Ebay Store or No?

[Claytomus]

I have about 2,500 cards ranging from $1-$15 and probably another 500 cards ranging from $16-$50 and lastly another 200-250 cards at $51+ (all resale ranges). I have other stuff I can list like retro games, Funko Pops, and more as well.

My question is should I have an ebay store with that kind of inventory or skip it and just list 50 a month with free listings?

A second question for those who have eBay stores is do you think having the store helps your sales? Does it boost customer loyalty or prices in any way?

Keep in mind I intend to keep buying and trading so new inventory will come in from time to time.

I have sent in 1,000 cards to COMC (mostly $5 and under set fillers, inserts, etc.) I'll use them for inventory control on cheaper stuff if this first shipment goes well.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

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[Rjk214]

I had a store for a year I just got rid of it a few days ago. I just didn’t see the value from it but to be honest I didn’t do a great job making sure it was full all the time

[Claytomus]

I had a store for a year I just got rid of it a few days ago. I just didn’t see the value from it but to be honest I didn’t do a great job making sure it was full all the timeHow many items did you usually have listed? How were your average sales?

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[HOFAutoRookies]

I have a store not based on my volume of sales but by the amount. Saves me a ton of final fees etc when selling thousands of dollars worth of cards.

[Claytomus]

I have a store not based on my volume of sales but by the amount. Saves me a ton of final fees etc when selling thousands of dollars worth of cards.I've looked but didn't see a huge difference on the final value fees. How do you work it to see a big difference?

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[HOFAutoRookies]

I've looked but didn't see a huge difference on the final value fees. How do you work it to see a big difference?

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It is a huge difference depending on the dollar amount you sell. I have the premium and it caps out at $250 for a final value fee rather than $750 for the starter. Over time, it saves me thousands.

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[aggie4ever]

With a store, your final value fee is like 1% less, so if you sell $1k a month, that saves you $10. I understand that's not a lot, but that's almost half the basic store cost. Plus, you get 250 fixed price listings plus 250 auction listings each month. Finally, once a quarter you can basically get 100 free padded envelopes using the shipping supplies coupon.

So I think it's worth the cost if you think you will be selling ~$1k/month, and have enough inventory to constantly keep 250 items up BIN plus 100+ items you can rotate at auction throughout the month.

[Claytomus]

With a store, your final value fee is like 1% less, so if you sell $1k a month, that saves you $10. I understand that's not a lot, but that's almost half the basic store cost. Plus, you get 250 fixed price listings plus 250 auction listings each month. Finally, once a quarter you can basically get 100 free padded envelopes using the shipping supplies coupon.

So I think it's worth the cost if you think you will be selling ~$1k/month, and have enough inventory to constantly keep 250 items up BIN plus 100+ items you can rotate at auction throughout the month.Thank you. That's the type of info I wanted to hear. It's basically down to if I can/want to keep up with that much going on.

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[psd2k10]

unless this is your full time job and you pan to have thousands of transactions every month, its not worth having a store.

[tommyfro21]

COMC.com


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[lisu]

I have a basic store, and I usually sell about 400 cards a month. I don't do a lot of fixed listings though, but I do like that I now have Terapeak. It's nice to be able to see history for a year+.

[WalkOffBalker]

Forgot about the Terapeak.

I tried to be cheap and save money by not signing up for a store and basically stayed under the free listing limits every month. This was very prohibitive to growth.

After running some numbers on where I wanted my revenue to be, it made sense to do a Store subscription to get the Final Value Fee discount. At .85%, you basically breakeven around the $2500 or more per month mark and you do even better if you have some really high end stuff where the Final Value fee caps out at $250. I've had a few sales where that's kicked in and saved me hundreds of dollars. The savings on those few items basically covered my store subscription for the year.

Plus, now I can list a heck of a lot more for free. I'm still a big Fixed Value guy because I've been burned on so many auctions. Now that I've had the store for a while, my revenue has grown a lot. I feel like once you bite the bullet, you'll list more items to try to make it worthwhile and you'll be glad you did.

[Claytomus]

Forgot about the Terapeak.

I tried to be cheap and save money by not signing up for a store and basically stayed under the free listing limits every month. This was very prohibitive to growth.

