Question
I got a wild hair this a.m. and opened an eBay Store. I know, I know, I trash them all the time, but I did it anyway. 3 hours later I closed it. http://community.here.com/infopop/em...n_rolleyes.gif
I am SO torn about this. If I'm going to drive traffic anywhere, I'd rather steer them to my website. But as I've said in the past, my website should be easy enough to get to as my eBay ID is my URL. You would not even believe how many e-mails I get asking me if I have more than 1 of something and they fall out of their chairs when I send them the canned e-mail telling them they can order all they want from my website!
Some never order, and I'm afraid I'm losing business to those webphobes who want to buy everything from eBay because they're scared to enter their CC# on a website. (I do take checks & money orders by the way).
Whaaa! I don't want to go through my templates and add a blurb saying VISIT MY EBAY STORE. I want to say GO TO MY WEBSITE. http://community.here.com/infopop/em...on_biggrin.gif
We all know I can't do that. http://community.here.com/infopop/em.../icon_wink.gif
So, let's hear what you guys think. DS#1 has his heart set on engineering college in the fall of '04, and extra money would be put to good use! I just don't want to share it with eBay. I think I'd rather give it to Oveture and Google Adwords!
Thoughts?
http://members.aol.com/melbayone/thread.gif
Melinda
Answer
ebay stores can be good for people like yourself who have more than one item.
I agree I do not like them, but hey, there is no room for emotion in a business decision, let's compromise here
Gift giving season is coming up...
open a store from now till January 3rd, then sit back and analyze if it was worthwhile or if it messed up your system...you can always close it at anytime you think it is bugging you...
what are you gonna be out 30.00 and the listing fees....but you could gain...who knows...???
try it, it might work it might not....let me know.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>open a store from now till January 3rd, then sit back and analyze if it was worthwhile or if it messed up your system...you can always close it at anytime you think it is bugging you...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
This is what I am going to try this year. I will be selling multiples, so listing saves a lot of time.
Last year I was going to do it to test it out and then my mother became sick and lost out on being able to do it during the peak season.
This year I am moving and taking off a couple of months and will really be able to see how I can do on ebay fulltime and if I even would enjoy doing it fulltime or would be happier doing it in my spare time only for extra $.
Answer
Definitly try the Ebay store.. My only problem with the store is I didn't have my website up & running. When I did the Ebay store I got lazy & never did finish it.
I get lots of new customers buying multiples from my store. I assume they wander in from my few auctions & end up buying from the store instead of auction. The penny gallery helps. I never pay for gallery on my auctions but splurge the penny for store gallery.
My store prices are what my bin prices used to be. I no longer pay the extra nickel for BIN , unless its a relist & I figure the bin might make them buy & therefore get me back my list fee.
When I shop on Ebay I always look for other items to combine shipping. I would not think of checking out the sellers website to combine.
Since your first month is free its worth a few nickle listings to test it out.
My Ebay auctions
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just because I know its been very successful for me - just made two more eBay store sales this morning and one website sale.
You're absolutely right there are some buyers who only feel "safe" (for lack of a better word) shopping on eBay than a merchants own website.
Consider it an experiment, load it up with stuff, make the edits in auctions to pull people into the store, maybe get some search engine plugs in, and sit back and see what happens.
**********
I list at many different sites : My Ebay Storefront and My Ioffer Storefront
Or perhaps you'd prefer to visit SYI Listings and finally My Website
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Melinda,
I love my store. If you list lots on ebay just having the categories is a big plus!! When I go to view a sellers other items and there are tons, I just back out if they don't have a store. If they have a store I hang around and look by categories of what I am interested in.
The cheap gallery is great too as it shows up when they view all your items.
Choose your name wisely and put as many key words in as you can as google will eventually pick these up.
Play with it and use it as "part" of the whole "bag". I like the combo I have with my store/auction/website. They all fit together.
Good luck!!
Janet * Lanetzliving.com
My Website, up and running and I already sold stuff!! woo hoo!....
Me Page
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ok, I opened a store with you mel. ...get your butt in gear, I will try it until January 3rd, unless it messes up my routine, then it will be out of here....
so I have two items listed in mine, how many you got???
I'll race you to fifty....
on your mark
get set....
hey, I want those powerseller JAMMIES..... http://community.here.com/infopop/em...on_biggrin.gif I can be bought, pretty cheap too.
http://community.here.com/infopop/em...on_biggrin.gif
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Gabs, I'm still mulling it over. Got to decide if I want to invest the time in it. I had one open for about 3 months when they first introduced them, and think I sold one thing.
I focus SO much energy on the website (to wean myself away from eBay - hopefully 100% someday) that I just don't know if I have any left to devote to a Store.
Still thinking...... But you'll be the first to know if I do. Thanks for the offer to race - I will need motivation if I open one!
http://community.here.com/infopop/em...on_biggrin.gif
http://members.aol.com/melbayone/thread.gif
Melinda
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the only reason I opened one, is because I need to relist aobut 200 items to protect the pics from being deleted on AW, they do automatic deletion, well usually when I relist, it works out ok,
but I thought with Aw now supporting ebay stores it isn't so tedious or time consuming, a couple of clicks and away it goes, so what the heck, might as well try again, we did one when they first opened too. But manning it was difficult because of using third party software. It is going to save my pics and save me money so it is a good thing, and who knows it might even work. http://community.here.com/infopop/em...on_biggrin.gif
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I was just using my store for the categories also but right now I am trying to immediately relist anything that doesn't sell into it, for six cents why not until I'm ready to relist at auction. My problem is I use sold! and I can't change selling formats in a relist so have to go through the dozen pages or at least seems like it, to relist into a store, even if I change NOTHING but the selling format! I spent an hour and a half last night just doing that http://community.here.com/infopop/em...icon_frown.gif and still didn't get done, I have quite a few relists from earlier in the summer, some back into June that I'm not ready to relist at auction. They are still in the ebay database if I know the item# but it's for things like this I hate my dialup connection. Wondering if it would be worth it for things like this to run into the country library http://community.here.com/infopop/em.../icon_wink.gif or I may have just to start using a pay per month service instead of sold, but on dialup those didn't work too well either (I tried sd and inkfrog).
Mel-