For sure the last year is going to go down in the books as a most difficult year to survive selling online because of all the negative rapid change that's hitting at once from the PO strikes, to the Tariff situation and to continual rising costs of selling. Hopefully things will turn a corner soon!
Whilst I've been selling for 47 years, I've only been full time for 17 now, and as I've mentioned in other threads, these difficult times are colliding with my move toward "semi retirement" if there really ever is for someone like me, so I don't have the level of nail biting that someone who's still trying to run 100% would be.
I've said this a few times over the years but its never good to have all eggs in one basket. When I was full time I was running my items on 3 separate sites (so getting kicked off one site didn't shut me down), as well as running traditional mail order. Having said this, for me, it has always been the case that eBay has seriously outperformed any other online site - this presents a challenge because why bother listing something on a different site that will sit for a long time when one can list more here and make more here (unless something goes wrong).
As the latest mail strike approached and happened last year, I began to look for options to diversify my selling beyond online and to reduce the time it takes me to sell an item (semi-retirement concept) because the fun part for me is the "treasure hunt" of breaking stuff down - everything after that is the work to move it.
I'm now down to 2 online sites and I've been experimenting with non-online options for about a year now, of the type where I prep material and others run it (combo of online or in person), or I prep material and others sell it in person.
The progress for the non-online options is slowly growing and not nearly as profitable, which is frustrating, but just the same as was the case 47 years ago when I started selling mail-order. I still have the problem that if I were able to have eBay running at the moment it would have a sales $$$$ rate 10x or more than any of the other options (although ebay is substantially more work for me on a per item basis).
I am truly fortunate that I'm at the stage where I can survive the evolution phase we're in at the moment, I've said this before that I truly feel for folks who're earlier in their business cycle trying to survive off this/or online 100% at the moment.
All I can suggest from my somewhat limited view at the moment is that I'm seeing behaviours changing as a result of all the current turmoil - things such as more Canadians are making a serious effort to buy at home, online or otherwise, some USA folks are making the effort to buy Canadian as a way to "apologize" for what's happening (this is in person sales, not online! - although I've observed in my online sales things that look a lot to me like the USA buyer was intentionally purchasing from me (AKA Canadian) for the same reason, although I never had any of them mention it directly.)
These changes will present options/opportunities. For me, being in the older slowing down phase of life, I've not got the energy anymore to do more than I am, but amongst this group of evolvers and survivors, I'm sure there are ways to get through this, I hope so especially for the 100% full timers!
