You get even more listings as the store size increases for free. The 1,000 item store currently offers as many as 60,000 free listings a month thru a 50,000 and 10,000 offer each month. I’m assuming once you cross that threshold and need more the larger size stores may offer even more. There’s also less money taken out of each sale in fee’s by E-Bay. Having the number of listings you want going over the amount allowed for free drops to as little as a nickel for the larger stores with incremental steps on the way to maxing out. There’s a point between each level where paying listing fees for going over combined with higher E-Bay fee’s taken out of sales makes a store a better option. You just have to work the math to see what your best option is for upgrading. I’m close to maxing out and having to move up again. That’s a math problem for Spring I expect.
I am averaging 275 listings a month. Not too shabby. I have dropped below that line because of recent sales.
eBay sucks though, if I’m selling 5k of inventory a month, I’d just be doing my own website to sell and manage. I know that’s not an option for most but I’m technical and setting up websites is easy!
Problem, like running this site, is generating traffic to your site.
That sounds nice but there is no other option that puts that many customers shopping from you for that small of a price and it’s not hard to just bump your listing prices slightly so the actual sales themselves cover the cost of the listings.
Take the fees that eBay charges and apply that to marketing to drive traffic to your website. When you start gaining the traffic from shoppers and loyal customers, you lower your costs over time since you’re not paying eBay fees, etc.
Sure but it’s doable, lot of work initially but honestly, most shop owners could handle it the amount of times I’ve visited an actual store and the owner is sitting there doing nothing but giving you the stare of “how dare you touch my precious books”…
15% of $5,000 comes to $750 for your advertising/marketting budget then you have to pray your website doesn’t miss out on those sales as people refuse to pay E-Bay level prices at random sites since you’re not lowering the prices on your own site. Even a 10% drop in sales and you have $500 less cash flow to work with trying to do it yourself and then you have to factor in your time and efforts. How much more of your life are you willing to give up to try to work around E-Bay when that same time could be spent just adding even more inventory to your E-Bay store boosting total sales even more. I’m at the point that I just like simple. Sit, scan comics, make new listings. Orders come in steadily breaking up the day that need to be packed and shipped. Some things have to go already like cutting way back on message boards until another 50,000 comics get loaded. Life can be simple when you let it.
Jumping too far ahead with assumptions. I just talking in general, if I’m moving 5k or more in inventory a month, I’m not dealing with a middle man like eBay…
Once I got a website running, it would probably be easier to manage than eBay. I do automation for a living… it would all be automated.
A little follow up on this UPS picked it up after being notified that I had found it and was returning it. They said they wouldn’t have someone come out and deliver it to the proper address. So I returned it directly from the old man up the street’s house (thanks Mr. Bob). Anyway, they delivered the same wet, damaged stand today saying they found it and were delivering it to me.
I flipped on UPS. I told them I told you I found it and was returning it, went through the whole history, covered the original label with the return label. And the stupid thing is sitting on my porch ready for the heavy storm we have rolling in.
UPS are idiots.
Lmao, sorry to hear that Anthony.
The incompetence in this situation is gargantuan: “Here’s your soaked item from the old dude up the street’s house!”
Common sense is not so common.
Let’s say in a month I average approximately 200 fixed price listings, never to exceed 250.
Without a store, I pay no monthly subscription or insertion fees. I am paying a 30 cent final value fee and 13.25% of the sale in seller fees.
With a store, for the “starter” package I get the same 250 listings, and the final value and seller fees are identical. The only difference is I pay $8/ month subscription fee.
For $20 more ($28/month), I get 500 listings and a discount of 0.90% (12.35%).
So for those of us that only run fixed price auctions and list less than 250 items, you need to sell over $3000 in a month to make up for what you’re paying for a store in seller fees. So not worth it.
However, if you’re listing 350 per month without a store, you’re paying $30 in listing fees that you don’t need to (30 cents each for the extra 100 over 250) so a store is likely less expensive.
If you’re listing between 250-350, it depends on how much you make in a given month whether it’s worth it.
A year subscription is $22/month a little more savings, if you think you can sustain sales all year. But even at $22 you’re looking $2500 in sales per month to make it pay for itself id you don’t hit 250 listings. Equivalent to about $30k in a year.
9.8’s for those are so hard to come by. Over 50 years old and such a dark cover.
I don’t use the eBay store options, I just list stuff and it sells and I’m happy. If I were selling a huge amount of inventory with a big ol’ business or something I might look into having an eBay store and/or my own little online site. I could do what Newkadia does and sell on eBay and online. When they order from my eBay I include a little flyer about how they could’ve ordered from my own site and saved more. That’s how I actually discovered them a long time ago.
That’s why there’s no substitution for just doing the math occasionally to see where you’re at. Build drafts once you exceed the number you have for free for whatever size you’re at until you have enough to justify the cost of the next size up.
You also don’t have to just build them at E-Bay. A number of sites allow you to link/share to E-Bay so you can construct them on a place like Bonanza where you can list 75,000 items for free but probably sell almost nothing regularly since they don’t have E-Bay’s gazillion dollar advertising budget and history. Just do the work and have it ready to list at E-Bay when the time is right. Make 10 listings a day, that’s 300 more a month ready to go up. 3,600 more a year but you have to stay disciplined.
I’m thinking of getting a store and planning to list 1000+ items. However most of the items I’m thinking of selling at around cover price, just very low priced items. The idea is to just get rid of as many comics as I can as I realize I have too many. It’s this worth it?
Just a lot of work to take good pics, list, package up, ship… Might just be better to find a buyer of bulk stuff and just move it out with less effort? There’s that whole money vs. time equation that’s different for everyone.