Question for sellers that have a basic store

[beallieblue-oz]

Hi, I have been doing a bit of thought about opening a basic store,

as half my stock is unlisted waiting on the extra freebies.

I have read up on the FVF from 9.9 to only 8%. Which will save a few cents.

Another option is I have to leave for  a few days and the odd weeks holiday during the year,

I know you can put yourself on holidays, as I have had stores in the old days.

Which would save a lot of stress and taking items off.

Okay do you find you sell more with a store now days

When stores get free extra  listing are they for 30days.

I only have handmade items on this ID, but can add extra bits and pieces

From another. 

Any hints would be appreciated,  as its been 5yrs aprox since I have had a store.

Thank you Pam

[Anonymous]

i find that i sell no more now than i did when i didnt have a store but i list a hell of alot more than i did then too

yes its great that i can list alot more items. Has that translated to more sales? sadly not. In fact my second most productive month on ebay last year was the month BEFORE i opened a basic store, and i would have had 1/4 of the listings i do now.

Yes we get more decent free listings offers.. 10,000 and even 100,000 freebies (fixed price) for which i use maybe 200

Yes its great you can put your store on holidays and still leave listings active (stopping buyers for a week was very handy when i went away)

Yes all listings are up to 30 days which i also love... so there are alot of real advantages to opening a store, but sadly increased sales isnt one of them (for me anyway)

[putney32]

you will need to do the maths,  you will be making very little on your items, at say $4 +$2 postage after ebay fvf and  Paypal fees now,

so can you get an advantage by adding  $20 a month store fee and paying lower fvf and longer 30 day /more free listings

[beallieblue-oz]

Thank you, you have answered most of what I need to know.  

Hope your business picks up.

I am only a hobby seller, as we small sellers say, and don't intend to try to have a business, been there, done that.

now time to relax.

just figured out how not to have a big blank space at the bottom.

[clarry100]

Not sure if/not you are aware that when you have a store only your But-It-Now (BIN) listings are free. 200 per month for a basic store.

Your auction listings you have to pay $1.50 each for (category etc dependent) unless ebay hand out the occasional freebie.

You will lose the 40 free auction listings that you have been used to each month.

[beallieblue-oz]

yes the FVF etc is something to think about, I use mailing flat boxes, so the postage is darer, rather than chucking them into a  envelope.

and they are too fat for a 70c mailing. But I know they arrive safely without being squashed.

As for the price, there is a lot of other sellers doing my craft as well, so have to keep prices minimal. 

So have had a little think, and if i can sell some other items , and use that profit for the store fee. Maybe it could work.

Then I wouldn't have to worry about holidays etc. I'll have until next week to think more, and see if there are more hints out there,

as I am going away. Thank you for your imput.

[beallieblue-oz]

Hi Clarry,Yes I am aware its only BIN, I don't have any auctions on this ID.
Thanks, no way would I pay them 1.50 for an auction.

[clarry100]

Yes we have 5x selling IDs.

Three of them are basic stores and two are non-stores.

This way we can take advantage of the 200x BINs on each of the store IDs.

Plus 40x free auctions on each of the non-store IDs.

And if they hand out freebies to either stores or non-stores we can catch them either way.

We cannot recover the lost $1.50 auction listing fee when only about 10-15% result in a paid sale. So we simply can't afford to pay that.

Works for us!

Sales have been down about 50% since Xmas tho.

[englishrosegardens]

If you're listing in Crafts, they come under Collectibles (for some reason known only to ebay), so you'll be paying 9.5% final value fees, not 8%. 

You'll be able to have free auctions as part of the 200 free listings if you're listing under crafts/collectibles, and probably with the extra listings that we get about every four weeks.  I don't do auctions so I'm not sure about that side of it.

[englishrosegardens]

One advantage of having 30 day listings is that people watching your items don't have to renew them every 7 or 10 days when your listing is renewed. They still have to do them every 30 days, unless you have them on GTC (good till cancelled). You pay every month with GTC, unless you've got less than 200 listings.

If you have similar items you could think about using multi variant listings to save on listings.