# E-Bay Store vs Fixed Price Listing



## sisterpine (May 9, 2004)

I currently have an E-Bay store costing 15.00 or so per month. In the store I generally have 40-50 listings. I am wondering if a fixed price listing would be a better way to go. Any one have good/bad experience with this option? sis


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

I've never had any luck with an eBay store. I sell everything in fixed priced auctions, listing one 7-day auction each day ending in the late afternoon.


----------



## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

I have a store because I need to be able to organize my items into logical categories. I have a few hundred unique listings. 
I genuinely believe I wouldn't have as good of sales as I do were I to just list them without a store available. 

That said, I have very few "store listings" anymore. That is, the ones that are $.03 per month but don't show up in most search listings. 
Instead, most of my items are listed as Fixed Price. But, because I have a store, they're still organized into categories. 

I've had a store for six years. It's a _very_ small fraction of my monthly eBay fees.


----------



## Starsmom (Nov 7, 2004)

I have a store but still put up the fixed price listings. I find that I sell very little in the listings or auctions I put up, they go to my store and buy. I have recently started putting up some fixed price listings and using the free shipping option and have started getting a few sales that way with fixed price, but I would say about 80% of my sales are out of my store. However, I have noticed that if for any reason I did not have the fixed price or auction listings running, my store sales would decrease dramatically, so in my case, they are necessary even if I don't sell them.


----------



## Kim_NC (Sep 5, 2007)

We use enough fixed price and auction items to get more attention in the search listings. The same items and much more are in our eBay store. We sell from both...about equally.


----------



## dunroven (Dec 6, 2004)

Are you folks making good money at the e-bay selling? Please, its very important. I may be losing a job and need to make up that money some how.


----------



## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

Were I not still building my inventory, I would probably be netting abou $800-$1200 in any given month... 
However, I've done nothing but grow since the day I opened as a fabric shop, a year and a half ago. :shrug:
So, hopefully in another year or three I'll be making some honest income...


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

dunroven said:


> Are you folks making good money at the e-bay selling? Please, its very important. I may be losing a job and need to make up that money some how.


I've done pretty well (~$100/day profit average) and I've done a lot worse (~$20/day profit average), depending on how eBay is doing things. You can be going along just fine, then eBay will rearrange the product categories without telling anyone, or maybe change the way products are displayed to buyers. Sometimes I think eBay employees do it just to see how much they can tank sales.

I saw this last one coming, and I warned the people at the power seller help line that it was going to hurt everyone, including eBay. The girl at eBay told me that "Best Match" was going to actually boost my sales, not hurt sales. Now eBay is laying off 1600 employees.

The point is that you're totally at their mercy. They screw-up, you pay. The profit potential is certainly there, but they can pull the rug out from under you at any time. I usually find a way to compensate for eBay's changes and get my sales back up again, but it's a never-ending battle.

By the way, what I describe should *never* happen with paid advertising. EBay is getting sued over this kind of stuff right now, but I don't know if it will get them to change their ways.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Concerns ebay but off current topic. From a buyers perspective, whats up with their new search? Doesnt work properly with Opera browser, and wont let me set up defauts I want? Also when I click the opt out, I have to start search all over. And I have to "opt out" every new time I log in. Extremely annoying. New and improved is much worse than old and lousey IMHO.......


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

HermitJohn said:


> Concerns ebay but off current topic. From a buyers perspective, whats up with their new search? Doesnt work properly with Opera browser, and wont let me set up defauts I want? Also when I click the opt out, I have to start search all over. And I have to "opt out" every new time I log in. Extremely annoying. New and improved is much worse than old and lousey IMHO.......


That is *exactly* on topic! When eBay makes it difficult for buyers to search & browse, our products don't get found. The new buyer interface is terrible, and it's hurting everyone (including eBay itself).

To become a successful eBay seller you have be willing to analyze these problems and look for ways to compensate. It's not as easy as just listing your stuff anymore.


