Ever feel like that? I know I do! I am gearing up for the holiday shopping season in my online stores. My regular job, taking photos of children in day cares is super duper busy, and on the side I work part time for an online auction company MAXSOLD, taking photos of the items to go online in the auction. (Need to downsize, have an estate to settle and want an easier way to do - message me will be glad to give you MAXSOLD info.) See there I go getting side tracked again.
So in the midst of all this, Etsy decides to change a few things. Some good some not so great ideas, but it's Etsy and they can do what they want with their service and site. So I decided to explore other options for my vintage store. I opened an Artfire store - and a store on Zibbet - all under the same name FLEAOSOPHY - Problem is
I was already set at Etsy, now trying to get 2 other stores at least presentable creates a bit of a challenge, with my limited time.
I have a ton of new products to list, most I have already taken the photos of. Now however I am stuck, do I list it all on Etsy, transfer over to the other sites or wait until after the holidays...oh the choices. For the most part I am listing things on Etsy - still have about 200 items live and ready to go, I have another 100-200 items waiting to get added, so I think I will add them to all the stores and measure the success of the holidays.
Having been through this with several other online stores in the past, the new startups need the shopkeepers, want them to be happy and are pleasant to work with, then they get successful - Cafepress was my first venture over 12 years ago. Once the website is successful, the owners sell out to raise money to expand and then they are beholden to investors, not the original customer base. Yes the shopkeepers are the customers of Etsy, Cafepress etc.. but once they get too big, then they lose sight of their original customers and believe that the shopkeepers' customers are their customers and that is where they start to go down hill.
Eventually I will start a standalone website - have one working now, just too close to the holidays to launch it and hope it does ok. And on top of that someone somewhere bought my name - and wants to sell it for over $1200. So no, thanks, not gonna do that right now. Almost feels like someone stole it and wants me to pay them for it back. That's how the interweb (as they say on one of those cartoons or was that in congress?) works.
The one thing I do know is if I want something done my way, I have to do it myself. Otherwise I have to be grateful others took the time to build something I can use to make some money, even if after I built my business up they take it away... At least I had it for the time I did.
Here's hoping Zibbet pays off, and I may even try Ebay again.
Ww will see...
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