The online store where I sold the CWMouse Iambic Paddle blocked my listing this Sunday morning. They didn’t like that I was answering questions from a potential buyer and interpreted our conversation using their own messaging system as me funnelling people to a competing online store.

Problem

There was not a single problem in sight. Due to a family travel I suspended sales by reducing the number of units to 0. One of the potential customers watching CWMouse on this site, asked when I’ll have more in stock. I responded that I will contact him when I make more units available.

Today I reached out with a note that more units are available and edited the listing. The conversation was plain and simple. No links, no phone numbers, nor email addresses were exchanged.

Within minutes, I received a violation and my listing was suspended. Vague language noted no sharing of contact info. As I didn’t share any contact info via site’s messaging system, I eventually reasoned that they took offense to my listing having cwmouse.com in plain text. I removed the .com and got my listing re-instated.

My own web site http://cwmouse.com/order/ previously ALWAYS linked to this very large and popular four-letter online store whose logo is red-blue-yellow-green.

Solution

Diversify, diversify, diversify. Same answer for investing, media presence and for commercial endeavors. While this online store had somewhat high fees, it was effective, convenient and worked for me - at least until they got in my way. I was content to just cruise-control and sell exclusively via their site.

Now I have Etsy, I am working on setting up Amazon Marketplace but will keep the former store listing active. May the market decide which of them will win most middleman fees.