Question
I'm considering opening up an eBay store. I already have my own website, and normally I run around 100 auctions a week, give or take a few. If you have any opinions on eBay stores and how they affect your sales, positive or negative, I'd really appreciate hearing them.
Thanks in advance!
Answer
My eBay Store pays for itself many times over.
It gives me a place to park items that don't move quickly enough to keep listing but they do sell eventually and it doesn't cost much to keep them in the store.
I can also run just enough auctions to draw buyers in to the store. Works for me. I can't see closing the store unless eBay makes some of their horrible changes that they are known for.
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Thanks JointRunner -
Does anyone else have an opinion on eBay stores?
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collectibles are cyclical, the biggest advantage is it exposes your items to potential buyers, parks the ads to keep the work handy and when the market cycles back around, boom, instant listings.
Open one, if you don't like it in three or four months, close it down. No hamr done
I actually opened and closed mine three times before it started to work for me.
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Originally Posted by gabs-a-lot
I actually opened and closed mine three times before it started to work for me.
and that was in a 48 hour period.
wavin' to Gabs.
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rotflmao too funny
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There are a lot of reasons to open a store but that doesn't mean it's best for everyone.
It, among other things, depends on the availability and quantity of inventory, the type of inventory, new or preowned and price range.
A better approach might be to ask what is there about Stores that make you hesitate to use them?
What are your questions or concerns?
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Hi Ray,
I sell mostly one-of-a-kind or at least very hard to find vintage paper items - postcards, paper ephemera, and the like, as well as wholesale stamp mixes and a number of miscellaneous other stuff that I only have one of. I would more than likely use an eBay store to park lots that didn't sell the first time around on eBay but are too good to just throw away. I'd probably list them in the store for a fixed price lower than what I asked for in the auction but still at a high enough price for me to make some type of profit.
I never have ten of the same things, or even five of the same things, except for stamp assortments.
I'm curious as to the traffic that an eBay store gets, the number of sales people get in them, and how it does or doesn't drive traffic to eBay auctions and/or website sales.
Thanks!
Answer
I'm curious as to the traffic that an eBay store gets, the number of sales people get in them, and how it does or doesn't drive traffic to eBay auctions and/or website sales.
I don't have any answers for you except for the "number of sales people get in them" question. In the 8 months I've had my store, I've made about $1500 in sales. If I had listed the same items as auctions, I may have needed to relist them multiple times, and I doubt I'd've gotten more than $500 for them.
The stuff I keep in the store is mainly of two categories:
1) Items which are relatively valuable, but for which the number of buyers are few.
2) Items which are too inexpensive to list as auctions.
In category 1, I have found that I can sell items for $200 to $300 that would probably only get me $80 to $100 at auction unless I was extremely lucky and had two bidders looking for that item during the same seven days it was listed. One such sale a year will more than cover my store fees, and I've made several already, in less than a year.
In category 2, I can list many similar lower priced items which do not lend themselves to individual auction listings (2 cents for 30 days' exposure vs. 35 cents for 7 days). With combined shipping, a buyer can buy many items at one time without taking a big hit on shipping for a $1 (or less) item.
For the expensive items I sell, there is not a large pool of buyers present and bidding every week on eBay, but there are occasionally some buyers looking. The sales I have made convince me that, in the long run, it's to my advantage to hold my price on items for which I'm confident I can determine a fair value rather than listing auctions with a 99 cent opening bid and just letting the chips fall where they may.