the pros and cons of an ebay shop

COOLTRIKERCHICK

I have 2 accounts on ebay, one private, and now a business one.

I used to have an ebay shop many moons ago when it was only £6.99 a month... but now its go up to £15.99? a month, i was just wondering if there were any actual benefits to a shop?

I do a mixture of auctions and BIN on the business acount.

Crowqueen

You can look at it one of two ways.

- if you have more than a certain number of BINs, then what you save on the listing fees (which get halved with a basic shop IIRC) you will be able to break even on the shop fee just from that.

- if you sell a few very expensive items per month then you will cover the shop fees in short order, but this has to be a regular thing, I guess.

The shop gives you a lot of tools to work with, not just cheap listings - advertising space, space for your own logo, custom categories, a search box on all listings, including auctions, and so on. It gives you access to Selling Manager for free (though if you quit having a shop, you have to cancel that separately otherwise you pay £3 pm). It is a very good idea if you have, say, a bookshop which you can break down into specific categories, sell e.g. stamps or postcards which have an infinite variety of categorisation potential and so on. However, if you just sell miscellaneous bric-a-brac on auctions, it might not be a worthwhile expense.

I suppose you look at it like you look at any other business expense - if you can pay for £15.99 pm fees, then go for it. If you can't justify it, then give it a miss.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Thanks Crowgreen,

I am selling job lots/wholesale...

what are the fees for listing with a shop? and the final figure fees?

chemical.galaxy

10p for a good till cancelled/30 day listing in a basic shop - for business sellers (20p for private sellers)
FVF depends on your category of items

soolin

On the ebay community boards they say that you need 50 unique bIN items uploaded every month to break even. That doesn't allow for the other benefits as mentioned by Crowqueen.

If you do an ebay search in the rubbish 'help' system for shop, there are some useful pages about fees and such like. I know as I was considering opening one myself, but after thought i don't think my sort of stock really justifies it as I tend to have as many auctions as I do BINs.

sequence

It doesn't seem worth it for most sellers.

moneypooh

My work has an Ebay shop and I manage it. It's brilliant and certainly worth it for the convenience and tools. We currently have 117 items in the shop. Having things in categories etc.. really helps sales as people can buy associated items.
It's also been a great help when getting phone enquiries for small quantities as we email customers the shop link and it's all there for them.
We have seen our ebay sales increase month on month, so working well for us, and certainly worth the cost.