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An open letter to Etsy sellers.
Jan. 4th, 2011 06:55 pmDear Etsy-based bath product sellers,
If you would like to boost sales of your chakra-aligning aromatherapeutic lotion with the recipe that Pan or possibly Peter Pan gave you in a dream - you need to list the ingredients. And the ingredient list needs to be correctly capitalized, neatly-formatted, plainly labeled as an ingredient list, and absolutely not scattered at random throughout the paragraph about how happy your dog is when you rub the lotion on the pads of her paws in the winter. I have my own dogs. They are more interesting to me than they are to you, and that is as it should be.
The ingredient list should not contain descriptions of your feelings about the ingredients - put that in your ad copy if you want, but there needs to be a separate list down at the bottom that contains only the ingredients, not their alleged function and history. I don't want to read a paragraph about how some study yet-to-be-reproduced and funded by evening primrose farmers found that evening primrose oil is good for nerve function, or that Cleopatra imported it to use on her hair. I want to know if your face cream has shea butter. Because shea butter irritates my face. Because you are selling face cream - you're not selling a cure for Parkinson's disease or a history book, you're selling face cream - and that is a moderately important point.
Love,
Someone who was buying face cream from this one guy on Etsy before, but now he's shut his store down
If you would like to boost sales of your chakra-aligning aromatherapeutic lotion with the recipe that Pan or possibly Peter Pan gave you in a dream - you need to list the ingredients. And the ingredient list needs to be correctly capitalized, neatly-formatted, plainly labeled as an ingredient list, and absolutely not scattered at random throughout the paragraph about how happy your dog is when you rub the lotion on the pads of her paws in the winter. I have my own dogs. They are more interesting to me than they are to you, and that is as it should be.
The ingredient list should not contain descriptions of your feelings about the ingredients - put that in your ad copy if you want, but there needs to be a separate list down at the bottom that contains only the ingredients, not their alleged function and history. I don't want to read a paragraph about how some study yet-to-be-reproduced and funded by evening primrose farmers found that evening primrose oil is good for nerve function, or that Cleopatra imported it to use on her hair. I want to know if your face cream has shea butter. Because shea butter irritates my face. Because you are selling face cream - you're not selling a cure for Parkinson's disease or a history book, you're selling face cream - and that is a moderately important point.
Love,
Someone who was buying face cream from this one guy on Etsy before, but now he's shut his store down
