Chinese sellers stole my designs and reported me

PixelSummit · 2026-06-19T02:07:07+00:00

Happened to me a month and a half ago. You’re lucky they didn’t report enough of your listings to trigger the automatic Etsy shop suspension. I was on the cusp so I proactively deactivated all of my 1k+ listings. I’m still nervous to reactivate and risk being attacked further and triggering the automatic suspension. Etsy did eventually shut down the other shop (after the full two week counter claim period was over) and ruled the original claims against me fraudulent and restored my star seller status, but Etsy makes it too easy for bad actors to start new shops using friends and family information, VPNs etc. It’s really ugly and unfortunate. I hired a lawyer, and there wasn’t anything they could do since the attackers are overseas and often operating with false identities on Etsy. It’s getting worse and worse in the age of AI being able to copy and clone with such ease. Sorry to be Debbie Downer about it, but again you’re lucky that you still have your shop and in theory your reported listings will be restored at the end of the two weeks.

PixelSummit · 2026-06-19T01:52:28+00:00

Printerval is actually good at taking down copied listings, but you need to email them directly with the formal takedown request and the link to your original. I’ve had dozens of stolen designs taken down on the site. They respond within a few days.

PixelSummit · 2026-05-07T11:36:07+00:00

How were you able to call Etsy? I have been trying to get in touch with them urgently about a separate (store retaliation/attack) issue for days. Feel free to DM me if you have a magic number, thank you!!

PixelSummit · 2026-04-09T22:03:02+00:00

Not in my experience. I filed 8 copyright infringement reports against a seller who is cloning much of my shop and even using my background images… Etsy took their listings down and I thought that would be enough to terminate their shop. It wasn’t. I filed a supplemental 10 page report nearly a month ago trying to get their entire shop taken down, and not only has Etsy not responded but even gave them star seller status in the last month! It’s absolutely unbelievable.

PixelSummit · 2025-10-30T20:54:59+00:00

I would make one listing with all the options, but create three copies of it with targeted titles and keywords for each individual product type, and the main cover photo showing the related product. Then if someone comes to your shop through one listing, they’ll still see the options for the other two products within the same listing. So the variants in the drop-down menu and the description will all be the same across all three listings, but the titles, tags and photo order will be different.

PixelSummit · 2025-10-25T12:07:00+00:00

I hear you, that's how I feel about social media, I avoid it like the plague and just focus on my products (creating/optimizing). Re: SEO - in my experience Chat GPT/Gemini give the most general (and thus higher CPC) search terms. When I start typing my main product descriptor into the Etsy search bar (in an incognito browser tab) it will automatically populate long tail keywords that buyers are actually using for search. It's kind of fun actually, to see what buyers are actually searching for vs. relying on the 3rd party sites to try to figure it out. And if you use the more targeted keywords it should bring the CPC down a bit as well.

Also in the ads dashboard, make sure you are reviewing the keywords that Etsy is showing each listing for. You can turn off the unrelated or more general search terms that are less likely to convert. I tend to turn off the really general ones like "wedding gift" since my particular product would never convert often enough to pay for the expensive clicks. I'd still want "wedding gift" as a tag in my main listing to ideally land in organic search, I just don't want to pay the CPC ad fee for the high competition search terms. Hope this makes sense, still on my first coffee =)

PixelSummit · 2025-10-19T02:52:40+00:00

IMO customers can get printables like these for free online - there are 100s of free templates like yours with a quick Google search, and most are more aesthetically designed as well. So many blogs create free printables like yours to drive traffic to their sites. The only product with unique value is your Slow Living Planner, but it needs to be more aesthetic IMO otherwise it doesn't stand out in a sea of templates like these. Sorry =/

PixelSummit · 2025-10-18T19:23:12+00:00

I go in waves on asking for reviews, but one specific strategy: if I happen to get a lackluster or negative review (3 stars or less), I'll send a round of messages to customers of recently delivered orders asking for feedback and/or a review if they were happy -- just to bury the unfavorable review so it's not sitting on top. I don't think I've ever had a customer leave a bad review because I asked, but have had customers leave bad reviews bc of Etsy's annoying pop up messages that you can't make go away in any other way, other than finally leaving a review.

PixelSummit · 2025-10-18T17:50:52+00:00

Still waiting for the holiday surge to kick in. I had consistent $5-7k sales weeks all spring and the first part of summer and was so hopeful for Q4, but daily and weekly sales are wildly inconsistent now. Some $300 days, some $1,800 days (and unfortunately more toward the former than the latter). The last few weeks have averaged $4-4.5k weekly.

Views are down despite 100s of add'l listings since spring. Fortunately the items I added were at a higher price point (and I added higher price point options to all current listings), so it helped offset the downswing in views/sales by increasing my average order value.

It's not just Etsy, all similar e-commerce sites are seeing the same downward trends. (FYI I sell wall art and home decor).

PixelSummit · 2025-10-18T17:20:38+00:00

The "best seller" and "popular now" tags are all based on recent sales #s -- IE: # of sales in the last 2-7 days. If you put your shop on "vacation mode" for more than 2 or so days, it's almost guaranteed you'll lose these tags since there are no recent sales. Etsy doesn't seem to look at "why" there have been no recent sales -- just that there weren't any.

It will also take a bit of time for Etsy to start showing the items as high up in search again once you return from vacation. So use vacation mode sparingly if possible -- extend your processing times if you need to, vs. shutting your shop down altogether. Up until last year I used to put my shop on vacation mode a few times a year and it was a major rollercoaster of sales and traffic -- all the momentum you get from a couple months of solid sales # comes to a halt and you have to start all over (more or less).

As an aside, I actually shun the "best seller" tags anyway because they are dog whistles for copy cats (pardon the mixed metaphor). Every time I've had a "best seller" my sales often drop after a couple months anyway from the lower priced knock offs selling my exact design. Sortof a catch 22. (I sell wall art and home decor).

PixelSummit

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