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creativewench



Posts: 48

PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 10:10 am    Post subject: Facebook Reply with quote

Has anyone else's facebook share button gone missing? I can't even post an ecrater link on facebook. what's going on?

Update: nevermind-seems to be working now

Update: it quit again
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tigercreekgifts



Posts: 6293

PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those facebook buttons have been screwy for a while now. Even the button on the older store templates that allows a buyer to like your facebook page from your store front is messed up too. Mine got unlinked and disappeared and I try to connect it again and it won't let me. Someone else was complaining of this a few weeks ago.

I stopped reporting malfunctions. I see no point in it these days because they don't fix anything like they used to. I know they have a small staff but ecrater is big enough that by now, they should have more than 3 people running the entire marketplace. I understand not wanting to pay a bunch of employees, but once a site reaches a certain amount of popularity more people need to be hired for the site to continue operating effectively. And obviously, several new people are signing up for stores almost every single day so the word is spreading and the amount of sellers is doubling, but still only 3 people are running the marketplace.

These days it seems as if ecrater keeps getting dozens upon dozens of new sellers but hardly any new buyers at all. What good does it do when the site is more geared toward encouraging people to open stores instead of encouraging buyers to shop? It doesn't do any good, it just causes a marketplace to end up with 1.3 million stores and only 200,000 buyers which is most likely why no one is selling very well on here. There are way too many sellers but not nearly enough buyers. The ecrater main page doesn't even look like a shopping site, no photos, no promotions, just plain text links that say sign up for a store.

They used to have categories and photos on the front page and I've seen several dozen people ask them to bring back the photos and make the front page appealing again, but they won't.
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creativewench



Posts: 48

PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do they have a support email? I need a work from home job. ...
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SheilaDeesPostcards
moderator


Posts: 4614

PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 12:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tigercreekgifts wrote:
Those facebook buttons have been screwy for a while now. Even the button on the older store templates that allows a buyer to like your facebook page from your store front is messed up too. Mine got unlinked and disappeared and I try to connect it again and it won't let me. Someone else was complaining of this a few weeks ago.

I stopped reporting malfunctions. I see no point in it these days because they don't fix anything like they used to. I know they have a small staff but ecrater is big enough that by now, they should have more than 3 people running the entire marketplace. I understand not wanting to pay a bunch of employees, but once a site reaches a certain amount of popularity more people need to be hired for the site to continue operating effectively. And obviously, several new people are signing up for stores almost every single day so the word is spreading and the amount of sellers is doubling, but still only 3 people are running the marketplace.

These days it seems as if ecrater keeps getting dozens upon dozens of new sellers but hardly any new buyers at all. What good does it do when the site is more geared toward encouraging people to open stores instead of encouraging buyers to shop? It doesn't do any good, it just causes a marketplace to end up with 1.3 million stores and only 200,000 buyers which is most likely why no one is selling very well on here. There are way too many sellers but not nearly enough buyers. The ecrater main page doesn't even look like a shopping site, no photos, no promotions, just plain text links that say sign up for a store.

They used to have categories and photos on the front page and I've seen several dozen people ask them to bring back the photos and make the front page appealing again, but they won't.
Tiger, how do you know they only have 3 people running the marketplace? I've never seen that information.

There have been several comments on the forum lately regarding problems with the Facebook buttons. I don't know how many reports have been filed with eCRATER via the contact link on the home page. It would seem to me that if one person reports a problem, it would be easy to think it was an isolated problem. If a lot of sellers reported the same problem and gave examples of when it happened, what they were doing, what they expected to happen and what actually happened, it would be seen as a higher priority. The details would greatly help with troubleshooting.

We are all sellers here with our own businesses. We have to keep an eye on the bottom line and the balance between income and expenses. We all enjoy the fact that there are no fees to list our items and they remain listed until they sell or we remove them. The owner has kept his promise to keep our stores free and I appreciate a person being true to their word. There have been many new features in the last few years that have made great improvements to the website. When Google started charging a fee for feeds to Google Shopping, we began paying a tiny fee when we have a sale from the marketplace. We do not pay anything to have our items listed in Google Shopping, only if something sells AND that sale was generated from the marketplace. There is money being spent on advertising in several different locations by eCRATER to increase the traffic to the marketplace. We were given the option of having a paying a higher % when our items sell IF the sale came from one of those ads.

