3 Easy Steps Open an eBay Store

By Connie V. Clark

Open eBay Store - First Step

Opening an eBay Store is the best way to help dedicated sellers maximize their online business and is a must for any serious seller and is available on a trial basis for 30 days, risk free. The basic level costs about $15 a month and is a wise investment in growing your online business.

Open eBay Store - Fees

An eBay store runs a bit differently than the traditional auctions you are probably already familiar with. When you open your online store, you can list your items for less money than traditional auctions, just know that the items you list will be sold at a fixed price and the items will be listed for at least 30 days. To have your own store you need to pay $15.95 per month for the basic store. Listing fees are only $0.03 and gallery pictures can be added for free. This is a great way to list lots of products for rock bottom listing fees.

As all eBay stores are basically Internet web pages you can design your store from scratch using any web page design software. The Premium Store will run you $49.95 a month and comes with everything in the basic store except for the 24/7 customer service/tech support that comes with the premium store. Instead of the regular selling manager you will get selling manager PRO and the market research basic plan. Your store will also be included in the eBay stores gateway rotation and will appear in the searches on occasion.

A subscription to the anchor store will run you $299.95 a month. You get everything in the premium store but instead of the market research basic plan you get market research pro. A well run store is worth every penny, and can add considerably to your profitability.

Open eBay Store - Make A Plan

Before you can start to load your eBay business pages with the goods your business has for sale, you need to prepare them. This can mean taking a photo, deciding on the selling price, preparing packaging materials you will need, and calculating the delivery costs you need to add to the selling price of your items.

It seems like many eBay Internet business people get complacent once they are up and running. Pay attention to new feature announcements, stay on top of your customer service and your competition. Your business pages can contain categories, custom pages, promotional areas and a header for the logo of your online business.

Branding your shop is important to ensure it stands out from the other businesses on the Internet. Don’t forget that your business pages are in essence just pages of a website that can be modified to your precise requirements within the limits that eBay sets. Visit the design center to see what is possible with your stores appearance.

Once your new business is up and running, you can now turn your attention to promoting your online business. One of the most important aspects of running your online business is tracking the sales through your store. eBay provides free reporting via its store traffic reports so you can instantly see the sales and traffic statistics of every item in your online shop.