Should your store only be focused on selling specific types of items?

[skeletonstore]

What sort of penalties or confusion are created by having a department store sales channel rather than focusing on a niche market?   I've seen mention of this on this board as well as youtube and other places.  Ebay of course is not a human visiting your site and analyzing it and coming up with an individually tailored selling experience.  It's a robot,  an algorithm that sorta shoves all your listings in food processor and you either wind up with something that blends well or gobbledygook.  Is that how it is?   I find myself using promotions in vain once again.  I'm getting more impressions,  some increase in clicks but no offers or sales.  There's best offers on all my items but no serious offers in 4-5 days.  If you're promoting you can only set the price so low.  I can only imagine the people seeing my items are not my customers at all.  Does selling a few odds and ends with my Halloween/Horror stuff hurt my store?   Naturally I'd like to add more items but have no money for supplies and ebay for example isn't exactly offering any sort of working capital loans, although i'm sure they had no problem getting loans if not grants from the feds over the past few years.  so I know I have too small a store.  I wonder if there's a magical formula?   Certainly if I could I would chef up 500-3000 items, some of which would flood the market in a week on the short end but no longer than 3-6 months on the high end, then I wouldn't worry about algorithms,  I'd have a healthy, vibrant store. Should I just delete the non horror stuff?  Should I add horror titles?  I know the real solution but can't manage it.  I wonder if there's an alternative and or do I need to start changing my titles significantly. Terapeak is hot garbage btw....

[slippinjimmy]

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

It doesn't matter in the least, you can do either.  eBay doesn't care or assess "penalties" either way.  

eBay offers Working Captial loans, as does PP & I forgot who else that I'm constantly getting ads from.  

Terapeak is very useful for me. 

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eBay doesn't care but buyers might. When I find something to buy I may look at a sellers other items to see if they have other similar things I might be interested in. If most of what they sell are similar things I may take the time to look, if they have a lot of listings and they are a mix of all kinds of unrelated stuff I would not bother in most cases.

[pargran3]

That would be a good argument for store categories so that if one is interested in one type of product one could just click on relevant categories.

[reallynicestamps]

In my opinion, we don't have any customers.

EBay has customers.

Have you ever said to someone "Thanks, I bought it from femmefan1946" ?  Or did you say "I got it on eBay"?

If I have to pay $25 a month for a Store, I'm going to put as much in it as possible, to reduce my per item cost for listing.

That's why we have our sub-categories.

I call them Aisles like the supermarket.

I don't bother with the diaper aisle at the supermarket, but I'm always picking up stuff from Dairy.

My customers will ignore the Covers aisle and spend time in Commonwealth if they collect Maldives used.

I have seen a few stores with unusual combinations: motorcycle parts and lingerie, although who know what that biker wears under the leathers?

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

It doesn't matter in the least, you can do either.  eBay doesn't care or assess "penalties" either way.  

eBay offers Working Captial loans, as does PP & I forgot who else that I'm constantly getting ads from.  

Terapeak is very useful for me. 

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eBay doesn't care but buyers might. When I find something to buy I may look at a sellers other items to see if they have other similar things I might be interested in. If most of what they sell are similar things I may take the time to look, if they have a lot of listings and they are a mix of all kinds of unrelated stuff I would not bother in most cases.

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Certainly a valid point to consider.  Keeping in mind that some shoppers are "store shoppers" & others are not.  I myself, never shop stores (even though I have one), I'm totally a KW shopper.  I don't do drill down either.  Everyone shops differently. 

[lepke1979]

I don't think there is really a good answer. It all comes down to what you're comfortable with. Or if you want your store to just be known for X. And not X, Y, and Z.

People like Daily Refinement stress or recommend niche. But you'll see plenty of others that do fine selling everything. The former is more to make things easier or assembly line though. Since if you sell just clothes or shoes for instance, you probably won't need to worry about how am I going to box this up. It's I sold 10 things today and you're done picking and packing in 20 or 30 minutes. Whereas, I've literally spent 30 minutes just trying to find the right box (or two if I have to cut it to make one bigger box) that was just right for something I sold. Not to mention you will hopefully become an expert in such and such niche.

