posted on April 1, 2010 09:47:18 AM new
I have never used an eBay store. Never felt the need to manage yet another thing. So, I decided to open a store for my personal account to see just how well this will work. It is a basic store, as I have very low # of listings now. Figure, if I don't try I'll never know if it will work to increase sales. I'm not happy at all with eBay policies, but for the sake of keeping some cash flow moving I figure I should at least set up the store to keep my fees down while I work out setting up my website.
Any suggestions beyond opening and launching auctions/fixed price listings? Any tricks, tips, etc would be helpful.
posted on April 1, 2010 09:54:00 AM new
one question I have is regarding Fixed Pricing. I have used FP before, but have found that most sales come in during the last day or two of the listing, kind of defeating the purpose of 30 day FP listings. Obviously, 30 day listings are the same price as 5-7 day listings.
Anyone else have the same experience, or have suggestions how to increase sales on 30 day???
How about auction vs. fixed price formats. I have seen some sellers put the same item for auction and fixed price. They put higher priced item with lower shipping at auction and lower priced item with higher shipping on fixed price. Any experience with this?
To be quite honest, I feel like I fell of the face of the earth when it comes to eBay over the last few years. I have been quite disgruntled towards their policies and fee hikes. I have a big learning curve for Stores, whether I should be using Vendio for launching items to eBay (more costs), and how i should manage inventory.
It seems that everything is business as usual with the new structure... just that I am now paying $16 a month to have a place where bidders can click and see all of my listings in one place. I'm just not too confident it will work in my favor. I guess time will tell
posted on April 1, 2010 10:00:09 AM new
Fixed price listings appear near the top of search results shortly after listing and slowly work their way down to the point of being nearly invisible at the end of the 30 days- the opposite of auction listings which are most visible shortly before they end.
posted on April 1, 2010 10:16:23 AM new
I open a premium store on March 14,so far I have sold 26 items,the last one just minutes ago is $375 plus shipping,Ebay fee is $20 (5.33%).
The way I see it is that having a store instead of auction is to free you to do something else,whatever that something else is!
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There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 1, 2010 10:48:46 AM new
I hate to say it (I mean really hate to admit it), but this change with the stores seems to be working for me. I've sold things that sat there when the stores were the old way. Things seem to be moving now. The premium store was best for me money-wise with the number of items I have now and plan to have in the future.
posted on April 1, 2010 11:12:43 AM new
I have always done auction until 2 months ago,I tried fixed price without a store and sold some high price items.
So I decide to open a premium store instead of keep listing fixed price as it seems to be cheaper.
Yes,the new store gets more exposure,and one interesting fact is that you dont have to list your item with make an offer ,the bidders will make you an offer and it is up to you to pursue it further.
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There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 1, 2010 05:44:32 PM new
any suggestions on managing inventory other than using vendio inventory? one issue i have with vendio is that I have to manually go into each inventory item and change the format for fixed or auction each listing, depending on the previous setting. the only way to get around it is to have each listing shown twice in inventory. one for fixed price and one for auction. any ideas to simplify this?
posted on April 1, 2010 06:37:25 PM new
I'm not sure what you mean by "managing inventory". I find that relisting closed auction items to "buy it now" format is much easier to do in bulk via eBay's Sales Manager Pro than in Vendio- a feature I know was requested to Vendio at least 5 years ago but still hasn't happened.
posted on April 1, 2010 06:57:23 PM new
FIVE years ago?? Try 8 years ago! For some reason Vendio never believed eBay Stores were here to stay. You couldn't even list in the format for many years! I guess in the end they were right.
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posted on April 1, 2010 10:29:37 PM new
I've had a Vendio Store and a basic eBay store for several years. When eBay included the store listings in the search I did moderately well. This last year my Vendio store has out sold my eBay store. I decided
since we didn't seem to have much choice, to give my store 30 more days and If I don't see better results, I'll go with the Vendio Store only and do more promotion locally. The 1st of April I sold five items in my eBay listings after 2 weeks of no sales except in my Vendio store.I must say selling through Vendio is much less frustrating. They actually have customer service. I take care of my customers because I want to, not because I feel there is an ax hanging over my head.
posted on April 2, 2010 12:43:55 AM new
I don't think anyone will have success with stores unless they run auction listings with links in their listings to similar items in their store. Edited to add: although in some sense, eBay stores in core is a dream-come-true, I now see it as a nightmare. I search for postcards in a specific small town. Typically, there are 17 or 18 cards to peruse in core. Now there are over 380+ - over 350 I've seen and passed on before. I can choose to view auction-only items, but I miss new items listed as BIN. Ebay tried this before and declared it a major mistake. If eBay loses a massive number of buyers, this is a major cause.
[ edited by pixiamom on Apr 2, 2010 12:55 AM ]
posted on April 2, 2010 04:29:43 AM new
Shag - Pixiamom has been managing her 10,000 item eBay store through eBay Selling Manager Pro (free with store) for years. It does everything Vendio does (except free scheduling) - relists and format changes are easy to do in bulk. I on the other hand manage over 10,000 items using Vendio. Format changes are a PITA but I like the rest of the system. My 39,964 sales records go back to September 2002!
