If you’re a volume seller of commodity goods, the standard eBay auction and fixed price listing formats may not be ideal for you, for a variety of reasons:

• Listing fees may not be economical for high-volume, low-cost items
• Auctions and fixed-price listings run for a limited amount of time—seven days or less (or ten days, but with an additional surcharge)
• Your visibility is limited during this period of time by the number of listings you post, meaning that costs are either higher because you post many listings, or because you must post them often

Given the amount of time and resources it can take to manage a large number of auctions that are ending every seven or ten days, it may not make sense to try to sell items this way that are only worth cents or a few dollars. For some types of limited-demand items, on the other hand, non-auction listings that don’t expire quickly would give sale items time to find their market and generate interest. Antiques and some types of high-end collectibles can fall into this category, amongst other things.

Using eBay Stores

For situations like these, eBay has an ideal solution—eBay Stores. You may have noticed eBay stores items in the past when they appear at the end of some eBay search results. eBay Stores offer certain benefits to high-volume commodity sellers that are often more appealing than those offered by auction-format listings:

• Drastically reduced listing fees beginning at $0.05 per listing
• Longer durations, from 30 days to “good ‘til canceled” (indefinite listing)
• Access to subscription tools to manage listing, selling, and feedback in volume, along with tools for market research, accounting, and store web traffic analysis
• An online storefront integrated with eBay’s own site to which you can send customers and repeat buyers

A number of other benefits, tools, and eBay features are also available to you as the proprietor of an eBay store—far too many to list here.

For all of these reasons, volume sellers of commodity goods and sellers of low-demand, high-value items often find that eBay Stores are a better, more economical, lower-overhead way to leverage eBay’s huge international customer base.

Requirements

There are several requirements and/or prerequisites for opening an eBay store:

1. Be an eBay member with an active seller’s account.
2. Meet one of the following criteria:
   • Have a feedback profile of 20 or higher, -or-
   • Be ID Verified, -or-
   • Have a PayPal account in good standing.
3. Pay a monthly subscription fee depending on the size of the store you want to maintain, with subscriptions starting at $15.95 per month for a basic store for managing up to 250 listings per day.

Once you can meet these requirements, opening an eBay store is as easy as visiting the Open an eBay Store link.

Running Your eBay Store

After opening your store, you can drive success by focusing on the four aspects of eBay Store selling that eBay says are essential:

1. Building and customizing your store
2. Carefully managing your listings and sales
3. Promoting your online storefront and listings
4. Monitoring your success and making adjustments as necessary

As an eBay store owner, your starting point for mastering these four aspects is the eBay Stores Toolkit, where you’ll find access not only to the eBay Store tools that will help you to accomplish these goals, but also to a wealth of tutorial and advanced selling information and help provided by eBay. Though there may still be many occasions on which eBay’s traditional listing formats are useful to you, maintaining an eBay store can be an important (and even central) component of your online ebusiness.

What to include in your listing and how to close

Follow these tips religiously to help ensure the most productive eBay selling experience.

• Include a photo. More than any other single factor, the photo that you include with your auction will determine the final value for which your item is sold. Take the photo yourself and take the time to do it nicely (well lit, on a clean surface) if you want to bring in top dollar.
• Use HTML to make your listing clean and readable. Bidders will bid if and only if they can figure out what you’re saying. Use some basic HTML tags to make your auction listing readable and user friendly so that you don’t chase bidders away.
• Start auction format listings at $1.00 unless you have a reason not to. For most common types of items you’ll receive more bids in the end if you begin your listing at $1.00, and you’ll ultimately save on listing fees as well. Don’t be impatient as you watch the price�most bids on eBay are placed on the last day (and the majority in the last hour) of an item’s listing.
• Clearly list the items included in the sale. If you’re selling a product that includes additional accessories or material when sold at retail, be sure to mention in your listing that these are included using phrases like “Includes all original accessories!” If item(s) that buyers might expect to be included actually won’t be included in the sale, be sure to mention that as well.
• Clearly state the item’s condition. Do use ratings such as “like new,” “almost like new,” “good condition,” “fair condition,” or “somewhat worn,” but also be sure to include actual details like “has a scratch at the upper-right of the screen,” “is missing two buttons,” “somewhat faded and shopworn,” or “I can’t find a scratch, a scuff, or signs of wear anywhere on it!”
• Include shipping details. Do include a very specific shipping cost (or an actual shipping cost calculator of some kind), but also include details about the areas to which you’re willing to ship, the carrier(s) that you’re willing to use, whether or not you plan to insure the item.
• Provide a clear guarantee, warranty, and/or return/exchange policy. Let your bidders know just what they’re getting themselves into by bidding. If your sale is to be considered AS-IS, then state that there will be no returns, refunds, or exchanges. Otherwise, mention that you’ll guarantee the item and provide the length of time that the buyer has to decide whether to keep the item, what you’ll offer if they decide to return it, and details about how they should go about beginning the return process should they decide to do so.
• Time your listing carefully so that it doesn’t end in dead zone. Listings that are scheduled to finish when nobody is likely to be watching will miss out on critical last-day and last-hour bids that can mean the difference between a huge sale and a huge disappointment.
• Be flexible about payment to encourage bids. If you want to really maximize the number of bids you receive, be flexible about payment: by accepting payment from PayPal, by personal check, by money order, and any other means at your disposal, you’ll ensure that the greatest number of bidders has a chance to bid on your item.
• Pack carefully and ship quickly after payment. You’ve gone to all the trouble to make a sale, so don’t lose the race in the last mile by packing your item so poorly that it’s damaged in shipment or waiting after receiving payment before you ship. Buyers that have a great buying experience will leave you positive feedback and buy from you again. Buyers that have a poor buying experience will leave negative feedback, will never buy from you again, and may also complain to eBay or to your bank or the postal authorities.

For more detailed help and tutorial information about selling on eBay to earn the highest bids with the smallest amount of risk, visit the articles in Selling Effectively.

1. If you haven’t already, join eBay now, since you have to be a member in order to sell.
2. Next, find or decide on something to sell in your auction listing.
3. Visit the eBay front page and click “Sell” near the top of the page to create an auction listing for your item.
4. Watch your auction listing in my eBay until the listing closes or a sale is made.
5. If you don’t immediately receive PayPal payment, use my eBay to send the buyer of your item an invoice. On the invoice form, be sure to send payment instructions to the bidder if necessary.
6. Wait for payment to arrive, either via PayPal or via whatever other method you have specified.
7. After payment arrives, ship your item to the buyer or winning bidder. Be sure to contact the member and notify them that their item has been shipped.
8. Leave feedback giving your opinion of the transaction.
9. Resolve any disputes that arose during the transaction.

• An eBay account
• An item you’d like to sell