Our eBay (and Etsy) month - April 2012

5 days into May, I suppose I should pronounce judgement on April.

April was the best month this year, and is the 6th straight month of what I consider above average sales.  If this continues (a big if) I'll have to think about changing what I consider average.

Postcard sales were a little above average, photo sales were quite a bit above average.  And our international sales (although they are part of, not in addition to, our postcard & photo sales) were very high.  I don't know why some people make the decision not to sell internationally - it's a significant part of our monthly sales. 

The one dismal part so far is Etsy, so dismal in fact that we're considering pulling the plug on it.  Which is too bad, because I actually like the site.  There seems to be two aspects of Etsy - one is a social aspect, and another is the market aspect.  Socially there are circles and teams and treasury lists and favorites and probably a lot of other things.  That is quite active.  It's nice and makes me feel good to know a lot of people consider our stuff pretty or interesting or even thought provoking, but so far it's making very, very few people actually want to buy anything, so the market place part of Etsy is lacking for us.  Our total Etsy sales last month would have made a bad day's worth of sales on eBay. It would be accurate to say sales on Etsy were pathetic.  It's getting to be a lot of work for very little return, so if sales don't start happening soon, the Etsy experiment will probably be ended sooner than planned.

All this came about because of a rule change on eBay concerning qualifications for top rated seller status (hint: we're TRS's now, but next month won't be, even we'll be providing the same high level of service as we always did).  This deserves it's on rant filled post, so I'll do that later.

Back on eBay, April was like two different months.  The first half was extremely good, the second half was fairly slow.   That slowness has extended into the first week of May, so I hope that changes.  That's the way the business is though, there is nothing steady about it.   Its either a mile a minute or skipping along smelling the roses.   The first week of May was not terrible, but it was leaning toward smelling the roses.