posted on January 9, 2002 07:26:20 AM new
I received a notice from eBay advising me that my eBay store is about to begin costing $9.95/month. I assume I'm not the only one who got one of these. I'm curious as to what experiences others have had with their eBay stores. Seems to me that ten bucks a month is reasonable, but I've had no sales from it so far (to my knowledge). That said, my auction volume has been comparatively low so far, so it hasn't had a fair chance either.
What's the consensus here? Are you going to keep your eBay stores? Do they work for you?
posted on January 9, 2002 07:49:23 AM new
If you want to spend ten bucks a month for a store, you can set your own up with your own website. Why give ebay a cut of the action.
posted on January 9, 2002 08:53:17 AM new
petertdavis:
I got an eBay store for many reasons, including:
1. It's completely automatic and requires zero maintenance.
2. Directing even a comparable fraction of eBay traffic to an independent web site would take time, $$$ and resources we don't have.
3. I could be wrong but it seems to me that unless an independent storefront is automatically tied to auctions and serves as a repository for retail to eventually be moved to auctions, hands-on maintenance just doubles the workload for little likely return.
4. It puts the storefront right at the center of the action, and it can be accessed in many different ways.
Fact is, I would be making extensive use of my AuctionWatch storefront to hold pending merchandise and using my own web page and other resources to direct traffic to it. But AW's SMBE software does NOT provide any means of uploading merchandise to the storefront. It's astounding that they released a crippled program like that. AW subsequently suggested that I export auction data to AM/Pro for storefront upload. Uh huh. It's apparent by inspection that no one at AW has ever tried doing it themselves because it does not work and cannot possibly work, and even if it did, who wants to manage two duplicate sets of inventory in two separate programs and try to keep them synchronized? The programmers have not put themselves in the shoes of the people who use the goods and services they produce, and actually tried using them as sellers.
To top it off, all of the storefront links on the eBay enlarged image pages have disappeared! Nearly a full month of notifying AW has resulted in zero traction ("We have advised our engineering department etc etc etc". So I ask: what good is an AW storefront? The answer right now is, unfortunately, none at all. Sorry, but that's how I see it.
So, the eBay storefront is the only one that makes sense to me. I was merely curious as to how others have fared with theirs and whether they think it's worth the ten bucks. Right now (or until AW gets their software act together) I think it is.
posted on January 9, 2002 09:50:16 AM new
For $10 a month, I set up my own web store. All my excess inventory is listed on the site and linked to my open auctions. Much better than eBay stores and I get more sales through it than I did with the eBay store.
[ edited by sun818 on Jan 10, 2002 01:04 AM ]
posted on January 9, 2002 11:50:41 AM new
It's a good-looking and clean site. I like the "make offer" e-mail option.
How do you manage your inventory and upload auctions? Do they provide software comparable to AW Sales Manager or do you use another method?
Onward and Upward,
--bdunique
posted on January 9, 2002 12:08:41 PM new
> How do you manage your inventory and upload auctions?
I use AuctionTrakker (www.timbercreeksoftware.com) for my inventory and posting auctions to eBay. Since they have a Microsoft Access database, I can upload the database to my web site and run database queries against it.
> Do they provide software comparable to AW Sales Manager or do you use another method?
AuctionTrakker lets me manage all my auction from inventory, listing, tracking, sending out e-mail, feedback, sniping and bunch of other stuff. I'm working on getting an "order status" page up where my buyers can check their order status with just the item number and eBay registered e-mail.
posted on January 9, 2002 02:34:59 PM new
They are also working on a new package, Sold!, which will phase out AuctionTrakker in a few months. It addresses a lot of the weaknesses of AuctionTrakker like multi auction posting, etc. I am going to upgrade after my vacation...
. So I ask: what good is an AW storefront? The answer right now is, unfortunately, none at all. Sorry, but that's how I see it.
