When I decided to sell online,the most frustrating decision was WHERE?
The more research I did trying to find a valuable site, the more confused I became since everyone has different views on how successful a site is.
I sell art and items I have made with it. The feedback based on sellers who crochet scarves or who offer shipping supplies have a completely different view on how popular YOUR item is going to be on a particular site.
I have tried many sites for a few months just to check them out, since every time I find feedback somewhere you get some people that are selling steadily and others that are unsure if they are doing it right since they aren't. I was at first lumping myself with the second group since I wasn't selling until I started doing better research.
Many sites such as Bonanza, Yardsellr, Tophatter and Copius all have their issues and facebook is rampant with shops complaining about low views, gouging fees or worse yet, undesirable buyers who play the system. I have joined so many of them and watched them and played the SEO game for a few months and sadly closed my doors on many of these dinky little sites that have nothing to offer except to a select group of clients, or they have the view of 'build it and they will come'.
I now sell on Artfire, Etsy and now TheCraftStar.
I have gotten a different sales base from Artfire and I lucked out when I first signed up to get the great promo deal of $4.99 a month with no other fees where now it is $11.99 a month. I also got a contract with a UK based shop who sells my greeting cards here, so I also consider this my good luck charm.
On Etsy, there are people whining and complaining constantly about fees that they have to pay, I see that it is better than EBay fees! I would rather get regular sales and pay something for it then make one sale a month. It has had its moments with all the changes but when you see the links I have below you can tell the difference in the volume of visitors worldwide it is attracting.
CraftStar is new and is combining a month fee of $5.99 and a 2.5% of sales taken off at checkout BUT the fees have not started yet so NOW is the time to get your shop set up since there are no listing fees either! They are slowly working out the bugs and you can also use the CSV uploader to transfer listings to their site as well. I did get a few sales there already and my shop isnt even a 1/3 full! I think the huge advantage is that the owner is promoting constantly on facebook as well as it is starting to get more exposure with new people joining every day. Their site is also built on SEO focus with a bunch of meta tags etc as well as regular site tagging.
CHECK THE RANKINGS AND INFO ABOUT THE WEBSITES YOU ARE CONSIDERING
These cool tools you can just punch in the website of your choice and it will give you statistics that you just can't find anywhere else. This gives you a bit of an idea on what kind of views it gets.
COMPETE.COM
An example is Etsy had over 8 million unique views last month alone and it shows the competition!
Competitive Rank (UVs)
1.ebay.com 79.78M.
2.etsy.com 8.16M.
3.artfire.com 315.55K.
4.dawanda.com 19.18K.
5.folksy.com 15.17K
ALEXA.COM
This site also assigns a US ranking as well as all the sites that link into it too
Great tools to watch some of the new sites climb or dwindle off and dissapear forever
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