Is It worth it to OPEN AN EBAY STORE?

• Do you have enough inventory to make a store worthwhile to you? Empty shelves will not attract sales. No sales and your store will be costing you more than it is worth.

• You will still need to run auctions. Since store items rarely show up in searches, you need to run a few auctions so that buyers know you have a store. The only time a store item will show up during a regular search by a buyer on eBay is if you have an item in your store that noone else has up for auction. Then your store item might show up.

• You can park items in your store and later if you want to you can send them to auction. For example you could have bathing suits in your store in January and not make any sales but come June you could then put one or two of the suits over to auction from your store and they would then guide buyers to your store.

• If something didn't sell at auction you could put it into your store. It will stay in your store as long as you want it to until you relist it again if you wish in the auction format.

• If you have a lot of one item a store just might be for you. You could put one or two on auction all the time and have the rest in your store. Additional sales could be made that way. For example, I always have a few types of cookies on auction, and the rest are in my store. If someone wants me to make a type of bakery item that I don't have listed at the moment it only costs me a few pennies to put it in my store for them. This translates into more profit for me and more sales.

• If you have low ticket items for sale, then consider the store format. The cheapest it costs to list an auction on eBay at the moment is 25 cents and that is for at the most 7 days. Compare that to putting an item in your store - it costs 2 cents for one month!

• Be sure to promote your eBay store the same way you would a real brick and mortar store. Watch for my article coming soon about promoting your eBay store.

Did you find this article helpful? Please let me know. If you didn't find it helpful - let me know that too! :)