“For the past few months, we’ve been doing in-person usability tests, building the site features of what we hope will be the ultimate place for professional buyers and independent designers to connect online,” writes Etsy Wholesale program manager Vanessa Bertozzi. “And now we’re excited to embark on the next — and most crucial — step towards making this marketplace a reality: to populate the marketplace with retail-ready products from remarkable designers.”

Etsy Wholesale is free for buyers, but they still need to apply. It will be free to vendors during the beta period. Fees will apply once it’s out of beta. Criteria for what can be sold on Etsy Wholesale can be found here.

“We are carefully doing more research here because Etsy Wholesale needs to make enough money to cover the costs of building and maintaining a professional marketplace, but we also want it to have a fair and straightforward pricing model, one that works for vendors across so many categories,” says Bertozzi. “Another note: the beta is open to applicants from around the world but will, at first, only be in English and only support US dollars. We plan to add many more languages and currencies very soon.”

Etsy also announced a new delivery process for digital goods. For sellers offering downloadable items, the company has made “improvements” to the way they can manage and deliver these items.

“Previously, sellers emailed the attachment to the buyer after every sale,” explains Etsy’s Jaclyn Fu. “Now, sellers can upload the file to the listing just once, and that’s it! After the payment successfully processes, the buyer will receive an automatic email notification letting them know the file is ready on the Downloads page.”

Etsy community members sold $101.7 million worth of goods (after refunds and cancellations) in March, 9.7% higher than February’s $92.7 million. 4,534,479 items were sold during the month. See the latest weather report for more stats for the month.

The company, formerly Bonanzle, says it has seen steady growth in membership, traffic and revenue since launching in 2008. It attributes this mainly to its fee structure.

“We’re happy to let Amazon and eBay argue over whose pricing scheme is ‘best for sellers,’” said CEO Bill Harding. “Meanwhile, our fees average 70% lower than theirs. We aim to make selling online simple enough for my grandma to do it, and yes,
that ‘one million’ number includes Grandma Harding.”

eBay announced last week that it is launching free listings for all sellers.

In 2010, Bonanzle acquired artisan merchandise site 1000 Markets and changed its name to Bonanza. The combined company would take aim more at Etsy than eBay, specializing in “unique and non-mass-produced items”.

Etsy had 1,025,124 new members join in February alone. The site saw 1.49 billion page views during the month.

During a recent earnings call, the company expressed such an initiative, leading us to believe that we’ll be seeing more of these kinds of acquisitions in the near future.

“We plan to leverage our premium video expertise to launch Subscription and On-Demand e-learning content by mid-year,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “We’ve already begun beta testing eHow Now, a product that offers real-time expert advice, where we leverage our studio’s expert talent to provide real-time answers. In our beta, we have experienced strong conversion rates and a 90% customer approval rating. We’re also developing a LIVESTRONG subscription service. We’ve hired senior executives from the makers of P90X to help develop this product offering, which we plan to launch in Q2.”

With an increased interest in sites like Etsy and Pinterest, one can only imagine that consumers are hungry for the kinds of content Creativebug has to offer.

“We believe there is a disruption and reinvention going on, as people become more interested in the craft movement,” the spokesperson says. “People will continue to turn to the visual inspiration provided by Etsy and Pinterest, which will feed their interest in expressing themselves and learning to create things.”

Of course, as far as Creativebug is concerned, they have to care enough to pay to learn.

Creativebug already has hundreds of videos. The top three categories, according to Demand Media, are sewing ,yarn and jewelry. The average video length is about 30 minutes.

But with all the free content already out there, is this stuff really worth paying for? They charge $16.99 a month for access to unlimited workshops, and $9.99 and up to buy single workshops. When asked what users can get for their money that they can’t get from other sites, the company says, “They get to learn from world class experts in the craft field, which is not available on any other site.”

Demand Media is not disclosing the details of the acquisition. They’re also not disclosing how many paying members Creativebug already has.

Other stats included: 4,482,545 items sold in January, 2,699,648 new items listed (14.2% higher than December’s 2,363,780), and 1,128,036 new members (21.8% lower than December’s 1,441,833).

Today, Etsy has released its report for February. Here are the stats for the month (which was three days shorter than January and a day shorter than February 2012, as the company points out):

Goods sold were up 62.4% year-over-year.

The company put out its “weather report” for January on Friday (better late than never), revealing that Etsy had 1.67 billion page views on its site in January. That’s compared to 1.53 billion page views in December.

The site also saw $97.6 million worth of goods sold (after refunds and cancellations) during the month, which was 17.1% lower than December’s $117.8 million.

“To most, January is a quiet time,” writes Etsy’s Michelle Traub in a blog post. “The bustle of holiday activity behind us, we hunker down into cozy routines — sleepily caressing fireside toddies and patiently simmering day-long stews. But there’s no rest for the weary when it comes to buying and selling on Etsy!”

“The $97.6 million of goods sold (after refunds and cancellations) represents a 77.8% increase from January 2012′s total,” says Traub. “At the same time, items sold were up 60.3%.”

