posted on February 5, 2002 07:18:32 AM
How is everyone doing with their Ebay Stores?
Do you get enough bids to justify the cost or is it just another boondoggle like the gallery that Ebay dreams up to get more fees from sellers, and that they want us to believe it is working and generates sales!
sabreena20
posted on February 5, 2002 07:56:53 AM
Ebay went into the stores idea wrong-headed. They expected us to drive our own customers to our ebay stores. Not only would this net ebay the monthly store fee, and the percentage of sales they take, but they would pass the cost and efforts of marketing on to their customers (the people who opened an ebay store).
IMHO, the only reason to pay ebay the fees associated with a store is if they would drive their customers to our stores. The ebay stores aren't very well done anyway. There's not even a shopping cart to go with your store. Without even the most basic features that go along with ecommerce, where's the value in an ebay store if ebay will not be taking responsibility for the marketing?
I closed my ebay store. Why bother with it? If I'm going to have to do my own marketing, why let ebay take a commission on every sale and the monthly fee to boot? There are numereous ecommerce providers that will set up a much more professional looking store for you, and without charging you the commissions that ebay does. My website is so much better than an ebay store can possibly be that it's almost a joke that anyone would spend more money for an ebay store than they would spend for this service. http://newenglandcoinco.com/links_page.html the service I use is listed at the top of the links page. It took me about as long to set up this site as it took me to set up my ebay store. I don't have to relist (and pay more fees) every 30 days. The shopping cart can handle multiple item purchases (ebay stores cannot, since it has no shopping cart). The service can automate payments via credit card using a variety of services, while ebay only offers Billpoint.
Until ebay makes vast improvements on its ebay stores, I don't see why anyone would want to bother with them.
posted on February 5, 2002 08:22:37 AM
I had an ebay store when it was FREE. I closed it when there would be fees. The Ebay store is exactly the same as the "look up sellers other auctions" link on the auction page. It's a tactic for ebay to take more of the seller's money IMO.
posted on February 5, 2002 08:29:17 AM
both amzn zshop and ebay store are just an extension of what they have in place.
to develop a storefront like yahoo will take a lot of money and time,also it may take business away from the ebay auctions.
they make more money with auctions,as long as we are willing to toil to list items every 7 days.why should they make life easy for the sellers?
posted on February 6, 2002 07:38:08 AM
I too have between 2 sales on a slow day to say 12 on a good day. I love our store and it saves me so much money.
I lead people into the store with the cheap stuff and get them to purchase the higher priced items.
Price in the store does not matter. Example to list a $99.00 item would cost $3.30 at auction. I can list 100 of them in my store for 5 cents.
I list a like item in the auctions for 30 cents and get them to look at my store.
I am very happy with them. Not sure if I have ever been charged yet but will be glad to pay to fee.
posted on February 6, 2002 09:33:43 AM
I'm ready to give eBay stores another whirl, but I'm stuck at pricing. The stuff that will be going into the stores is stuff that didn't sell after relisting a couple of times, so you'd think that the idea would be to use the store as a sort of clearance bin & price everything lower than what the starting bid was, right?
But... the items I sell are all +- one-of-a-kind, and it's really just a matter of the person who cares coming across the one he wants. I mean, everytime I relist a batch, one or two of the ones I thought would never sell is "just the thing!" for somebody, but listing over & over at .30 - .55 a pop is too expensive (hence my interest in a store again)
So the question is (at last!) when you list things in your store, do you list them higher, lower, or about the same as your starting bids? Any thoughts on this?
posted on February 6, 2002 09:57:49 AM
I wonder if it would be against eBay rules to state in your auction description that the same item could be bought cheaper in your store ?
posted on February 6, 2002 10:25:16 AM
eBay stores and Amazon zShops are a joke. Somebody previously said he truth that it's simply a trick to get more money from seller. There is absolutely no advantage in having eBay store or Amazon zShop.
If you are serious about fixed price selling, Yahoo Store is the best. It's reasonably priced, fast, easy-to-use, well promoted through Y!Shopping and it has so much functionality that will covr anything you will ever need. You can setup a test store for free and check it out for yourself:
posted on February 6, 2002 12:11:54 PM
The Amazon zShop is actually far better than the ebay store. I had one for several months, while it was ten bucks a month. When they raised it to forty bucks a month I dropped out because I'm really not doing enough volume to justify it. With the right type of business the zShop could be a very useful tool. Stuff in the zShop does appear in searches done on Amazon, unlike the ebay stores. This does drive customers to you. If you're selling something that people might search on Amazon, and you price attractively enough, you will get customers from them. If you're selling something nobody would think of buying at Amazon you won't find it useful. Or, if you're selling a competing product to Amazon and can't cut their price substantially, you won't do well either. If you're selling a product that's complementary to Amazon products, or you can cut their price, you'll do well. OTOH, with ebay stores, there's virtually no value.