I also recall someone saying eBay kind of likes people that sell in a category a lot. For instance, if you just sold makeup and all of a sudden decided to start selling jeans. eBay won't recommend you as much for jeans. But hard to say how true that is.

The other is in regards to if you have people browse your store. It's not a big issue I think though because it will be organized by category.

As for the loans. I don't really recommend going that route. But id you do, I'd steer clear of the ones eBay and PayPal offer. Haven't looked at them in a while, but I recall the rates being fairly lousy. You'd probably be better off looking into a loan though Discover or AMEX if offered (get offered short term loans by them all the time). I recall them having tiered rates depending on how long you want to pay them off (1-5 years). Can also go the cash advance route, but that will depend on if you can pay them off in less than a year. Can also look to see what your bank offers (personal/business loans). But again, don't recommend doing this since it can get you down a bad cycle of debt if it's not something you can pay off within a year or whatever the term might be.

[slippinjimmy]

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

It doesn't matter in the least, you can do either.  eBay doesn't care or assess "penalties" either way.  

eBay offers Working Captial loans, as does PP & I forgot who else that I'm constantly getting ads from.  

Terapeak is very useful for me. 

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eBay doesn't care but buyers might. When I find something to buy I may look at a sellers other items to see if they have other similar things I might be interested in. If most of what they sell are similar things I may take the time to look, if they have a lot of listings and they are a mix of all kinds of unrelated stuff I would not bother in most cases.

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Certainly a valid point to consider.  Keeping in mind that some shoppers are "store shoppers" & others are not.  I myself, never shop stores (even though I have one), I'm totally a KW shopper.  I don't do drill down either.  Everyone shops differently. 

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Absolutely! Like you I almost never look at a sellers Store, unlike you I almost always use eBay Category / Item Specifics to drill down to relevant results.

[skeletonstore]

That's not true.  My point was criminals which include corporations who made money off of stolen goods also got loans and grants, many of which re secret.  Apparently you didn't read what that up and running grant from hello alice was for.   While it does not disclude anyone from applying,  it will disqualify you based upon their criteria which is extremely narrow.  The latest one is listed as a grant from a scotch whisky company to promote 1 race,  and it's not Scottish.  Some of the other campaigns have been based on other criteria but in all instances they do not include everyone. They don't hide it.  

[lepke1979]

I find myself looking at what else someone might be selling if you get a discount. For instance, I am looking for a Wii game and they have a percentage off or free shipping if you buy 2 or 3 maybe I'll browse to see if they have anything else I might want.

I think this is where being a niche might be beneficial though. If you just sold video games, movies, or clothes or something. You might follow them so you'll get updated if they add something else you might want. But as a whole, the actual store name might be easily forgettable.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@skeletonstore wrote:

That's not true.  My point was criminals which include corporations who made money off of stolen goods also got loans and grants, many of which re secret.  Apparently you didn't read what that up and running grant from hello alice was for.   While it does not disclude anyone from applying,  it will disqualify you based upon their criteria which is extremely narrow.  The latest one is listed as a grant from a scotch whisky company to promote 1 race,  and it's not Scottish.  Some of the other campaigns have been based on other criteria but in all instances they do not include everyone. They don't hide it.  

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I not only read what it was for, I won one, so I'm familiar with the process.  I know other winners as well.  The criteria is WIDE OPEN.   Now, you may be confusing Hello Alice with eBay.  Hello Alice manages MANY different grants, some of which are very narrow in scope.  The eBay Up & Running Grant is NOT narrow in scope & only has the limitations which I posted, very basic, age & residence requirements along with actually being a small business.  That's it.  

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it is NOT the eBay Up & Running Grant.  

