observations on sales platforms.

[ammolitehunter]

I Have been a member here for years and have been watching Ebay's effectiveness as a sales platform decrease year by year--at least for me and the sort of items I offer.

At one time sales were great on the Ebay platform and then over time the "search" mechanism changed and Ebay started allowing high volume trash sellers to dominate the "Fine Jewelry" space.

It got so bad that if you searched "Ammolite Jewelry" all you got for the first three pages was cheap silver plated trash from high volume costume jewelry sellers.

I complained to whomever would listen and nothing was done.

Eventually they made changes to where an item had to be solid precious metal set with an actual gem in it to be called fine jewelry--but the volume cheap volume sellers ignore that to this day and still  dominate the space with cheap plated stuff--just look at their feedback to confirm

In spite of pointing this out to Ebay--nothing has been done--Ebay obviously ranks the trash sellers very highly due to their volumes.

So I took action to defend my business a few years back which is paying off handsomely now.

I'm enjoying my best year and best Christmas season ever this year.

How?--you ask?

Well --- I started listing my items in three places--Still here on Ebay--and on a second competing platform and the third is my own private website.

It took time and a lot of effort but here is where most of my sales come from these days.

[1] My private dedicated website

[2] a competing platform

[3] and dead last by a long margin---Ebay.

So there you have it.

Ebay is forcing many of us to look for alternatives while becoming the favoured venue for volume trash sellers---at least in my space.

Good luck to all--and a Merry Christmas to all.

[femmefan1946 · Accepted solution]

We're semi-retired now, but before we were doing just what you are; we sold on eBay, on several dedicated hobby sites, and on our own website.

It could be interesting to chart how sales varied from month to month and from year to year.

EBay was usually second and our own website first, but not every month. The other hobby sites were usually the low sales even when we combined all sales over all sites.

The hard part was making sure that a listing was removed from all the different sites when it sold. I think all our negs here were for double selling, sometimes years later. Sigh.

EBay makes a good advertising site at a very low cost even without a lot of sales. And many collectors who found us on eBay later became website buyers or even dropped into our B&M Store.