Current 2016 (buyers, not lookers) traffic on ecrater?

[CrossCreekEmporium]

I used to have fairly decent selling rates on ecrater for the number of items that I had listed. Lately, nothing... Can someone please shed some statistical light on the current traffic of buyers to ecrater. Ecrater is not even showing up in searches of "best alternatives to Ebay" like it used to..what is the truth? I am trying to make a decision about which site to use primarily to sell on. I currently have things on Ebay, Ecrater, Bonanza and CL. I still have the most luck on Ebay and CL.

[SheilaDeesPostcards]

I'm assuming you have another store active on eCrater in addition to the store posted here. If not, your feedback probably is having a major impact coupled with the fact that you don't your store name (just the Logo Here placeholder), you have NO information on your FAQ page and you only offer 16 items.

[MoonwishesStore]

Agreeing with Sheila here. You barely have enough items to make a blip on the internet selling radar. You have a listing with no photo. Your about us page, half of it is talking about why you got a negative. You are aware I hope that if discussed with eCRATER they will take down undeserved negatives? Plus the fact you have no new feedback for the last 6 years.

Okay on to whether people are buying on eCRATER. Approximately 1/4 of my total sales come from here. It used to be a lot more, but each time Google changed their search with Panda and Caffeine and now you have to pay to be seen in shopping, sales have dropped. To sell on line you have to be SEEN. If google is showing you, and even if it is, you need to be promoting your products in other ways. Having 3-5 sites you are selling on will be taking up a lot of time, AND if you are double-triple-quadruple listing on each of those sites, then you are going to be having trouble figuring out which site to promote and the best way to do it.

Having multiple websites you are selling on, each has different parameters, fees, etc. Only you can decide for yourself which site/s will work out best for you. Some sellers here never had to promote anything. They listed here and watched the sales roll in. Well that doesn't happen anymore. Selling on line is a lot more work than it used to be although it was never 'easy'. I encourage people to sell in niches since it helps you get your name known as both a seller and a bit of an expert. It is always much easier to promote when you only have to promote your goods to one or two audiences instead of trying to figure out where to promote an eclectic assortment of inventory.

Some sellers here aren't getting much if anything in the way of sales, and while they have started using another site to sell on, since eCRATER is free to list, they have left their items up here. I don't know if you have more items for sale elsewhere, but I have found that the more I list, the more sales I get and the more I list daily, the more I sell daily. I've always been surprised when newbies list not even 10 items, many of which look like yard sale rejects and then wonder why after 3 days nothing has sold. Then instead of working they drift away and completely forget that they have a store here. I've also seen newbies come in hoping to sell a large quantity of goods monthly, but they don't even have that many items up for sale!

So there are a lot of things to think about that are all individual to each seller. It isn't just a question of which is the best venue, but 'what am I doing to make this the best venue for me?'!!!

[tigercreekgifts]

I agree with Moon. Promote your items on facebook or elsewhere and also work on your photos, most of your photos show the items too far away and you can see glare from the sun in the background, a little too dark. Not being mean, just letting you know that if a potential buyer can't really tell what's in the photo by looking at the thumbnail view on ecrater they probably won't click on the item to see the full view either.

But yes you are right, traffic on ecrater has been getting slower every year and google is mainly to blame for this because they keep experimenting and changing the search around. Google can't leave good-enough alone. Many of us here use to have regular sales every 2-3 days and then suddenly they got further apart. I had a rush of sales here around christmas and afterward too but on Jan. 17th the sales here stopped again and nothing since then.

My ecrater sales come in waves these days. I make sales on ebay non-stop but my selling fees over there are WAY up there! You just have to decide what's best for you. I decided last year that it was worth it to pay the higher fees at ebay because sales are almost guaranteed over there and almost everyone knows about ebay and amazon so with those sites you don't need to do too much extra self-promotion because someone will find your items over there eventually. Over here, promotion is crucial whether that means paying a higher selling fee to have google promote your items in the search or tweeting about every item you list because there are still so many people who have never heard of ecrater yet.

[elpereles]

The old days of "list and wait" for a sale are gone since Google made it changes. You want sales in the "eBay Alternatives" sites like eCrater. You must continuously list new items and promote your stuff.

Since September 2015, I was busy with my life and moved this little hobby/part time to the last of my list. I stopped listing and promoting. The results was interesting. Not a single sale in November and not question from potential buyers until January 2016.

[MoonwishesStore]

Elperles, if I have a week that is filled with doctor appointments or just not feeling good, when I see my sales at the end of that week I really don't feel good as they have dropped even more That is why I really push myself to list and tweak daily if all I really want to do is crawl back in bed.

Hoping you have your life straightened back out.

[elpereles]

MoonwishesStore, I hope you get better.

No worry. Thank God, I'm still healthy. I'm fine and also my family. I just decide to use that time for important things and people in my life.

Now getting back to the topic. I was so disconnected that I wasn't ready for even the USPS price increase. It was a surprise when I look closely the situation. I checked my traffic in GA, the direct traffic decrease in those months.

[theartsandlettersofmaggiethecat]

CrossCreek, you really need to do something about finishing the home page of your store. Also your photos are dark and even when enlarged are too gloomy to show the details of the item. Also that -76% feedback would turn me off and I wouldn't bother to look to see that it was only 1 negative out of 2 feedbacks.

If you get negative feedback that is not deserved or it is negative and you resolved the situation, contacting eCRATER with proof that you took care of the buyer can get the neg removed.

[MoonwishesStore]

@Maggie those feedbacks were from 2010, so that is another turn off. Was the store closed? No sales for 6 years? I wouldn't trust it too much myself. Only 14 sales that I notice so I'm not sure what CrossCreek is using as "fairly decent selling rates on eCRATER for the number of items that I had listed" . After all these years still no logo and the home page has no words at all for a search engine to find for searchers.

On-line buyers do not want to "Email me if you would like to see additional photos or would like more info." If you can produce additional photos or something needs more photos, put them up to start with. I pulled that quote off your Coach purse that is for sale, in a photo that makes it look black and you can't see any details whatsoever. It needs more and better photos as the other poster mentioned.

As I tried to say before, if a seller isn't making sales, they tend to question the venue, when the first thing to be questioned is you as the seller and how you run your store. Have you tweaked ANY of these listings in ANY way in the last 6 years or at least since they were listed. If they have just been sitting for years, then the search engines will probably continue to ignore them. Even though when Google made huge changes in their search and sales for many of us dropped overnight and we knew it had been google and not anything we had done, I still looked at my store and listings to see what I could do to get my listings noticed by the search engines and buyers eyes. At one point you really could list and wait which I never did but I remember some sellers saying they never had to promote before and they weren't going to now. They either died on the vine or changed their thought pattern to keep selling.

That being said, those nosedive drops following Google's changes made me a much stronger believer against keeping all your eggs in one basket. So I sell on two forums, and I work on other things that have the potential for bringing in money as well. But jumping from site to site, especially if you give a site only a month or two to perform for you, is basically a waste of money. The search engines may see your listings and new store, but it takes about 6 months for you to be trusted by them to not be a fly by night business. My son has two businesses and with the one that he had advertised and made a website for, it was only after 6 months that almost to the day his work picked up a lot coming through the website. I've read this in books as well, so something to keep in mind when thinking of pulling up stakes to move elsewhere.