The New ebay: The Official Guide to Buying, Selling, Running a Profitable Business

Chapter 27

Opening a store and marketing options

Your eBay store is effectively your own branded website within eBay. You receive a unique URL (website address) and can design and brand your store any way you choose. eBay buyers are able to search your entire store for every item you have for sale, save your store as a favourite, and view other information about your business such as terms of trade and frequently asked questions. For eBay sellers, stores come packed with excellent marketing functions, discounted listing and other fees, and help add a higher level of professionalism to your eBay business. For a fraction of the price of creating your own website, you can have your eBay store up and running in a matter of minutes. Better still, your store will be referenced by search engines such as Google, helping with the fourth P of retail, promotion.

Subscribe to a store

Depending on the eBay site you subscribe from, you will have two or three store subscription levels to choose from. Each level has a different monthly subscription fee, different functionalities and different listing fees (listing fees are covered in the next chapter). To subscribe to a store, or upgrade, click Customer Support at the top of any eBay page and type ‘store’ in the help search box, then click Search.

Table 27.1 shows the costs and some of the additional benefits of each store level on the Australian site.

Table 27.1: eBay store costs and benefits

Once you have subscribed to a store, you’ll ...