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rocket trike

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I am thinking about opening a E-bay store and was checking to see if any of you have any input good or bad about the E-bay stores.

Thank you
Tom
 
Well, I have an ebay store, but I'm afraid if I tell you my experiences you might run home and hide:)
 
So do you think the E-bay stores are worth it or should I just keep putting things up for auction?
 
Just my 2 cents....

Ebay stores are okay but there are two things that must be done in order to insure any rate of success. First, make sure you have plenty of items (Not 30 of the same thing either), breaking them down by catagory (Parts, chutes etc.) To give yourself good exposure, you should have at least 70-80 items as a min. Do not use the quantity selection when placing a store item, instead use the "Good till cancelled" option to keep management issues minamized.

Second, you need to get yourself some good auction software to track your success. If you have as many auctions and store items as stated above, it gets pretty dicey trying to keep track of all of those items with just Ebays online info. Take advatage of everything from Ebay that you can read and/or download.

Last tip. Learn the Ebay and PayPal fee schedule until you can recite it in your sleep. You'll be surprised how much money actually goes to these folks. They get paid at least three times during an auction. 1-During the initial listing 2-During the sale of said listing 3-Finally if you use paypal, you'll give up some here as well. This doesn't include monthly fees either. Make sure people only pay once for multiple items otherwise you'll rack up more fees than necessary.

Other tips-
Good pictures
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K.I.S.S.


Good Luck
 
yeah..what he said:)
And be prepared for strange folks to come crawling out of the woodwork. With the industry we're in, people are of a much higher than average "quality" and intelligence, but you still get your occasional looney tune. I could tell you a couple of stories;)
And of course you have people who will buy and never pay, so you're stuck with all those fees and no income from the sale. Forget getting your money back. If you file a non-paying bidder form, that same non-paying bidder will leave you negative feedback. Ebay needs to change the rules to where NPB's can't leave feedback, but they won't because they want that over you're head. If they changed it and sellers started filing NPB forms, Ebay would lose all those fees, so they keep it just like it is so sellers are hesitant to file on a NPB.
Unless you are a mega-seller, Ebay doesn't give a CRAP about you. Period. End of story.
I could keep ranting, but I'll shut up for now. I'm not trying to talk you out of it, just letting you know what you're up against. I wish I could get away from Ebay completely, but I need them right now to drive traffic to my website.
OK, I said I would shut up, so I'll do that now:D
 
Originally posted by rebar_rocketry
yeah..what he said:)
And be prepared for strange folks to come crawling out of the woodwork. I wish I could get away from Ebay completely, but I need them right now to drive traffic to my website.
OK, I said I would shut up, so I'll do that now:D

LOL...that's fro sure. But you'll deal with alot of good folks too.

As far as feedback is concerned, just keep sending those e-mails and keep the lines of communication open. You be suprised what a quick e-mail can do to put out a fire.

really think about the timing of your "active auctions" in terms of time off. Don't overload all you auction items so they end all at the same tome. Spread em out a little.

What Rebar said about driving them to your website is key!! Be careful not to add to many links to your auctions though, or Ebay will send a nasty gram:D
 
Originally posted by flying_silverad
LOL...that's fro sure. But you'll deal with alot of good folks too.

As far as feedback is concerned, just keep sending those e-mails and keep the lines of communication open. You be suprised what a quick e-mail can do to put out a fire.

really think about the timing of your "active auctions" in terms of time off. Don't overload all you auction items so they end all at the same tome. Spread em out a little.

What Rebar said about driving them to your website is key!! Be careful not to add to many links to your auctions though, or Ebay will send a nasty gram:D

Good point on the "good folks". There are plenty of them in our hobby. What I was saying applies mostly to noobs who are new to ebay and don't understand it. I sold a CD to one fella who thought I was supposed to ship it before he paid. He got irate when I tried to explain the process to him. Of course, he never paid. More money lost.
On the links, be sure to not link directly from the auction itself. Mention something along the lines of: "See my About ME page for a link to my website for some great deals" or something like that. Ebay will let you link to your website from your about me page.
 
Hey! I had a store last summer! I'm not sure if eBay still does this, but last summer I was able to open a store for 30 days free! I then closed it the last day though. Check out lego_heaven_store on eBay, that's me!

As for the programs. I highly recommend Seller Assistant (I got that for 30 days free as well) if you're selling lots of items. It allows you to keep your 'My eBay' page very maintainable and organized. It lets you know which buyers have paid, if you have shipped or not, and if you have left or received feedback yet. There's a lot more though that I can't think of.

Last year TurboLister was free, but I think they have started to charge fees, which is ridiculous. It's downloadable from eBay and comes with a few templates for your auctions, Buy it Now, or store listings. It also allows you to save all your items in an convenient folder so that you can relist them at any time!

I now I have a couple more tricks as for pricing auctions and what not, I'll discuss them with you on AIM.

Good luck!
and may the force be with you
 
when ebay charges the seller a fee, when someone uses paypal to pay for a product... that doesn't sound fair to me

I also notice alot of sellers try to make it up in shiping costs
I personaly wont buy an item if the shipping seems too high so...

it sounds like making a good profit is not easy
 
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