Etsy saw 4,482,545 items sold in January. 2,699,648 new items were listed during the month (14.2% higher than December’s 2,363,780). 1,128,036 new members joined Etsy (21.8% lower than December’s 1,441,833).

The site has put greater emphasis on items, shops, and treasuries with bigger images and more items per page. There is also now one feed that combines the user’s activity and their followers’ activity.

Additionally, there is a designated shop feed for sellers, so you can see shop activity all in one place. This includes a notification number for new activity in the “Your Shop” tab.

Earlier this week, Etsy announced some new coupon codes.

Merchants will now be able to offer fixed discounts on items and set price minimums for coupons. You could offer, for example, $10 off when the customer spends $50.

Etsy is also testing Thank You emails as a way to introduce shoppers to the deals.

“Buyers can opt in to receive an email with a promotion when shops they’ve purchased from have an active Thank You coupon,” the company explains in a blog post. “Bought a necklace as a birthday gift and got rave reviews? Maybe that shop is offering a discount and you can pick up the matching earrings for under the tree!”

Etsy has offered Coupon codes since 2010, and about 3,000 of them are used every day, according to the company.

Etsy has instructions for offering and promoting coupon codes here.

“Growth of highly-personal shopping categories like wedding goods and home decor was strong in 2012,” an Etsy spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Jewelry, our #1 category, is still hugely popular, but others, like clothing and housewares, are quickly gaining steam. Furniture was the fastest-growing category on Etsy this year, growing 134% year-over-year.”

Here are some more highlights from Dickerson’s post:

• Overall sales by the community in 2012 grew 70.3% over the previous year, to $895.1 million from $525.6 million in 2011.
• Sales in December 2012 were 72.9% higher than 2011 (compared to 69.9% from Dec 2010-Dec 2011).
• Sales in November 2012 sales increased by 74.9% over the previous year (compared to 65.7% from Nov 2010-Nov 2011).
• New buyers increased by 83% in 2012.
• 10 million new members joined Etsy last year, nearly doubling the total number of members to 22 million around the world, in nearly 200 countries.

Etsy will celebrate its 8th birthday this year. Since opening in 2005, the site has seen over 14 million shoppers buy over 100 million items.

Etsy has only made more moves in recent months to help its growth continue. Consider that it only laumched its iPad and Android apps in the last two months. The site also continues to expand into more languages.

Last week, Etsy announced its acquisition of Mixel.

Mixel users can breathe a sigh of relief, however, as the company will keep the Mixel product up and running. Users can still download past collages, and make new ones, though they are shutting down the social network aspect.

“Going forward, the Mixel team will be focused on the many exciting challenges we have before us at Etsy,” Mixel says in an FAQ. “However, we still wanted to provide a path forward for Mixel users, who have produced such great work with our previous version. Because the majority of our maintenance efforts have gone towards the social network aspect of Mixel, it made sense to phase that out, thereby dramatically simplifying the upkeep of Mixel. This lets users still have access to the unique functionality, and lets us continue to improve Mixel as our bandwidth allows.”

“The Mixel team — CEO Khoi Vinh, his co-founder Scott Ostler, and colleagues Akiva Leffert and Roy Stanfield — will turn their focus to Etsy’s mobile future,” writes Etsy’s Randy Hunt in a blog post. “As you may remember, in 2012 we launched apps for iPad and Android, and translated our iPhone app into three new languages with added seller tools. Whew! Mobile visits on Etsy grew 244% in the past year, and right now they represent a steady 25% of visits year round. That’s not too shabby, but something quite astounding happened this past holiday season: almost one in three visits came from shoppers on their mobile devices. We expect that trend to accelerate, so doing more with mobile is one of our top priorities in 2013.”

“We’re always on the lookout for ways we can make the total experience of Etsy better — out in the world, on your computer, and in your pocket,” he says. “Today we’re taking another step forward, by welcoming the creators of Mixel to our staff. These talented designers and developers built a mobile app that helps you make and share fun, beautiful photo collages. Now they are going to help us do even more with Etsy’s mobile platform. It’s going to be awesome.”

Etsy saw about 1.5 million new members and 1.53 billion page views in December, while also experimenting with a physical store in New York.

The company has shared a couple videos looking at what it was like.

“One of our goals this holiday season was to reach out to people who were aware of the Etsy brand but had yet to become an Etsy customer,” writes Etsy’s Randy Hunt on the company blog. “We’re happy to say that 50% of the buyers at the Holiday Shop had never purchased from an Etsy seller before. That’s incredible, and reinforces the fact that we can present, position, and promote the Etsy community in unique ways and bring more enthusiastic and supportive shoppers into the fold.”

“During the ten days, we hosted over 20,000 guests in the SoHo neighborhood, one of the highest profile shopping districts in the world,” he says.

It sounds like the pop-up shop was a success, and it would be surprising if we don’t see this kind of thing more from Etsy going forward – especially around the holidays.

Last month, Etsy’s signed up about 1.5 million new members, and the site saw 1.53 billion page views. It’s also expanding into more languages.