Business Machine Monday?

No, that doesn't sound very catchy.

But nevermind. My kids have been doing a bit of buying and selling on ebay lately, which made me decide to check into the handmade lampwork bead business on ebay.

It has been maybe 3 years since i last tried to sell my beads on ebay. At that time it was very frustating because there would be 10,000 listings in the "handmade lampwork U.S." category. The vast majority of these auctions would be from sellers of mass-produced beads made in China or India, and the legitimate handmade artisans were just lost in the pile. And that is why so many of us have set up over at etsy, and other artisan-friendly sites.

But currently there are just over 2,000 ebay auctions listed in the "handmade lampwork U.S." category. Most of them are still the mass-produced sort of beads, but i thought it might be a place to try to get rid of the vast quantities of miscellaneous beads that a bead maker amasses. So i'll see how it goes, but if most of the sellers have gone to places like etsy, it would make sense that the buyers have followed them.