eBay[c] The Missing Manual

Imagine a marketplace lined with tables, each stall piled high with carpets for sale. Somewhere in the midst is your tablealso piled high with carpets. As a shopper strolls down the street, the merchants all cry, "Carpets for sale!" "Beautiful carpets!" "Buy my carpets!" "No, buy mine!" With all that shouting, it's hard to make your voice heard above the din.

Now imagine you sell your carpets from your very own shop. When someone walks in, you don't have to clamor for her attention. As she looks around, she's examining your merchandise, and if she buys, she buys from you.

eBay is like the marketplace; when a shopper searches or browses for an item, your auction is crowded among many others in the search results list, each vying for attention. But if you open an eBay Store , a page on eBay that contains your listings, and only yours, you have a virtual shop where buyers can look around, search your inventory, compare your productsand buy from you.

eBay stores feature all your listings: both regular auctions and fixed-price BIN listings. In addition, you can create long- term and even nonexpiring listings for your store. A store costs $15. 95 to $499. 99 a month, depending on the level of service and prominence on eBay you want. But after you've been selling for a while, there's a bunch of good reasons to open your own eBay Store:

• You get your own e-commerce Web site, right within eBay . Your eBay store has a name and a Web address of its own http://stores.ebay.com/name-of-store so you can promote your store within eBay and across the Internet.

• When a buyer checks out one of your regular auctions, you can advertise your store right from the auction page . That way, an interested buyer can easily find your goods.

• An eBay store makes it easier for buyers to make multiple purchases from you . Rather than watching and waiting for several auctions to end, they can buy as much as they want all at one time.

• eBay helps store owners with their marketing . The program advertises items from your store on the Bid Confirmation and Purchase Confirmation pages (Figure 7-7), giving buyers an extra chance to see your goods.

• If you specialize in a particular kind of merchandise, a store is a great way to attract interested buyers . When you change the merchandise often, you keep 'em coming back.

• A store can save you time . Auctions run out of time after ten days at most, at which point you have to go through all the work of relisting the item (if it didn't sell). Your store listings can last for 30, 60, 90, or 120 daysor until you cancel the listing (called a Good 'Til Canceled , or GTC, listing). No more time wasted relisting the same items after a slow week.

eBay claims that sellers see a 25 percent increase in sales in the first three months after opening a storethat's the good news. The bad news is that those buyers have to work pretty hard to find your merchandise. Items sold in eBay Stores don't always come up in the list of results when a buyer conducts a search. (When they do appear, they're at the very bottom of the search results page.) Instead, there's a link at the bottom of the results list that says, "See additional Buy It Now items from eBay Store sellers." Most buyers won't even notice that link; they'll just start going through the items on the results list.

Still, a store can be worthwhile if you have a good- sized inventory of related products, like if you typically have several dozen listings going at one time for, say, baby clothes (or for all kinds of baby- related products: clothes, baby blankets, bibs, toys, and so on). Buyers shopping for baby booties who find one of your auctions are likely to venture into your store to see what else you have to offer.

7.3.1. Creating Your Store

Before you can open an eBay Store, you must be a registered seller on eBay and meet at least one of these criteria:

• You have a feedback score of 20 or higher or

• You've gone through the ID verification process (Section 5.4.2) or

• You have a PayPal account in good standing.

You don't have to meet any requirements about volume or how long you've been selling, but the most successful eBay Store owners are those who have a steady volume of sales and enough experience to have refined their listing and customer service skills. You'll get better results from your store if you've already got some selling experience under your belt.

Before you go create your store, think of a good name for it. Your store name doesn't have to be the same asor even related toyour eBay ID. Make it easy for buyers to remember your store with a catchy name that relates to the merchandise you sell, like Turkey Calls Unlimited or Mini-Maison Dollhouse Furnishings. (The box on Section 7.3.1 lists eBay's naming rules.)

If you want to check out stores others have set up, type http://stores.ebay.cominto your browser's address bar or, from the eBay home page, select Buy eBay Stores. Either will take you to the Stores home page, shown in Figure 7-8. From there, youcan browse the directory of existing stores or click the Open a Store button to create your own.

