I shut down my Etsy store in November. 
 
 I'd been a seller since April 2006, less than a year after Etsy first went into beta. I was in my first job out of journalism school, and making cards and journals was a creative outlet and a way for me to score some extra money. I'd been selling stuff on the side at craft shows for a few years at that point, part of a larger wave of modern crafters who met online and inspired each other to start businesses. 
 
 Etsy debuted at just the right time: Indie craft shows had started popping up around the U.S. in the early 2000s, but running your own online store was a complicated task. (My "store" at the time encouraged buyers to mail me money orders.) Most of the people who joined Etsy in those first few years were like me—independent crafters who were already at least somewhat established IRL—and the quality of the goods on the site was generally high. 
 
 Things have changed in the past decade: Indie craft has grown from a close-knit subculture to a giant economy that influences trends in big box stores. And Etsy has grown from a startup built by crafters and for crafters to a juggernaut on the verge of an IPO. The most recent success story of a mom making a million dollars a year isn't what it seems. In practical terms, scaling the handmade economy is an impossibility. So while Etsy maintains a hipster façade, they lost their indie cred years ago. 
 
 Grace Dobush About Grace Dobush is a freelance journalist in Cincinnati, where she writes about design, tech, politics and culture. She also organizes an indie craft show and wrote the Crafty Superstar craft business guides. Follow her gracedobushtogo. 
 
 I have to acknowledge this: Modern craft would not be as hot as it is without Etsy or something like it. Like book authors who hate Amazon's policies, crafters who hate Etsy find it hard to leave because of the site's immense traffic and generally positive public reputation. Just before the Christmas rush, I finally put my money where my mouth is and shut down my shop. My reasons for leaving the site aren't unique, even though casual shoppers and potential investors have no idea of the drama going on behind the scenes. Here's my beef with Etsy. 
 
 A Bigger Market Isn't a Better Market 
 
 There are more than 30 million items listed on Etsy right now. That popularity is, of course, great for Etsy. But new hobbyist sellers, desperate for clicks, often price their products so low as to make real profit an impossible dream. 
 
 And that popularity isn't good for shoppers, who have to wade through pages of crap to find what they're looking for. Searching for "mermaid" in the wedding gown category of Etsy returns 1,299 results, ranging from a $6,882 gown made by Project Runway's Leanne Marshall to dresses for less than $200, one purportedly handmade lace dress going for $65. (For those who aren't up to date on their fabric prices, the materials to make a wedding dress alone would cost at least $65.) A friend and I recently discovered we both always sort results by highest price when we're searching on Etsy to see only the serious sellers. 
 
 What other e-commerce sites can say the same? Etsy needs casual crafters to keep paying the 20-cent listing fees and, if any of the items sell, the 3.5 percent transaction fees and any additional payment processing fees. (See "She's Making Jewelry Now.") Etsy doesn't disclose its finances, but it facilitated $1.35 billion in sales in 2013, which adds up to more than $47 million in transaction fees, not counting listing or payment processing fees. 
 
 Resellers Are Rampant 
 
 That Etsy began allowing manufacturing partners in 2013 underscored the reseller issue that has plagued the site for years. The Marketplace Integrity, Trust & Safety team—which has the unenviable task of policing sellers for adherence to Etsy rules—is unable or unwilling to weed out sellers of mass-manufactured goods. And having sellers who are able to move nearly a million dollars of product a year is great for Etsy's bottom line. 
 
 Sellers have been dissatisfied with Etsy's policing of mass-manufactured items posing as handmade for a long time, but the site hasn't seemed receptive to their concerns. An Etsy staffer I met a few years ago dismissed sellers' questions about Chinese resellers as "kind of racist." The snark site Regretsy (RIP) was one of the few big gathering places where sellers and shoppers could voice their frustrations with the marketplace. Any kind of "calling out" of accused resellers or bad businesspeople on Etsy's forums is usually acknowledged by an admin shutting down the thread with "I'm going to close this up now." 
 
 Etsy Has Homogenized Indie Craft 
 
 From the beginning, Etsy has pushed the "quit your day job" storyline. The fact is, the majority of the people selling on Etsy aren't running their businesses full-time, and the idea of quitting your day job is a manic pixie fever dream. If you want to make it big on Etsy, you don't necessarily want to make things that fulfill your creative dreams; you just want it to get onto the front page and sell like hand-felted hotcakes. 
 
