If I Can Pay Someone To Do It...

May 30, 2011 7:59 PM

Are there people out there who will manage an etsy store FOR me??

Love etsy to death but I find listing items and dealing with paypal and emails and all of it extremely de-motivating. I know that with ebay you can find brokers to sell your items and manage your auctions, and I wonder if such a thing exists for etsy sellers or if I should just look for a personal assistant on craigslist.

I want someone to work FOR ME, for pay, (but not necessarily a commission or cut of sales.) I would want them to upload photos, list items with my descriptions, accept payment, and then notify me what I need to ship.

Are these magical elves out there in the ether or am I dreaming?

posted by polly_dactyl to shopping (6 answers total)

Any reasonably web-savvy personal assistant could do that for you with minimal training. I do similar things for artists/companies, and I find that kind of work on Craigslist. Have you thought of putting up an ad on there?
posted by OLechat at 8:02 PM on May 30, 2011

You might be able to hire a personal assistant to do the work for you, but it's a bit iffy in terms of Etsy's (theoretically) strict rules on who can do what. In practice, Etsy turns a blind eye to quite a lot of rules violations, so it's entirely possible that you could easily get away with this.

Someone offering Etsy broker services would almost certainly be violating their terms of use.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:59 PM on May 30, 2011

Etsy's TOS states that the person that owns the account is the one in charge of billing, etc for the account but that others are allowed to upload the items- but I've never seen or heard of an instance where that was enforced to any degree. I agree that an Etsy broker would definitely be majorly breaking their terms, though- they are very specific that the account must be held by the person who made the items, which is different from Ebay, where the items could have come from anywhere. You should definitely be able to find an assistant easily by looking on Craigslist, I know that this is the kind of thing that I and many of my friends would be very willing to do.
posted by kro at 12:20 AM on May 31, 2011

If you figure this out, please let me know. I could seriously use this or possibly go in on something with you.
posted by ashtabula to opelika at 8:04 AM on May 31, 2011

I've run my own online shop and have done eBay auctions for several years.
I wouldn't mind doing that kind of elf work, as long as Etsy isn't going to freak out.
posted by luckynerd at 12:00 PM on May 31, 2011

I was recently followed on Twitter by someone who appears to offer this very sort of service - possibly with the exception of the payment accepting - but it's definitely something people do, apparently. If you want, message me and I can send you her info.
posted by alynnk at 12:16 PM on May 31, 2011