Dain, NGD, and anybody else with a store, what are the pros and cons of opening an Ebay store. I'm considering doing it. Any suggestion? I would appreciate any feedback.
Well, it's cheap to list a lot of items, but they take a larger percentage of the sale which is why you see items in stores listed for more than they fetch via auction. The cons are pretty much the same as with selling anything on ebay: deadbeat buyers, slow-payers, etc. The biggest con is shipping internationally, but if you don't, you'll greatly reduce your audience. It's difficult to keep up with international orders because a lot of additional work is involved -- you have to fill out a form, manual print a shipping label, physically wait in line at the PO, etc., whereas with domestic shipping, you don't have to set foot in the PO if you don't want to. The other con is cleaning and testing each game -- if you don't, you will get negative feedback (a lot). Look at discountgames and dkoldies -- I don't think they test or clean their games and they get hundreds of negatives. I've had 1 in 5 years because I clean and test mine, though I did miss one this month and sure enough I got a negative (the guy even called me a jerk, LOL).
It can be a very good way to subsidize your collecting. In the last few months, I've been able to use the store money to fund a real NWC, a Myriad, and several other games I would never have paid full price for.
Yeah, it amazes me sometimes. That's another con of having a store: you have to deal with lots of dipshits at times. I used to put Best Offers on anything over $10. I stopped doing that because it became a real headache. An example: a guy BINs 5 $1-2 games, then puts in a Best Offer on a $40 game for $10 thinking that buying a handful of super cheap games that I'm going to give away a rare title. You counter-offer (or decline), then the buyer says he doesn't want the other games (assuming because I wouldn't take his lowball offer). I've had that happen 3 times in the last few months, so I said to heck with it.
Also, I don't use the "Good 'Til Cancelled" option anymore either (I use 30 days). If an item doesn't sell in 30 days, I look at why: how cheap are the comparable items in other stores? I then adjust the price and relist it. Prices fluctuate so much that I've found it's the only way I can reliably stay on top of it.
I just opened my store last week, so I am still learning a lot myself. Thr pros for sure is that stuff fetches higher prices and can set for 30 days at a time. It is MUCH cheaper to list stuff and the auto renew (good til canceled) saves a lot of time and headaches. Most listing cost .05 each, and then another .01 for gallery. Nearly everything in my store costed .06, and the most expensive thing costed me like .60 a month to list.
The higher ending value fees is a big con, but ebay fees eat you alive anyways. International shipping is really needed for stores, but I somewhat combat that by charging higher shipping fees abroad, it is a lot more work to ship internationally everyday. Once in a while isn't bad to forums members, but everyday gets old fast. With a store you really need to have a bunch of stuff listed or it isn't cost effective to have a store, so when you first open no only do you have to set it up to make it look decent, and make a logo of somesort you have to get a bunch of auctions listed fast to draw in attention. The more people see your name in searches the more likely they are to see your shipping discounts and buy several items.
15.95 a month flat fee whether you sale an item or not. But the cheap listings make up for that in no time. The 275 listings I have right now would have costed me well over 100 bucks, prob more than that.
You don't think? I think if Google played it's cards right by introducing a better feedback system, lower listing/final value fees, and a faster search listing, eBay could be in some trouble. Maybe not at launch, but slowly they would eat away at the market share.
I sooo hope Google does this, it looks like it is in the works too since they have set up googlepay to compete with paypal. I don't think it would effect ebay at all for the first year or 2, but after that ebay would have to restructure to compete I think.
I haven't used it at all myself. In fact I saw my first site using it exclusively 2 days ago when I was looking at buying bubble mailers. I am sure they have a fees chart on the site somewhere. Post a link if you look or find it.
They're waiving all fees until 2008 and then charge 2% + $.20 (instead of PayPal's 2.9% and $.30). PayPal should be very afraid! In fact, ebay has banned Google Checkout from their listings. How crappy is that?
If Google ever starts an auction site, I would remove every single listing from eBay and move all of my business to Google. And I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'm tired of eBay raising fees, making dumb policies, not making sense, and offering the worst customer service ever. Anything Google does usually sticks, I think they're the ONLY company that can give eBay some ACTUAL competition at this point.
Comments
It can be a very good way to subsidize your collecting. In the last few months, I've been able to use the store money to fund a real NWC, a Myriad, and several other games I would never have paid full price for.
-Dain
Also, I don't use the "Good 'Til Cancelled" option anymore either (I use 30 days). If an item doesn't sell in 30 days, I look at why: how cheap are the comparable items in other stores? I then adjust the price and relist it. Prices fluctuate so much that I've found it's the only way I can reliably stay on top of it.
-Dain
The higher ending value fees is a big con, but ebay fees eat you alive anyways. International shipping is really needed for stores, but I somewhat combat that by charging higher shipping fees abroad, it is a lot more work to ship internationally everyday. Once in a while isn't bad to forums members, but everyday gets old fast. With a store you really need to have a bunch of stuff listed or it isn't cost effective to have a store, so when you first open no only do you have to set it up to make it look decent, and make a logo of somesort you have to get a bunch of auctions listed fast to draw in attention. The more people see your name in searches the more likely they are to see your shipping discounts and buy several items.
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