Ebay Stores

any experience?

[Rugles]

I was just reading through the information on EBay about the stores. We are wondering if it is worth the time and effort.

Does anybody have any experience that they can share about them?

[sem4u]

Good timing. I have been looking into setting one up for some of the products we sell.

The only thing that is putting me off a little is the percentages you have to pay Ebay on the final sale price and Paypal to accept credit cards.

I think I will give it a go though.

[sniffer]

Im thinking about this too. Im tempted to 'suck it and see'... not a whole lot to lose. Besides, im a bit tired of seeing products that are similar to ours popping up in the SERPs under Ebay listings! Even though they're rarely the same brand, there's obviously a market there

[Senty]

Hi,

I started an Ebay Store back in October 2005 and for my products I have found it worth while as it is cheaper to list your items.

Remembering that if you only use your ebay store for your items when someone searches for an item you may have it will not always show up in the search they have requested.

So my trick here is I list everything i have in my ebay store but list smaller quantites as a standard ebay listing for .99 cents to only get the smallest fee possible. By doing this I always get new buyers plus i have at least 50% that comeback and purchase more.

I would not recommend an ebay store if you are only dealing in 1 off items but if you have many of the same things I say go for it.

if you would like more info sticky me.

[jsinger]

Any thoughts on Amazon stores?

[Raymond]

Ebay is a great selling platform with lots of buying power. If you are just looking for a place to liquidate your stock, it's great.

Problem I find with ebay is it is harder to build customers loyalty. Yes, you have your feedbacks, people can bookmark your username, but in the end, customers still go to "ebay" before they can find your stuff. Afterall, feedbacks don't mean much anymore because all serious ebayers already have over 1000 feedbacks. We tried ebaying around 2 years ago, things got sold well, but we were bombarded with questions like "can I buy stuff from your site and combine shipping with the auctions that I'll bid in 3 days?". This created chaos for my shipping process. Also because of the way merchandises listed, most customers always go with the lowest price possible and sellers are constantly engaging in a price war. I eventually had enough and just quit eBay all together.

Having that said, I know a few who have great success with just ebay alone. I myself prefer putting the effort in my webstore.

[Essex_boy]

Amazon buy second hand you mean?

I did a £1000 pw on games in teh lead up to Xmas

[ispy]

Forget it, build your own website or have one built for you.

[2hounds]

I have both a website and an ebay store.

I mostly use ebay to launch new designs and find new customers. You aren't allowed to promote your website on ebay but of course when I ship, I add my business card as a means of getting in touch with me and most customers come back to my website instead of ebay to buy again.

[grobe]

Find some eBay stores which sell similar items. Do a completed items search by seller for the first seller. Sort results by ending date. You can now see how well they are doing. Repeat for each additional similar seller.

[jsinger]

In our category, I see a zillion sellers and few buyers. Things go for peanuts, or don't sell at all. A website is the better way to go. But, still, every year or two I test Ebay. In general it's gotten worse for our purposes... not even worthwhile for liquidating oddball junk.

It would have value if you could use it to advertise your main site.

Any comments on stores linked to Amazon?

[Rugles]

>>>Any comments on stores linked to Amazon?

It is worth it if you can get in. Not a tonne of sales but people trust them and it adds a little to our daily outgoing shipments. Like was already mentioned, you get to promote your own site in the package.

We wanted to treat Ebay like we do Amazon, just one more channel.

[CernyM]

Any comments on stores linked to Amazon?

We dropship our goods via Amazon. It works out to 10% or so of our total sales.

[shigamoto]

The good thing with an Ebay store is that you don't have to pay for marketing. You get visitors based on the products you are selling.

Obviously Ebay doesn't have that high revenue potential compared to an "ordinary" online store (if managed correctly), because of all the fees. But it can still prove very profitable and a good way to start out.

I would seriously consider alternatives to Ebay, such as Amazon or Yahoo Auctions for several reasons. Some sellers are moving from Ebay because of the high fees.

For my company I've found out that finding niche auction sites for your particular product can also contribute a lot to your earnings, even more than Ebay. But it depends on what kind of products you are selling.