I love the idea of ehive. I buy from Etsy, but I'd love to be able to buy more locally.

I wonder... are you planning on implementing some kind of faceted searching? Or tagging? I think faceted searching and tagging would help make the site more friendly.

I find it very hard to search the site, and find things. Or is it because many of the shops which were free are closed?

Free tagging for sellers

For example, clicked from the newsletter:
http://www.myehive.com/Product.aspx?ProductId=1642
As it is, an item is a sort of searching dead end, when it could be a springboard. If I've landed on a page of an item I like, but it's not quite perfect, it means I'm pretty close to finding something I'd like.

In the description are materials, if those were clickable, I could continue to see other things similar. Also, if there was tagging I could see other things tags similarly. Sellers could tag items with other keywords.

With that data, you can implement lists of popular tags within categories, even if you don't have a fancy search software.

Faceted searching

Faceted searching could make it easier to see Jewellery, and items within jewellery (like the gold ring I am looking for). And women's or kid's within clothing.

Giving me as many options to continue searching something similar helps my quest.

With that said, I did a sleuthing on Google and I see many of the items I am looking for are 'no longer for sale' so I assume this is because of moving out of beta and the free shops listings.

Empty results should be empty...

Also, when an item isn't found it currently comes up with random things... rather than tell me, 'there are none'. I tried searching for a gold ring and ended up with a crazy mixed bag of stuff. But I'd rather just be told: hey, none right now!' You could even offer the results of empty searches to your paying subscribers so they could see what people are looking for.

Anyway, I hope that helps!

Best wishes for the new year. I'll try to promote it as much as I can. I'd love to see ehive do well!