posted on April 10, 2002 12:46:38 PM new
I just signed up for an eBay store. I
read what I could find on here and decided
it was worth a try to be able to list some
of the items that didn't sell through two
listing cycles on regular eBay (not junk
though). I will try it for a few months
to see how it works. I've blown $20 or $30
on worse things. :^)
I also looked at a few other eBay stores to
see how they did things (regular auction
listing vs. eBay store listings). Does
anyone with experience with eBay Stores,
good or bad, have any suggestions or tips
(particularly for getting people to visit
the storefront)? Obviously I need to still
list regular auctions (which then have a
notice of the storefront in them)...
Thank you in advance.
Z
---
"Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not
know, so cannot say". -- Zathras (Babylon 5)
posted on April 10, 2002 04:55:08 PM new
One of the questions asked was:
"any suggestions or tips
(particularly for getting people to visit
the storefront)?"
Many of us have written long lists of things we tried to make our stores work. Some sellers are happy with them, most are not and closed them.
For me it came down to this. Since the only people who ever clicked on my store did so from my auctions, they were not providing any additional income.
So I decided to invest the same energy in simply getting buyers to visit my other auctions, which is all that the stores were for all intents and purposes.
And that doesn't cost $10+ a month.
The ebay stores need to be reworked before they will be of any value to the typical ebay seller. Items need to be included in the overall search, a shopping cart needs to be implemented and the appearance needs improvement - just for starters.
posted on April 11, 2002 08:29:12 AM new
I appreciate the two replys. I figured that
I'd get "don't bother it doesn't work" at
least a few times...and did!
My thinking in at least trying it was that
listing fees for 7-day auctions with Buy It
Now (BIN) are $0.35 each (minimum) so paying
$9.95 a month and $0.05 per listing (for 30
day listings) for items that haven't sold
yet would mean I only need to list 30 or so
items to break even on what it would cost to
relist them. Anything over the 30 or so
items would be, basically, free to list.
I've seen some eBay Stores with hundreds and
hundreds of store listings, with auctions
mixed in (which is what I will try).
I agree that getting people to visit the
store site is the problem. I will try it
for a few months (2 or 3) and see how it
works. It has been 3 days so far, and no
sales, but I didn't have much up the first
day and I'm only running about 15 regular
auctions (I usually run about 100 or so).
I'm going to try putting a link myself into
my auction template (eBay adds one, but I'll
make it a little bigger, and indicate I've
got other similar items there).
What other methods, besides eBay Stores would
you folks recommend? I just noticed that
Auction Watch has storefronts too... Thank
you in advance. :^)
Z
---
"Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not
know, so cannot say". -- Zathras (Babylon 5)
posted on April 11, 2002 09:22:18 AM new
amzn zshop is 39.99 and you can list 40,000 items.
amzn is a good place to sell books,but you may get a few sales every now and then on non books.
commission is in line with ebay.and you can keep the items in your shop forever until you remove them.
yahoo is more pricey,49.95 for webhosting,10 cents per item,1/2% transaction fee,3 1/2% commission if the order came thru yahoo network.
you must have a merchant account to open a yahoo store and with 20,000 stores in place,you need something to stand out in the crowd.
some yahoo shops use overture and google ad word to bid on key words,so extra marketing expense there,
no shop i know of remove shop items after 30 days,only EBAY does,so how can you call it a shop when shopowner is forced to remove the items and return them back on the shelf every 30 days.
i would not open an ebay store unless they can show results.
it may be cheap ,what good is it if it produces no results,your time is money too!
posted on April 11, 2002 11:49:23 AM new
Well, here is one way to handle the 30 day ebay listing/relisting problem.
It is called a "til forbid" arrangement.
It should be optional on all items.
It means they will run the listing until it sells or you tell them to stop ("til forbid".
The seller could list their widget, say ten of them, and the listing would run until all ten were sold or the seller said to stop.
In the meantime, ebay would get 5 cents a month per listing for as long as it was available.
Quick, easy and straightforward. No need to keep relisting and wasting valuable time. The time saved could be used to add other items and that would increase everyone's bottom line.
Unfortunately, with no real marketing brains in ebay's management, it is just a simple concept/idea in search of a venue.
[ edited by litlux on Apr 11, 2002 11:51 AM ]
posted on April 11, 2002 11:51:04 AM new
For $10 a month (or $120 a year), why not register a domain name and create your own web store? Many web hosts allow some type of server side scripting like PHP, ASP, or ColdFusion. And many free scripts exist to create a basic web storefront ... (see hotscripts.com under eCommerce). I just downloaded one that worked right out of the zip file!
www.tekgems.com
[ edited by sun818 on Apr 11, 2002 11:57 AM ]
posted on April 11, 2002 11:57:38 AM new
My advice on this issue is this, You don’t know for sure if you don’t try. I read many messages here regarding this issue and then after seeing all the pro’s and con’s I figured you know for $9.95 a month why not give it a try and see for myself. Some sellers were very happy with their results and others weren’t. Since I had little knowledge of success rates or failure rates under the category I sold in I opened a store.
I had one item I was selling that was very uncommon. There were only a few sellers listing these items on eBay, the profits were high and the sell through was fantastic. I thought that if I added a store I could by pass listing some of the more expensive items on eBay. My thinking was to list them in my store for .05 and see if I could capture some sales with out all the typical eBay fees associated with them as an auction item.