If you are listing multiples of the same item, you might want to switch to the Vendio Inventory Edition which doesn't work so well for OOAK items but will let you edit and change listings in bulk.
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posted on April 2, 2010 06:45:00 AM new
Pixiamom said-
don't think anyone will have success with stores unless they run auction listings with links in their listings to similar items in their store.
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This is no longer true with the new Ebay store.
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There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 2, 2010 09:11:11 AM new
Hwa, if you think buyers are going to wade through thousands of fixed price listings to find your items without a link, think again!
posted on April 2, 2010 11:06:17 AM new
numbers do not lie-I just sold 6 items from my store(same buyer though)!so far I have sold 34 items from my store since March 14.
If you have something people want,they will find it,they will just keep finetuning advanced search to find the items they are looking for.
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There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 2, 2010 11:08:52 AM new
Pix.
With the new store format,store items get the same search exposure as the non store items,this is what Ebay promised,so far it works for me,dont know if this will change in the future?
Come to think of it,if you keep a gadget in your store and it does not sell for months or years,I wonder if Ebay search logic is going to downgrade its visibility?
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There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 2, 2010 11:32:00 AM new
neglus/pixia-
from my perspective, it seems that vendio is losing ground fast on eBay's improvements, especially now that we can include up 12 photos for free. many vendio features are becoming obsolete which makes it more and more difficult to justify Vendio costs. There are some exceptions, like having web stores outside of eBay's grasp, free scheduling, and perhaps its inventory manager (I have to further investigate eBay's SM Pro to determine which I prefer and whether it justifies costs). Format changes are important, especially when you have tons of listings to correct, especially if the category numbers change.
I have been using Vendio since it was AW and a free service, but I now use a Mac and purchased GarageSale to launch my listings. They host 10 pics for free, but that feature is obsolete if eBay is offering 12 for free per listing.
I really like the clean templates and ease of use, though I have not completely familiarized myself with all it can do.
What features/costs do you prefer over the other?
I have two uniquely different types of seller accounts, though that may soon change.
First Account- most items are unique and don't require Inventory of multiple items. I do use inventory for a handful of items, but integrate the Vendio store into my website instead of launching auctions from it because a few items have been Vero'd before and I don't want that hassle.
My biggest frustration with integrating Vendio stores is that it takes the buyer away from my website to Vendio's site. When you look at the web address, it shows .vendio/myname. I really want this to remain within my website and is why I have asked about creating a web store in other posts. It seems most people who use Vendio don't use their store for their own site. Maybe I am wrong in that assumption.
2nd Account- Primary listings come from Inventory and I have multiples of each item available. I also offer similar items used, but these are generally 1 offs, so I don't put them in inventory. I don't have a web store for these items, just sell on eBay and mostly as auctions... though that is going to change under eBay's new system.
posted on April 2, 2010 01:20:56 PM new
Have you looked into Rubylane?It allows you to drop items to Ebay.
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There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 2, 2010 04:28:44 PM new
thanks for the suggestion on rubylane. I don't think that is the right venue for me, as they are more eclectic. When I did a keyword search I found some items at $65-75 that I normally pass on at thrift stores/garage sales for under $5. Unfortunately, that isn't a good thing because most of those things are everywhere and people are giving them away just to rid themselves of something hideous. Also, many items shown were reduced, or had accepting offers noted. Some items were even misrepresented.
Generally speaking, surrounding yourself amongst amateur sellers isn't good as it brings down the value of the items you sell. this is one reason why we opened our own retail store. other dealers were throwing in junk around us, which devalued our items. People just can't justify a $500 chair in mint condition when it is sitting next to a similar chair in filthy, tattered condition for half the price. It's like having more value in the crappiest house in an expensive neighborhood vs. having the best house in a crappy neighborhood.
If I went through the trouble of a place like Rubylane, I would be better trying to get into 1stdibs or another venue that everyone over prices high end items. People who shop those sites have enough disposable income that they'll pay to buy there.
[ edited by shagmidmod on Apr 2, 2010 04:32 PM ]
posted on April 2, 2010 04:47:46 PM new
Generally speaking, surrounding yourself amongst amateur sellers isn't good as it brings down the value of the items you sell
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Yes,Rubylane items are overpriced!Thats why they drop items to Ebay to raise cash!
There is also Igavel and Aspire.
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There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 2, 2010 07:51:13 PM new
I'm very upset that Vendio does not support sending multiple pics to gallery plus, which allows folks to preview all pics of the listing from the search page. Vendio's service board informed me that it did not affect that many sellers. Hello! How many collectible sellers does Vendio have? I thought, years ago that the NEW Vendio platform would solve all my woes - haven't seen a thing.
My reasons for staying with Vendio is that the 2nd and additional pics are not uploaded to eBay's hosted picture site and Vendio provides a history of listings, in case something catastrophic happens on eBay.
I like listing with SMME, have over 100 profiles I use to expedite listing. I can do the same with eBay tools, it requires some time to duplicate it.
ebay's management of unsold and post-sale listings far exceeds Vendio, which has not added any functionality in years.
posted on April 4, 2010 09:53:08 AM new
If anybody is bored, there is an interesting discussion, "The Wasteland Called Ebay", on The Home Shop Machinist site.
