It takes a boatload of effort and most of the people selling are one man bands. We here are fortunate to have two people doing it, admittedly in their small amount of spare time, and still its very difficult to keep up. The stuff generally sells whether it’s on a website or not, and acquiring it, photographing, listing, selling and packing it is a time consuming pain in the neck when it is much easier to just haul it to shows we are going to anyway as buyers and more easily get rid of it there.
Of course, Carl and I are hobbyists and aren’t trying to (or succeeding at) making real money off it. Much of what we have to sell is from small groups or collections we buy to keep a piece or two for our own collections and sell the extra or to help others out by giving them an outlet to sell something they are ready to move on from. The Fagan bullet recently sold is an example of a forum member selling something to another forum member through the website and we got $0. I am not boo hoo'ing as we probably could've gotten a piece of the proceeds, but that's not our real objective here,
Like others Carl and I have day jobs that we depend on for our livelihood and other things like family commitments that compete for our time. Except for a couple big dealers with not highly compensated but nonetheless dedicated employees, I don’t know how anyone makes money doing it. I think about any low level job would pay better on an hourly basis.
So basically it’s a labor of love and so for internet sites to thrive, I’ll quote Dionne Warwick, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It's the only thing that there's just too little of.”