Reality Sets In At Etsy

Earlier this year, Creators Against Pinterest published: Etsy Loves Pinterest, featuring the lovestruck ramblings of enthusiastic Etsyans.

Four months later, Estyans are singing a completely different tune. Etsy has fallen out of love with Pinterest.

Some excerpts:

I've tried to look at it from a business perspective and the ROI would be much too low to make it worth while. Time is money, too. Don't forget that. My time is much better spent listing.

Very few sellers admit to getting many views from there, and you're not supposed to self-promote. So yes, you get a few views, and maybe an occasional sale. But is it really worth the time? Not to me.

I get occasional views from it and repins but I mostly like it for my own personal use.

I get some views from Pinterest.

I absolutely love Pinterest, but more for personal entertainment than for sales.

Is it even really a good idea to post your items on pinterest? I vaguely remember reading that when you post something, you're saying you have the rights to it, but you're also giving the rights to pinterest to do with as they please.

I don't know if it's brought me any sales, but it's fun!

There's so much going on in there that it's stopped making sense to spend to much time with it.

Pintrest has never helped me, but I try to help sellers by having a board titled, Favorite Etsy Finds. I have noticed some of them get repinned so sure hope someone is getting sales from it!

Tried it, didn't like it. No method to their madness!

[...] don't think it helps business but I love the site.

These comments are surprising given Pinterest's emphasis on recipes and crafts. One might have a reasonable expectation that the beautiful pictures taken by Etsy sellers, splayed all over Pinterest, would convert into a noticeable amount of conversions to sales. Apparently, it isn't the case.

Hype, Meet Reality

After a peak in traffic in spring 2012, Pinterest has sputtered
despite dropping the invitation-only requirement.


To put things in perspective, Pinterest isn't doing all that much better
than the slowly imploding myspace.


That's right!
An 8% drop in traffic in the past 3 months.

Granted, this data is obscured to some degree by variations in the cat-and-mouse game between Pinterest, and our strange-bedfellow allies, the spammers; but before you buy that e-book from that self-appointed Pinterest guru whose byline is to instill a sense of panic YOU HAVE TO GET IN ON THE PINTEREST ACTION!, remember that Pinterest blows chunks, outside of recipe blogs and home decor brand names.

The hype machine doesn't appear to have run out of gas, yet, but it seems like the pin hags that spent 50 hours a week scraping third-party content to fuel Pinterest's hungry chase for venture capital, may have fallen behind on the laundry, and are too busy catching up folding threadbare socks and faded towels to infringe on pictures of cutesy socks and spiffy towels.

Pinterest Comparative Traffic Data

According Google Trends,
reports that Pinterest is closing in on Facebook
appear to be a monumental exaggeration.
If you can't see the blue line in the graph above that represents Pinterest, you may have to squint. The blue hugs the ZERO value on the x-axis.


Google Trends does confirm that some recipe blogs are receiving proportionally important referrals from Pinterest
The recipe blogs/websites above appear to receive as much referral traffic from Pinterest as they from Facebook, despite Pinterest's much tinier presence on the internet.

Pinterest may be a boon for recipe blogs, but it's becoming clear that it's a bust for everything else.