This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
How do you handle negative reviews, especially on Etsy? We're gonna talk about that today. Little case study from a listener, a caller, who's selling on Etsy. And well, of course, as you might guess already, she had an experience that was not super positive. It was a little bit negative, in fact, because at least one customer, maybe more, it actually sounds like she said a couple of negative reviews, presumably in the context of many other positive reviews.
Well, we'll talk about all that, but what do you do? And welcome, of course, to Side Hustle School. Every day we explore practical and creative ways to boost your income without leaving your day job. Thank you so much for tuning in. Glad you're here, you're in the right place.
So let's see if we can address this issue. Rachel from Seattle, she runs an Etsy shop. She has faced some challenging feedback. So if you ever want to sell anything, you have to deal with this from time to time. What do you do when somebody's not happy and then they are not just unhappy, but they tell the world, or at least they leave a little one or two star review or some other negative comment online.
How do you maintain your positive reputation? Keep your customers happy and take care of yourself along the way. Rachel's question and my answer coming in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hey Chris, I'm Rachel from Seattle. I run an Etsy shop selling handmade crafts and I've recently received some negative reviews that are affecting my sales.
I've been a fan of your podcast for years and have applied many of your tips to grow my business. How should I address these frustrating reviews publicly and what steps can I take to improve customer satisfaction and prevent future issues? I want to maintain a positive reputation and ensure my customers are happy. Thank you so much for all of your guidance and support. [Music]
Rachel, from time to time, this question comes up in various forms.
Sometimes it's about a charge back. Sometimes it's a complaint. Sometimes it is a negative review like this on some platform or another. And hopefully in addition to the negative review or whatever the bad feedback was, hopefully you also have a lot of good reviews and good feedback. Hopefully this is an exception to the rule.
And I think it's just important to remember that when you're a consumer, if you go to Amazon or any other source to buy books or to buy anything really, you kind of expect there to be a range of reviews. And if the item or the book has only positive reviews, then you almost kind of wonder about it, right? Like you understand how not everybody's gonna like this item or this book or whatever it is. What do most people think? That's usually what most of us are thinking when we go and look at reviews.
So I understand that it's hard when you're on the other side of it, when you're like, oh, I got this negative comment or everybody's gonna see this and it's going to affect all of their decisions. The reality is they probably won't see it all the time, at least as long as new reviews are coming in. If they do see it, it's not necessarily bad. It's more just like, oh, one person didn't like what I made and hopefully other people do. Now you can try talking to that person directly and offering to do something, a solution to rectify whatever problem they had, nothing wrong with that.
And then hopefully they can update their review afterwards. Sometimes that's the right choice, but other times it's okay to just kind of let things go and maybe ask yourself, is there something I could have done in this situation? And if the answer is yes, okay, then you just try to do a better job moving forward. If the answer is no, then you just realize I'm gonna sell hundreds of products, thousands of products, perhaps, and a small fraction of people are not going to love them. That's okay.
I'm gonna focus on the ones who do. And you just keep making your products better and doing a better job. And ultimately that's what you judge your success by the people who do continue to support you. So beyond that, I don't know that you need to worry about it so much. Focus on positivity, focus on what you're making and the people who care about it.
Rachel, cheering you on, wishing you well. Listener is always wishing you well as well. Let me know if there's something I can help with or let me know if there's something we can share with our global community of side hustling listeners in all parts of the world, doing all kinds of interesting things. I'm just so happy to be able to make this show for you every day. So thank you for listening.
Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
