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A close relative once had a pretty good business hosted on eBay. (I occasionally helped with computer stuff.) Robust enough for a large garage full of inventory

A close relative once had a pretty good business hosted on eBay. (I occasionally helped with computer stuff.) Robust enough for a large garage full of inventory and my aunt and uncle to quit their day jobs. eBay's stewardship of the marketplace started bad and then steadily got worse. Just fighting the search results, where legit products were buried under SEO and copycats, became a full time job. A little bit of jostling, that's just healthy competition, same as it ever was. But when legit business has to cheat just to stay afloat, the market's broken. Eventually, it just wasn't worth the bother.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
I just canceled my Ebay account a couple days ago (and rarely buy anything from Amazon any more). Ebay and Amazon are victims of their own "success." Everyone understands what they're doing wrong, and exactly when they went astray, but they don't seem to be doing anything about it. Ebay and Amazon continue to strive to be all things to all people selling and buying online, and won't fix the problems we can all plainly see. I note that other apps/services like Etsy or Shopify or Reverb are filling in the gaps left behind from this mentality. I hope these second-tier apps continue to attract more disillusioned people from the first tier, but stay focused on what has made them successful so far.
- mlang23 5y ago
  I mostly agree with your comment. However, dont get me started on Etsy. This is probably likely due to my location/language, but the first and last time I looked at Etsy, every product description was autotranslated with Google Translate into my native tung, and there was no obvious option to disable this behaviour. In a sense, Etsy gave me a glimpse into the grim future of internationalisation. That experience was even worse then some Amazon product descriptions. I really wondered what sort of customer would be willing to strike a deal based on that presentation. But I gather people are mostly looking at photos these days. In a world of icons and pictures, proper text is probably on the way out.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

I just canceled my Ebay account a couple days ago (and rarely buy anything from Amazon any more). Ebay and Amazon are victims of their own "success." Everyone understands what they're doing wrong, and exactly when they went astray, but they don't seem to be doing anything about it. Ebay and Amazon continue to strive to be all things to all people selling and buying online, and won't fix the problems we can all plainly see. I note that other apps/services like Etsy or Shopify or Reverb are filling in the gaps left behind from this mentality. I hope these second-tier apps continue to attract more disillusioned people from the first tier, but stay focused on what has made them successful so far.

mlang23 5y ago
I mostly agree with your comment. However, dont get me started on Etsy. This is probably likely due to my location/language, but the first and last time I looked at Etsy, every product description was autotranslated with Google Translate into my native tung, and there was no obvious option to disable this behaviour. In a sense, Etsy gave me a glimpse into the grim future of internationalisation. That experience was even worse then some Amazon product descriptions. I really wondered what sort of customer would be willing to strike a deal based on that presentation. But I gather people are mostly looking at photos these days. In a world of icons and pictures, proper text is probably on the way out.