Of course people will buy what is cheaper, but eventually a merchant has to decide whether lowering prices to remain competitive is worth it or not.   Eventually the prices will get so low that vendors will stop creating because they won't be making enough at it and then there won't be very many products in the various stores to choose from...  Or in those stores all you will have is crappy products that are really worth only a couple of bucks because vendors won't find it worth it to invest all this time to make sure you get quality.

You give Jaguarwoman as an example of one who has both a private store and sells here, same prices in both places.  Were she to stop selling here so she doesn't have to give that 50% to Rendo, what guarantee does she have that all the people who buy her products here would go and buy her products in her private store?  In order to make the same amount of money or more, more then half her Rendo buyers would have to take that step and go buy from her store or else she'd be loosing and in this case, she might have to increase the prices in her own store to compensate for the loss.  Now if she had to do that, some people may stop buying from her cause they couldn't afford it anymore.  Jaguarwoman already has a nice bit of traffic on her website, she's been working at this for a long long time and I'd say her sales over there may be just as good as they are here, same with Xurge3D, he's a very well known merchant and has worked for many years at building his name, but it's not like this for everybody...  I also have my private store, same prices as here and for one sale in my store I get about 20-30 here, my store has been around for about 3 years and my website for more then a decade.  Should I ignore the exposure I get here to only sell in my store, do you really think I'd sell as much?

Lucie
finfond.net
finfond.net (store)