eBay Starter Store

[ifyouloveit]

What is the consensus on the new eBay starter Store?

I am a regular seller here who was doing vey well until April, when sales just tanked. I used to get lots of extra free listings promotions, now nothing. I am above standard with no issues, no SNAD, no returns, 30 day money back guarantee and free return shipping. eBay says my account is great, no problems, yet they have turned off any free listings and my sales are beyond bad.

Is it the same for other small sellers? I mostly sell collectibles, the bulk of my items are under $15. Does eBay consider me a waste of space or something? I had much more expensive items up, but they have sold and with the current lack of sales, I am not putting up more high end items. I get tons of watchers and pressure to lower my prices or lowball offers on higher priced offers, people are putting them in their shopping carts to get eBay to email me with a lower my price alert. I've lowered the prices and no one buys.

Who has bought the new starter store, what has happened, is it worth it, or why should I NOT do it? I appreciate your answers, many thanks!

[castlemagicmemories]

If your sales will justify the expense of a store, then that may be a good decision for you.

If not...

[ymeagainlord]

If you go with the $7.95 monthly subscription (so you can dump it whenever you like with no penalty) you're basically paying 0.15 for each of the additional 50 listings you get.

If you feel you're probably not going to get any more promo offers and you have more than 22 unlisted items to list then yes, it's worth it.

You do however still pay the non store 10% FVF and lose the free bin with auctions and free scheduling.

[femmefan1946 · Accepted solution]

Stores don't help in placement, nor do they give you any more listings than eBay currently allows you.

Store Listings are not Free, you have to divide the number of listings you make into the monthly fee.

At the moment with 83 listings, you have 50 free and pay $11.55 for the others.

That's 13c per listing.

So a Store with 100 'free' listings would cost you $7.95 and if you only used 83 each would cost you 9.5cents.

If you have enough items to use all 100 listings, each would cost you 7.9 cents.

Stores do allow you to put your items On Vacation if you have to be away, and this can be well worthwhile.

[lonz55]

We received one of those starter store offers and after having an ebay store for many years that we ended due to lack of sales several months ago i thought why would i do that. We just do the 50 listings free every month and have about the same amount of sales we had with 300 listings. My thoughts were i would wait and see how all these changes ebay is making pans out before i jump on any offer.

[ifyouloveit]

Thank you everyone, you answered my question brilliantly. Sales are awful right now and I was wondering if paying for a store would help me in placement, that is the only reason I would even consider it.

I don't have enough money to go on vacation, so that's not an issue. Sounds like a store actually limits some of the things a non store seller can do, and femmefan1946, your conversions on listings is excellent and you helped me tremendously. Many thanks!

I will stay with my non store and see what all these changes continue to do. I've tried everything I can think of to make sales, they just are not there for me. Will hang in there and see how all these changes unfold and if sales start to return.

Here's to more sales for everyone!!

Thank you all so much!

[mattie46]

I, too, have looked into an ebay starter store because I am no longer receiving promotions like in the past.  My sales are also off and it is quite puzzling to me.  The only problem I have with an ebay store is that in order to qualify for the listings they have to be in the collectibles or fashion category.  I do not like that as I also list in  other categories in which I will have to pay a fee. So, why open a store?

I am in agreement with others that I will jut continue with my 50 free listings until I see what the new changes will do to us.

Thanks for all the good information from others. 

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@mattie46 wrote:

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 ...  The only problem I have with an ebay store is that in order to qualify for the listings they have to be in the collectibles or fashion category..... 

The free insertions can be used for fixed price listings in almost any category, and for auction-format listings in 13 categories which eBay at one time used to characterize as "fashion and collectibles."  You can see the full list here:

Fees for Store subscribers: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/storefees.html

[mattie46]

Thank you very much! That makes it a lot clearer. I appreciate your response. I thought it was just for collectibles and fashion but I see that I am incorrect. That makes my decision a little easier.

[misterboots]

Hi all...

I got an enticing offer to open up an eBay store and couldn't resist it... when I sat & figured it out, the extra 50 listings a month is worth it... the only problem is that I haven't sold anything since I opened it...

Does having a store limit how your items are viewed?  Or is eBay just slow... I've been selling for quite a long time now & this is the slowest it has ever been...

Just wondering...

Frank

[uncseniorsportsfan]

I wouldn't open a starter store at this time of year when sales are typically slow for what I sell.  I'll spend th summer revising older listings and combining some into lots.  If I decide to open a starter store it won't be until late August or early September. 

[milrel5]

I agree with you. I was doing good monthly sales using my 50 free ads, got an offer for a free 3 month ebay store and opened a basic store - 250 items for a year).  Thats was on May/17, will begin paying for a basic store on september.  Those 3 free months sales were good (no change), on september/17 sales tanked and never went back to the same level (from 2k to 200 monthly)

After analizing all my data/items/ads, realized that the only change was my status from free to ebay store, I do believe that opening a store will affect the way your ads are displayed.

Checking the diferents stores subcription there is a line that says "Search engine keyword management" (starter store doesnt have it)

I believe that if you dont use the "search optimization engine" your ads will not be displayed right.  I did some test with a specific product and were unable to have it appear in the first 200 items displayed, the best was about in the range of 600 to 700 from aprox 1000 total items.

[femmefan1946]

@ifyouloveit

I don't have enough money to go on vacation, so that's not an issue.

But perhaps you have family in town for the week. Or a kid gets really sick. Or the car breaks down and you can't get stuff to the post office.

'Vacation' just means the store is closed and no one can buy. It's useful if you cannot log in for a few days or if you will be unable to ship.

[getzappy]

I currently have a month to month store. At first the sales jumped but after the 2nd month went back to where they where.
July was slow and I guess that is to be expected. I see other sites where I can pay the same money and have sellable pins, sellable links directly to my items on Instagram and charged much lower fees.
I’m going to give ebay Aug and sept and see if the store is really worth it to me
In the mean time I am going to give ify site a chance with the free trial and a month to see if it may be a better investment of my time and money
Honestly the fees are not what makes the biggest difference here but I’m more intrested in moving my items more quickly

I have access to many items but taking action on these items don’t make sense if I am not moving them quickly enough to rationalize the gamble

[peggy7431]

Just easier to open up a second account and list 50 items. I had a premium store for years at 59.95 a month and it was worth all the bells and whistles that it came with but like many others a couple of years ago my sales dropped off dramatically so I ended my subscription. Now in order to avoid insertion fees I just open several accounts to sell with and list no more than 50 items on each. Easy Peasy.