FRAUDS COMMITTED ON ETSY AND PAYPAL

Hello;
I noticed that ThePeppermintTree is one of EE team members and I wanted to warn you about this buyer and seller. I do not want for her to take advantage of other Etsy buyers and sellers on your team.
This particular individual used to be a buyer on Etsy by the name of BrenBooneDesigns. She is now operating under a new username: ThePeppermintTree.

On February 13, she purchased one of my items for almost $50. On February 2011, she wrote positive feedback for me that she had received this item and was very happy with it. Soon afterwards, I wrote positive feedback for her because she had paid for this item in a timely manner and had written what seemed to be genuine positive feedback. I strongly regret giving her positive feedback now, but unfortunately it is too late.

On April 2011, I received an email from PayPal saying that this buyer claimed that she had never made this purchase and that someone was using her credit card in fraud for this item. Soon afterwards, I received an email from PayPal saying that the buyer's credit card company had reversed the charges and that I was being withheld the $50.I tried contacting her 3 different times regarding this problem and never got a reply. I noticed shortly after receiving the PayPal emails that she no longer had a shop under the user name of BrenBooneDesigns. I have 3 pieces of evidence against her:
1. I have a copy of the original transaction
2. I have a copy of the postal receipt
3. I have her positive feedback as part of my feedback history in my store.

PayPal said that it could take up to 75 days for the buyer's credit card company to make a final decision whether to rule in her or my favor.
Today, May 20, I received an email from PayPal saying that the credit card company decided to rule in her favor, despite all the evidence that I had produced against her.

She has a Facebook page under Bren Boone Designs:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bren-Boone-Designs/108984765808666
on this page, she has linked it to her new Etsy shop that she just opened on May 13, 2011: ThePeppermintTree.

I can't help but wonder why her original account, BrenBooneDesigns, was suddenly removed from Etsy. I have now noticed that her new shop, ThePeppermintTree, is "on vacation." It seems suspect to me that if she just opened this shop on May 13, that she would be putting her shop on hold this soon afterwards. It also makes me wonder because her last sold item was on May 19, 9 days ago.

I would be happy to send you copies of the transaction, the original positive feedback, etc as evidence. I also have the various PayPal emails saved.
If she did this to me, I'm pretty sure that she has probably tried doing this to other Etsy sellers as well.

Beware of this person!
Please contact me with any questions or additional information that you might have regarding this individual.

I simply feel like this person has probably gotten away with her unethical practices too many times.

I actually did call PayPal and spoke to someone very nice. But he told me that PP was not the one to make the final decision...it is up to the buyer's credit card company. They said they didn't want to become "involved" in this incident, yet was going to charge me a $20 fee just for intervening. Fortunately the guy must have felt somewhat sorry for me because he waived that fee (since the total amount was only about $50). But I was less than happy with the way PP dealt with this.

I have tried contacting Etsy several times about this buyer but never get a reply other than their generic email saying that a "real person" will contact me asap. Not so!

I have a feeling that she is a real con artist. Often times people who suddenly disappear from Etsy and then come back with a different user name are suspect. And that is exactly what she did.

I have not mentioned her name in any of my FB pages, blog, etc. And I don't want to get in trouble with Etsy for "calling out" and possible retaliation from this particular individual.

But I'm very glad to hear that you have taken this seriously, because Etsy and PayPal certainly have not.

I've tried contacting Etsy several times regarding this person but have not gotten anywhere with them. My first email to them was over a week ago. I sent them another one a few days ago and absolutely nothing.
I find that all these comment on her FB page about welcoming her to the EE team were strange and suspect.

Interestingly enough, when I search for her under "seller search" on Etsy, nothing comes up. I've only been able to link to her Etsy site via her FB fan page. Something very fishy is going on here.

This is VERY strange. Because earlier tonight she was a part of your team. Now she isn't. This is really bizarre.

Now this is really strange ...I found just about all of the comments from other EE team members welcoming her have just been deleted! We both saw all the comments, but now they are gone (at least I can't see them).

Something very strange is going on here.

Yes, she used to have another shop on Etsy by the name of BrenBooneDesigns. That one is no longer in existence. I noticed that she quit that shop soon after she filed that false claim to me via PayPal.

She also has a personal FB page:
http://www.facebook.com/btaylorboone

I didn't find much info here (unless you become a friend, I think most of it is hidden). But that is her personal site and she also has a blog.

**Anonymous** The victim have asked not to have her name or etsy id exposed due to fear of retaliation from the con artist.
If you have been a victim of an online scam yourself, please write to us and we will post here:
Online Scams- Protect Yourself

COUPONS GALORE

Please feel free to post your store coupon codes here and they will be sorted according to shop's categories.