After running some numbers on where I wanted my revenue to be, it made sense to do a Store subscription to get the Final Value Fee discount. At .85%, you basically breakeven around the $2500 or more per month mark and you do even better if you have some really high end stuff where the Final Value fee caps out at $250. I've had a few sales where that's kicked in and saved me hundreds of dollars. The savings on those few items basically covered my store subscription for the year.

Plus, now I can list a heck of a lot more for free. I'm still a big Fixed Value guy because I've been burned on so many auctions. Now that I've had the store for a while, my revenue has grown a lot. I feel like once you bite the bullet, you'll list more items to try to make it worthwhile and you'll be glad you did.

That pretty well sums it up for me. I'm thinking it will motivate me to list more because I can.

The fees seem to break even early on even figuring some lowball sales between the free insertions to list more stuff and the final value fees. It's mostly being able to list more items for more monthly sales and saving the fees that's appealing to me, especially considering I have stuff outside of cards I'd like to list and get moving as well.

Thank you for the input!

[shrevecity]

The listing fee cap is about to go up to 350.00 but its still a huge savings I have a premium store and it saves me a couple of hundred a month in fees. Other intangibles is with my level is the automated feedback, some of the additional reports you are able to generate. I can print of packing slips which make PWE shipping a lot easier. You also have the vacation settings. The 50.00 in free boxes/quarter is a life saver as well so that is one month free right there.

[HOFAutoRookies]

The listing fee cap is about to go up to 350.00 but its still a huge savings I have a premium store and it saves me a couple of hundred a month in fees. Other intangibles is with my level is the automated feedback, some of the additional reports you are able to generate. I can print of packing slips which make PWE shipping a lot easier. You also have the vacation settings. The 50.00 in free boxes/quarter is a life saver as well so that is one month free right there.


Vacation setting is worthless. I sold 15 items when I was gone and got charged late shipping for all of them and almost bumped me from being a power seller and top seller.

[BostonNut]

Vacation setting is worthless. I sold 15 items when I was gone and got charged late shipping for all of them and almost bumped me from being a power seller and top seller.

That is because you failed to adjust your handling time as well. Common mistake.

[BostonNut]

unless this is your full time job and you pan to have thousands of transactions every month, its not worth having a store.

Absolutely horrible advice...

[HOFAutoRookies]

That is because you failed to adjust your handling time as well. Common mistake.


Thought I did and they said something along the lines of I would lose being a power seller or whatever because I won't have fast enough shipping.

I'll be sure to look again to do a longer handling time. Thanks for the info!

[Americards]

Thought I did and they said something along the lines of I would lose being a power seller or whatever because I won't have fast enough shipping.

I'll be sure to look again to do a longer handling time. Thanks for the info!You can always shut the store down completely and have nothing for sale while you are away

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[Shadowsonic2004]

I have a store not because of volume but I sell large dollar amounts of sales. The .85% saves me more then it costs to pay for the subscription plus you get free $25 in shipping supplies per quarter. Plus thats for cards only. I sometimes sell coins too and that actually saves me 4% per sale. I've mentioned it before, but if you are going to sell an very expensive item. $5000+ it's actually better to buy a basic store for a 1 month subscription. A little off topic but it has to do with selling on ebay. Paypal is changing their refund agreement. Starting sometime this month they will no longer refund you the 2.9% they charge you per transaction. If someone returns something on ebay for whatever reason and you have to refund them, you are out the 2.9% +.30 for that refund. Before they just wouldn't refund the .30. So it's basically $2.90 per $100.

[Claytomus]

I have a store not because of volume but I sell large dollar amounts of sales. The .85% saves me more then it costs to pay for the subscription plus you get free $25 in shipping supplies per quarter. Plus thats for cards only. I sometimes sell coins too and that actually saves me 4% per sale. I've mentioned it before, but if you are going to sell an very expensive item. $5000+ it's actually better to buy a basic store for a 1 month subscription. A little off topic but it has to do with selling on ebay. Paypal is changing their refund agreement. Starting sometime this month they will no longer refund you the 2.9% they charge you per transaction. If someone returns something on ebay for whatever reason and you have to refund them, you are out the 2.9% +.30 for that refund. Before they just wouldn't refund the .30. So it's basically $2.90 per $100.I probably won't have too many times I sell anything over $1k, but I'll have a lot of sales between $10 and $100 so it will still add up quickly. The main thing at this point for me is volume and everyone has agreed that's a large reason for opening the store. It allows for faster inventory movement and I'd assume better potential for multiple sales to the same person to save on some shipping fees since I'd have more items listed at one time.

