Frank Ross has been blogging about the pros and cons of opening an eBay store. He's also detailed some of the important strategies that help you expose your eBay Store listings within eBay here. Great stuff.
Here's some more eBay Store information from my book, The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing
eBay Stores
eBay Stores offer easy-to-establish channels for marketing goods and growing your eBay business. The all-in-one eBay Store package makes it easy to create your own online selling presence, even if you have no previous Web design experience.
You get your own customizable URL address, where buyers can link directly to your professional-looking eBay Store. Store subscriptions also include your own search engine that allows customers to search items in your store only, keeping them shopping with you rather than clicking over to other sellers.
Your store is also listed in eBay´s Store Directory-a sort of yellow pages for eBay buyers to find store sellers and their goods. eBay automatically submits your store´s information to Internet search engines such as MSN, Google, and Yahoo!, which helps to drive buyers to your store from outside of eBay.
Every store subscription comes with powerful sales and traffic reporting as well as new promotional and cross-selling tools. Best of all, listing fees for fixed-price store inventory literally cost just pennies, creating potential for larger profit margins than regular eBay listings.
Opening an eBay Store or Improving Your Existing One
Opening an eBay Store is quick and easy. We´ll walk you through the process here. If you already have an eBay Store, read through this section anyway. eBay recently added several new features and options to help you customize your store, and this section will help you maximize your selling potential.
Note: At the outset of this chapter, we stated that we would shy away from nuts-and-bolts type instruction. However, because the eBay Store is an integral part of any eBay marketing strategy, yet so many eBay sellers don´t take advantage of its potential, we offer an in-depth discussion of eBay Stores here. We´ll be referring to eBay Stores frequently in the other chapters, also, so this section contains important reading.
Select Your Subscription Level
The first thing you´ll need to do is make a decision about what eBay Store subscription level is right for you. There are three levels to choose from:: Basic, Featured, and Anchor Stores. Each comes with its own particular benefits. For more information on the fees and benefits to the different eBay Stores subscription levels, go to https://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/Subscriptions.html.
Featured and Anchor Stores come with additional perks at a higher price tag:
"?¢ Additional custom store pages
"?¢ Additional e-mail marketing capabilities
"?¢ Expanded traffic and stores reporting
"?¢ Monthly allotments of free keyword advertising
These additional perks and features will be explained in greater detail as we progress through this section.
Tip: For medium-sized sellers who also use Selling Manager Pro, the Featured Store subscription represents the best value, as your Selling Manager Pro subscription fees are included in your monthly store subscription fee, along with a $30 credit toward the eBay Keywords program (explained later in the chapter). Individually, these value-added services total more than the monthly fee for a Feature Store subscription.
... More to come...