PLEASE FOLLOW THESE RULES FOR COUPON CODES, PROMOTIONS, AND DISCOUNTS:
Only coupon codes that DO NOT expire will be posted here. Please do not post coupons that have expiration dates, or temporary sales of any kind. We want to keep our page current and up to date. If you make any changes to your coupon codes or current discounts, sales, and promotions, please notify one of our leaders ASAP! or comment on this page, so that we can make the changes immediately. Failure to follow these rules will deny your shop the rights to be featured on this blog.

What can be posted?
Coupon Codes: Percentage Off Coupons or Dollar $ Amount Coupons
Shop Promotions: (Including Free Shipping and Discounted Shipping)
Discounts: BOGO SALES (Buy One Get One Free, Buy 3 get 1 free ect...)

You may post more than 1 coupon codes, promotions, and discounts; as long as none of them expires.
**Coupon Codes, Promotions, and Discounts can be from your Etsy shop, Artfire shop, etc... as long as you are a member of our team**

How to post your Info:
1. What category do you sell? Examples: Supplies, Jewelry, Vintage, Crochet, etc...
2. Your Shop Name & URL (links, including the http://www.shopname.etsy.com or http://www.shopname.com)
3. A picture of an item or group of items that show what you have on sale.

TEAM CHALLENGE 3: 10 MINUTE TREASURY CHALLENGE

10 minute treasury challenge:

Create an EE Team treasury within ten minutes using EE team members products! In this challenge you will choose whatever products your eyes are drawn to first to include in your treasury.

1. In a new tab, search for the words "eeteam" and/or "etsy entrepreneurs" for our team members items.

2. Select one or two items per page that your eyes are naturally drawn to. Feel free to skip pages, go back and forth, start from the end, etc. because there are tons of items! Since there is only 10 minutes there is little time to choose a theme, but if one happens that's amazing!

3. It's fine if it takes longer than 10 minutes; just try to do it as fast as you can.

4. Tag your treasury with 10 minute challenge, and ee team/etsy entrepreneur team.

5. Send a message to all members with your featured items to let them know they should check it out, share, and comment.

6. Post your treasury to the 10 minute challenge discussion as well as your twitter, facebook, and blogs for all to see!

Good luck!
When you are done, please post your finished treasury in this thread for other members to see, share, and click. Thank you for your participation!
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7978/etsy-entrepreneurs/discuss/7604729/

MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPOSURE, GETTING FEATURED, ETC...

Hello EE Team Members!

Did you know that we have a wonderful Team Blog filled with so many AMAZING and helpful information?!!!

Well, here is your chance to get increase exposure for your shop!

WHAT IS IT? Are you an expert on a topic or field of practice or craft? Well, here is your chance to get noticed! Share your wisdom, knowledge, and experiences with your fellow EE Team Members. We are always looking for members who wants to write articles for our blog. We read all articles and info before posting it, and combing through all of the not so important details. Our featured articles are well written, have a nice flow to it, easy to follow, informative, and packed full of knowledge.

WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU? Just so you know, our team blog gets on average 100-200 views a day and on peak days, 600+ views a day. With people from all over the world viewing and reading our blog. In addition, with the majority of our traffic coming from Google, other websites, Social Networking sites, and numerous other blogs and search engines. That means that being on our blog will get your shop exposed much further than just in the realm of Etsy alone.
We always credit the author of the article. And if an article is written from an EE Team Member, we always attach your shop avatar with a link to your shop with the article. This is a great opportunity for those of you that don't have a blog to still get blog exposure!

HOW CAN YOU GET INVOLVED? Have a great topic that you want to share? Please let me know of your topic. Write your article within 1-2 weeks of getting the stamp of approval. Once you are done with your article, send me an email with the article to proof. I will also share the article proof with another leader/s on our team. Once everything looks good, it will get posted and you will be notified when it does get published. We are looking for many many good articles and contents. So there will be many features! Each author and article will be featured on different days. Our goal is to have at least 1 featured article each week.

WHAT DO WE LOOK FOR IN AN ARTICLE AND AUTHOR?
1. No noticeable grammatical errors. Hence we need to proof the article before posting. Nothing is perfect, so every now and then, a few small errors might slip by.
2. A good topic. One that is helpful and practical. Or one that is encouraging and uplifting. Anything to benefit our team, our members, and their businesses and/or life.
3. Please include pictures (if you can and if you have any pertaining to the topic written). Pictures are great because they tell a thousand words.
4. Please make sure that article submissions are topics that our members relate to. And we want to keep our current theme cohesive: business topics, business related, anything to save money and time, craft room decorations etc... Anything to make our lives more simple. Not sure about an idea or article?, feel free to convo or email us and discuss it with us Thanks.
5. A nice flow to the article. You don't have to be a professional writer. Just write from the heart.

