Why Should I Create A Store?

The big deal you can drive traffic just another ways as only the users search through ebay. For example running a blog.
But the most part - C O M I S S I O N S. Every auction has a huge comission, every item in your shop can be made quick and free....its just a few basics. Consider doing both ....if you are not huge on ebay !

Are you talking about an eBay store or a real eCommerce site?

Having an ebay store just keeps things a little more organized. Having a traditional eCommerce storefront is what separates the casual sellers from the serious ones who are building a real sustainable business.

Better margins
more control of your customer
branding/competition
creating a niche
no shill bidders
Attracting more customers (How many people wont shop on ebay)

You are losing on average 10 - 15% off your profit for every item you sell unless you happen to have very low ebay fees. Do enough volume and it is easy to cover the cost of a full ecommerce shopping cart and have full control of the buyer and shopping experience.

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Although I do advocate doing both, to increase your footprint, I just want to make sure some things are addressed with an eBay store from the previous comments:

Better margins - These are calculated on a product-by-product bases from the market worth. The medium does have a say in how much something is purchased for as well. In addition, there are around 4-5 deductions from the market worth (depending on your source) that determine an estimated profit. 'Better margins' can be a blanket statement that, without product-specific data, could be true, couldn't be true, or could be sixes.

In addition, if your turnover is higher on the medium, then your profit over time variable, even with a reduced margin, is higher.

More control of your customer- This is owner-based, not medium-based, and you have the same controls as you would with your own store. If you sell a product that is faulty, hasn't been delivered, etc, then a chargeback/return can just as easily be placed with a credit card company as Paypal (if that's was is being alluded to.)

Branding/competition- This is done very well on eBay both THROUGH your eBay storefront, your marketing techniques in your shipping, and also through your well-developed brand funnels.

Creating a niche- Part of what I teach is niche research on eBay resulting in the same principles for websites. Good demand with manageable competition - through NICHES, resulting in products. When you create a store, you want to do it niche-specific, and dominate that niche.

No shill bidders- This is pretty much a non-issue on eBay since the mid-ish 2000's. It's very easily detectable on eBay, and both accounts are banned instantly once it's detected. eBay's systems are very good with this, especially after a 2007/2008 lawsuit that exposed their detection system as faulty. It's really been ramped up. Plus, the auction prices, if an items is to be sold as an auction, can be predicted beforehand. This allows you to know if shill bidding takes place anyway, and it allows for your to correctly price (and buy, for that matter) items.

Attracting More Customers (How many people won't shop on eBay) - This one made me raise my eyebrow a little bit. Mainly because eBay has a reputation for being a very safe place to BUY, especially because of all of the protections buyers have. Their security badges, the buyer protections, etc.

In addition, they have been around a long, long time. They have TV commercials, they have spent MILLIONS in advertising, and they have an increased reputation of being a great force of ecommerce. Sure, everyone has heard horror stories, but you also hear about plane crashes. Doesn't mean people don't fly.

However, if you have a website, people tend to be a little less trusting of a brand-new website, with NO staying power, no national recognition, no protections for buyers, etc.

It just seems to me that a national brand would have more people trusting to buy from them then a 1 week old website with little traffic.

With that said, I must add a disclaimer. ALWAYS build an ecommerce store in CONJUNCTION with an eBay store - you can use the sales from eBay as a traffic generator as you can tie your Paypal payments to an auto-responder and get instant, targeted traffic.

I just wanted to clear some things up.

-Auction Debt Eliminator-

Having your own store is good idea to have your own brand

At the end of the day getting traffic that converts is all that matters but all points above have their own merits.

It is a big deal, because you don't have to pay the Ebays fees. I've made a good amount of money on Ebay myself, but I've paid over 1000s in fees. Also depending on what you sell can easily decrease in the market on ebay.

If you make your store, you will need to know it takes dedication to get it working and start making money off it. This means you either get a company to get you started with helping with SEO, backlinks and setup or do it yourself. You will more than likely need to get paid traffic going to your site, I don't mean the bad ones either that get you sandboxed. You need ad campaigns such as adwords and other banner advertising. It's work, but its worth it. With ebay they have a platform already marketed and set to get you traffic. So if you stay with them, you are just paying them to advertise for you and to use their platform. Hope this helped.


Also you will have better control with coupons and much more with your store, they have some really good free eCommerce store platforms. Prestashop, tomato cart and more.

