Any one have an Ebay store?

[RedCherry]

The fees just recently went up, and truthfully, I'm thinking of closing mine. I tend to sell the most from October through Christmas, so I might just have mine seasonally. They take 12% now final value fees when you sell something out of a store, and when most of my products are under 10$ that is a lot. Plus, using Paypal as a processor, takes another chunk.

The advantages of selling on eBay though are if you start a blog, and use keyword optimization in your title tags for your listings, plus submit your store to froogle, you can get your items in the search engines easier than you can starting a stand-alone store. Plus, there are literally millions of people shopping eBay, so if you have something unusual you can get some good sales. Just make sure you take in account the fees when setting your prices.

I also plaster my url to my non eBay store on every picture I post on a listing, so that can help you cross sell on your non-ebay store and make some money. You can't link off-site on listings, but you CAN on your about me page...so take advantage of that.

You will also need to drive traffic to your store by sumbitting auction style listings too. I might list a loss leader, or list something that for 25 cents more than can just buy it now in the store instead of waiting for the auction to end, that that will get traffic to the store. Plus, as I said, using the blogs helps too. There are quite a few bloggers on eBay and the blogs get read, and spidered well too.

So for me, I don't get a bunch of sales right now, but the soap market is very competitive on eBay. But DocHolly has unusual stuff, so she is doing better. If you have unusual, you can do fine.

[docholly]

I haven't really noticed a slow down in traffic since january and certainly not since the strike BUT..

12% is a lot and most of my stuff is under 10.00 as well however I will say that on quite a bit of it i have like a 300%-500% mark up. The bigger pieces aren't so much since i'm selling them for starving artists but i still factor in enough to cover all my fees and make a profit.

Ronnie: Depending on what she is making to sell, I find that etsy.com is a much better marketplace for handcrafted items. I've removed my store from there for my cross cultural greeting cards because I just can't keep them in stock and they are too hard to make.

I don't think Ebay is on the way down actually I think they are realigning themselves to be more market friendly. There are lots of "stores" over there and mouthy people who spout off on the forums and the blogs but have ZERO in their stores. and i've been listing on craigslist for about 5 years now and ebay is still much more trafficked.

As far as traffic goes.. my #4 referrer to my store is GG&J. but I do have a site that feeds traffic there, plus i'm pretty active on livejournal groups and flickr groups so I get quite a few sales from there. and like Redcherry said.. put your URL to a stand alone store on the pictures and people will type it in. Once your stand alone store makes more than ebay then it's time to move on.

The theory I've always subscribed to was that you have a balance between store and auction. I have my stuff at auction for about 3 cycles (7 days each) then I move it in the store, unless it's a repeat item that I sell frequently. Once it's in the store more than 2 months (it only costs .01 to list in the store) and it doesn't sell, it goes to my 'sale' list which is every 2 weeks. I try to turn my inventory every 90 days otherwise it starts eating into my profits.

that's about it.. got go watch my sales since my auctions are going off in the next few hours.

Oh yeah that another thing I've learned... Most sales are made on Sunday evening and Wednesday evening. Who knows why. I say its the Sports theory but what explains Wednesday? A little shopping before prayer meeting??