I’m at the point where I’m going to be dragged kicking and screaming into selling my lampwork on eBay.? I’ve tried the Annealer Boutique for six months or so, and in that time I have sold one item.? It’s not just me, either; other lampworkers have indicated that it’s just not working for them either.? As for doing shows, well, I don’t mind doing one once in a while, but I certainly can’t make a constant thing of that.
So it looks like eBay it is, despite all the negatives — eBay/PayPal being seller-unfriendly in a lot of ways, including rather high fees and restrictive policies; the bargain-hunter mentality of the typical eBay buyer; the competition not only from so many other artisan lampworkers but from the importers a la Austin Hamilton as well; the difficulty of getting seen/known/recognized in among all the other merchandise.
Last night I did a little research, and ended up setting up an Auctiva account (sort of putting the cart before the horse there; I don’t yet have my eBay seller’s account quite yet!).? I don’t understand why more sellers don’t use it, since it seems to give you some real benefits at no cost.? Setting up the various profiles was non-trivial, but it wasn’t as bad as setting up all that information from scratch would be.? We’ll see how it works for real in short order.
Probably the biggest irritant I see currently is that I don’t see how to use my existing merchant account in conjunction with either eBay or Auctiva.? There should be a way…but I haven’t found it.? I already have a very satisfactory setup, and see no reason to use anything else (especially PayPal with their disgusting ripoff-level fees, so much higher than what I would otherwise pay).
I guess next is to set up the seller account, get a couple of decent pictures of SOMETHING, and dip my toesies in the cesspool…