What Is Ruby Lane?
Ruby Lane is a site to sell antiques, collectibles, dolls, fine art, furniture, lighting, glass, jewelry, porcelain and pottery, silver, vintage fashion.
Who shops at Ruby Lane?
According to Ruby Lane, their website visitors are well-educated, comfortable buying online and have disposable income. 85% of Ruby Lane buyers are female and 93% are aged 40-70. Furthermore, 58% of users who come to Ruby Lane earn more than $59,000 per year, 35% earn more than $75,000, and 19% earn more than $100,000.
What are the fees like?
Ruby Lane does not take commissions on sales, and shop owners that work their shops, adding items regularly, can use that to their advantage. To set up your shop, you will pay a one-time fee of $100 (includes the first full month maintenance fee), then a $69 monthly maintenance fee. You also pay a one-time listing fee of 19 cents for each item. Discounts on monthly maintenance fees start after 150 items.
How much traffic does the site get?
Ruby Lane gets over 1.1 million unique visitors per month, or more than 36,000 per day.
Sellers on Ruby Lane are reporting good rates of profitability. Using EcommerceBytes, Ruby Lane sellers recently rated Ruby Lane as the 4th most profitable marketplace, and 1st in Customer Support for the past four years.
Review
If you have a high-end antiques or collectible store and want to start selling online, Ruby Lane may be worth a look. By specializing in a limited number of unique and vintage products, it attracts very specific buyers, who may be more likely to pay premium prices.
Moreover, Ruby Lane’s flat-fee structure suits those selling expensive goods better than sites like Etsy and eBay that take a percentage of your revenue. If, for example, you sold a $7,000 painting on eBay, you’d pay a $700 fee. With Ruby Lane, you pay no specific fee, but you would pay at least $169 to set up your shop and sell through it.
That said, where eBay basically only charges you when you sell something, Ruby Lane’s fees are a sure thing — even though your sales are not. Thus setting up a store here is a bit of a gamble.
You may also want to consider Etsy.
What their users say
eCommerceBytes does an annual survey of online sales sites and ranks Ruby Lane fourth out of 10. Notably, the comments included in this Ruby Lane review indicate that sellers were better satisfied in previous years, when Ruby Lane appeared to be doing more advertising.
