Membership Requirements

The Oh Canada Team is growing and expanding on a daily basis, and our admins are working very hard to keep up to date with everyone! We'd like to prevent the need for a membership cap in Oh Canada, so we have created these basic guidelines for membership.

To Join:

1. Fill in your shop's Policies section

Help with Shop Policies

2. Fill in your Location under Public Profile

Help with Shop Locations

3. List a minimum of 10 products in your shop.

Help: Contact our admins/leaders if you have questions about listings. Shops that have a small product base - custom work, etc. - can still apply.

4. Sign up for our team newsletter by filling out the Newsletter Sign up Form

This is sent out once per month, with occasional supplements of important team news.  
Members will be invited to our team via our subscribers list.

After Joining/Existing Members:

1. Use the team tag in at least 25% of your listings, or one in four.

Tagging your items with OhCanadaTeam helps us locate you for treasuries, blog features and promotions.

2. Visit the current chat thread at least once per month.

You can share a new listing, a treasury, a sale, blog posts or ask questions about handmade business!  Links to the new chat thread will be posted in the Groups forum, here on the blog, and in our newsletters.

Multiple Shops:

You can join Oh Canada with as many Etsy shops as you like, as long as each shop meets the above requirements, and is TOU compliant.

Alternate shops must be listed in your Announcement, Profile, or Policies section under Additional FAQs. (This guideline may change after the new Etsy profile layout is finished evolving.)

Etsy's Policy on Multiple Shops/Accounts

Note: You only need one newsletter subscription, even if you have multiple shops.  To add a second shop to the team, send a message to Team Oh Canada, and be sure to mention your existing team shop.

About These Changes:

Team members recently completed surveys to help us create guidelines that suit the needs of both members and admins. Thank you so much to everyone who completed our surveys. Here are the results. You can click on the pictures to enlarge.

Basic Membership Requirements



The results were pretty much unanimous! Having a shop policies, and a visible (Canadian) location will be a requirement for shops wanting to join the team. A ten listing minimum was the most popular requirement, which will become part of the new charter. We will make exceptions for shops that have an intentionally limited product line.



This will really help with moderation, and encourage potential members to polish up their shops.

Newsletter

We currently have a team newsletter through Yahoo, that goes out once a month, with an occasional mid-month supplement. This helps let everyone know what’s new with the team, and lets us share important links to keep everyone connected.

A private opt-in email newsletter will replace the Yahoo system, now that we have our own private forum right on the Etsy site. The newsletter will let everyone stay up to date on team activities even when they can’t make it to the forum or chat thread. Here’s what our members would like to get out of the newsletter:



Team Tags

According to your votes, using the team tag on 1 out of every 4 listings is a suitable requirement for maintaining team membership. Etsy has announced that they will be creating a new team item search function in the future, but until then the team tag remains our most useful promotional tool.



With the new truncated profiles and shop announcements, asking members to promote the team within their shops is a bit out of the question. We’ll set this aside until Etsy launched the new team features on member profiles.

Activity Requirements



The results were mixed regarding what team members could do to show participation in team activities. For now, we will ask that team members post in the current chat thread at least once a month.



Any thoughts? Please feel free to discuss in the comments, or in the November Chat Thread.