 The Etsy effect on craft trends is striking. At the San Francisco edition of the Renegade Craft Fair in November, I was struck at how most things look like the homepage of Etsy, pinnable, pretty things. (See "Put A Bird On It.") It's so incredibly boring. How many pieces of geometric jewelry with a pop of color can the earth bear? Will we ever see hand-drawn logos without antlers and arrows? How much barn wood must we salvage to atone for our crafty sins? 
 
 Successful Businesses Leave Etsy 
 
 The biggest secret is this: Makers who have what it takes to succeed—good product, a good marketing plan, a pricing structure that compensates everyone in their supply chain fairly—don't really need Etsy for long. 
 
 Etsy is the fifth most-visited marketplace site in the U.S., after Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Best Buy. But for that visibility, sellers have little autonomy in the store's design, and are subject to the site's rules, fees and design. A customer complaint can freeze your payment account. An accusation of copyright violation can freeze your store or shut it down entirely. 
 
 For a full-time crafter, that's too much of a risk. Successful makers of a certain size eventually move to e-commerce platforms that give them much more flexibility and control for fewer fees. If you're working in high volume or high price points, using a customizable ecommerce platform such as Big Cartel or Shopify massively reduces your fee obligation, as I outlined in a comparison chart. 
 
 I see the recent policy changes Etsy has made—allowing third-party manufacturing partners, entering the wholesale space—as last-ditch efforts to keep super-successful sellers using the site. But successful handmade businesspeople weren't waiting for permission from Etsy to hire help or get into wholesaling. They grew out of the site and took their wares elsewhere. 
 
 The David Has Turned Into Goliath 
 
 At its outset, Etsy was a powerful tool for makers, by makers. We were a bunch of Davids, fighting back against the big-box Goliaths with artisanal slingshots. Founder Rob Kalin came up through the same online craft forums that me and my crafty cohorts did, and we were making a revolution. 
 
 In the past few years it's become apparent that Etsy is the Goliath. Indie craft's whole purpose from the outset was to meet your makers and consume conscientiously. Now, when you ask your friend where they got that cool "Weekend at Bernies" cross stitch sampler, they'll tell you, "I bought it from Etsy"—the maker's identity is secondary, if noted at all. 
 
 I'm not pessimistic about handmade culture at large: Maker culture is thriving independently of Etsy, and it's easier than ever for crafters to run independent online stores. I prefer to sell my wares (and buy my presents) at local indie craft markets and in curated bricks-and-mortar shops that reflect the flavor of their communities and encourage real relationships between makers and buyers. 
 
 The bottom line is this: Etsy needs crafters more than crafters need Etsy. ||||| Depending on whom you ask, Alicia Shaffer, owner of the hit Etsy store Three Bird Nest, is a runaway success story — or an emblem of everything that has gone wrong with the fast-growing online marketplace for handmade goods. 
 
 With the help of up to 25 local seamstresses and alluring photography, Ms. Shaffer takes in upward of $70,000 a month in revenue selling twee headbands and leg warmers via Etsy. But as her business has grown, she has been harshly criticized online and accused of mass-producing goods, of obtaining wares from China. Detractors consider her a blight on Etsy’s hipster cred. 
 
 The dispute over how goods are produced and sold on a site that prides itself on feel-good, handmade authenticity underscores the growing pains transforming Etsy as it moves toward a potentially lucrative initial public offering of stock. 
 
 As for Ms. Shaffer, she denies the claims that have dogged her business recently but says she understands why questions have arisen about the volume of goods she produces. She says her store strictly adheres to Etsy’s guidelines, including that all items listed are either handmade or “vintage” secondhand, with some new exceptions that allow for approved outside manufacturing. “We’re a team of dedicated Etsy artisans who have been able to grow a tiny shop into a little machine,” she said. ||||| If you’re serious about crafting, then you may have fantasized about ditching the 9-5, picking up the glue gun, and opening an eponymous Etsy shop. 
 
 Well, Alicia Shaffer from Three Bird Nest, is living that dream. 
 
