So I want to start an ebay store

Any tips on getting lots of hits?

[sadelb]

I plan on starting an ebay store of every item that I sell in my real store.. What I have noticed is that when you add listings with inventory ($.02) it doesnt really show up in regular searches... When you list in regular searches, it seems it can be very costly... What do you guys reccomend as far as mixing it up, (inventory and regular search additions) Are there any other things to do with an ebay store to get more hits rather than this? Thanks in advance..

[derekwong28]

eBay offers an internal PPC program known as eBay keywords that you can use to direct traffic to your store. However, I do not think it is trackable and therefore you use it at your own risk.

Otherwise, listing more products in the your would naturally get you more traffic. You can also use external websites to drive traffic to your store or listings but again I am not sure whether you would want to do this.

[sadelb]

I have about 800 products I want to list... If I list everything in my inventory with the $.02 listing will I still get hits? How many products do you guys usually cross promote to get hits to your store.

[crak_bot]

Use your own html on the auction style listings.

Have huge links to your ebay store. Links like "More selection and lower prices - visit our store" something along those lines.

I remember when I did an ebay store I started with a 9pt font that linked to my store. Then I went to 12pt, then 14pt, then 16pt, then 16pt in red with a green background. The uglier and bigger I made the links to my store the more hits and sales I got from my store.

I've sinced stopped my ebay selling because the management of it just became too much of hassle.

[jaztuck]

are proStores a better solution if auctions are not important?

The hassle factor of eBay is not appealing to me but the traffic sure is!

Any success from proStores vs. Yahoo stores vs eBay?

[sadelb]

Thanks Crak_Bot. Few questions I have for you. When you say management was to much of a hassle do you mean the questions you received from the customers? Also, did you do a lot of cross promotion? As far as regular auctions compared to inventory listings. My biggest concern is setting up an ebay store with about 800 or so items and there be not many hits as I expect. I do not think this will be to much of a problem though. I do not know much about html either. I do not have a website, just experimenting through ebay right now. Do I need to know lots of html to set up an ebay store? What parts of html should I learn to benefit from with the ebay store? Thank you for your time..

[crak_bot]

You don't need to know html but it does help in setting up your pages the way you want instead of using the standard ebay layout. Although, now they may have templates but I'm sure they charge for it.

When I said the management became too difficult I meant that dealing with my web site and ebay store, which were seperate became a hassle. Probably someone who is more organized could of easily pulled it off but for me it was too much. Most customers on ebay were no more difficult than anywhere else so that was not a real problem.

As for getting traffic, you are going to need to set up regular auctions in order to drive traffic to your store since the store listing only show up in search if the original search only comes back with less than ten results, or something silly lik e that.

Also, make your ebay store very, very, very, very easy to navigate. If an ebay customer goes from your auction to your store and they get bombarded with 800 random listings, you will no convert that click.

Another thing, if you use some HTML on your store you can do a little SEO and get some ranking in the search engines. I had my ebay store ranking higher than my website for a while on Google and I didnt really do anything except sprinkle in as many keywords as I could.

[sadelb]

thanks crak_bot, will keep all of this in mind when setting up my store next week.