Benefits of running a shop on Ebay

[franceconsol_0]

Hi,

Over the past year I have been selling on some of my own personal vintage items on Ebay, and am now looking to establish an online business.  Am exploring the various platforms, and am on here asking experienced business sellers for their honest opinions, pros and cons, top tips of setting up a shop on Ebay.  Any advice would be welcome...

Many thanks in advance!

[santlache_sales]

You'd be bucking the trend by registering as a business, when you can get free listings and no fees as a private seller.

As you will read on here, many have now come to the conclusion eBay is broken, and having been here for over 22 years with a promoted shop, it has now become a waste of money as eBay give you no promotion whatsoever, unless you pay them even more on their already extortionate fees.

At the end of the month I will be downgrading my shop, as that is what this platform is now, a downgraded site and a mere shadow of what it was when I first came here, unrecognisable even and not in any way for the better.

Good luck with your business venture, but I really don't think eBay is the place to be starting at anymore.

[the-nutwood-collection]

A shop costs £27.00 +VAT (£32.40).  For this, you get 250 fixed price listings and 100 Auction listings.  A non-shop listing costs 30p, so multiply the number of items you plan to list by 30p and see whether the cost exceeds £32.40.

With a shop, you get promotional tools like sale and markdown, coupons and a couple of other things.  If you need these, then open a shop. You can see the full panoply of the 'benefits' a shop offers at https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/fees-business-sellers?id=4809&st=3&pos=3&q...

Otherwise, as @santlache_sales says, it's a waste of money.  Buyers can always click 'See Seller's Items' to see all that you have to offer.  

I closed my shop a couple of years ago as I couldn't see that it was any benefit whatsoever.  As far as I know, you don't get stats about how many buyers visited your shop, so you've no idea whether anyone ever looks at it.   In my case, I suspect the answer was 'none'.

The only other benefit of a shop is if you are selling hundreds of disparate items - e.g. cookware, dog collars, stationery -  then you can organise them into categories.  Same applies if you have hundreds of vintage items, then you can categorise them as blouse, dress, coat etc.

Also, check out the business seller fees.  If you've previously been a private seller, you're in for a shock.

[cobwebcottage]

You will have a better chance at selling your higher cost items by registering as a business seller. By law, you will have to offer a minimum of 14 days return which will give your buyers more confidence to purchase from you. ( I very rarely get requests to return items).

If you are going to go down the buy to sell route, then you should register correctly. It will give you peace of mind by trading legally and may motivate you to grow your business.

Good luck.

[the_book_seekers]

It's not an easy time to be starting a business on ebay.  There's a lot to consider. If you read these boards a lot of experienced business sellers are struggling at the moment as its been a really tough couple of years. The economic problems together with ebay issues have made conditions difficult. There are a lot of sellers who should be registered as businesses but aren't and are making use of the fee free selling. This isn't legal , but ebay for reasons of their own aren't enforcing their own rules on this. A few have had to upgrade their status but business sellers being under cut by these traders is a major problem.  ebay has made statements that it will 'level up the playing field' to make it fairer to business sellers and has today announced the buyer's protection fee which only applies to private sellers and the use of a number of discount tools will only be made available to business sellers in the near future. There will be suggestions to trade on a private account, not least from some ebay staff, but this is illegal and breaks UK consumer laws.  

[ojewellery]

For many items eBay is a good platform to sell - I started selling anything not bolted down and having successfully sold my own jewellery moved into buying jewellery to sell, focused in on a niche brand and then have pivoted again to sell my own designs.  My year on year sales on eBay are up.  Profit is up not quite as much as sales as overheads have increased.

Lots of platforms have pluses and minuses and each one is very different.  For me eBay is the community platform - its a great place to start a business and learn the ropes.  Whilst sanctions can happen when things go wrong with an account generally eBay do use a warning system (take warnings seriously - the forums will always help if you ask) and you get a chance to turn things around.  On other platforms there can be a far stronger non negotiable action and your business can disappear overnight.  The platform does appear to be taking a stronger approach to trust and communication for buyers and sellers with new initiatives like seller clinics where you can book a 1:1 support session and now 24/7 support for buyers - something that isn't available elsewhere.

eBay have various free programmes to help sellers navigate different business stages.  At your stage Start Up Scale Up could be very beneficial: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/grow-your-sales/start-up-scale-up

It offers typically weekly calls from eBay and helps you focus on the key tasks to get set up correctly.

My middle son has just set up a business on Vinted and now on eBay.  He has found Vinted a bit of a nightmare to navigate and spends a lot of time on forums and watching YouTubes trying to work things out.  eBay he's doing start up scale up and says its much more like a proper business.  He gets his money (proving to be a nightmare on Vinted), customers cancel less and he can find answers to issues.

I am multiplatform, I do have a thing about not having all eggs in one basket because things can go wrong anywhere.  My word of caution on this is to do as you imply you intend.  Choose a platform, get it up and running then look at your next location, albeit virtual.  Better to do one well than two not very well and feel pulled in different directions.  The biggest thing is to start and begin the learning journey.  You can't get all the answers before you begin and the initial outlay to set up can be pretty low so risk is quite low.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I forgot how negative the forums are.....

