Should You Start an eBay Store
You may be wondering if you should start an eBay store. I opened my eBay store in 2018. It was time. It was one of the best decisions that I made. I was making a couple of hundred bucks each month without the store, but for my business to grow, I knew that I had to open an eBay store. In today’s post, I share with you 7 reasons why you should start an eBay store.
Higher Selling Limits
eBay gives all of its sellers 50 free listings each month. When I first started selling, that was fine, but as I started to list more items it wasn’t enough. Sometimes eBay gives some of their seller’s bonus listings. Some months I’d get emails saying that I had an extra 50 or 100. The catch was that I had to use them by a certain date. If I didn’t, they’d expire. The messed up thing is that you don’t know if eBay was going to send you an email like that each month. Sometimes they did and other times they didn’t. I also read in some eBay Facebook groups that everyone didn’t always get the extra listings.
For a few months, I received e-mails saying that I got the extra free listings. In early 2018, I went about six or seven weeks without getting one of those promos. At that point, I was used to having 80 – 90 items listed. I could either pay the $0.30 per item listing fee (since I was already at my monthly limit of 50) or I could open an eBay store. I was doing well with eBay and I wanted to continue to do so, so I opened the store. Instead of just having 50 free listings per month, I now have 250 buy it now listings and 250 auction listings on certain items. That’s more than enough for me right now.
Need help with eBay, check out my webinar, eBay for Starters
Discounts on Fees
If you start an eBay store, I want you to know that it isn’t free. I pay $21.95 per month. It’s worth it. Having an eBay store gives the sellers discounts on some of the fees. I have a basic store. If I listed more than 250 buy it now listings, it would cost me $0.25 instead of the normal $0.30 to list. The listing discount is even greater if you have a premium, anchor, or an enterprise store.
eBay charges a final value fee for every item that you sell. The fees vary depending on the category of the item. In most cases, the fees will be around 10%.
Vacation Mode
A cool thing about having a store is being able to put it in vacation mode. Vacation mode is a setting that you can change your store to if you go out of town. It’s clutch because you don’t have to go through each listing individually and end them or extend the shipping time. You can leave a custom message for buyers to see if they go to your store. You can even put a date on there to let them know when you will be coming back to town. Below is a screenshot of how vacation mode looks on your store and on a listing.
You can see the message at the top letting people know that I’m on vacation. You can customize that to say whatever you want it to.
The message on the image above lets people know that if they but the item, there may be a delay in processing the order. This feature is clutch.
Share the Store
From time to time people may ask you what you sell in your eBay store. Instead of sharing individual item links, you can share your eBay store link. That will save you so much time when it comes to sharing your stuff. If you have a blog as I do, you can email your audience the link from time to time. You can also promote your store link on social media as well. Here’s the link to my store Atlanta Mart.
Discount on eBay Supplies
As I stated earlier, I pay $21.95 each month for my eBay store. It’s definitely worth it. Every quarter, eBay sends its sellers who have stores a $25 coupon. That coupon can only be used for eBay related shipping supplies. They have all types of things that you can get such as tape, mailers, and boxes. Below are some of the things that I’ve ordered.
Pretty cool isn’t it? eBay is not playing when it comes to their supplies. This is another good reason why you should start an eBay store. They are doing great with branding and making sure that the name is being seen.
Featured Items
Having an eBay store should help to get your items more exposure. There is a setting that will allow you to feature certain items in your store. Featured items are items that will show up at the top of your store page. You can update your featured items by going to your seller’s dashboard.
Need help with eBay, check out my webinar, eBay for Starters
Promo Features
With an eBay store, you can run promos for your items. This is a feature that comes in handy if you have some things that you’ve been trying to sell for a while. Also, it would be smart to run some promos during the holiday season to help boost your sales. You can create coupons as well as give shipping discounts.
I opened my eBay store after I had been selling for a while. I’m glad I finally did it. My eBay income has been steadily growing. In May I had my highest amount in sales with that being over $1500. The crazy thing is that I feel like I’m just getting started. I’m currently at 178 items in my store. My goal is to have between 275-300 in there consistently.
Are you looking for a side hustle that will allow you to make over $400 in your spare time each month? Have you considered selling on eBay? If so, you should check out my course, How to Make Money in Your Spare Time With eBay. The course features six modules that are full of tips and tricks on how to make some extra income with eBay. The course has a couple of videos and PDF’s. Check it out to get more information
More eBay related posts
30 Interesting Things Sold on eBay
14 Changes to Make When Your eBay Items Aren’t Selling
The Beginners Guide to Selling on eBay
]
Vacation mode sounds like a game-changer. The most difficult thing with side hustles, I’ve realized, is trying to plan out and deal with vacation time. With eBay I’m sure it’s really bad because buyers expect things to be shipped immediately.
That’s why vacation mode is so clutch. It lets the buyers know that the items will be shipped a little later. I haven’t had any problems with it.