I think it really started going downhill when Trade Me was sold to Apax Partners. These private equity firms don't care about the long term, just how much a brand can be milked by the shareholders and management before being sold. Apparently, back in 2022 Trade Me made a loss but that didn't stop millions of dollars in 'compensation' to management. 2023 was barely profitable. Trade Me should focus on building a site that people want to be on. Instead it's a site with poorly working filters, incorrect 'snapped' categories, no algorithmic product targeting (that you find on sites like Aliexpr...

And I agree, not being able to choose which products you advertise is ridiculous. Trade Me talks about their algorithm knowing which products to push, but honestly, the Trade me devs can't even figure out how to get products put into the correct categories. A machine learning algorithm is probably a bit out of their ability.

It's only just showed up in my Tradevine account. I would presume not worth it for most sellers.People on Trade Me are looking for a bargain with most searching for a product and then sorting by lowest price. So, in most cases you're advertising a product, but not really your product, if that makes sense. Because people see it, and then immediately search the product name and sort by lowest price. Yes, not everyone does this, but enough that paying 16 cents a click makes it uneconomical. I could see it potentially working with high margin low competition products, or unique branded products...

Just started moving products to categories that they are automatically categorized into, same as yourself. Already noticed more interest in the listings. Will continue and do all of them. It's rather ridiculous as the automatic category is wrong, but what can you do...

Trade Me does feel pretty dead nowadays. Websites doing much better in comparison. When you consider the cost of Trade Me fees, Tradevine subscription, and excess listing fees, it is now cheaper to just run your own site and advertise on Google/Insta.

Hey Callum, Thanks for taking the time to do that for me. It's appreciated :)