posted on November 18, 2002 10:35:24 AM new
I am considering opening an Ebay store to list and sell unsold auction listings. Is there a support from AW for this? Or have I just not looked in the right place? Or do I have to go directly into Ebay and re-write them there? I would rather launch directly from AW as all my photos are here and I don't want to pay more than I have to for photo hosting. Help!
posted on November 18, 2002 11:02:46 AM new
Is it worth the cost to open a store to host items that did not sell in the first place? You still pay for items to be listed at your store, a monthly fee as well, plus you get no promotion from ebay (not searchable in their search engine for auctions) Is it worth it? Doesn't sound like it to me...
posted on November 18, 2002 11:37:03 AM new
I read over a thread on Ebay about Stores and while there were some negs. there were lots of positives. Your store is searchable on the various search engines so you do get net exposure w/o additional costs. Some folks were closing their websites to go exclusively with Ebay because of this and the cost was less. And just because the items didn't sell in the listing doesn't mean that they won't sell in the store. I recently had a black amethyst bowl that I had listed I don't know how many times before it finally sold and it sold at a priced well worth the additional listings. If I had priced it higher and put it into a store it could have sold a lot sooner.
I will have to promote the fact that I have an Ebay store and drive traffic to it but you have to do this even with a brick & mortar store so there's no real difference there. Besides, listing an item for $0.05 for 30 days as opposed to $0.30 for 3-7 days is a lot cheaper. If I work it right, and that's the key word, work, then yes, it should be worthwhile.
But I still need to know how to get my auction listings changed to store listings and put them into my Ebay store from AW. Any ideas?
posted on November 18, 2002 12:28:59 PM new
I won't not open a store until the search engine within ebay drove traffic to that store. They have to find you first, then go to your store. It's cheap compared to an auction, but I imagine unless you did a lot of outside advertising, traffic would be low. If you do all that advertising outside, seems less expensive to set up your own website instead of pay the 5¢ every 30 days PLUS all the commission you have to pay to ebay (5.25% FVF) - You never know from week to week what will sell on ebay, I've listed something one week and got no bid at $4.99, and the next week it sold for $35 after I listed it again. You never know...
posted on November 18, 2002 01:06:38 PM new
You never know week to week what will sell in auctions either. Yes the FVF is the same, so what? Listing is cheaper in the store. I have to park it somewhere. Why not at least take CHANCE on getting additional exposure in a store instead of storing it only on my hard drive? Like I said before, I have to promote my store within my listings, the same as if I put ads in a newspaper for a brick & mortar store. I've been selling just long enough now that I have repeat customers who would love to look through additonal items. Besides, since it's just me working this, and that's the way I intend to keep it, I can move items from auction listings to store front to keep the inventory fresh with a minimal amount of work.
Now I ask again, DOES ANYONE OUT THERE KNOW HOW TO GET MY CLOSED AUCTIONS BUILT THROUGH A/W INTO AN EBAY STORE W/O RE-WRITING THEM?
posted on November 18, 2002 03:05:30 PM new
I am pretty sure you have to rewrite them - there's always copy-and-paste, but you're still "rewriting" them. You can try asking the questions down in the AW section of the boards and see if you get a different answer from someone who works here. I was thinking of doing the same thing when AW started charging for their store, but found out I would have to rewrite everything and didn't feel it was worth the hassle.
posted on November 20, 2002 11:48:50 AM new
Hi ihula
Thanks for your response. I did go down to one of the AW support boards and did get a reply from them which was simply that AW doesn't support eBay stores at this time. She said "if/when" they would do such they would let us know. I understand that they want us to use an AW store over and eBay store but I think it's being kind of mean.
Since you have an AW store, is it worth it? Or is that why you were thinking of doing an eBay store? Are you getting enough traffic, is the worth the cost, etc.?
posted on November 20, 2002 11:54:07 AM new
I would think that ebay stores get more traffic, I know I shop ebay stores if I plan to buy something from a seller to see if there's anything else I want for the reduced shipping. I do get some traffic to my AW store, and was thinking of doing the google key words "thing" (get myself in the google search engine). Just haven't gotten around to it yet. In my opinion the AW stores are difficult to navigate. Seems like all my ebay auctions come up under "other" and I know I wouldn't shop through 200 "other" auctions to see if there's something else I want. As far as the price, though, I have an AW power plan, so the store rental is free - I just pay the 1% FVF so that's not bad.
posted on November 20, 2002 03:31:35 PM new
THE "HOW TO"
If your closed auctions on eBay are still in eBay's database, you can relist them in your store using eBay's Sell Your Item while still retaining the Aucionwatch templates. Go to your closed listings on Auctionwatch and click on the eBay item numbers to see if they're still there. Auctionwatch should have no objections since they don't support the stores.
Good luck.
posted on November 21, 2002 09:03:31 AM new
I thought about relaunching them through eBay and putting them into the store but AW will charge me $.10 per photo because I wouldn't be launching it through them. A friend of mine did his listing through AW, then relisted it through eBay and AW popped him for 18 photos for a total of $1.80 in addition to the other relisting fees. Now if I change my plan from Standard to something else I'll get free image hosting. Guess I'll have to look over my expenditures on AW to see if it's worthwhile to change my plan. Up until now I just didn't see any point in changing my plan as I don't like to pay monthly fees if I don't use something.