It's pretty safe to say I'll at least have a basic store and may quickly upgrade if it's going well.

Thank you for the response!

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[shrevecity]

Vacation setting is worthless. I sold 15 items when I was gone and got charged late shipping for all of them and almost bumped me from being a power seller and top seller.

There are 2 settings. m One allows items to continue to be seen and sold but alerts the buyer the other completely removes them which you don't need to adjust your handling time for. You talk about worthless that is the TRS status. That is just a carrot that Ebay tosses out there. it has no real bearing on visibility or anything. When I dumped mine my sales increased to a point it more than made up for that discount. Returns also went down used to average one a week now maybe 4 a year,

Here is what you have to check on your vacation settings.. This is on the page where you set the dates and all thatm if you check that box they cannot purchase items.

Keep people from buying your fixed price listings while you're on vacation. Your auction style listings will still run as scheduled.

[frenchquarter]

Vacation setting is worthless. I sold 15 items when I was gone and got charged late shipping for all of them and almost bumped me from being a power seller and top seller.

If you have BIN's, you can check a box so buyers can't buy your items. If you have auctions and you know when you are going on vacation you can run your auctions so they end a few days before your vacation starts.

[frenchquarter]

Forgot about the Terapeak.

I tried to be cheap and save money by not signing up for a store and basically stayed under the free listing limits every month. This was very prohibitive to growth.

After running some numbers on where I wanted my revenue to be, it made sense to do a Store subscription to get the Final Value Fee discount. At .85%, you basically breakeven around the $2500 or more per month mark and you do even better if you have some really high end stuff where the Final Value fee caps out at $250. I've had a few sales where that's kicked in and saved me hundreds of dollars. The savings on those few items basically covered my store subscription for the year.

Plus, now I can list a heck of a lot more for free. I'm still a big Fixed Value guy because I've been burned on so many auctions. Now that I've had the store for a while, my revenue has grown a lot. I feel like once you bite the bullet, you'll list more items to try to make it worthwhile and you'll be glad you did.

This is good advice. If you spend an hour or so a day scanning and listing you will easily use up your 250 BINS and 250 auctions each month.

[jw8]

With a store, your final value fee is like 1% less, so if you sell $1k a month, that saves you $10. I understand that's not a lot, but that's almost half the basic store cost. Plus, you get 250 fixed price listings plus 250 auction listings each month. Finally, once a quarter you can basically get 100 free padded envelopes using the shipping supplies coupon.

So I think it's worth the cost if you think you will be selling ~$1k/month, and have enough inventory to constantly keep 250 items up BIN plus 100+ items you can rotate at auction throughout the month.Why is free shipping supplies such a big incentive when I can get them for free from USPS?

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[shrevecity]

Why is free shipping supplies such a big incentive when I can get them for free from USPS?

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Those you get for free you are required to ship the item priority mail. If you are not and they catch you they can fine you. At the least the will charge your receiver the difference in price.

[jw8]

Those you get for free you are required to ship the item priority mail. If you are not and they catch you they can fine you. At the least the will charge your receiver the difference in price.Gotcha, so eBay provides normal padded envelopes. Yeah, that is a nice perk, may consider upgrading to professional.

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[shrevecity]

Gotcha, so eBay provides normal padded envelopes. Yeah, that is a nice perk, may consider upgrading to professional.

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Only thing I am not keen on is they are Ebay branded. Anyone who sees it knows its an Ebay package.

[Chris Henderson]

Only thing I am not keen on is they are Ebay branded. Anyone who sees it knows its an Ebay package.

I use their boxes and cut them up and use them for packing material so I don't have to worry about the eBay labels. The cost of the free supplies covers about a third of my store fees.

With the amount of merchandise you have at least a basic store is definitely worth it. Having a store especially helps if you have a lot of related items. Neatly arranged store categories and combined shipping discounts will make you popular with player/set collectors. I hate it when someone has a store full of merchandise and no categories. You can also use listings with variations to list a lot of the cheaper cards without using up a lot of your free listings.