You may be planning to open an Ebay store, but at the same time you will be thinking not to, arguing with yourself. Yes, an Ebay store provide lower listing fees and yes, exposures are lower than normal auctions or BIN listings. So what should you do? Let's go through the goods and bads of opening an Ebay store. Shall we?
The good thing about an Ebay store is first of all, its affordability. For about $15 a month, you can open your own permanent store with hosting! Publishing a store by yourself would cost minimum $20/month for reliable hosting, from $20-$200 for LEGAL store script, not to mention graphics, search engine submission, and other advertising fees. But with Ebay, you can get IT for only $15 per month, already popular and search engine friendly!
Secondly, its long listings which is almost a permanent listing, which Ebay names it "Good Till Canceled". Normal listings are up for only 10 days and search engine spiders and other networks wouldn't bother indexing your listing that often. Unless the viewer searches from Ebay, there is no way others can notice about your listing. But with Ebay store's permanent listing, you can your own URL, website, established links, and outbound links for search engines to crawl and your store is automatically listed in many directories!
Lastly, the cheap listing fees. The more you save, the more profit you gain from your sales! Awesome heh? basic listing fees are never more than 2-3 cents where in normal listing, you are charged from 30 cents for auctions and several more for fixed listing, which are also only 10 days. But with Ebay store, lower fees, Good Till Cancelled listings. You also get special discounts on features, bold, and other add-ons. Say you list 100 items, its $2 in store, but $30 in normal fees!! WOW what a save!
At the down side, first of all, even though listing fees are lower, Ebay store has a higher final value fee. Compare the normal (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html) and store (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/storefees.html) value fees. So that means you may need to increase your selling price for items, which could result in your item being more expensive than normal listing sellers.
Secondly, it is not guaranteed that you will get traffic to your Ebay store, even from within Ebay itself! :( Ebay stores do not show up in Ebay searches unless there are no other sellers with that item or with the search word. Ebay searches always bring up normal listings. You will need to do outside-sourcing to drive more traffic, such as advertising in blogs, journals, link exchanges, etc...(Exclude Spamming).
Lastly, you do get your own URL with Ebay store, but just a subdomain. Meaning, its not domain.com but stores.ebay.com/yourstore. There is no way you can expand your store with other hosting providers without setting up your own domain, starting all over, losing your inbound links, popularity.
Thats all folks! Now its your turn to carefully think over those advantages and disadvantages of opening an Ebay store. Thinking wisely will make you earn more! My suggestion is that for resellers, (physical items), start with normal listing, get known by buyers, then open an Ebay store, link form your auction listings. If you are hosting reseller, domain seller, etc.. consider normal listing.
Hope that helps!
Have a Great Day!
Love,
Hilton
)