To be truthful, there is never a good time to start a business.

However, if you are willing to do so and have the drive and energy to do it, then now is always a good time!

I'm not entirely sure if you mean to open an actual Ebay shop, or just to trade as a business?

If you mean a shop, then it will depend very much on the number of listings that you are going to have, as to whether or not a shop is actually worthwhile.

It's a fairly easy calculation to make, just go look at the fees.

But if you mean to trade, then legally, you need to be using a business account.  

You need to consider whether or not you are going be a sole trader, partnership, ltd company.  If your not sure about this, then I would strongly suggest that you speak to an accountant.

Ebay can and does work, there are some issues, but no matter where you go there will be issues of one kind or another.

One thing that I would advise that you do, is not only sell on Ebay.  There are plenty of other sites out there that you can expand to and it means that your not putting all your eggs into the one basket.

Understand the fee structure properly!

Make sure you have some sort of accounts setup.  A spreadsheet works, but there are free accounts packages out there as well.

Regardless of what you may have read on here, advertising is NOT a necessity.

The trick is to be adding items regularly.

[5216elisabeth]

They do show stats for your shop now - visits at least, perhaps it's a new feature.

[santlache_sales]

By law, you will have to offer a minimum of 14 days return which will give your buyers more confidence to purchase from you.

You can offer 14 days return on a Private account.

[cobwebcottage]

Well I know that. They are asking about a business account. 

It is optional on a private account but not on a business account which was what I was saying.

We both know this so not sure what the need is to clarify it to each other.

[the-nutwood-collection]

They do show stats for your shop now - visits at least, perhaps it's a new feature.

Maybe it's new, or maybe I missed it.  I've never had much faith in eBay's statistics, so I've never paid close attention to them.  The only thing I liked was a bar graph that showed sales for the category where most of your sales were made, and the same graph for your sales.  You could see whether, up or down, you were in line with the category as a whole.

However, that disappeared years ago.  My guess is that it showed sales for the category dropping and dropping so, instead of addressing the problem, eBay got rid of the graph.

Reminded me of an incident some years ago when, on a flight crossing the Pyrenees, the engines started to make an strange noise.  The passengers, mainly business travellers, started to take notice.    The attendant, seeing this, went though to the flight deck, came back, and turned the music on very loud so we couldn't hear the engines.  Problem solved.

[franceconsol_0]

Thank you for your response.

From reading through some of the other threads, it does seem that many businesses feel as you do, what a shame.  Ebay has always been my "go to" for preloved online shopping, I'm gathering it is a different experience as a seller...

[franceconsol_0]

Thank you for replying.

Your points about private v business sellers/accounts are really interesting and helpful...

[franceconsol_0]

Thank you! 

Your point about customer confidence is one of the reasons for wanting to set up a "shop"/business account (is that the same thing?).  I feel that both customer confidence and seller credibility would be affected if I were to sell niche, high priced pieces alongside unwanted items from my own home/wardrobe so perhaps set up two sellers accounts, one shop, one private.  I always look at sellers other items...

[franceconsol_0]

Thank you for the information, it's really helpful.

"A non-shop listing costs 30p, so multiply the number of items you plan to list by 30p and see whether the cost exceeds £32.40." 

Is this 30p per listing as a registered business seller, as opposed to an actual shop?  I will check out the link so I don't have to ask any further stupid questions...

[franceconsol_0]

Thank you for taking the time to make such a helpful and encouraging response!  Lots of great tips here...

[santlache_sales]

Three weekends now in a row, Friday to Monday with not a single sale and with a Featured eBay Shop.

There is no 'Featured' bit about it anymore and that went west several years ago. So I have come to the conclusion I am paying eBay £92 a month for a shop for nothing, it is all take from eBay now and they give nothing back.

This used to be such a great platform yet over the last 10-15 years they have effectively ruined it, seller and buyer trust is at an all time low and it is all down to eBay's bonkers policies.

[franceconsol_0]

Thanks so much for this.  You have cleared up my confusion around trading as a business and Ebay shop.  Lots to look into...

[spence0175]

When I first started on here as a business roughly 14 years ago, it was “the” place to sell. There were lots of incentives to becoming a business seller. But so much has changed over the years.

I would think very carefully.

There are not many incentives. I along with so many businesses can no longer sell into EU or NI or rather it’s more difficult. As a private seller you still can.

A basic shop costs £30+ a month for 350 mixed listings. A private gets 300 for free..

It just depends how big you think you can go.

As you have read on the boards, great sellers with large shops are struggling to sell.

I hate being so negative as IRL I’m not but at the moment on here I don’t have anything really to sing about

[hobbit66]

Business fees are way too high here. Ebid is good 0 to 2% fees plus buyers will pay a paypal fee. Just needs more people to discover the site and then they'll become great competition !