Any other questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks and hopefully we will get many of you excited and willing to participate.
TEAM EMAIL ADDRESS: EtsyEntrepreneurs@gmail.com

TEAM CHALLENGE 2: TREASURY CHALLENGE

Thank you to TopiaryDesigns for putting this treasury challenge together for our team. (She stepped in for Carrie, who have been experiencing some computer problems).

If you are totally new to treasuries check out Esty's FAQ on treasuries
help.etsy.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/82

Treasuries are great marketing tools. Not only are treasuries selected for the front page they also browsed by thousands of customers everyday. There are currently 22,641 pages of treasuries with 20 treasuries per page, that's 452,820 treasuries! So it's extremely easy to for any treasury you create or that you are featured in to get lost. But we have a secret weapon! We have a team of over 1,100 members to help push our treasuries to the top pages!

Treasuries are listed by "hotness" not by creation date. Hotness is determined by how much activity a treasury generates, views, clicks and comments. With 1,100+ people and all their Facebook friends and Twitter followers to visit our team treasuries we can generate lots of activity pushing our treasuries to the first pages!

So that makes our treasuries easy to find but are they front page worthy? Will Etsy pick it to be featured? You don't have to be a mind reader to figure out what Etsy is looking for. They tell you! If you haven't found the merchandising desk yet head over and take a look. The link is below. In addition to the desk Etsy will send you emails telling you what they are interested in! The link to sign up is also listed below.

If you build your treasury around one of their trends it is more likely to be selected. And DON'T feature yourself! Treasuries are about sharing the love.

But at the end of the day it needs to be beautiful. Don't just pick random items from team member shops. Compose your treasury around a color, theme, season or story. Here's an Etsy Storque article about how to curate an amazing treasury. www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/how-to-make-a-great-treasury-list-671/


So before we begin the challenge, please tag ALL items in your shop that you would like to have other EE TEAM members be able to find in a search for items to put in their treasuries. (You can tag a few items or all items in your shop if you want).

1.Check out Etsy's Merchandising Desk. www.etsy.com/storque/search/title/merchandising/
2. Sign up for at least one Etsy newsletter www.etsy.com/mailinglist
3. Create a treasury based around a current trend Etsy has promoted on the merchandising desk or one of the email newsletters using at least 8 items from Etsy Entrepreneurs Team members.
4. Tag your treasury with the tag EE TEAM, EtsyTeam and Entrepreneurs
5. Send a convo to every seller featured in your treasury letting them know you've featured their item and asking them to come take a look.
6. Maintain your treasury by revisiting at least once a day to replace any items that have sold and respond to comments.
7. Comment on every treasury you are featured in.
8. Comment on at least 10 Etsy Entrepreneurs team treasuries you are not featured in. You can find them be searching Treasury for the tag EE TEAM
9. Promote your treasury and the ones you are featured in on any platforms you can, Facebook, your blog, Twitter. Etsy gives extra brownie points for using the tag #EtsyTeamTreasury on Twitter. I don't tweet so I hope that makes sense to those of you who do!

All right, when you are done with your treasury, please post them here so that all of our team members can view it, comment, click, tweet, blog, FB, etc..

We have over 1000 members, and if each of us make at least 1 treasury to share and then click on each other's treasuries, just imagine the amount of exposure that we all would get! I'm so excited just thinking about it. This challenge will last for about 1 week to 1.5 weeks. I want to give people enough time to tag all of their items and then make treasuries of items that they find.
Okay, let's have FUN!

TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE GO TO OUR TEAM FORUM:
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7978/etsy-entrepreneurs/discuss/6814175/

5 Types of Tweets to Boost Your Biz

Made up of a little bit art and a little bit science, proper tweeting is essential if you want your Twitter account to work for you, and not against you. There are a lot of opinions out there about the right way to tweet. Like so many things, it really comes down to the fact that there isn’t a single answer. It depends a lot on the type of business you have and what you’re trying to accomplish with your Twitter account. So how often you tweet and which combination of the types of tweets you use is not addressed here. But it’s just as important to explore the different types of tweets and know what your options are. So here’s a breakdown to get your brain working:

Personal - Twitter is for connecting with your audience. One of the best ways to do that is to let them get to know you. The type of business you’re in will dictate the nature of these tweets. For instance, if you’re a blogger, you can afford to be more personal, as you’re probably on a personal level with your readers anyway. If your business is tax consulting, you might be more concerned about how your clients will see certain kinds of tweets. That doesn’t mean you don’t tweet personal stuff, but you might be more inclined to tweet about your son’s soccer team winning last night, and less likely to tweet about the cool iPhone game you just found. The key is to show your human side, while adding some value in the form of insight into your life or maybe something entertaining. Tweets like, “Had a bowl of cereal for breakfast,” while personal, are probably of little to no value regardless of your goals.

