You have perhaps noticed that we have the same damn records for sale both at Facebook AND our own site here (https://saintstevensthingery.com/shop/).
Well, not ALL records are for sale in both places, but some are.
So you may wonder: what’s the difference? Do we have a preference where you buy them?
No. Not really. Our own shop at this site has taken a long time to develop, contains many more listings that the Facebook shop, and is slightly more flexible about accepting orders if we’re doing a local face-to-face transaction. We also don’t pay platform fees when we sell it from out own place.
BUT. For whatever reason, shoppers obviously prefer Facebook. For a year now, sales there have been vigorous enough that we completely took down stuff we had listed at Amazon and Discogs. We started out in Facebook Market Place when they added options for shipping. The Thingery doesn’t enjoy that kind of traffic.
That was a little weird. FB provided shoppers who expected to dicker and make all kinds of deals like they did in buy/sell groups. We don’t really do that.
But then, Facebook made it possible to integrate a shop based on our “business page”, with shipping, and more than one shipping option at that. Market Place insisted in the beginning that we list only Things starting at $5.00 or more.
Anybody who’s really cool now knows that vinyl is hot (cringe), and that people are buying records in historic numbers, but the reality is, based on our experience in the hobby since 1987, that record albums were often sold in the millions, and there are many titles out there that just aren’t worth five bucks (opinion).
It looks like it’s possible to sell “dollar” records at Facebook now, but from our own shop there we can build categories that we think are useful for search, and to begin with at least, we’re going to use the FB shop to feature bargains that we don’t often offer from our own snooty site.
Our own snooty site is built on appeal to persnickety record buyers (with audio samples of each track of each record) who intend to shop very carefully and critically, while the same merchandise when presented at Facebook is aimed at buyers who are looking at pictures on their phones (to be blunt) and enjoying a social experience. There’s a difference.
So, no, we have no preference where you click the buttons, but buyers at FB will probably see some quick little in-and-out dollar deals that won’t appear at the Thingery.
So here’s that address if you’d like to use it: Rainy Day Music at Facebook
Thanks either way.