 Shaffer is one of the most successful sellers on the online craft site, with more than, gulp, an estimated $65,000 a month in sales. But she tells Yahoo DIY that it didn’t all happen, overnight, though. 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Alicia Shaffer and family. All images courtesy Three Bird Nest) 
 
 Etsy may seem like a quaint little destination for vintage pendants and handmade birthday cards, but with 30 million registered users, one million sellers and over one billion in total annual transactions, this is not your neighborhood craft fair. This is big e-commerce. 
 
 
 
 
 
 girls posing with boquets More 
 
 Where most shops would love to sell 300 items a day, Three Bird Nest is selling over 3,000. (If those numbers don’t make you wanting to quit your day job, then you must really love what you do.) 
 
 Three Bird Nest has its own distinctive sensibility, but it’s not breaking the mold with exclusive, rarefied creations. Items similar to her lovely handmade, knitted scarves, wraps, headbands, beanies, boot socks and calf cozies (adorably irresistible) can be found elsewhere. So why is Shaffer cleaning up when others are coasting? 
 
 
 
 
 
 Alicia wearing a homemade purple headband More 
 
 One thing that stands out is Shaffer’s passion for her work. “I love textiles, fabric, fashion, designs, and seeing how different colors and fabrics pair together,” she says on her site. When the seller’s passion comes through, the shopper connects with craftsperson. 
 
 But Shaffer also loves the business side. She happily absorbs the pressures that come from running her own mini empire. The creative process, from concepting, to production, to getting it in front of people to delivery is a high for her. To have a successful business on Etsy (or anywhere), she advises: you need to eat, sleep and breathe your brand. 
 
 Shaffer also designs for a wide range of women, which broadens her potential customer base. “She’s a mom, a student, a daughter, a bride, a woman going on a first date,” she says. 
 
 
 
 
 
 bracelets closeup More 
 
 Read More ||||| Etsy, the online marketplace for handcrafted goods, has long hosted a thriving community of witches, tarot readers, and other spiritual and supernatural vendors. After eBay banned the sale of spells and the like in 2012, it became one of the most popular places for these types of vendors to make a living. 
 
 But many who sell supernatural goods on the site are claiming Etsy has been on something of a witch hunt (sorry), changing its rules about the sale of metaphysical services and shutting down stores without warning. 
 
 “Swathes of us have now had our sales and shop views tank, and there is great distress in the metaphysical community,” one vendor, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Daily Dot in an email. 
 
 The witch explained that under Etsy’s previous rules, spells and hexes were allowed to be sold, as long as they fit two criteria: They didn’t guarantee results, and they produced something tangible. So you could sell a tarot reading as long as it came with, say, a digital download, or a candle that could be used for casting spells, as long as you didn't guarantee that the spell would actually work. Earlier this year, for instance, I bought a sex spell off Etsy , which came with both photographs of the spell being cast, and a disclaimer that no spell is guaranteed to work. 
 
 Recently, however, Etsy quietly adopted new guidelines that prohibit the sale of spells and hexes. According to its new rules, “any metaphysical service that promises or suggests it will effect a physical change (e.g., weight loss) or other outcome (e.g., love, revenge) is not allowed, even if it delivers a tangible item.” 
 
 Etsy didn't include a date with its new guidelines, so it's unclear when, exactly, the policy change took place. Yet the Daily Dot's source says that Etsy was still enforcing the old rules at the beginning of the month. “Up until June, many sellers had been contacted by Etsy warning them their listings would be deleted and/or shop suspended unless they updated these kinds of things to include something tangible," she wrote. 
 
 Even if the witches had a disclaimer saying these services were “for entertainment purposes only,” or that a spell was not guaranteed to work, listing something as a “love spell” vaguely suggests that you could find love by casting it. 
 
 But instead of warning vendors about the upcoming change, Etsy seems to have pulled the plug overnight. Many vendors say stores began to be shut down last week, and on June 9 our source was sent an email by “Etsy Marketplace Integrity” implying a change had been made. 
 
 “We’ve recently clarified our spells-related policies in a way that impacts your shop,” the email read. “Because of this, your shop has been suspended.” 
 
 When asked for comment, Etsy spokesperson Sara Cohen said in an email that the website “recently” updated its policies, though she declined to give an exact date. 
 