Useful 3^rd party information – Posting a link to a blog post, video, e-book or other useful tool or information will help your followers and show them that you’re interested in more than just self-promotion. If you have a way people can save money or learn something interesting, share it, and they’ll keep checking your feed for more.

Re-tweets – Re-tweeting is saying that what someone else had to say was of value, and you’re letting your followers know that you respect the person whose tweet you repost. This adds value to your followers by passing on useful or entertaining information, and it lets the original tweeter know you appreciate them, which strengthens bonds on both sides.

Thank-yous – Mom was right – saying thank you is always a good idea. You can tweet thank you messages to thank people for following you on Twitter, which is a good way to connect, but might be difficult to keep up with, especially as your followers grow. Another way to use Twitter for a thank you shout out is for off-Twitter deeds. If someone wrote a guest blog for you or has agreed to speak at your event or webinar, for instance, thanking them on Twitter will accomplish the thank you, and it will get the word out about the blog or event as well.

Promotional – It’s no accident that this is last on the list. Twitter folks are very leery about people using Twitter for blatant self-promotion. That doesn’t mean you should never post a link to your products or services. It just means you need to be careful that you don’t turn anyone off. There are a lot of supposed “golden ratios” out there, ranging from 1 promo post per 3 other posts, to 1 per 10. The “right” one is probably somewhere in the middle, and again, it depends on your business and your goals.

If you want to see someone who uses a combination of all of these to effectively market her business, check out @MariSmith‘s page. Everything from her page design to her tweeting strategy are outstanding. Then again, she’s a social media consultant, so she’d better get it right! Do you have other recommendations for optimizing your Twitter efforts? Share your thoughts below in the comments.

(Source: http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2010/04/02/5-types-of-tweets-to-boost-your-biz/)

Thank you to our member for finding this article: CrochetBabyBoutique

HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL TREASURY

The team love is already starting to pour in with treasuries featuring our lovely and talented members. I've even seen a post or two with some questions about how treasuries work and what their value is so I thought I'd create a thread where we can all share our tips and techniques for creating successful treasuries. This first post is going to be long but I promise it's worth reading.

1. The value of treasuries: The main value of treasuries is exposure. But now that there are thousands of treasuries the exposure can be very limited. The Etsy team does select from member created treasuries for the front page but they aren't going to search down to page 57 to find them. You want your treasuries to make it into the first ten pages if possible. The question is, how to do that? You want as many views, clicks and comments as possible! Here are tips on how to achieve that.

2. Treasuries are searchable! You can search by your shop name to see any treasuries you have been featured in or created. The activity feature does show you treasuries you have created or been featured in as well but lately I've been experiencing a sporadic delay of 12-24 hours so I search the treasuries at least twice a day. Always always comment at least once on any treasury you're featured in. If you created the treasury respond to the comments you receive.

3. Tag you treasuries! The tags you use are also searchable. You want to tag treasuries as much as possible. Always tag treasuries featuring your team mates with the tag Etsy Entrepreneurs!!!! We are blessed with an enormous team. If half our team commented on your treasury it would have 500 comments. Also use a any trend tags Etsy Finds has been sending out in their emails. This is what the Etsy team is currently interested and is likely to search for when picking the front page. You want to use color tags, theme tags, style tags, season tags etc.

4. Composing a treasury. The Etsy team doesn't always just pick the hottest, most commented on treasury. The are looking for a beautiful well composed treasury. Select your items with care, compose them around a color, style, trend or subject. Include a variety categories, jewelry, home decor, paper goods, clothing, photography, painting etc. Also Etsy will not select your treasury if you feature yourself!

5. Using team love. We have an enormous out pouring of enthusiasm right now. To harness that on treasuries we should all take a few minutes a day to search the treasuries for "Etsy Entrepreneurs" and give those treasuries some love. If you've created a treasury but didn't use that tag don't worry! You can go back in and add it! That way the entire team can find and support the treasury even if they aren't featured.

If you have any tips I didn't include please post them!


Thank you to our member TopiaryDesigns for this wonderful post!