Originally Posted by alamostation

Fleabay went to H+E+double toothpicks when they started promoting Buy It Now and giving people templates for their auctions. It used to be you could make a decent living buying stuff from people who didn't know what they had or did not know how to promote it, then selling the same items with good pictures and good promotion.

Back around 1999 I found a shareware program that would let you sequence pictures like a primative cartoon. My 360 degree views of the items I was selling drove the number of views and prices sky high. Typically 400 hits for common stuff, 800 to 1000 hits for good stuff.

Then eBay changed their focus and for the last five or six years I've been lucky to get 50 hits on great stuff. The absolute death of eBay was the "Best Match" concept. All that does it put the high volume dealers at the top the results list. If you are looking for "Mercedes Hood", you get results from high volume sellers offering "sweatshirt with hood" and "In the Hood," or hood emblems.

Now the only people that benefit from eBay's policies are troublesome buyers and overseas bulk sellers. I used to pay eBay around $200 a month in selling fees on each of my accounts, now they are lucky to get $100 a year total.