Casual visitors, envisioning a community of heartfelt handmade items, may not realize Etsy is also filled with penis-related crafts and jokes.
On Tuesday morning, Gawker reported on 12 especially phallic goods, but this phenomenon is almost as old as the scommunity itself. Etsy parody site Regretsy has been regularly updating a category dedicated to crafts of the penile kind since 2007.
More intriguing, however, is the fact that Etsy has its own category—and pricing—for penis crafts, too.
Sellers on Etsy have the opportunity to create internal search ads—ads that will pop up for customers that input certain keywords. But the price of each ad depends on which keywords the seller chooses.
Perusing the keyword list, sellers will discover that a “penis” mention costs $0.60. And no, the cost doesn’t vary by the size of the, er, product.
It’s not as costly to advertise penises on Etsy as it is to shill “14k gold” ($2.90), but it’s not as cheap as “soap” ($0.31).
Etsy sellers have just recently discovered this community-instituted penis value in February, and they’ve been cracking penis jokes in the forum ever since.
“I wonder who decides these things?” asked the original poster, Elsa of ElsasGarden.
According to Etsy, keywords prices are determined based on statistics:
“Etsy’s search technology sets keywords and prices based on Etsy Shop Owners’ use and historical search data. This data is evaluated periodically and keywords and their prices are reset. For some keywords, where seasonality and trends matter, there may be a variance in price over time.”
In other words, less frequent searches tend to cost less.
So if we happen to notice the “penis” price start skyrocketing, we’ll know our readers have some dirty minds.
Photo via Etsy