 “When we make policy decisions, we strive to strike the right balance between creative freedom, Etsy's values, and establishing a safe marketplace for members," she wrote. 
 
 Cohen also insisted that Etsy has been contacting affected sellers “to help them make sure items they sell comply with our guidelines." She said the website is shutting down only the shops that violate these new policies. 
 
 An Etsy forum on the subject has over 850 responses. Some witches are annoyed that Etsy had given no warning that the site's policies on witchcraft were about to change. Others were frustrated at Etsy for ditching the community that had previously been welcomed on the site with open arms. 
 
 “Etsy has definitely made a lot of money off the sale of these ‘spelled’ items, so they have had to know they were being sold. They even had a category for Spell listings which would prove that point,” wrote one vendor. 
 
 Screengrab via Jaya Saxena 
 
 Screengrab via Jaya Saxena 
 
 Within Etsy’s witch and metaphysical community, there are a few theories as to why Etsy would have adopted the change. One has to do with Etsy having gone public in April. Additionally, while the site focuses on selling handmade, unique goods, it has always been an easy place for resellers and counterfeiters to set up. Etsy is now facing a lawsuit from investors over items that possibly violate trademarks, and it’s possibly that the website has become more strict about just what can be sold. 
 
 While these theories are all sound, many metaphysical sellers believe that Etsy has a cultural bias against their goods. One forum user compared the sale of crystals that could be used in meditative rituals to the sale of a rosary or a cross. Both items represent spirituality, but neither make the claim that they will heal your ills or help you speak to God. 
 
 “Etsy seems to be only targeting those items of a pagan/occult nature while allowing items of certain faiths traditionally used for protection like St. Christopher medals, to still be marketed,” said another vendor in an email. “Personally I think it's probably unintended ignorance and failure to consider and think through what banning all spiritual, energetic and magickal claims will really mean.” 
 
 “Etsy seems to be only targeting those items of a pagan/occult nature while allowing items of certain faiths traditionally used for protection, like St. Christopher medals, to still be marketed.” 
 
 Admins in the forums insist that the sales of things like oils, incense, crystals and candles for use in spells are still okay, as long as they don’t claim any magical properties. For many witches, however, that’s not good enough. 
 
 “The entire point of buying stones/herbs/oils is for their metaphysical effects in my community!,” wrote one vendor. “If I can't list these correspondences, then why would any witch/pagan buy them from my shop? Witches and Pagans want to buy stones from people with knowledge about their magickal properties.” 
 
 There is already a petition to get Etsy to reopen these shops, with many sellers accusing the website of religious discrimination. 
 
 “I give the example of the seller who just this week was told to change the title of her listing from 'Archangel Protection Spell Kit' to ‘Archangel Protection PRAYER Kit’ by an Etsy rep,” claimed one vendor. “A spell and a prayer are basically the same thing, putting an intention out into the Universe.” 
 
 Discrimination or not, if you’re looking to hex your ex-girlfriend, you’ll have to start looking elsewhere. Or alternatively, you could always band together with these witches and cast a spell on Etsy. 
 
 Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Examination of a Witch (1853) by T. H. Matteson | Remix by Jason Reed ||||| Some spells for sale on Etsy right now-thank god it's payday 
 
 Victoria Zasikowski is an Etsy witch. Her profile bills her as a "professional astrologer and practitioner of Hoodoo Magick," while her shop-the Enchanted Land-offers a menu of spells, pendulum readings, and cartomancy. Depending on what spell she's casting, she uses candles, cauldrons, mojo bags, and customized "spellvelopes." Once she's done, she sends pictures to every client as proof that the spell has been cast. 
 
 "You may send me a hair and nail sample in the mail if you like," reads her listing. "Such items are called 'personal concerns' and are known to increase the effectiveness of any spell. Airmail to the UK tends to take around 5 days. My address will be given upon request." 
 
 Etsy is full of peculiar items for sale-as Regretsy famously illustrated-but what's often forgotten is that it's also full of witches. The marketplace offers an online home for spell casters, fortune tellers, and those ladies you might see in the local alt-weekly ads peering into a glowing crystal sphere. 
 
