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!

[art2own]

Where do they show shop stats? I only have listing views.

[hobbit66]

Sorry I meant sellers pay paypal fees ! hehe

[5216elisabeth]

If you go into Manage My Shop in the left hand side under Shop Set Up there is a link for 'Shop Traffic'.  If you click on that it takes you to a page which shows you how many visits your shop has had and there's a graph too.

[art2own]

Interesting, daily shop views appear to be about a third of total daily listing views.. Thank you.

[the-nutwood-collection]

They're not stupid questions - you're doing good research before you commit.

The cost per listing per month for a business seller is 30p (36p if you're not VAT registered, which I guess you probably aren't).  If you plan to have less than 90 listings, the monthly fee for a shop exceeds the listing cost so the 'free' listings that come with a shop are of no benefit financially.

However, with a shop you get access to promotional tools like Sale and Markdown, Buy [n], Get [n] Free etc.  You can also offer multi-buy - I think this has been stopped for private sellers.

[pillarboxred]

I think a shop on eBay might be a good thing if you have a focus on an item, say, cameras, or antique engravings, so the shop becomes a go-to for a sector of the market and you have deep knowledge of the product. You should proceed prudently using your own experience. EBay has plenty of advice about Selling Safely and you should study it.
Someone posted recently about his ridiculously large stock of whatever, I forget,  and seemed totally clueless. Oh, it was batteries, 10,000 batteries,  something a business acquaintance had talked him into buying and there are problems selling them on eBay (and also don't batteries go flat after a time even if unopened and unused?). His experience seemed to me a textbook case of what not to do. I don't know if he found any useful advice and I couldn't think of anything to tell him. 

Few sellers on eBay earn what is considered a "good salary" by professional employees. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

If I recall correctly, they were lithium 16650 batteries.

Virtually none of the couriers will carry them, which is the biggest single issue.

But they are rechargeable, so though they will have an expiry date, it will be a fair bit longer than standard batteries.  🙂  Used for things such as high powered torches etc.

[crg_music]

I'd say its purely down to the free listings. From the view of a basic shop, if you use more than £30 worth of listings a month every month then its worth it otherwise probably not.