Tiger, not everyone works and thinks at warp speed like you. Also, just because a request is made doesn't mean every request will be granted. Some requests may cause too many other problems if made. A programmer has to be careful that changes in one area don't cause major problems in some other areas.
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tigercreekgifts



Posts: 6293

PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I asked, and I was told there were 3 employees including the owner.

If I'm paying a fee and opting in for a higher ad level, I'd rather have those links lead to my store instead of to the marketplace so my buyers can't see my competition and will have an opportunity to see my other items without distraction from other sellers. Who cares if it means less people will see the marketplace if stores are still making sales and paying their fees on time? My goal is not to lead buyers to the marketplace where other sellers could potentially take sales away from me, my goal is about MY bottom line, period. And any successful business would agree with me on that because they feel the same way about their business.

I would gladly pay the marketplace fees for every sale to have all links on google re-routed directly to my store instead, might as well, because all of my sales are now marketplace so I'm already paying a fee for every sale I get so they might as well make it count.

You can't beg most buyers to click on your store, but if they are already there when they click on your link in GS or organic, then you don't have to persuade them to come look and they can see your logo on every page making it easier to remember who they bought from. I know 6 sellers that have been here since 2006 or 2008 with hundreds of sales and they are no longer listing new items here because they don't see a point in it. I haven't listed a thing over here either and I'm not sure if I'm going to anytime soon. The items just sit around for months unsold, but I list them elsewhere and they sell within a few days to 3 weeks tops.

Nothing wrong with hanging onto a store during a sales decline because there's no monthly fee to keep it open, but if you spend your time listing away on sites that bring minimal sales, in essence you really are losing money because you could be spending your time listing those items on venues where they will actually sell in a timely manner. Time is money, so wasting time is essentially wasting money.

Oh and in case anyone asks me, well how do you know there are 1.3 million stores here and only 200,000 buyers? I don't know that, that was just an analogy I used as an example to say it seems like there are siginificantly more sellers on ecrater than there are buyers these days.
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lastade-designs
moderator


Posts: 2903

PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 5:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are a lot of things creatively Ecrater could do to make it better. I hope they are continuing to improve and will not ever shut down. One day when I retire from teaching, I am going to fit in some time to learn more about technology. I would like to know many things, especially how to do programming and coding. I am always wondering why you can't type a few codes and make a change? How long does a simple change take? How are all the stores affected? It is interesting to me when I imagine what happens behind the scenes.
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creativewench



Posts: 48

PostPosted: Thu Dec 03, 2015 11:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

regardless of the number of employees and such there is definitely a lack of buyers. A friend of mine has shut her store down. I'm just starting out so I am in the hopeful phase yet. I agree though that if you are paying for ads for people to come to YOUR store, they should be routed to YOUR store. It only makes sense. On that note, what other selling platforms do you use? I want to get my products out there, in front of people, I have yet to make a single sale.
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tigercreekgifts



Posts: 6293

PostPosted: Thu Dec 03, 2015 12:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Set up at ebay. If you can tolerate the fees, they get all the traffic because they advertise. I have sold (I believe, without checking my account) about 59 items in the last few months since I started listing full time over there. Before that, I'd just list about 10 items at a time maybe once or twice a year when sales were slow over here and I end up getting a sale or two to make up for my lack of ecrater sales but since sales are so slow over here now, I had to start listing full time.

I added 13 new items over there last night and woke up to 3 orders this morning, one of the orders was for an item I just listed not even 10 hours ago. The other two orders were for items I listed 3 days ago. The fees do add up, I owe over $20 right now but I make over $300 a month between both of my ebay accounts. if you price right you won't lose money on them but you have to calculate your percentages while listing to get pricing just right. You can't just list and go over there without calculating which price and s/h amount you should charge or else you will lose money, which is what so many do and why some people complain of losing money because they just listed the price and the shipping and didn't factor in handling fees or FVFs.

I had to open another account on ebay for a niche store because the combined shipping will not work if I allow customers to purchase the small lightweight items I am listing right now with the larger heavier items from my tiger creek store. The items are just so different in weight and size, there's no way to set up combined shipping to effectively cover them all without over or under charging my customers on postage. So I have multiple accounts over there.
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