Perhaps you already own a small bricks and mortar business and wish to increase sales by having on online department – Great call!  More is always better and with relatively low overhead for this new business segment – it is a great investment.

While eBay is generally thought of as an auction site, where the highest bidder wins the sale, the other distinctly different and very useful option available on eBay is opening up an eBay store.  You will notice I did not say Open up a Store “instead” of auctions.  I see the two as interdependent options for the small business owner online with eBay.  The auctions serve as “teasers” for the store contents.  I see the auctions as essential to maximizing sales in your store.  This is important because generally, search results from your store show up only in cases where there are not enough auction items in a customers search to fill a page or pages.  So, it follows that you store is much more likely to get traffic if you are running auctions continually, concurrent with the store merchandise you have for sale. 

Keep in mind that stores are provided for a monthly fee (I believe the current rate for a basic store is $15.00 a month).  To make a store fee worthwhile, the expense needs to be mitigated by a high number of listings and regular auctions to draw buyers as discussed above.  You must assure sufficient traffic to your store to support its cost over the long term.  Once you are sure the cost of the store can easily be borne by your monthly sales, it then becomes a a valuable tool to manage merchandise (including keeping sales going while you are away from home).  

Store listing are far less expensive and last longer (as long as you determine you want them to last).
 
Once you have determined your sales can support the store, you can then feel good about your choice because of the many additional tools that come with it.  A store comes with the following bonuses for your business:

-  Templates to  create a consistent and professional look

-  Vacation Management notices that give you an alternative to managing  auctions 100% of your time.

-  Reports on traffic to your store, purchases and growth or decline in sales.  This helps in so many ways, no the least of which is testing the effectiveness of your marketing strategies, sales or other special promotions.

-  Options for creating a subscriber list for customers who choose you as a favorite seller.  This gives you a wonderful opportunity to do promotions and special offers for your regulars.

In running an online store, auction/online Store Management software is a must.  There are many to choose from.  You can subscribe monthly to web based applications, there are some essentially free web based programs such as Auctiva, you can buy resident software for your computer or you can use the management software provided free by eBay – Turbolister2.  Auction management software speeds up the business of writing ads with in-line editing, pre-written information on books, music, electronics and multi-media products to name only a ffew benefits of this software.  An added benefit to software is that you write one ad only for each item and it is always available when you need it and wherever you want to use it.  The efficiency of creating an ad only once is priceless.  For instance, if you try to auction a coat late in the season and it doesn’t sell, perhaps you will try again in early fall with better results.  With auction management software, you just pull up the ad and relist it.  Auction/store management software also useful in pre-filling information common to each ad such as return policy, payment methods and additional information.  Here is a hint on using Turbolister:  Make files to keep like items together but then add a file for each day of the week.  As you write ads file them in each day of the week.  Then when you are in a hurry, just go into Turbolister and upload that day’s ads – you need not pay the extra fees to set the time for your ads to go live you can do it this way instead. Do be sure to “file” each listing in the day back into your respective inventory folders after it has been uploaded to avoid uploading duplicate ads.

I cannot say enough about managing your processes.  If you can manage your processes effectively, it will lead to steady growth and more revenue.  Sales costs must be carefully managed too.  The more carefully you manage your sales costs, the more profit you will realize over time.  

Organization is a MUST.  Getting your items listed is, of course, important.  Once sold, however, it is equally important to get your merchandise packaged and shipped quickly to arrive on your customer’s doorstep fast and intact.  The appropriate merchandise organizing system will become apparent over time and is very different for different commodities.  Whether you employ an item number process or by date of listing or other filing system it will prove essential as you grow you business.

Along with organization – help your customers help themselves.  Use your store categories.  They are like the aisles, or departments in a bricks and mortar retail store.  Anything you do to help the prospective buyer find what they are looking for is important.  If you sell clothing on eBay, one category might be “men’s,” another “children’s,” another “women’s,” etc.  If you sell mostly woman’s clothing as I do, then your categories might be more like “blazers,” “Skirt Suits,” “Pant Suits,” “Dresses,” “Skirts,” “Sweaters,” etc.

Finally, do sell internationally on eBay.  Not as simple as domestic sales but not so complex as to make a decision to cut off such a huge potential customer base and market place.  The extra paperwork takes little time but is well worth the larger audience.  There really is money out there -- don't let fear or inflexibility regarding international sales stop you from growing your business.

The final aspect of managing your store is the critical issue of security.  By critical – I do mean critical!  In fact, it is so important I will address it in part 2 of this Managing your Ebay Store Set of guides.

Security is something all eBayers should know more about.  It is not necessary to know the boring nuts and bolts to know enough to protect yourself and your assets from online predators who make the news.  Knowing – is critical. 

Please visit Part 2 soon and share its contents with every eBayer you know.  To be forewarned is the surest defense I know.

If this article haqs been helpful, please scroll down and leave a yes vote?  I surely would appreciate it!

If you have some time please stop by my eBay store "The Write Place" and visit my auctions too

Thanks So Much I really appreciate it!!   Pepper120851