Any advice for a new eBay store seller?

Hey guys,

I was just wondering if you guys had any helpful advice about starting/maintaining/using an eBay store?

I've sold a lot of my "better" cards, and now just have alot of $3-$5 cards and other collectible items that I think would do better in a store than at auction. I use low shipping fees so I'm hoping to get customers to buy alot of items all at once. Some questions I have:

It looks like the fees are way down from the last time I checked. Is this really the case or just a good deal to start with lots of "hidden" fees or add-ons coming later?

Do sellers usually have a typical customer buying 3+ items at a time or is more just 1 at a time kind of sales?

Is there any problems doing auction sales even though you have a store set up?

Any help would be appreciated and Thanks!

I often have people buy multiple things at once. No problems with auctions. My one piece of advice though: keep inventory FRESH! Can't stress that enough. You need have new stuff in there every couple of weeks to keep people coming in.

Make sure you set up tour store categories. The categories show up on the left side of each of your listings. Check out one of your listings and check it out. It seems like a small detail but it'll get you alot more views for your other items. You can also customize the theme and lay out of your store page.

Sweetness said:

Make sure you set up tour store categories. The categories show up on the left side of each of your listings. Check out one of your listings and check it out. It seems like a small detail but it'll get you alot more views for your other items. You can also customize the theme and lay out of your store page.

Click to expand...

This is huge for me as I have two categories for each card, by year or by team. For multi-player cards I will use the teams for each category. I get a good amount of team collectors and all they have to do is click on the team name category and everything is there for them.

I'd say about a third to a half of my customers are only buying single cards, with the other half or so buying multiples from 2-3 cards up to 40+ in one shot. No hidden fees, but the nickle per listing is for each month and the nickles can add up from month to month.

Good luck with the endevour, I question my sanity sometimes with it sometimes. You start out doing what you want to do, move lesser prices cards that might fare better in a store format than auctions, but then you keep refreshing the inventory. I have more cards now and more of a variety than I've had in a long time from all of the lots I pick up to break down into singles, it's fun. New inventory and mixing in some auctions can really drive sales, I put up about a dozen cards this week for auction and added 450 cards to my store last night, I can't remember the last time I've sold this many cards, I just dropped off 15 packages at the post office and will probably have another dozen tomorrow.

Evening bump.

And thanks for all the help so far!

brumbach said:

Sweetness said:

Make sure you set up tour store categories. The categories show up on the left side of each of your listings. Check out one of your listings and check it out. It seems like a small detail but it'll get you alot more views for your other items. You can also customize the theme and lay out of your store page.

Click to expand...

This is huge for me as I have two categories for each card, by year or by team. For multi-player cards I will use the teams for each category. I get a good amount of team collectors and all they have to do is click on the team name category and everything is there for them.

I'd say about a third to a half of my customers are only buying single cards, with the other half or so buying multiples from 2-3 cards up to 40+ in one shot. No hidden fees, but the nickle per listing is for each month and the nickles can add up from month to month.

Good luck with the endevour, I question my sanity sometimes with it sometimes. You start out doing what you want to do, move lesser prices cards that might fare better in a store format than auctions, but then you keep refreshing the inventory. I have more cards now and more of a variety than I've had in a long time from all of the lots I pick up to break down into singles, it's fun. New inventory and mixing in some auctions can really drive sales, I put up about a dozen cards this week for auction and added 450 cards to my store last night, I can't remember the last time I've sold this many cards, I just dropped off 15 packages at the post office and will probably have another dozen tomorrow.

Click to expand...

I just hit up your Yankees section. Thanks for making it easy!

Anymore weekend advice? bump.

Any more advice?

I think I'm gonna go for it and start listing stuff this weekend...

Any more?

Double shift on Sunday bump!