 The average paranormal purchase involves back-and-forth emails to work out what's required, a personal recommendation, and finally the casting of the spell, with a date given for when the client can expect its effects to start kicking in. Victoria gets asked about custom spellwork, but can't always cater to the requests. Some are a little ambitious: "I got one request to make the client taller, one to change the color of their eyes... I don't want to lead them on. Some of the requests are just ridiculous." (Apparently, the film The Craft has a lot to answer for.) She adds, "A number of spell casters I know have been sent pornographic pictures and requests to make clients' penises bigger." 
 
 Etsy spells live in the "Handmade/Everything Else/Metaphysical" category of the site and can take several formats. There's the haunted object-most often an antique or jewelry with a "spirit" inside for good luck-and there's downloadable magic in PDF form (as with this vampiric transformation ritual). But most common of all is the spell similar to a Catholic indulgence, or any other faith encompassing paid-for prayers: For a price, the seller will cast a spell for you. 
 
 I decided to speak to another Etsy spell caster, "witch and necromancer" Gill of Faerygill, who has practiced magic for more than 30 years and trades both on Etsy and her second site, Tarot Magick. She describes the process of divining a client's needs as akin to spirit-writing with a computer. "I get an image, something they've not told me about themselves. I'll lay down the cards, and while I'm reading them, I type out what I see. The words just sort of come to me, the closest thing I can describe it to is channeling. Sometimes I just can't type fast enough." 
 
 More so than with face-to-face readings, the internet allows a client to relax and let their guard down. Victoria notes that "it does give you a very interesting cross-section of people's lives," but that it comes with its own dangers. "I have to be respectful of people who come to me laying bare their souls," she warns. "There are customers who are emotionally distraught, people with a lot of trauma in their lives." 
 
 Does she ever feel like people's problems are too big for her to tackle with Etsy witchcraft alone? 
 
 "I have to refuse to do spellwork for some people, and recommend that they look for a psychiatrist," she admits. "I've had a handful of people who were obviously suicidal, and I'll never, ever do work for those people and have to refund them." 
 
 The witches of Etsy are nothing if not thorough: as with every industry built on trust, they have their own directories and review sites. Both the sellers I interviewed refuse to do revenge spells, which traditionally are bad karma. Gill says it's impossible to put a curse on someone you don't know, and that what you put out there comes back to you: "I'll usually say to people that I can banish and I can protect, but I won't do curses." Nevertheless, hexes, curses, and "EXTREME black magick" are available online from £1.59 ($2.55) to more than £400 ($640) from sellers with fewer scruples. 
 
 The range of magic available reflects consumers' hopes and dreams, their ambitions and anxieties, in much the same way as Amazon's self-help book chart. "They want spells for situations in life that most of us face. It's quite practical work in some respects," says Victoria, whose most popular spells are for reconciliations, or people looking to find their soulmate. She estimates that her customers are 95 percent female. 
 
 Similarly, Gill sells more love spells than anything else, though over the years her custom spell option has brought in some odd requests. "Once I was asked to do a reading for a client's snake. She had this pet snake, and she wanted a reading to find out why she felt bonded to it. That has to have been the weirdest reading I've ever done..." 
 
 Gill's spell-casting equipment 
 
 Spells for weight loss, money, and a better sex life are also popular, though more poignantly, Etsy is also full of spells catering to people looking to change their gender, and a near-countless number of fertility spells. 
 
 Etsy supports an entire economy of "intangible items": sellers buy supplies there as well as offering their services. They source occult books and even offer witchcraft correspondence courses. But other websites are not quite as liberal: The witchcraft community of Etsy migrated there after being banned from eBay. In a policy revision in 2012, eBay discontinued the sale of readings, spells, and potions due to "a large number of misclassified items and eBay policy violations." 
 
 Items banned by eBay over the years deserve their own lengthy article-the list features lock picks, Native American crafts, social media endorsements, amateur pornography, "grave-related goods," and human remains. At times the rules are logical (credit cards, firearms), at times baffling and arbitrary. What is an anti-ageing face cream, the Etsy witches argue, if not a potion with better advertising? What's the difference between a diet spell and a book by Gillian McKeith? 
 
