Ebay Store Vs. No Store

[electronics220volt]

I've just been added to the Canadian PowerSellers program as a bronze member and have noticed many succesful eBay'ers have an eBay store. Does having a store really affect your sales or the number of views your items get? If so how much does it cost to open and maintain an eBay store? Thanks!

Best Wishes,
Electronics220volt

[dragonimpact]

True, but this thread is in regards to whether or not to have an eBay store, and, I say if you go gung-ho it is worthwhile.

The way I like to look at it is like so...

I purchase an item at wholesale for $2 C$. My retail for the same item is $10 US or $12 C$.

eBay store listing fee is $0.03 per month or $0.36 per year. An eBay store fee is $14.95 C$ or $0.03 per item (for 500 items : 14.95/500=0.03) per month or $0.36 per item per year. One year for 1 item in an eBay Store is roughly $0.72. Thats $0.72 per item matter whether your selling it for $5 or $500. This by far is better than the auction fees, so, place auction items where you know they will sell yet still drive traffic to your eBay store.

eBay's closing fee on $10 is roughly $0.90. So say a $2 fee for a $10 item over 1 year, $6 profit less however the customer pays (PayPal fees for example).

Total sales for December were down at $540.02 US, (because I stopped auctioning from the 7th to 27th), eBay Fees were $68.79 and Paypal Fees were $54.78. Total Fees were $123.57. Fees accounted for 23%, item cost was $132.05 profit was $255.62 or 47%. Fees were particulary high this month because from the 1st to 7th I had a 1 Cent sale on all auction items listed (about 100), thus the uneven increase in eBay Fees.

I am upset as pretty much everyone is about eBay's fee increases and it has even made local news out here as to how expensive it'll be to sell those unwanted xmas socks, but I am doing the best to make do and right now that is through generating sales where the expense in less and the profit can be higher... through my eBay store.

Alex.

[rd1000]

HI Alex,

I am glad the store works well for you. I am in a similar situation, and it works for me too, albeit a little less profit on Feb 18th, if I continue.

My consideration is though is how much I can profit putting the same effort into other sales channels, and more importantly how much am I willing to invest to eBay?

You see, we are dealing with a monopoly. And they have just instituted 60% fee increases in the store with little to no improvement. It was strictly profit maximization. Which they have a right to do. The question is - do I want to invest time and effort into building a business with a company like that?

My answer is no. Each seller will have to analyze their own situation and do what is right for them.

As far as the topic is concerned - you have described a scenario which is profitable even after the fee increases. It really depends on what and how much you are selling.

Rob

[shoplineca]

Alex
I am of the same mind as Rob. While I didnt have a store to close, I was planning to open one in January until I received their notice of a fee increase.

I can spend as much time listing on my own web site which gets an average of 2,500 to a maximum of 4,000 distinct hits per day without paying any listing fees or FV fees.

Its all a matter of being in business to maximize your profits. If eBay generated more traffic to my eBay store than my web site gets, then it may be of continued interest. If eBay generated more sales for me from an eBay store than my web site, then it may be of continued interest.

I presently list nothing on my web site for sale yet I sold about $2,000 from it in December just from people visiting the site and making inquiries.

This month my eBay auction sales are really down and I will be lucky to sell $1500, however I will have sold at least $1500 from my web site with no cost, no advertising, no final value fees to me.

You might be surprised if you were able to divert those extra sales not to your eBay store but to your web page store and as Rob suggested, take advantage of other venues that will not cost you as much as what eBay has raised their fees to.

Malcolm

[scouttech-outfitters]

My store allows me to offer many other items for sale as the cost of putting up several hundred items up for auction would be astronomical. It provides a cheap way for me to display many products and also many people would rather come into my store and use the buy it now option as opposed to waiting for an auction. I do not offer BIN on auction as it sets a perceived value for my auctions. People also pay more when they buy it from my store. Also larger, more expensive items with a slower turnaround rate I have found tend to do better in my store then auctions as people I supposed like to mull over a decision for a more expensive bag before making their purchase.

I guess it all comes down to what you are selling...

[recped]

Malcolm

Your 2000 - 4000 hits per day, are they views of your home page or just your hosted eBay images?

