Setting up an ebay shop - Any advice?

[raspberrybloom]

Hi,

As sales are slow through the website we have decided to set up an ebay shop. I know many of you have these and I wondered if you had any advice?

Also ebay buyers advice is also welcome :wink:

Thanks, Lou

[Seahorse]

Give as much information as possible.

The amount of times ive had to contact people re details!!tuts and rolls eyes.

[swirlyarts]

Hi,

I've sold on ebay but don't actually have an ebay shop. Always make sure you have photos - I and many of my friends just go straight past the listings that don't have photos. It's well worth investing in a digital camera if you don't have one already. Also use your ebay shop to advertise your website - a friend noticed an big increase in site traffic to his own website from selling on ebay.

Hope this helps - oh also as a buyer make sure you leave feedback - it's always appreciated and if there is a problem contact the buyer - it's 'bad form' to leave negative feedback without contacting the seller first.

Lynsey

[Bea]

Re: Setting up an ebay shop - Any advice?

Hi Lou

Start with the first level of the shop and see how it goes before upgrading.
Download turbo lister and create all your items with it, otherwise you will spend hours on it.

Ebay can be more tedious than a ''normal'' website.

You have to relist stuff everyday unless you want to pay a bit more to 'schedule' your listings in advance. There are a few websites that you can subscribe to help you with this - I went against this as it created another load of work! Of course you can choose not to list every day.

Ebay is a bit less forgiving if something goes wrong as the dreaded negative feedback is never far away. On a website, any problems will be sorted behind closed doors, but with ebay, the customer can voice their problem in the feedbacks... Hence you need to maintain a high level of customer service.

I use a scanner instead of a camera, but I suppose it depends what you are selling. A photo is a definite must!

I agree the description must give as much details as you can provide to avoid receiving emails with lots of questions. Make sure your T&C are clear and simple. Don't over-do it on the P&P as this puts people off.

Hope this helps
Bea

[craftfairy]

Hi Lou,

like you I have a web site that has very little traffic so I decided to sell on Ebay. First of all you cannot just open a shop, you have to sell at auction and when you get a feedback of 10 and have opened a paypal account you will be allowed to open a shop.

However your ebay shop is a bit like your web site as the items in it are not listed in a customer search until the end of all the auction items. So to draw traffic into your site you also still need to sell at auction. Keep an eye out for special offer listing days and remember that hardly anyone buys on a Friday evening. Mondays are good days to list, or at least i've found so.

Remember that Ebay charges for everything and if you are selling low cost items you can even lose out. You pay to list, you pay a final valuation fee and you pay PayPal a comission. The good thing about Ebay is that you can target your customers with your site advertising. Every time that you make a sale be sure to send out a flyer. this draws customers to your site.

If I had to start over again I think that I would have started with Ebay and then opened my own site. I would have had a client base to call on. I have been going for 10 months and it is only since I started selling on Ebay last November that I have seen some real sales.

Do have a look at my site, I might even tempt you.
www.craftfairy.co.uk

Yvonne

[Auntysally]

Ebay is good! its just the charges! i sometimes wonder why i bother when most of the profit from ebay sales does go on charges! but it is useful to draw traffic to your own website!

[swirlyarts]

Apparently ebay are offering the first month free at the moment when you open up a shop and the charges have gone down recently to 3p an item. Not really sure what this means but I've read it on another forum that I look at.
Lynsey

[beadsbydesign]

You need to be careful about how you direct traffic from ebay to your other online store.

I was in a similar situation only the opposite way around. I had sucessfully run a smallish ebay store and then decided to go independant. I run both side by side with the same beads and findings.
When I first set up independantly I changed all of my ebay listings so that they all said visit www.beadsbydesign.co.uk , my other online store.
It was only after a couple of months that I received an email from someone saying that I was actually breaching the rules of ebay that say you cannot promote selling off ebay.

