As a new store owner at Ebay (less then 1 year) I have had growing pains that I would like to share for other new Store Owners. These are my own personal experiences and lessons but the lessons and changes I have had to make have paid off for me.

I opened a basic Store in March of 2005 and listed all items in 2 catagories and did not allow for gallery view or subtitle. This was my first big error.

After approx. 3 months I upgraded to Feature store. Sales started rising but not like I expected or wished for them to be. When reviewing my store I had over 2000 items that were duplicated into 2 catagories and didn't have enough catagories to really list the way I wished to list.

The Christmas Holiday was profitable but still not what I had expected or wished for, so after the Holiday I took a long hard look at the situation.

I spent 1 whole week going through each store item and adding Gallery view to each item. I then selected 10 primary catagories to fit all the items into and down sized my listings, placing them into 1 of the 10 catagories ONLY. This prevented duplication and easier searching for my customers.

I was careful in selecting the catagories and groupings. Since spending all this time my sales are now soaring.

I also use Keyword search and try running 10 to 15 auctions for 5 days at a time. Items that haven't moved, I rearrange and group as a lot sale.

So if your new to Ebay stores, don't give up, just view what you have and ask yourself, "Would I search this store extensively if I were a customer? Are things easy to find?" If the answer is No, then you need to make changes until your store is where you would want to spend an hour or 2 just looking!!!

I even had 1 customer who emailed me that they spent 3 and a half hours going through the items in my store. They said they had never spent that much time in 1 store during their membership with Ebay.