Did you know that most sellers who open an eBay store experience a 25% increase in their sales within just 3 months?* Amazing, right?
For a lot of sellers, opening an eBay store is a natural progression in building their business. For that reason, this week I put together this quick guide to helping you decide whether it's time for you to open an eBay store.
5 benefits offered by an eBay store
As if a 25% increase in sales wasn't enough!
1. Cross promotional tools. These help store owners by showing buyers other similar items you are selling when they view your listings. This gives all your items in your store maximum exposure. For more information on cross promoting in an eBay store, check out this eBay tutorial.
2. When you open a store you also save money on eBay listing fees, with each product costing as little as $0.03 per month.
3. Having a store increases trust among buyers
4. Your items show up in a regular product search
5. Great marketing features like email marketing, web analytics, Markdown Manager
What are the requirements of owning an eBay store?
Thankfully, the requirements to have an eBay store are pretty straight forward. You must:
Although these requirements are simple to meet, keep in mind that a store is mainly only beneficial for serious sellers who consistently sell on a part-time or full-time basis (or are at least working towards doing so). Casual sellers who sell in lower volumes may not get the full benefits from using an eBay store.
Store fees and subscriptions:
Stores subscriptions
eBay stores have three different tiers which you can choose from:
Basic Store: Perfect for sellers who are just getting started. A Basic store will help you start out slow and work your way up as you learn new selling skills.
Monthly Fee: US$15.95
Premium Store: For small to medium-sized businesses who will benefit from all the added extras like 24/7 dedicated customer support and free traffic reports
Monthly Fee: US$ 49.95
Anchor Store: A complete solution for the seasoned and ambitious seller! Anchor subscribers will benefit from a free Selling Manager Pro account, up to 10,000 e-newsletters to send out to customers every month and making frequent appearances in the "Shop eBay Stores" area of matching search results.
Monthly Fee: US$299.95
For a full list of everything you get when you subscribe to any tier of eBay stores, check out this guide.
What is 'store inventory format'?
As an eBay Store owner, you can take advantage of the Store inventory format. This is great for sellers who sell large numbers of multiple items. By using this format you can list your items at a set price, so buyers can purchase items immediately (no bidding is required; it's just like a regular store). Inventory format listings have a longer duration and lower insertion fees compared to the auction-style and fixed price formats.
Store fees
All sold items also incur a final value fee. These are a little higher than final value fees for regular listings. Final value fees differ depending on how much the item sold for but here is a quick example to show you the difference in pricing:
If I sold a pair of jeans in a regular auction for US$29, I would pay 8.75% on the first US$25, then 3.5% on anything above US$25 (up to US$1000).
So all up, I would pay US$2.32 in fees using a regular listing.
If I was to sell that same pair of jeans in an eBay store, I would pay 12% on the initial $US25then 8% on the remaining value up to US$100.
So therefore to sell that same pair of jeans in an eBay store, I would pay US$3.32. Keep in mind however that your listing fees will be reduced when you list items in your store using the store inventory format.
To run these equations on your own items and check out the difference in fees, visit http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/storefees.html
How to set up an eBay store
Click here and log in to your eBay account
Choose a subscription level. Click 'Continue'
Name your store. Try to keep it as relevant as possible to the products you are selling. Click 'Continue'
Select the free add ons you are eligible for. Click 'Continue'
Read and accept the User Agreement. Click 'Subscribe'.
Building your Brand: Customize your store
Once you are inside your store, you can go crazy with different design templates to create an attractive and easy to navigate store front. You can add a logo, minimize the eBay logo to give yours greater visibility, write a slogan or store description, include promotion boxes, and choose attractive colors to complement your branding. Some of these options for customizing your store are only available to Anchor subscribers.
Phew! Hopefully that gives you some direction as to whether an eBay store is right for you. Either way, there is still plenty more to learn about opening and managing an eBay store. If this post has got you curious, I recommend checking out some eBay stores for yourself and seeing how other sellers are doing it. Also take a look at some of eBay's great information on running a store, starting here: http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/start.html
Do you have an eBay store? What have your experiences been in terms of growth compared to your regular eBay listings? I am really keen to hear if you too, had a 25% increase in sales!
*Schepp and Kaiser, 2004, eBay PowerSeller Secrets
Comments (11)
Simon Slade on 23:26 8 Mar
Great post Alice, I definitely think it is worth setting up a store if you are serious about selling.Albert Sindjui on 13:21 12 Mar
Thanks for this post. I have 2 websites and was planning to develop a 3rd one, because I want to be at least partime seller. I had the feeling that ebay is too expensive. I think I can now take a decision. Thanks.Kanshie Mathis on 16:00 14 Mar
Very Informative - Nice work. Thanks!build a niche store on 6:06 23 Apr
great post very good and informative thanks dude for sharing it with us:)JOSHUA BARBOSA on 19:15 8 May
This does not make any sense after the rants about ebay's charging too much money and all this fuzz about other alternatives auction sites lolWholesale on 11:21 19 Oct
I am agree on the point that opening your shop at ebay will provide you benefit and it should be as it is one of the largest mall in the online shopping world but it should not be stated as confirmed source of profit making profit also depends on the supplier and his reputation if someone experience loss by opening shop at ebay due to the suppliers own policies and action he will blame ebay not him self I hope that you got my point regards its David from http://www.wholesalepages.co.uk ( and we are not promising 25% increase in profit :-P )Brad Haddin on 12:16 11 May
Well I do agree with all of it. But let me add some thing more in it. It is better to see what area we are going to focus for our business. IF it is small one then definitely eBay is better than own B2B store. Otherwise there are many other ways to invest your money too. :)How to Open a Store on 6:24 4 Oct
I was thinking about opening an eBay store after I have read this post. Thanks for sharing these useful information.Rui Santos on 10:57 25 Feb
Interesting post. I'm just in the midst of setting up my eBay store and will happily feedback if I hit a 25% or more sales increase...whoa -hoo!! But I think a previous comment with regard to your business goals & relative size/focus is key. If your just getting up and running then eBay offers not just a relatively cheap webstore option ... but very cheap if you factor their market size and the savings you should achieve if you were advertising to get anywhere near the same traffic volume to your own website when your starting out. Cheers Rui.kavin smith on 7:30 29 Nov
we all know that ebay is the world's most famous website for shopping,and if you are a sellers and want's to sell your product online so you should have an account ebay, go and get account....ebay stores set up
Dave on 14:21 17 Jan
Decent run down of Ebay stores but...you really have to take into account all the fees, they can be very confusing! I mean that too. If you sell an item for 10.00 you will be paying a buck in fees to Ebay. Additionally, you will be paying Paypal their fees. So, if you are just starting out this can break you before you get out the gate. I started a store, sold 32.00 worth of shirts and my invoice was 42.00. This was for two months of my store but most items are hard to sell at a profit. You have to understand bigger Ebay stores will take away any edge you may think you should get. I found myself in a panic once I got the invoice and cancelled everything asap. I could see where this was heading and while it sounds great in theory, new sellers should be aware of the competition out there regardless of how great a product you have and the ability to deliver cheaply. These little fees can add up and you certainly don't want to be living out of your car with a pile of stuff to sell because you couldn't pay your bills. Just some food for thought.