----------



## Starsmom (Nov 7, 2004)

My ebay sales were just a side line to my real store. When just the side line was making more than the actual store it self, I closed it and went bigger on ebay figuring I would make more money. Well, I was doing ok and getting more business every month. Then suddenly ebay decided to make things better. My sales themselves dropped 1/3, but even with the decline in sales, what I had to pay to ebay increased, so I am still paying them the same as I was when my sales were higher. So lower sales, higher fees, much less profit. Since they changed the search engine, if you get one crazy, bitter customer, they can single handedly tank your sales by giving you poor DSR ratings. This allows ebay to place you lower on the search engine. This happened to me twice in the past couple months. It takes a month to get past their rating, but the cost in sales is very noticeable. We had 2 blizzards and temps -40 for several weeks AND it was Christmas time. My cars wouldn't start, delivery drivers would not come down my road and the post office refuses to pick up or deliver to my house. So, delivery's were slow getting out and I notified everyone and it wasn't like they could not check on the weather to see I was not lying. Anyway, she got her item about 18 days after paying for it. She tanked my sales. I even gave her a refund on her shipping charges to say I was sorry for the delay...she still tanked me. So, keep in mind that there are so many variables the most of which are customer ratings and ebay themselves. Its a good second income and does really take some time to work up your good name. Once that is done, people will actually pay a little more to buy from someone with a good rating..I know I do. I just wouldn't count on it to be a full time income right from the start. It takes years to build it up unless you have a lot of money to sink into it for inventory and such.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Starsmom said:


> It takes years to build it up unless you have a lot of money to sink into it for inventory and such.


Inventory is no problem for me. I get my products free or cheap by creating my own. It's the eBay fees, PayPal fees, and postage that concern me.


----------



## Nomad (Dec 19, 2002)

I've been a seller since December 1997 and things have changed on a regular basis over the years. Most changes were supposed improvements but I don't think that was the case very often. The only thing Ebay improves is the money in their pockets. With the amount of auctions listed you'd think the fees wouldn't continue to go up. They change them making people think they are doing you a favor when in reality they are lowering fees in the areas that are used less and raising the ones in the areas that are used most. I sell a lot of smaller items that are under $5. With the fees, I don't make much, but I can't charge more because of customer resistance due to rising shipping costs. I've lowered the cost of a bottle of my hot sauce which should retail for $7.49 to only $4.99 because it costs almost $5 to ship it. I'm not sure what to do anymore. 


Nomad


----------



## Ken Scharabok (May 11, 2002)

I have about 350 items in my eBay Store. I run one or two big ticket regular auctions a week as teasers to direct people to my eBay Store. I advise them they can find all of my listings by doing a seller list view search.

Sometimes I may only sell one or two of a particular item a year. Doing a fixed price listing would be prohibitedly expensive.

My eBay/PayPal expenses went from 12.4% of gross in 07 to 16.8% of gross in 08, and I really haven't changed my method of using eBay. (That means out of every $1 in sales, eBay/PayPal take $.17 off the top.) At my sales volume the difference amounts to about $1,300 for probably less services from eBay.


----------



## bigmudder77 (Jun 9, 2008)

yes i know what you mean about ebay they raised there fees but how i screw them over is the stuff i sell under $30 i buy a buy it now as a penny ( $0.01) and the shipping at say $19.99 then i get what i want and they dont take out for the shipping so there profit on me goes to the $0.55 cents it cost me to list it and i get the $20 i wanted 

ebay says stuff about high shipping but i told them off cause they said my plow pump at $70 shipping was too high it was $69.28 to ship that thing i sent them a pic of that and then they shut up and said sorry and refunded me my listing fee the last time they ended it cause i had high shipping (that was also from ohio to washington and the pump was 56lbs 

but i list on craigslist as much as i can cause its free and what dont sell off there gets put on ebay tons of car, bike, truck, lawn mower, parts i got alot of stuff with motors and cant ship the motors so craigslist comes in good for that


----------



## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

Ken Scharabok said:


> I have about 350 items in my eBay Store. I run one or two big ticket regular auctions a week as teasers to direct people to my eBay Store. I advise them they can find all of my listings by doing a seller list view search.
> 
> Sometimes I may only sell one or two of a particular item a year. Doing a fixed price listing would be prohibitedly expensive.
> 
> My eBay/PayPal expenses went from 12.4% of gross in 07 to 16.8% of gross in 08, and I really haven't changed my method of using eBay. (That means out of every $1 in sales, eBay/PayPal take $.17 off the top.) At my sales volume the difference amounts to about $1,300 for probably less services from eBay.


I used to do the exact same thing (a few auctions/fixed prices and link into my store). 
But when they went to unlimited items in Fixed Price listings this fall, and letting Fixed Price listings run as "Good til Canceled" (re-billed once per month) like store listings, I just moved my entire inventory to Fixed Price. I get Search exposure and the convenience of a single listing for my entire inventory of that item.

Ie, I can either pay $.03 per month, per item and get minimal exposure as a store listing. Or pay $.35 per month, per item as a Fixed Price and get standard Search exposure. 

I have 340 listings and for me it's _well_ worth the extra $100 or so per month. I know for a fact that the additional exposure covers that cost _many_ times over... :shrug:


----------