By the way, at the moment, in Firefox at least, your auction deccriptions look screwy

Ben

[ospreylinks]

Malcolm, how do you attract 2500 unique hits per day?

Jeff

[shoplineca]

Jeff
You have to talk to my son again (you and he talked a couple of years back when you were doing some changes to your web site).

He is a pro at generating traffic. He spends more time lately getting some of his other web sites up to the top of web searches and keeping them there as we dont use ours to generate sales yet.

As an example, if you type in his full name in google, the very web page that comes up is a site he designed for my instrument buyer (I have the international rights for distribution worldwide for stores and dealers).

If you typed in his dj name, 20 out of the first 30 links will be directed to him and different web sites he either owns, operates, or particpates on.

Ben, no we can pick out where the traffic comes from and these are not simply people accessing our pics on eBay auctions. Cripes, I only have about 3-4 things listed on eBay, how much daily traffic do you think that would generate for my web site?

I wish I could credit eBay with the traffic to justify their fees but, sorry eBay, I probably direct more business to you than you do to me.

When we started pushing our web site we got tons and tons of emails and nasty ones as we werent listing anything to sell and that is what people wanted.

People would keep returning saying, you promised us last month you would have instruments listed.

I know, golden opportunity and all but I was busy with other business interests for the last few years until November 2004 so it was never a priority for me.

Malcolm

[recped]

That's ok Malcolm, my one page site has remained exactly the same since I put it up 4 years ago. Your site at least looks like it would function well if there was any content, mine on the other hand is an ultra basic single page that would barely make a good about me page (something I've never nothered to do).

Your listings (all 4 of 'em) still look wonky to me (and I cleaned my glasses).

Ben

[shoplineca]

Ben
I had all sorts of other business lined up but selling retail (online or brick and mortar) isnt my first choice of what I enjoy doing so I have always backed off going into it deeper.

We were going to add electronics, DJ equipment and on and on. I lined up several businesses who wanted me to run their products for them from all over Canada. All I had to do was list their products the orders would be diverted to them for shipping and I collect about 40% on the sale.

I had local businesses who didnt want to run web pages that I could have listed their stuff on my site. No cost to me, no inventory, paid cash before I ship.

I am certain that we could be doimg about $50,000/month easy through our web site if I wanted to put in the effort but I just keep backing off.

I guess I have other things in life to accomplish, business-wise before I get so deep into this that I am stuck with it.

Malcolm

[muminlaw]

Malcolm, just FYI your listings are "wonky" when I look at them too. Your "terms" box is overlapping your "product info" area. That sort of thing happened to me once when I converted an MSWord document to PDF - I finally discovered that it was because part of the Word document was formatted in 11 point text and Acrobat only recognized 10 or 12 point, so your problem there might be something to do with the point size of your text.

A while back there were a number of complaints that eBay was changing the size of text in people's listings - maybe they're at it again??!!!!!

Glenda

[shoplineca]

Glenda
Are you using something other than Internet Explorer (V6)? Such as Mozilla or Netscape? If so that is 98% of the problem as we are set up for IE.

I dont see it at all! I check all my listings all the time and while I have a 21" monitor, I also checked them on my daughter's 17" monitor and dont see the problem that you have suggested so assume that the problem is people who use another system other than IE.

Malcolm

[zarzuella]

It's still a problem. Malcolm - many buyers use other browsers than IE6

[recped]

I dont see it at all! I check all my listings all the time and while I have a 21" monitor, I also checked them on my daughter's 17" monitor and dont see the problem that you have suggested so assume that the problem is people who use another system other than IE.

Yes it's a browser issue, dug out my old copy of IE and your listing(s) looks fine. In Mozilla it's definitely wonky, IE is the most popular browser but there are millions of users of Firefox and other browsers, very few people I know use IE anymore, it's not simply a "security" issue, alternate browsers eliminate a number of other problems such as pop-ups.

You should check to see how your listings look under various browsers, at least IE & Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape plus perhaps Opera, the many other browsers do have a fairly limited user base but the ones I mention above are widely used. The next version of IE will in fact include a great number of the features currently found in Mozilla and it's derivatives

Ben