[asciident]

That seems a bit unfair to jump to thinking about bots, as he noted he had a lot of engaged visitors that commented and sent him emails.

While the marketplace is more crowded, the number of markets has shrink. To continue your analogy, each marketplace vender used to be its own market, so you had a lot of options. Now there were really only 2-4 giant marketplaces, and vendors with a good location have made it really difficult to set up shop.