When you click "Open a Store," eBay prompts you for your password, and then explains what you need to get your store up and running: a name, a short description of the store (up to 300 characters ), a design for the store (you can choose one of eBay's designs or create your own), and a subscription level (Section 7.3.1). Click Open Your eBay Store to continue to the first step of the Open Your Store form, where you choose a theme to give your store a consistent look and feel. Here's how the process works:

1. Choose a theme .

   After you've decided on a name, you can begin the process of opening an eBay Store. Go to Services eBay Stores, and then click the big blue "Open an eBay Store Now!" button. On the next page, click Open Your eBay Store. The first page of the Open Your Store form, shown in Figure 7-9, asks you to select a theme , which gives a unified look to your store. eBay shows you popular pre-designed themes, or you can design your own theme by clicking the Easily Customizable link. Select the theme you want and click Continue. On the next page, you name and describe your store.

2. Fill in the blanks .

   On the next page, Open Your Store: Provide Basic Information, you tell eBay what your store's all about, as shown in Figure 7-10. In addition to the name and description, you can select a logo. You can choose one of eBay's cartoonish-looking logos, which relate to merchandise categories, or you can use your own logo. If you have a logo stored on your computer, you can upload it to your eBay Store or, if your logo appears on a Web page, you can type in the Webaddress where eBay can find the logo. Or, if logos aren't your thing, you don't have to have one at all.

   Figure 7-9. eBay offers several pre-designed store themes to choose from, in a variety of colors. A header runs across the top of the page and shows your store name; a navigation menu (including a search box) is on the left; the footer across the bottom of the page says "An eBay Store maintained by:" and shows your eBay ID. You can add custom links to the left-hand menu or the top of the page, as you prefer.

   Figure 7-10. This form asks for the name of your store, a short description, and whether or not you want to include a logo. If you already have a logo (perhaps from your own Web page), you can upload it to eBay's Picture Manager or link to it from a location on the Internet.

3. Choose a subscription level .

   On the final page of the Open Your Store form, Review & Subscribe, the last decision eBay asks you to make is also the most painful: how much are you willing to pay each month to operate your store? All stores offer customizable pages, monthly sales and tracking reports , and cross-promotion tools. Beyond that, you can choose from three subscription levels:

• Basic store . This level is the cheapest and most popular, and is probably the best place to start. The basic store offers five additional pages beyond the storefront and free use of eBay Selling Manager, eBay's sales-management tool (Section 9.1.2). Basic stores appear in the Stores Directory, organized by category; your store appears under every category you have items listed under. The Stores Directory is huge, though, with thousands and thousands of stores, so it's easy for yours to get buried.

  Note: In February, 2005, eBay increased the monthly fee it charges for Basic stores by more than 50 percent: from $9. 95 per month to $15. 95 per month. This big price jump motivated many sellers to close their stores and shift their merchandise to regular auctionsor to find another online marketplace to sell their wares.

  UP TO SPEED The Naming Rules

  The name of your eBay Store has to be unique; you wouldn't want to deal with the confusion of two stores with identical names, anyway. Also, if it's someone else's ID, it can't be the name of your store. (You know in your heart you're not the first person to come up with elvis4ever , even if your store will be jam-packed with memorabilia honoring the King.) In addition, eBay imposes these additional rules about naming: The name of your store must contain no more than 35 characters. Your store name must begin with a letter or a number. You've seen it in the Yellow Pages, but you can't do it on eBay: you can't have four or more consecutive As at the start of the name. So Aardvark Gifts is OK, but AAAA-1 Gifts isn't. The name can't confuse shoppers by containing eBay, Half.com , or PayPal . Neither can you start the name with the letter E followed by a number, so e8ay Electronics or e3Bay Toys are out. You can't use the consecutive letters www or the characters <, >, or @ anywhere in the name. Along the same lines, your store name can't end with a top level domain name (the last part of a Web address), like .edu, .net, .com, .biz , and so on. In other words, you can't use your Web site address or your e-mail address as the name of your eBay store. Even though you can't use another eBayer's ID for the name of your store, you can use your own. If eBay doesn't like the store name you've chosen (or if someone else has already taken it), eBay will prompt you to change it after you've clicked Continue. Keep trying until you find a name both you and eBay like.