Here's what's wrong with that 'fees' argument, though.

It goes into the 'opportunity cost'.

I've never complained about fees on eBay, because eBay CAN charge those fees. They've done a lot of legwork doing marketing for you. They've been around since the mid-nineties spending millions of dollars on marketing, building a website, and getting their name out there FOR you.

They are essentially leveraging their name so you don't have to.

They charge those fees so that they can bring millions of people to YOU so that you can essentially bring your traffic to that highly trafficked corner of the mall. (That's why malls charge rent/leases - they already have the traffic!)

With your own website, sure, you don't have to pay the fees, but you sure are paying opportunity cost in driving all of that traffic to your site. How much time do you suppose it will take you to have the same traffic, exposure, branding, sales?

How much will it cost you in opportunity cost? Probably more than 'thousands' in eBay fees.

Plus, you can use ALL of those sales you did make on eBay for re-targeting on your website through list building for easy traffic.

Done.

You should open as many channels to sell your product as possible. If you are selling on eBay, take what you learn and sell on your own site, and check out selling on Amazon, Etsy etc.

what store building software do people recommend..? Hosted stuff like magento or stuff like downloadable script..?

I had an ebay store built about 6 months ago. It cost me £700 and I think it looks OK

audio CDs, vitimins supplements items in self hypnosis hypnotherapy store on eBay!

Now the bad news My sales have dropped by 30% ever since. It could be coincidence but I'm not so sure.

Here's the "advantage" to selling on places like Ebay or Amazon, you can build up a base of customers efficiently, while including your url on the shipping package, packing list, and any followup emails.

That's pretty much where it ends, I've found.

By selling on Ebay and Amazon, you accept the risks such as; below-cost sales (Ebay), competition from the site itself (Amazon), and an ever-changing price (Amazon, when you're still trying to compete with other small sellers).

Owning and running an ecommerce site gives you a bunch of advantages, as mentioned above. The downside is that it can take much longer to build up a customer base. If I were to do it all over again, I wouldn't have sold everything on Amazon, instead just selling a few things, or I simply wouldn't have sold anything on Amazon.

*I should mention that when Amazon saw that there were a lot of sales of certain types of my products, they would suddenly jump in and sell it themselves, then find a reason why I could no longer sell that item anymore on Amazon.

IMHO not only ebay/real online shop fees are important. It really depends what you are selling. Used things, cheap electronics - stay on ebay and try to fight with many competitors. Ebay store will not help you to become more valuable seller.
If you selling something unique - get out from ebay, buy your own domain ( choose a good one of course ) and start with your brand/e-shop as an owner.

Thank you TriTrain for your comments.

However, I'm still trying to figure out what 'upfront fees' you're getting at with eBay.

It doesn't cost anything to sign up, it doesn't cost you anything until an item sells, and you do have an option to get capital without 'acquiring inventory'.

However, when you build a site, you have to register a domain, buy plugins (for the good ones) host the domain, and for initial marketing and data collection on traffic (to get a good idea on how your site behaves) you pay for your initial targeted traffic testing. (PPC)

Those are upfront costs I can see.

I'm still trying to see what upfront costs eBay has. If you can show me one, I'll be more than happy to admit my mistake - but I can definitely build a business on eBay WITHOUT going out-of-pocket, especially since I can liquidate items from my home to get some quick cash.

You can't build a site around a 'Nintendo 360' and do the same thing, and be practical.

Insertion fees are free UNLESS:


Basic Store: Insertion fees are free for your first 150 listings per calendar month.
Premium Store: Insertion fees are free for your first 500 listings per calendar month.
Anchor Store: Insertion fees are free for your first 2,500 listings per calendar month.
All other sellers:
Insertion fees are free for your first 50 listings per calendar month

So, you really have to go above and beyond to be charged an insertion fee - the 'all additional listings over 50', but even if you did, you're probably doing well enough to have those covered. But even if you had 50 listings, you BETTER be subscribing to a store because your insertion fees would be over your subscription fee, which would make your insertion fees way less.


And at that time, your amount of listings would be so much that, again, you'd be more than covered - and it's not 'upfront', it's still optional if you're already making sales.


Also - you would be very wise to NEVER have a listing upgrade. They do NOTHING for a listing, and you should never use them. It's just something eBay has to make some extra money for themselves.