Is Etsy Poised To Profit From Expanding Seller Services? Recent Updates Point To Changes On The Horizon
As Etsy prepares to report Q2 2025 earnings, recent updates point to potential profit opportunities beyond transaction take rates - could seller paid service offerings be the corporate answer to boost revenue amidst lagging sales and buyer growth?
Seller and ecommerce consultant Cindy Baldassi recently noted in a Patreon article that Etsy has updated the benefits to their Etsy Plus plan for sellers, now offering the ability to customize Shop Home pages with new color themes and promising more updates are "coming soon."
Here's what Etsy Plus subscribers currently get for $10 per month:
- Shop customization tools: Exclusive banner and listing display options to better highlight your products
- $5 USD in Etsy Ads credits monthly
- 15 listing credits monthly [worth $3 USD]
- Get 50% off via Hover on a custom shop URL for one year
- Adobe Express Premium free for 6 months (price varies by location)
- Restock requests
And in early 2024, the seller community was buzzing with speculation about the future of Etsy Plus after a leaked survey raised the possibility of a listing fee increase and monthly subscription plans for listings.
Liz Morton
While the ideas put forth in that survey have not (yet) come to fruition, it's clear that Etsy sees seller paid services as a potential revenue generator, especially as Services Revenue (money made from optional services like onsite advertising, shipping labels and other paid offerings) has continued to see strong growth in recent quarters, despite lagging Gross Market Sales and Active Buyer stats.
Liz Morton
When Etsy announced in October 2024 that they were blocking most 3rd party shipping software applications, carving out only a few exceptions for select providers, many wondered if the decision was security related or possibly meant to reduce costs by limiting API access.
Liz Morton
Those limitations went into effect for the US, Canada, and Türkiye last year, with new ones added for France and Germany just last week.
While Etsy may have restricted API access to certain perform certain functions like accessing shipping addresses, submitting tracking numbers, and marking items as shipped sellers and other third party order, shipping, and inventory management providers were still able to download CSV files with order data as a workaround - until Etsy put those files on a 2 week delay, making them impossible to use for timely order fulfilment processes.
Liz Morton
Co-founder of multichannel ecommerce software company GeekSeller, Daniel Sodkiewicz, says they are no longer able to process Etsy orders with PII (personally identifiable information) data access.
Sodkiewicz theorized the move may suggest Etsy is making an intentional effort not to support sellers who mass-produce products or run operations at scale - the kind of sellers who would be most likely to use software like GeekSeller to manage orders and inventory across multiple marketplaces.
Etsy has received increased scrutiny in recent years as counterfeit and copyright infringing items as well as mass produced products drop shipped from AliExpress and other sites have flooded the marketplace, resulting in removing API access for popular dropshipping software providers last year.
Liz Morton
More recent Creativity Policy changes aimed at cracking down on 3D printing, digital items, and generic supplies while allowing sellers to offer tailoring, repair and modifications services could also bolster the idea that Etsy is trying to get back to its more human/handmade roots.
Liz Morton
But another explanation for shutting out third party providers could be that rather than trying to get rid of larger multichannel sellers, Etsy may be maneuvering to offer those services to sellers directly - for a price.
In reporting on the CSV updates, Baldassi was informed by one of her readers that Etsy has recently sent out a survey specifically gauging seller interest in inventory management and shipping and order fulfillment capabilities.
According to a screenshot posted on Baladassi's Patreon page, the survey question said:
Imagine that Etsy gave you the ability to manage all of your different sales channels in one place, and you were able to complete tasks across every channel all at once. Which of the following tasks would you be most interested in using this kind of platform for? Please select all that apply.
- Inventory management
- Accounting, bookkeeping and finance management
- Managing customer relationships
- Marketing and promoting my business/brand
- Shipping and order fulfillment
- Reviewing stats and data to make decisions about my creative business
- Other (please specify)
While it's possible Etsy could build out their own inhouse offerings for these various services, it seems likely that a faster and easier approach would be to partner with select existing players in these spaces, like they've already done with shipping providers.
For example they might leverage eRank for stats and data, maybe make a deal with Intuit for bookkeeping , HubSpot for CRM, etc. and either package it all up under an all inclusive subscription, or offer some services a la carte.
Or the company could go in a different direction and instead of making these seller paid features, strike deals that would have select third parties paying for exclusive access to Etsy's APIs and seller-base.
While the exact nature of any future offerings is still anyone's guess at this point, it will not be surprising if CEO Josh Silverman leans in on Seller Services as a key revenue generating initiative when Etsy reports earnings on July 30th.
How much would you be willing to pay for an Etsy subscription that included bookkeeping, shipping, inventory management, CRM, and analytics reporting tools that would be used across multiple marketplaces? Let us know in the comments below!
