Showing posts with label storefront. Show all posts
Showing posts with label storefront. Show all posts

Monday, March 29

Are eBay Stores Really Worth the Money?

So my boyfriend who is my sidekick in setting up my online store has been super busy with his own online projects for the past few months. Needless to say, I am still store-less and still considering my options. I decided to go and check out the eBay Store situation. I used to have an eBay store back in 2007 and it didn't seem to bring the traffic or sales I was looking for. They claim they have improved the exposure given to those selling in an eBay store. I almost fainted when I calculated how much it would cost for me to open a store up. I have been looking at the free shopping cart software programs before now because I don't need a host. My boyfriend has plenty of space on his server for my little site.

So here is the cost of an eBay Store:

Subscription fees
Store level
Fee
Basic
$15.95 / month
Premium
$49.95 / month 
Anchor
$299.95 / month
This is to just have the store. Here is what you get for each one:

http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/Subscriptions.html

But then...

Insertion fees
Price
30-day duration
Good 'Til Cancelled*
$1.00 - $24.99**
$0.03
$0.03 / 30 days
$25.00 - $199.99
$0.05
$0.05 / 30 days
$200.00 and above
$0.10
$0.10 / 30 days
You pay for each item every month. Yes it may not be much but what if you have a thousand items! Oh but that is not all. When you sell your product you then pay:

Final value fees
Price
Final value fee
Item not sold
No fee
$1.00 - $25.00
12.00% of the closing price
$25.01 - $100.00
12.00% of the initial $25.00 ($3.00), plus 8.00% of the remaining closing value balance
$100.01 - $1,000.00
12.00% of the initial $25.00 ($3.00), plus 8.00% of the initial $25.01 – $100.00 ($6.00), plus 4.00% of the remaining closing value balance $100.01 – $1,000.00
Over $1,000.01
12.00% of the initial $25.00 ($3.00), plus 8.00% of the initial $25.01 – $100.00 ($6.00), plus 4.00% of the initial $100.01 – $1,000.00 ($36.00), plus 2.00% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01-closing value)
In conclusion, I feel that an eBay Store is kinda a rip-off unless you have an already established customer base and guaranteed sales or have a few items you sell and they have a large profit margin.

If you don't you would be better off paying for a shopping cart software like 3-D Cart and getting automatic exposure all over the internet for your products.

Thursday, January 14

eBay vs Craigslist and what is Kijiji

eBay Inc.Image via Wikipedia



Just when you think that eBay has learned its lesson and has stopped trying to dominate every aspect of e commerce, they go and launch their new classifieds site Kijiji. So I guess if you are a Craigslist seller like me and millions of others, you can now also list your products on Kijiji. We will see how successful this site ends up being but eBay seems to be having more success these days with their e commerce pet projects like Stub Hub than eBay itself. Maybe if they lowered their selling fees and lifted some of the restrictions they have placed on selling items, they would see business return. 

eBay is still a great place to sell your products, don't get me wrong. I just wish eBay was the same as when I started selling in 2000. All business changes though, that is the nature of the beast. Check out Kijiji and let me know what you think. Should Craigslist be scared? I guess we will have to wait and see.
























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Sunday, December 13

PrestaShop

Without moneyImage by Toban Black via Flickr
So I still haven't opened my store yet. It seems to be one thing after another. The storefront I was going to go with has so many bugs. The main site is down a lot and getting the csv feed to work has been a joke. I am now considering scraping the old store and starting my store using PrestaShop. PrestaShop is free Open-Source e-Commerce Software. So you have to provide the server and a domain. While that is a drawback, you get full control over how your store works and looks. I don't have to rely on someone else to fix a problem I am having with their product. If it is broken, I fix it. It does take some know how. Probably more for the moderately advanced user. Some html knowledge is probably helpful.

You should definitely check it out. If I decide to use it, I will let you know how it goes.
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