Selling your vintage

Can I ask this here? Where do you sell your vintage? I’m looking specifically for online options. I am also looking to avoid eBay. If I sold 10 items on eBay, I would be lucky if I had paying bidders for 8 of them. I am so frustrated with that site so I’m looking for alternatives. Thank you.

 

Thank you for the suggestions. I really appreciate it!

 

Let us know what you decide. You have found such great things over the years and shared them with us here! I still like Ebay, despite all the recent changes. If you sell 8 out of 10 items, that is above average for most sellers. There is just so much exposure globally there. I have heard good things about Ruby Lane lately, and am considering that myself. But I will never completely leave Ebay, that I know. My sales there have been consistently good over the past 20 years. The fees are about 15% on each sale made, which is a bit high compared to some sites, but the actual listing fees (if there are any) are low.

 

If you are going to sell on eBay then definitely avoid the bidding auction option, unless you like the heartbreaking sight of seeing your prize stock still selling for £1.50 with the seconds ticking away, lol. Even though they've gone hideously corporate over the last decade, Etsy is way better. They have a very active 'Sales Prevention Team' who love to meddle with their algorithms and change things for no reason, but they are nonetheless the only reasonable eBay alternative around. Whatever you choose to do, good luck

 

I find that if you 'drip feed' your Etsy listings and don't put everything on all at once, it keeps you higher in their search results.

 

I've tried a few selling platforms over the years:

Dewanda - very German. Dull as dishwater. They scrapped it in the end. Rest in Peace.
eBid - I made one sale in a decade, which immediately marked me out as one of their Top Sellers.
Zibbet - learn the art of not selling anything, Australian style. Their customer service had all the charm of Pol Pot.
Numonday - learn the art of not selling anything, British style. They don't do vintage, so how can they ever be an Etsy alternative? Suicidal business model. I wrote to them about their decision not to include vintage and I'm still waiting for the reply I know I'll never get.

Monthly organic traffic hit stats reveal all....

Etsy: around 2oo to 250 million. Even more during lockdown.
Numonday: around 5000. Yes, five thousand. That's it. Serves them right for not doing vintage. Do not resuscitate.
Zibbet: around 25,000 usually, although they did c.44k last month.
eBid: from a dizzy high of 62k in November 2020, they are down to 17.9k last month with no sign of pulling out of their nose-dive.

As Midge said, Etsy's reach is good and you can't argue with the stats. Basically, if your chosen selling platform is flatlining, so will you :-(

Emms

 

Zibbet. The worst platform ever. And as you say, no customer service.
Bonanza was ok until they turned it into an amazon want to be.

 

Thank you for all the input! So far I have a small booth in an antique store where things go to sit for eternity. We’re very small town and the market here is small and so are most of my dresses so there we are. At the start I was told, “If you could provide vintage in sizes to fit your modern day woman...” but that stuff just sits there too. eBay is a nightmare. Even people with sky high positive feedback are often non-paying bidders. They bid to win at the very last minute and that’s the last you hear from them. It’s maddening and time consuming. I don’t have a lot to sell but only once in a while when I’m nearing being invited on an episode of hoarders. lol I also have one full time job, one part time job and I’m a single parent so I’m very busy. I will think about what to do and inevitably share it here. Thank you!

 

Spooky/creepy. Since I wrote one or two beastly things about Numonday in this thread yesterday, I am now being bugged by Numonday ads all over Facebook. It can't be a coincidence.

 

I had a Dawanda shop for ages, but my stock was a duplicate of my Etsy shop in a futile attempt to get twice the exposure. I can't remember ever selling a bean on Dawanda and in the end I gave up on it. Shortly afterwards they gave up on themselves. I remember it had a really dull image - 'undynamic' springs to mind. From then on I stuck exclusively to Etsy and only opened an account with all the other platforms just to prevent anyone else from registering using my business name.

 

On the face of it, paying just £40 per year if you don't ever have to pay anything else sounds like a great idea, but I got the shock of my life when I ran a check on how many visitors their site gets each month - around 5000, that's all. There are ghastly dormant vintage blogs out there that haven't been updated since the year dot that still pull in figures like Numonday's without even trying. We don't need to be Businesswoman of the Year to work out if the website doesn't get the visitors in the first place then their shop owners cannot possibly get the sales Numonday's marketing blurb will have them believe they'll get for their £40.

Pity, because I think Numonday's format is bright and lively and British too (some of Etsy's loonier ideas, like bullying sellers into giving free delivery might work in America but really hurt UK sellers like me, as 63% of my customers are in the States and it costs a king's ransom to mail stuff there). If Numonday folds, I bet you'll have to sing loudly for your money back.