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.

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...

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

Trade Me doesn't seem to enforce half the rules they have as it is - whether that be duplicate listings, products listed in incorrect categories, sellers 'located in NZ' but drop shipping, and so on. So, you're probably fine accepting Ping and then shipping when you can. Obviously, make any shipping delays clear to customers on the listing page.

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...