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@simply-the-best-for-you    ebay's criteria are what you say, nothing more. Some of the firms that have partnered with Hello Alice have other restrictions, for example, if a company is giving grants only to Veterans or only to women, that will be reflected in their eligibility rules. Door Dash sponsors grants to help independent restaurant owners who have been negatively impacted by natural disasters. The eligibilty rules are straightforward....and aren't limited to women owners, or veterans, or whatever. Same with ebay. 

For the ebay Up and Running grant, it does not matter what the requirements are for other grants, it only matters what they are for the ebay grant.

The Up and Running grants are basically aimed at small businesses on ebay. Period. The OP clearly believes he would benefit from a cash infusion, and frankly he should have applied...there was no good reason not to.

I would certainly recommend it for next year.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@simply-the-best-for-you    ebay's criteria are what you say, nothing more. Some of the firms that have partnered with Hello Alice have other restrictions, for example, if a company is giving grants only to Veterans or only to women, that will be reflected in their eligibility rules. Door Dash sponsors grants to help independent restaurant owners who have been negatively impacted by natural disasters. The eligibilty rules are straightforward....and aren't limited to women owners, or veterans, or whatever. Same with ebay. 

For the ebay Up and Running grant, it does not matter what the requirements are for other grants, it only matters what they are for the ebay grant.

The Up and Running grants are basically aimed at small businesses on ebay. Period. The OP clearly believes he would benefit from a cash infusion, and frankly he should have applied...there was no good reason not to.

I would certainly recommend it for next year.

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Yes, 100% correct.  The only limitation besides basic age/residence restrictions is the requirement that your business meet a VERY wide dollar range of sales.   They even publish the criteria they evaluate with & what weighted percentage, each section gets.  It's all quite transparent.   I would reccomend the OP apply next year, as well.  

[coolections]

99% of all buyers type an item they are looking for and see the results of the item currently listed. No need to have all one type thing as most buyers do not even know or care the other stuff you have listed.

[coolections]

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@skeletonstore wrote:

One such penalty would be ebay getting confused and showing out items to the wrong buyers and ruining our click thru rate which could in tern ruin our sell thru rate.  

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NO. There are no penalties on ebay and what you have listed has nothing to do with buyers. They type the name of the item they want, and they see the results. 

[chapeau-noir]

I've sold all sorts of things under this one ID and have had a store for years.  Right now I'm more of a niche seller because of what I can find to sell. 

When I had a variety on offer, I had both types of buyers - the kind that just bought the item and didn't care about the store, and the kind that shopped my store.  My store shoppers tend to be repeat buyers and often multiples buyers.  In the old Omniture days, I found that about 45% (IIRC) visited my store every one to three days - that's a lot of repeat business.  I'd have someone buy two books, a hat and a DVD.  Or a pair of bike pedals and a skirt.  It was quite surprising how many people purchased a variety of items.

My conclusion is that it doesn't matter, no one will get confused, eBay won't get confused, so just do what works the best for yourself.

[onlinecentral]

I require 98 buyers to sell 100 things.
96 Buyers will buy one or more units from one listing. = 96
1 Buyer will buy one or more units from TWO listings = 2
1 Buyer will buy one or more units from TWO listings = 2
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98 buyers = 100

I suspect that even if buyers browse my other items/store, they rarely need more than the one item from me. I figured that out by downloading a report from Managed Payments and sorting it by buyer ID.

eBay has 30 main categories arranged as a department store.
I have 12 categories arranged as a department store.

More stores require:
a) More signing in and out. Otherwise,
b) Two or more browsers. Otherwise,
c) Two or more computers.
d) Dividing my feedback among the selling IDs. I think 8 is the max # of IDs.

Regarding getting a loan for your business. In month 1 and 2 I was temporarily wealthy. In months 3 through 10 the payments were a burden.

If you look at the Active Listings for a seller and Sold Items for 90 days, you will find most sellers sell 8% or less of their inventory. You need a business model with a faster evaporation rate to make a loan worthwhile.