papyruspapillo wrote:
I am one of the little sellers who is feeling left behind. Ebay is the only viable site for my niche category, theatre collectibles. I used to do famously, but times have changed. My theatre-colleftible colleagues are also experiencing awful sales. Have you any advice for us? Thanks.
The saddest thing for any of us who deal in some of these narrow specialty areas... especially of things that we love and find so fascinating... is when we finally have to face the truth that fewer and fewer folks have any interest in this stuff anymore. 
But it's no different than having a space at the mall, but specializing to such a degree with a narrow line of merchandise, that almost all of the shoppers walking the mall in front of your door aren't interested in coming in. They're shopping! They're spending money! But they aren't interested in what you are offering, and just pass on by. And.. yes, these little narrowly-specialized shops very often can't make it, and go out of business.
But advice about this depends so much on what you want to do about it, which can be *nothing* all the way up to *get into some line of merchandise that sells better*... Why are you here? What is your end goal? Do you want to be able to interact with others who enjoy your interest, to handle this merchandise and continue your own collecting, to focus on this area because it's where your heart is? Or, do you want to build a small business online, using eBay, and want to drive it to success, which means all the work of presenting merchandise to the public that the public is interested in buying at this time in history, and presenting it to them in a way that snags the sales FOR YOU.
More and more, we're finding little specialty sites springing up for collectors too, so it's always fun to go poking around the internet looking for little spots where others are nestled, those who share our interests.