 "We were quite a large community, the metaphysical section of eBay, but they really didn't need us," Victoria says. "Hundreds, maybe thousands of sellers, and most of us had our eggs all in one basket. And we were just kicked off, out of the blue." She recalls watching the site remove her listings one by one, slowly taking away her livelihood: "Obviously we all know eBay exists as a money-making machine, but this really revealed their true colors. We all basically got fired without any notice. After that I took to bed for a week." 
 
 Though it insists on spell casters using the legal disclaimer "FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES," Etsy allows for pretty much any kind of spell, from "extreme telekinesis" to sending a succubus on a loved one. Many of the spells seem like little more than commodified good vibes that rely on good intent, though even within the community there are conflicts. "There are charlatans," Victoria tells me, "there are scams. It's not always obvious, but sellers can just copy and paste the text from other people's shops, and the buyer might never know." This in turn attracts criticism and trolls: "You do get the anti-witchcraft brigade," Gill tells me. "Mainly fundamentalist Christians. It's just like when Jehovah's Witnesses call to the door: I'm polite to them and tell them the truth. I'm a witch. I practice magic. It can lead to some interesting conversations." 
 
 What comes up when you search for "spellcasting" on Etsy 
 
 This is perhaps hard to fathom, given that if you believe in witchcraft, surely the one person you don't want to annoy would be a witch, but clients who refuse to pay are another occupational hazard. Victoria explains: "You hear stories about clients who haven't paid, and the occasional seller making threats. People have said "I will curse you!" I've never threatened a client, though," she adds, matter of factly. "It wouldn't make for good feedback." 
 
 At face value it's hard to get one's head around paying anything from £8 ($13) for printable instructions, up to more than £1,000 ($1,600) for an "Extreme Binding Bewitchment." But then commercialized faith is nothing new: Only last month eBay managed to sell the Pope's hat for just under £70,000 ($112,000)-the money was donated to humanitarian aid in Congo. Surely the hat's buyer believed on some level that the item was charged with contagious magic, as in Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough, and that there was sanctity woven into its very fibers. 
 
 "I do vaguely remember that sense of mystery and awe," Victoria tells me of her magical beginnings, "of doing something that others might not understand. You might be a little nervous about it. It has that sense of intrigue, like it's something dark or dangerous..." The internet is allowing a new generation to experiment with minimum personal risk. "For the newbie it must be like a sweetie shop. You can get advice, join forums, and still be anonymous." 
 
 The witches of Etsy are growing in number every year, and the internet and the occult might just be a perfect match. After all, the Wiccan Rede, "An it harm none, do what ye will," isn't too far from Google's "Don't be evil." On the internet, everything is niche by default. As Nancy, teenage sorceress of The Craft snarls, "We are the weirdos, mister." 
 
 Follow Roisin Kiberd on Twitter.
– When customers order an heirloom pet teepee, Charles Manson necklace, or vinyl Gorillaz wall clock from Etsy, they expect it to be lovingly handmade or authentically vintage, perhaps even customized and made from ecologically sound materials. But critics of the site are claiming that sellers are increasingly taking to mass production or even reselling cheap items from overseas—a move that many see as undermining the crafts giant's authenticity and credibility, the New York Times reports. And although execs from the online marketplace didn't grant interviews with the Times ahead of its potential IPO, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson notes in the IPO prospectus that there have been complaints about sellers working with outside manufacturers and "diluting our handmade ethos," he notes. "After all, Etsy has always served as an antidote to mass manufacturing. We still do." Etsy used to ban sellers from outsourcing manufacturing or hiring employees to keep up with demand, the Times notes—until Dickerson relaxed the rules in 2013, as long as certain criteria were met. Alicia Shaffer's Etsy shop has been featured on Yahoo and in Fast Company as one of Etsy's biggest success stories; she tells the Times that while she understands why people are skeptical about her high-volume output, she follows all of Etsy's guidelines, hiring a couple dozen local seamstresses to help her out. But Grace Dobush, an ex-Etsy seller, tells the Times that "as Etsy has gotten bigger, it’s gotten more like eBay." In an essay last month for Wired, Dobush notes the "pages of crap" shoppers have to filter through and a seeming disinterest on Etsy's part to purge resellers. "At its outset … we were a bunch of Davids, fighting back against the big-box Goliaths with artisanal slingshots. … In the past few years it's become apparent that Etsy is the Goliath." (Click to read about Etsy's "haunted doll" market.)