Setting Up Your Store on eBay

Setting Up Your Store on eBay

Before you can set up an eBay store, you must have a seller’s account, and either be ID Verified
or have a feedback score of 20 or above. Here’s how to create a store:
1. Go to eBay Stores (http://stores.ebay.com/). There’s an eBay Stores link on the home
page (top left).
2. Click the Open a Store button.
3. You may be asked to log into your seller account. On the next page, click the Open Your
eBay Store button.

You can customize your store later. An easy option in this regard is to select one of the Easily
Customizable themes.

4. Select a theme—the layout and color scheme. Note that some themes
have Color scheme drop-down list boxes below them, allowing you to select different
colors. You can click the links at the top left to select different groups of styles. Click the
Continue button when you’ve selected one.

Read the rules about store names (click naming your Store). The URL of the store will be
based on the name you provide, so you may want to include a few keywords for the search
engines to read. You can base it on your company name, but adding keywords may help.

5. On the following page, enter a Store name and Store description.
6. You should also provide a logo. eBay lets you use a generic or Predefined logo, but
you shouldn’t use this more than temporarily when you set up the store. Your logo is
too important—it appears at the top of every page in most layouts, and in the Check
Out These Stores area at the top of your category if you choose to buy that position. So, have a designer create an image that is 310-pixels wide and 90-pixels
high, and then upload it to your store. You want your logo to be a sales piece, because
if you buy a placement in the Check Out These Stores area, the logo will be displayed
there.
7. Click the Continue button to see the Review & Subscribe page.
8. Select the subscription level for the store (click the benefits of each subscription level
link to learn more).
■ Basic store $19.95/month, the cheapest store; you may want to select this to begin.
■ Featured store $49.95/month
■ Anchor store $499.95/month
9. Click the Start My Subscription Now button and your store will be built.
10. You can now customize your store. Click the Customize Your Store button or go to My
eBay to see the new options that have been added.

Customizing Your Store
You’ve only half-finished your store. You now need to finish the customization. Enter the My
eBay page and look for the My Subscriptions box on the left side. Click the Manage Your Store
link and the Manage Your Store box appears.

From here, you can customize your store by completing various tasks shown in the following:

Store Builder
Edit the basic information you entered when you created the store.
Change your listing layout.
Change the header style; if you have a Featured or Anchor store, you
can make the eBay header at the top of your store smaller.
Add custom pages, and change the navigation.
Organize listings into custom categories.
Add product-promotion boxes to the store.

Custom Listing
Header Create a custom header for your listing pages—add a logo, include
links from the header to particular categories, and incorporate a storesearch
box.

Customize Cross-promotion display
Set up your cross-promotions box, which appears on the product pages

Change Store Subscription
Switch from one store type to another (Basic, Featured, Anchor).

Custom Invoice/Checkout
Add a logo and custom message to your checkout pages and invoice
e-mail.

Customize Keywords for Search Engines
Edit your category pages’ TITLE tags and DESCRIPTION and
KEYWORDS metatags to help your ranking in the search engines.
See Chapter 26 for more information.

Change vacation settings
If you’re running a one-person operation and going on vacation, you
can turn off your store.

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Pushing People to Your Store

Pushing People to Your Store

If you set up an eBay store, how are you going to get people to visit it? There are two ways
people can arrive at your store: through eBay’s efforts, and through your own.

If you wish, you can create a domain name and point it to your eBay store—for example,
instead of typing http://stores.ebay.com/really-cool-toys, your clients would only have to type
really-cool-toys.com. To learn more, click the Register your domain name link in the Manage
Your Store area of your My eBay page.

In the early days, eBay Stores was a little-used backwater. These days it’s much better
known, and eBay is doing more to let people know it exists and push people toward it. eBay will
direct people to your site in the following ways:
■ By including a little eBay Stores link in the Specialty Sites box at the top of the eBay
Home page.
■ By including various eBay Stores links in the Other Ways to Browse box at the
bottom of the main Buy page.
■ By including the Visit this seller’s eBay Store! link in
the Seller Information box at the top of the items listed
in auctions by eBay store owners.
■ eBay store items are included in search results when eBay can’t find enough auction
listings that match.
■ Products are included in the More on eBay box in auction search results .
Of course, since this is your store you’ll have your own URL—http://stores.ebay.com/
storename—so you can guide people directly to your store. This way, you can market directly to
people, and cross-promote from your eBay listings. For instance, you can
■ Promote your store in all your auction listings, prominently and multiple times.
■ Promote your store in your eBay auctions About Me page.
■ Use various eBay marketing tools
■ Market directly to existing customers through postcards and e-mails.
■ Use Pay Per Click systems.
■ Include your store’s URL in ads.
■ Promote your store to customers with in-packaging flyers.
Remember, this is your web site. You can promote it in any manner you see fit.

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Opening an eBay Store: Why Set Up an eBay Store?

Opening an eBay Store: Why Set Up an eBay Store?

