The Time Has Come for Alchemy Stones to Part Ways With eBay
After a fair bit of deliberation I have decided that it is time for me to pull the plug on trying to sell Alchemy Stones on eBay.
That said, I'm not going to close down my eBay store quite yet, because I still have several months left on my annual subscription and it would cost me all of the rest of my annual payments up front to do so. Might as well actually get some benefit from what I am doing there. But I'm definitely going to not renew once the time rolls around… which happens early this fall.
I can't say as how I will miss paying $21.95 a month for… well, pretty much nothing.
There was a time when I thought eBay would work as a pretty good storefront for selling the stones, simply because 10 years ago pretty much "everybody" used eBay to find pretty much anything… but in the intervening years it has pretty much become a giant pit of mass market items and ”drop ship from Asia” types of products.
I initially had hopes that moving my listings from the ”art” category to ”metaphysical” and changing my marketing approach more towards those who have been proven buyers would make a difference, But the online sales results have been similarly pitiful so I'm just tired of holding my breath in expectation of something to change.
Although I'm not a big fan of "dancing in the lions den," to the degree that I have to deal with one of the Internet's "evil empires," I have to admit that Amazon Handmade is actually generating more interest and better sales than eBay ever did.
That may simply be the result of people now treating Amazon as the place where you can find anything rather than going to eBay for that as it used to be.
Meanwhile, this is also going to free up both available items to sell as well as a bit of monthly cash flow that I can instead put towards opening and focusing on building a bit of a presence here on our own @hivelist.
Next week I have some more Hive come free, so that will be the time!
Whereas I also don't expect to get any significant results as a result of having alchemy stones on hive list, at least I can feel good about the fact that I am supporting one of our local initiatives rather than putting more money into the pockets of some giant corporation!
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Because I am trying to make some semblance of income — a part time living, even — I now add this footer to all my posts, in the hope that someone, somewhere, might decide to take a further look at my work, and perhaps consider supporting independent art.
Thank you, in advance, for your consideration and support!
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Regardless, your upvotes and comments are always appreciated!
Thank you for supporting independent art!
2023.04.05 AS-TXT-154/122
Makes sense. I remember when eBay was an internet garage sale, and it's sad that kind of site will probably never become that kind of phenomenon again. Here's hoping we can build something better here.
It's just not what it used to be. I'm cautiously hopeful we can build something here. eBay started very much as a peer-to-peer venue, and that's totally in alignment with the idea of decentralization... and we have a lot of creatives, artists, homesteaders and more who could benefit from having such a marketplace, away from the beaten track of the legacy economy.
Even if it were just to reach the scale of a community flea market/farmer's market, that woud be great. I'd like to think we could find at least a couple of hundred interested participants from within the Hive ecosystem to create a stable base before even worrying about attracting external interest. It's much easier to market a working system to the world, than just an idea.
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Amazon is having the lead that eBay doesn't have, that's it in business, one must surpassed another because of deriving a good system that both buyers and sellers want.
Amazon was able to build a better distribution system, based on selling "for their own account" before admitting 3rd party vendors to piggy-back on that system.
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Do you think if you accumulate huge LIST power, you can use your upvotes as business tool to attract customers to your store?
Imagine your customer buying a product worth USD 20 and getting rewarded with upvotes worth 10% or more of that in LIST token through upvote when he/she reviews the product via comment in your promotional post? The customer can even post an article about the product on your store, which need not be a review, and you can reward them with upvotes.
Big outlets can use this business model to reward their customer as they have the capital to do so.
If this is workable, and if just even one big outlet buys into this idea, then you will see the price of LIST token skyrocketing. Moreover, remember the maximum number of tokens for LIST is only 500 million.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts @xyz.store!
I am definite planning to gradually accumulate LIST tokens, both as a marketing tool, as well as simply as a show of support for the HiveList project, overall. I tend to be "one of those people" who's slow to decide on and commit to something, but once I get involved, I treat the project seriously. I am glad that the LIST tokens have a finite supply and it's not "trillions."
However, for what you suggest to be meaningful, the LIST token would have to have significant value, along the lines of a LEO or something like that. Even a 100% upvote based a 1,000,000 ListPower stake would result in a 50-60 LIST vote; of which the recipient would get half — let's be optimistic and call that 30 LIST — so with 10 cent LIST that would mean 3.00 in fiat equivalent.
For the time being, I m just hopeful of being on the leading edge of building this project and hopefully it will "go" somewhere.