To my surprise people would see my store logo and did as I hoped buy the more expensive items in my store. It more than paid for itself. That was up until eBay no longer allowed this one particular item to be listed on their site any longer. I sold other more common items on eBay so I thought I would keep the store open for them and see how I did. I made no sales of these other items from my eBay store so eventually like many others I did close my store.
So try it, what do you really have to lose? Commit to two or three months that will answer your question and will cost you less than a good dinner out on the town
posted on April 11, 2002 01:50:54 PM new
the problem with having your own website is NO ONE COMES.
there is really 3 websites out there with good traffic-yahoo,ebay and amzn
i heard ubid is good,dunno about msn shops??
posted on April 11, 2002 02:48:32 PM newthe problem with having your own website is NO ONE COMES
What are you doing to bring visitors to your store? If you want visitors, you have to actively promote your store. Did you know eBay advertises on the pay-per-click search engines (Overture, Google) to bring in buyers?
The advantage to having an eBay Store is the ability to directly link to it from your descriptions. You can't do the same for your web store, but you can promote it in your e-mails. You should also consider that if eBay ever disappears (as difficult as that may sound), your investment in http://www.stores.ebay.com/widgetstore disappears as well.
Anyway, here are some relevant AuctionWatch articles. Take a look!
posted on April 11, 2002 05:58:49 PM new
i do include my shop url (on amzn and yahoo) in my emails,i have my shops in the me page,i advertise on aol and include my items in all major search engines.
do you know there are 20,000 shops on yahoo and god knows how many zshops on amzn.
yes,google and overture -pay per click,you bid on key words and if someone clicks on your site,you pay the bid price.
i do not use it becasue i cannot afford it,some shops do not have inventory so they can afford to pay for clicks.
i have to choose between pay per click or stock up and ship instead of relying on drop shippers.and i decide to stock up and ship myself.
inventory costs money,so does using overture and google to bring you traffic.
it is something sellers decide what works for him or her.
some shops claim it works well for them,some said it is a waste of money.
after paying ebay fees,yahoo fee,amzn fee,paypal fee,billpoint fee,packing material,occasional chargeback fee,long distance phone bills,there is not much left on the table for GIMMICK.
after all i have already paid my marketing expense by having my shops on those sites.
posted on April 11, 2002 06:03:00 PM new
by the way,how would you like this scenario?
you are the proud owner of your store and one day you come to work and find your landlord has removed all your items because they have been around for 30 days??
thats what ebay does to an ebay store,i dont call this a store??
i remove the item ,not my landlord.
posted on April 11, 2002 08:01:38 PM new
Just for curiosity sake, I used to get alot of traffic to my web url from ebay. I had a direct link from my listings. Then someone turned me in. (I honestly didn't know the rule at the time) Has anyone found a way around this issue? A way to list your url in the listing without ebay complaining to you?
posted on April 11, 2002 08:43:30 PM new
> do you know there are 20,000 shops on yahoo and god knows how many zshops on amzn.
i know we're paying a lot for different services that in the end, we seem to make very little, if at all.
> i do not use [google and overture] becasue i cannot afford it,
there are free ways to promote your site but it does take a lot of time. you could write content for your site that would want others to link to you. i guess it depends on how you want to divvy up your financial and time resources. i can track direct sales (by using special product links), so i do get a return on investment on most products. some words are really competitive so i'm not willing to pay $1.00 for a click! if you're on a tight budget, definitely skip overture as they charge a $20 minimum each month. google's new pay-per-click service has no monthly minimums. www.tekgems.com
posted on April 11, 2002 10:10:20 PM new
overture requires prefunding,now that google comes along and charge you cc on file,so i dont know if overture has changed its policy.
i feel i am already paying for prime real estate-ebay,amzn and yahoo,need i pay more??
we all know how slim the margin is in cyberspace.
posted on April 11, 2002 10:21:51 PM new
AuctionWatch provides a FREE storefront and also offers services to help you drive traffic to your storefront. AuctionWatch's integrated services help you to easily upsell fixed price AuctionWatch Storefront items during checkout. AuctionWatch also offers Customer Relationship Management Services to help you generate repeat business.
Click here to learn quick and easy strategies to sell more at no additional cost!
posted on April 12, 2002 05:32:56 AM new
There is a list of store building services that work with eBay auctions located online at http://www.auctionbytes.com/stores/stores.html
Most of these systems are much more sophisticated than eBay stores. The biggest problem with building your own store from the ground up is getting traffic. By using an online specialty mall, you take advantage of their existing traffic, and have your own store as well. There are many specialty malls on the Web that you may want to consider. Do a Google search and see if you can find a store building system that is associated with an online mall that specializes in the type of merchandise that you are selling. There are quite a few specialty malls on the Web for antiques, collectibles, books, crafts, art and many other categories. Always check with merchants that are currently using the mall, before signing on. Also, most of these malls offer free trials or a discount on fees for the first month or two. Don't commit to a long term contract until you are comfortable with the service.
Many of these store systems also allow you to sell on eBay, Amazon, Yahoo and other auction and store sites as well. They are like virtual warehouses for your inventory. They can include features like customer relations management, cc processing, automatic purchase notification, warehouse management, shipping management and shipping label printing, invoice printing, accounting features and much more. If you find a service that you like, but don't see a feature that you want, ask their customer service if they have the feature or will have it soon.
Also, find out how long the company has been online. Are they a viable business or are they about to blow away in the dot com breeze. If possible check with third party sources on the companies financial viability going forward. A little due diligence will save you a great deal of aggravation later.
.