Has anyone tried having an Ebay shop?

donna73

Hi, I have recently set up an ebay shop to sell my handmade cards. I have had hundreds of hits in the last few weeks but although sales are trickling in , because hits are so high, the amount of sales are disapppointing.

I wondered how anyone else has got on with having an ebay shop.

I dont know what is a normal hits to sales ratio, for selling with ebay shop or internet generally.

wondering whether i would be better off with own website?

Alison_B

Can I ask you what the charges are for having an Ebay shop? Are they similar to listing items individually or is there a discount for having more items listed?

Thanks

windswept

we have had a shop for 6 months, before xmas we were having more shop sales than sales from normal buy it nows, however now we are having far more bin sales due to the way shops have been pushed off the radar by ebay.
listing is cheaper in shops but fvf's are 10%! which is quite a hefty chunk, so you have to weigh up whether your profit margins can support shop fees. we currently have about 30 items in shop inventory ( down from 50) with about 10 things on buy it now in different categories. we will be reducing the shop number even further as they come to an end.
this week has seen a welcome return of customers, we had no sales for 6 weeks in jan/feb so we were starting to panic, but last week was great and we have just sold an item that was only listed at 11pm last night, so things are looking up. if you pm me I will give you details of our ebay shop and our new website, we have put in a link from "about me" on ebay to the site and have had tons of visits (sadly no sales as yet). you can get traffic reports to your shop and we get 100's of visitors but few sales.

mikewebs

Why not keep the ebay shop and set up a website yourself. That way you get tow bites of the apple (Dell and many others do it) so there is certainly a precedent for you. I would be glad that you are getting some business from the ebay shop because you can build on that - repeat business, word of mouth etc (much of that wouldn't need much work on your part - so is realy a money saving idea too). Remember with the rapid growth in interest in craft projects (look at idealhome.tv for proof that this interest is growing) will mean that you have to have a pretty unique product to capture a big enough portion of the market to live on. Why not try going around local sub postoffices and other small busnesses that sell greetings cards and try and sell some on a slae or return basis?

Hope this helps

donna73

Thanks, everyone.
I think the way to go will be to try and set up a website, and have links between that and ebay as you suggest windswept and mikewebs, thank-you!

I'm trying to produce some more niche market cards, eg for falconry, and yoga (because thats what me and OH are into, so have some knowledge and contacts), as well as making more general designs,in order to give myself the best chance.

Dont think it will ever make me rich! but at least i enjoy what i'm doing and can fit it in around the kids and homelife!!!!

ukbill69

Shop fees are a lot cheaper and shows the customer you mean business to.