Then there’s those who do home made Amiibos which is also illegal but Etsy lets it slide? They’re claiming they’re not targeting me but how else am I supposed to take this? There’s people who have been selling direct rip offs and illegal made content from games for years and never get touched but I put custom art from a game on there and I get in trouble for it a few weeks later.
At this point I really don’t know what I want to do. I have started so many projects in the past which I have given up on because I felt like it wasn’t good enough or some other excuse however for the first time I actually felt like this was something I wanted to take far. We have some debt we are working on paying off and I currently do some contract work but ever since COVID started, the contract work have mostly died out. I started applying to WFH jobs but I haven’t been able to land anything. I decided to take matters into my own hands and start thinking about things I could make and sell to help get some income and after a lot of brainstorming I decided to start painting collectible cards.
I spent weeks making prototypes and getting the thoughts of my close friends and even they were excited for me when I was ready to go public with it. Once I launched the shop, I got a lot of positive feedback on my art and it felt great. Now I don’t know what to do since my conversation with Etsy is going nowhere. They’re probably not going to budge on their decision even though they’re turning a blind eye to everyone else breaking that policy.
I could use ko-fi and buymeacoffee to sell my painted collectible cards however they don’t have a search engine meaning my store will probably never get discovered by people outside of word of mouth. I really wanted to use Etsy due to the discoverability and Etsy is all about hand made products. I feel defeated. If anyone has any suggestions on what I could do, please let me know. I just want to curl up in a ball and cry.
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