• Featured store . This level leaps forward in terms of both benefits and price; you'll have to decide whether the monthly fee of $49. 99 is worth it. You get 10 pages, an upgrade to eBay Selling Manager Pro (Section 9.1.2), more detailed sales reports (Section 9.1.5), and a featured spot on the Stores home page. To decide whether or not a featured spot is worth the extra money, think like a buyer. How often do you shop eBay by starting on the Stores page and browsing the stores featured there?

• Anchor store . For $499. 99 a month, you get all the benefits of a Featured store plus 15 pages for your merchandise, advertising on both the Stores home page and eBay itself, and 24- hour dedicated tech support (a big deal on eBay). Obviously, this option makes sense only if you're a high-volume seller with a very active store.

7.3.2. Managing Your Store

You've got a memorable name and a sharp-looking storefront. Now it's time to fill your digital shelves and bring on the buyers.

All your eBay listings appear in your store, so any regular auctions you have running will appear in your store automatically. However, the items you specifically list in your store appear only there. Buyers have to go to your store to find them.

You list your store items using Store Inventory format: when you create a new listing (Section 5.4), select "Sell your items in your own eBay Store. " This format offers the lowest listing fees on eBay: just two cents per item per month. If you want the Gallery feature to show off your photos, it costs just an extra penny per item. And your listings last longer: you can choose 30, 60, 90, or 120 days for a listing, or you can make a listing good 'til canceled (GTC), which means that eBay automatically renews your listing every 30 days until the item sells or you pull the listing.

Tip: eBay Stores let you list multiple examples of a single item. So if you have a lot of dessert spoons to sell, list them only once; don't create a separate listing for each spoon. If you list the spoon once, allowing buyers to choose how many spoons they want to buy in a transaction, you'll save on listing fees and save yourself the inconvenience of having to relist a new spoon each time you sell one.

7.3.2.1 I-need-a-vacation mode

It sounds convenient to be able to list many items that automatically renew themselves , but what if you go on vacation? Do you have to cancel every single item in your Store until you come backor else risk angry customers? eBay offers Store owners Vacation Hold, which lets you put your store on hold in various ways when you're not around to pack and ship items.

Here's how to do it: on your My eBay page (Section 1.4.9), find My Subscriptions and then click Manage Your Store "Change vacation settings. " Choose the settings you want:

• Hide all your Store listings . This option hides your Store inventory, but it doesn't work for regular auctions, so be sure to cancel those if necessary, or else plan ahead so all your current auctions end before you plan to leave.

• Place an "on vacation" message in your Store . eBay has a prewritten message you must use, which includes the date you'll be back.

• Place an "on vacation" message in individual listings . This option applies to all active listings, not just Store inventory.

After you've selected the option you want, click "Turn vacation settings On," and then click Save Settings. Now you're ready to head for the beach , the city lights, or that cabin in the mountains .

7.3.2.2 Bulk editing

One great time-saving feature of eBay Stores is that you can edit multiple items at once. If your waffle makers are selling like hotcakes and you want to raise the Buy It Now price, you can do it for all the waffle makers in your store.

To edit a bunch of items at once, go to My eBay Items Im Selling, click the Format drop-down menu, and select Store Inventory. Click Go. Turn on the checkbox next to each item you want to edit. When you've selected all the items you want to change, click Edit Item. The Edit Item page opens; make the changes you want, and then click Submit. You've edited a whole list of items with just a few mouse clicks!

7.3.2.3 Cross-promotions

The Cross-Promotions tool, available only to sellers with eBay Stores, lets you get the right item in front of a potential buyer at just the right timewhen they're already looking at what you have to sell. With the Cross-Promotions tool, you can display items from your store on your auction page. So, buyers who are about to bid can keep shopping, heading straight to your store. Figure 7-11 shows what a cross-promotion looks like.

When you open a Store, eBay has already set things up to cross-promote items in the same or similar categories when buyers browse your auctions. If a shopper bids or buys, four cross-promoted items appear on the confirmation page.

But if you don't like eBay's choices, you can modify the cross-promotion to feature the items you really want to sell. Try featuring slow-moving items (you know people would buy the product if only they thought to look for it!) or high-value items that mean more profit for you. To change cross-promotion rules, head to the auction page of the listing you want (find it in My eBay's Selling view under Items I'm Selling). Click "Change cross-promotions" and swap in the items you want to display.