Hello,
As a 15+ Year Selling Veteran (for many / multiple accounts / clients), I have to agree with this post 100%.
Every statement made is accurate and Hits Home like a bull's eye dart; I have come to believe that whatever 'changes' were done to the Management down there in San Jose sometime within the last two years were VERY BAD decisions which have doen NOTHING to raise either Buyer's or Seller's faith in this online parking lot swap meet.
The ownership of this site should listen to your statements and THINK about them as HELPFUL suggestions; they are NOT critical stabs at how poorly things have become run down there;
Practicall every 'New Feature' that has come to exist on this site over the past two years has made things either WORSE / MORE COMPLICATED / or MORE COSTLY for Sellers.
They will NEVER be AMAZON. They shouldn't WANT to be AMAZON. I can understand wanting to have the income of AMAZON, but it will not be achieved by 'mimicry' or 'copying' them;
Remember your IDENTITY eBay? You lost it a couple years ago, so you may not remember what it was.
The year was 1997. The eBay identity was that of a place where folks of all kinds could come and display their quirky, unusual, hard-to-find, rare, sought-after, fun, bizarre, collectible and/or cool items and offer them FOR SALE to the highest bidder. I cut my teeth on that model, and did a pretty fair number of great exchanges in the process; which in turn made folks happy; they returned; maybe not to me, but to a different Seller with cooler stuff than I; that's cool; I knew there'd be others coming along soon; and over and over it went.
Fast forward to now.
I scramble daily to try and make a few cents Selling here. Often my items are 'invisible' to people searching for them because I haven't properly jumped through all the new Circus Rings such as Structured Data which doesn't even apply to stuff I LIKE to sell; I can keep trying to Play The Game by giving up even more of my profit in the Pay TO Play racket known as Promoted Listings, but with all the Fees and unwarranted Percentages of Selling price that get taken off the top, my stack of cash is pretty small each month, and I'm running out of reasons to join a race of Monkey's clammoring on top of each other like Peacocks during a mating ritual all trying to sell the exact same Oven Mit. Let Amazon deal with that zoo, ok?
'Cause for me, and as the great B.B. King once said, "...the Thrill is Gone...";
I can hear the young bucks now:
'Then scram, old man!...that's just more room for us.' which is just part of life sometimes, I know. But losing people like myself and the Original Poster of this Topic is not the best idea you could have right now. Although, if the last two years of ideas coming out of San Jose is any indication, 'Good' apparently isn't a necessary part of the process.
In closing, I should simply say to those in power down there:
REMEMBER YOUR IDENTITY. It was a GOOD one.
It was WORKING. People flocked to it.
Your Sellers made some money. You made good money.
That made you a household name. People liked you.
It multiplied exponentially on all those levels to bring you to that fateful day of terrible decision making Two Years ago to try to 'be like Amazon' simply because you believed they were taking 'your share' of the pie. THAT is where it all started to collapse. But it's not too late to go back and claim what was once yours. Start by firing the morons 'Managing things' down there and give Sellers a BREAK on the Fees. I bet you'll blossum like my Daffodils are right now.
Thanks. I hope someone's listening...:-)
T
