Cost involved with setting up a store?

[dcmgroup]

Hi all

I'm currently weighing up the pros and cons with going ahead witha store.

Is it necessary to have a web design person set up for you? If so, what sort of costs are involved? (Any recommendations for Adelaide?)

Also, can you transfer items under your seller name to your store? Or do you have to go through and relist everything?

I've currently got just over 100 items loaded but I probably have up to a 1000 items total.

Thanks!!

[davewil1964]

No. You can use eBay templates or get one for not very much from sellers here. OR go with the default. Less chance of a potential buyer getting distracted.

All BIN listings will show up under the store automatically. I think auctions do too, but you pay standard rates for them.

[recordfairs]

If you look online, there are some good eBay store designers around, from a few hundred dollars to a lot more. They will make your listings look more professional, but the the price you need to consider to get them to do it too, or you can get a cheap template off QS and use that in Turbolister to upload onto eBay

[robshelp]

Hi musicliquidator,

Here is the page where eBay lists the costs associated with owning an eBay Store on eBay AU:

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/sell/storefees.html

I couldn't find a direct comparison table so I believe you'll need to figure it out yourself in relation to non-store fees here:

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/sell/fees.html

Fees aside, a significant advantage with eBay Store ownership is what eBay refers to as the "listing frame".  Enabling the listing frame left navigation bar will display your store categories alongside each item description in your listings.  You create your own category names and assign your items to them (including items already listed when you start up the store).  Consider carefully how you name your categories keeping in mind the goal is entice visits from your item listings (more about that below).

Bear in mind also there is little advantage to owning a store in terms of gaining exposure through eBay searches.  Shoppers will need to go out of their way to search for "stores".  The main trust of shopping on eBay is for items and items in stores are not given any preference in the search results.  The bulk of your efforts remain best directed to improving each individual item listing's placement in eBay item search results.  Second priority is to do all you can to convert the visits to your items into sales with well constructed item descriptions. Third priority is to gain visits to your store from your item listings -- your item listings are the actual front door to your eBay store.  Customizing a storefront is down toward the bottom of the priority list in effectiveness to improve sales.

Hope this helps,

Rob

[phorum_junkie*]

You can't do much better than to use rob's site, I have been using his free template builder for many years now and used in conjunction with his hosting site, EAPH.com, (a very small monthly charge) and Turbo Lister you have no need to pay hundreds of dollars for a store front.

Once you have your store up and running and you are selling enough to make it worthwhile you could use a custom store front instead of what is available through ebay but it is not something you should be spending money on until you know it is going to be cost effective.

[putney32]

just make sure you set up your Store from the ID you already have on ebay with the most listings.   If you open a Store with a NEW ID then you cannot 'import' your existing ebay items to it, they stay with the ID that is currently offering them.

[syrupsmummy]

You started to sell here in December last year and you are a new seller if this one is your only ID. You might get selling limit even though you open a store. You might want to check it with eBay before deciding. I read many threads here complaining about selling limit after opening a store.

If you list one item in multiple quantity of 10 it still count you listed 10 items.

[pin-jo1]

The cost of a website mostly depends on the amount of time required to build it. To give an estimate of costs for a website, your web designer needs to collect as much information as possible so they can estimate the time required to build the site.

You should know you are not forced to hire a web designer to get your website published. Nowadays it is easy to set up a store with easy site builders provided by web hosting companies (WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get). There are many web hosts offering such easy tools. If you compare best web hosting sites reviews you will find hostgator, Godaddy, Bluehost, and Yahoo Small Business are the most recommended companies. Especially Yahoo is a great choice because they offer cheap web hosting, email hosting & domain registration services and let you pay monthly your billing. They even have made creating a website easier with offering various templates for any type of store.

To get more info about the prices and services offered by Yahoo Small Business refer to:

https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting

After all, according to my personal experience, selling via ebay is easer than your own website. Marketing and getting traffic for your website will be a big challenge.