I went into pannick mode and emailed ebay to check it out. They responded and said that on the listing page i cannot have a directive or details for off ebay trading. The only place and way to do it within the guide lines was to put a link on my "about me" page.
It took nearly a week to update and revise all 350 of my listings.

I do send out a little note with all purchases on ebay redirecting them to my non ebay store.

just be careful. Ebay are known to act first and ask questions later if they find you doing something they consider wrong.

I also find that I have very regular ebay customers and very regular ebay customers but they seldom swap loyalty.

Good luck with your move to ebay. let us know how it goes.

[colourart]

I opened an ebay shop in December, but shut it a few weeks ago. You can have the first month free, then after that it is £6.00/month. I shut it because from my point of view it was easier/cheaper to list the items in auction. Having an ebay shop does generate extra hits though, I found that if I auctioned some items, then people when people hit on your auctioned item they would have a look in your shop also. I believe that if you have lots of items to sell then a shop is beneficial because the inventory list is cheap about 11p at the time and the items can be listed for 30 days.

When I send out the won item, I send a business card also with my website address, well actually more than one, this generates business to the website.

Good luck with the shop if you decide to go that way.

Amanda

[Katianne]

I listed some of my mosaics last Tuesday on ebay, to 'test the water'. If this goes well, I am thinking of having an ebay shop, as I have sold nothing as yet through my own website, etsy or craft jumble. I am probably just being impatient but I would really love to sell something so figure everything is worth a go. I will let you know how I get on!

[goldy1]

Have you seen this site http://www.etsy.com/ dedicated to crafts and you can list items for longer than e-bay. Cheaper too. oops sorry didn't see your last post till i posted this

[craftfairy]

E-Bay update

One thing to remember is that E-bay might only charge a small amount for listing in the shop but they also charge a final valuation fee on all that sells.
You really do need to be careful.

I am considering shutting the shop and concentrating on the web site.

I have started to do the bif fairs like Creatice Stitches and Hobby Craft. while the cost of a stand is astronimical, there are a lot of potential customers and it is a good way of introducing them to the products that you sell. They can see and feel the quality.

craftfairy.co.uk

blog.craftfairy.co.uk

Yvonne

[littlesnuggler]

I have bought and sold a lot of items on Ebay (feedback 525) and I think it's brilliant. Anything I list I try to add a bit on to cover at least SOME of the charges. Good, crisp photo's are essential aswell as full details of the products.

I opened an Ebay shop around Christmas but closed it after a few days because the shop listings are after the auction listings and I could never find mine when I had the shop. So I prefer to list things through the normal auction or Buy It Now.

If you are selling something small you could always offer free P+P - this always attracts plenty of bids but won't work for larger, heavier items.
You can add a link to your website through the page but you cannot put your url in the listing itself.

Ebay is great but I wasn't impressed with the Ebay shop. Hope this helps.

[Running_wild]

selling on ebay

I have sold through an ebay shop for a few years but am now running down my listings and selling beads and findings through my own website.
The ebay fees mount up without you noticing. You can list an item in your shop for 90 days, and when it doesn't sell it is easy just to click the relist button for another 90 days. before you know it the listing fees are mounting up and when the item does sell ebay take a cut and paypal take a cut and you are left with nothing. All the success stories on ebay are people selling expensive items eg exercise bikes. A packet of beads rarely makes much of a profit.
Having said that I will close the shop when the current listings run out but run at least one auction a week to drive people to my website.
So far that isn't happening, even though I am selling the same stuff, lower prices and cheaper postage! Like another poster said, some people stick to buying from ebay.

[Katianne]

I wonder why that is? I used to buy my mosaic supplies from ebay, but then my supplier set up her own website so I started using that instead, as the prices were a little cheaper. I suppose some people may feel ebay is more secure and because of the feedback system less likely to be ripped off maybe? It's a shame if that is the case. I will have to see how it goes then, maybe see if my mosaics sell this week through the auction. If they do try the free shop for a month and if no good hope the craft fairs are a winner!