You can tell by my name that I was a predominately an eBay user. Three things saved my "eBay business."
1) I went to Amazon. on eBay, sales are inconsistent. It's weird putting a product into a market with a good demand, and then selling 1 a day, and then 4, and then 0... for a week, and then 2. It's always kind of funny how all of a sudden I get a spike in sales from Australian buyers, and then U.K. the next. On Amazon, I'll sell 2 a day until I run out inventory. It's kind of weird. You don't compete against Chinese sellers, and there is still good demand. They don't care if they only profit 25 cents per item, and they don't give a damn about fee's because they hardly pay any fee's. You can't compete against them. On Amazon... that competition isn't really there. For example, I can buy a specific plush cartoon character for $3.00 US with $2.00 shipping. on Amazon, you can sell that for $16.00. Amazon does better at promoting your items. Listing is really simple. It's still affordable, and I would pay more for the less amount of problems I have had in comparison to eBay.
2) I created an eCommerce store. I was really worried about setting one up (now I own 5) and driving traffic to it. Turns out, it's not any harder than operating an eBay account with PayPal. With an eCommerce store came an actual Merchant. I paid a small investment for someone to build one for me, and then another small investment for SEO. Do I make more sales on my websites in comparison to eBay? Hell yes I do. I should have started 6 years ago. Lets be honest, eBay's traffic is Not all that great. Why should I have to invest time and effort (or even money) into advertising my products on eBay whom is taking between 8% up to 12% AND charging me to just make my items visiable? Kind of defeats the purpose. Now 10% of my sales is budgeted to go back into advertising (seo) and I always have more money than I need, which means more money in my pocket.
3) I pulled what little traffic I could TO my eCommerce website from eBay. I began to operate my eBay accounts more smartly. I have backups in case one goes down, I have a method of reintroducing the same products to a new account very slowly without raising suspicion. I've lost accounts with 5 digits worth of feedback, and was back up and running the next day. I call it the "eBay Game" and you have to play it like a game. PayPal accounts get limited because "3%" of my customers complained, sometimes with $10,000 in it. What are you doing to do, just give up? Nope, you've got to play a game and expect eBay to shut even the most legitimate sellers down through automation, and you can't take it personally. I process thousands through a PayPal account that doesn't even know who I really am. You can NOT rely on eBay to assist you.