Why Set Up an eBay Store?
Should you set up an eBay store? Maybe. Let’s consider some of the reasons merchants do
just that.
■ They want a web site. Many merchants begin by selling through the auction listings,
doing well, and then expanding. Selling online is more than just selling in auctions: they
want to create a web site that they can direct buyers to, a site that can be promoted in
many ways (see Chapters 22 to 29).
■ It’s fast and cheap. Merchants can set up a web site through eBay very quickly and
affordably.
■ Merchants want to sell accessories. A merchant may sell digital cameras through the
auctions, then direct people toward their store where they can sell them accessories such
as batteries, memory cards, camera cases, and so on.
■ They want to sell many fixed-price items. A merchant who sells mostly fixed-price
items may find it easier to do so through a store.
■ Merchants can sell multiples. More like a regular store; merchants attempt to sell as
many of each product as they can. Thus, they’re not just selling “one off” products.
■ Insertion fees are very low. A merchant could list a thousand products for a month for
just $20.
■ Final Value Fees are much lower. As long as the buyer comes directly to a merchant’s
store and not through eBay, Final Value Fees are considerably lower.
■ Merchants end up selling to repeat customers. Why should a merchant pay high
Insertion Fees and Final Value Fees if they’ve done a good job of bringing customers
back to their site?
■ eBay Stores is turning into a destination. More people now know about eBay Stores,
and eBay is doing more to educate people about it. So having a store provides another
way to reach people.
■ eBay pays 25 percent of a merchant’s advertising. If a merchant owns a store, eBay
will pay up to 25 percent of the cost of placing ads in newspapers and magazines.
Of course, there are always disadvantages to any choice in this world. Take, for example,
the following:
■ Final Value Fees are higher. If the buyer gets to a merchant’s site after arriving at either
the main eBay or eBay Stores site, the Final Value Fees are higher.
■ Store listings are not found in the main eBay site as easily. Searches through eBay.com
mostly find listings in the auctions. eBay Stores listings are only included if there aren’t
enough matches.

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Registering as an eBay Member

Registering as an eBay Member

Let’s look at how to register as an eBay member—whether buying or selling, the initial process
is the same.
1. On the eBay home page, click the Register link near the top of the page.

Visit the eBay Learning Center for audio tours and tutorials about selling through eBay. See
http://pages.ebay.com/education/.

2. The registration form appears. Enter all your information, and then click the Continue
button at the bottom of the page.

3. The Choose ID & Password page is displayed.

The User ID that eBay suggests is likely to be a combination of your name and a number. It
won’t be particularly memorable or distinctive, so we suggest you devise something better.

4. eBay will offer a number of IDs from which you can choose, but we suggest you click
the Create your own ID option button and type the user ID of your choice.

5. Type a password; make sure you use something you can remember (write it down
somewhere safe, or use a password-protection program). Don’t use anything obvious that
someone can figure out.

6. Select something from the secret question drop-down list box. This will be a question
that eBay’s staff may ask in order to identify you.

7. Type the answer to the secret question in the Secret answer box.
8. Click the Continue button.

9. eBay now sends you an e-mail message to confirm the account; doing so ensures that
the e-mail address you provided was valid and accessible by you. (If you entered a bad
e-mail address, click the Change your email link to correct it.) You can check your e-mail
within a few moments since the confirmation should arrive pretty quickly.

10. Click the Complete eBay Registration button in the e-mail message. (If the button
doesn’t work, as it may not in some e-mail programs, use the link and the confirmation
code eBay provided below the button.)

11. You’ve created a basic account. You can now buy, but in order to sell you need to
continue. Click the Start selling link.

In this step, you’re going to need your credit-card number and checking-account information
(routing number and account number). eBay uses this information to confirm who you are
and to charge seller’s fees.

12. On the page that next displays, click the Create Seller’s Account button to see the Enter
Credit or Debit Card page.

13. Enter your credit-card information into the page, and then click the Continue button.
The Enter Checking Account screen appears.

14. Enter your Bank name, Bank-routing number, and Checking-account number. Be
careful to enter the routing number and account number into the correct fields.

eBay saves money if you pay your fees from your bank account, so they encourage you to do
so. Currently they will reduce your seller’s fees by 1 percent for a couple of months if you
agree to use your bank account.

15. On the next page, you select which account you want to use in order to pay your selling
fees, either the bank account or the credit-card checking account. Select the appropriate
option button, and click the Continue button.

16. If you selected to pay from the bank account, you’ll see a Direct Pay Authorization form,
giving eBay permission to access your bank account. Click the Authorize Checking
Account button once you’ve read the information.

That’s it. You’ve created your account. You’re now approved to sell on eBay. You can
continue to set up an item for sale, if you wish, or build an eBay store, but there’s no need to do
so at this point. In fact, you’ll probably want to set up a PayPal account, which is what we’ll be
covering in the next section.

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Creating Your eBay Presence: Why Sell Through eBay?

Creating Your eBay Presence: Why Sell Through eBay?

The world’s largest online market is eBay; the largest market of any kind, really. At any moment
literally millions of items are on sale. Billions of dollars’ worth of property are sold through
eBay not merely every year, but every month.
eBay is an unusual e-commerce site because it doesn’t actually sell anything; it simply provides
a mechanism through which other people can sell online. It’s allowed millions of people to sell
online, and eBay claims that 400,000 of these people make a living by selling through eBay.
Besides the relatively low-dollar individual sales of collectibles and “garage sale” items, many
established merchants sell cars and real estate, computers and antiques, and electronics and jewelry.
And not just in the United States, either. eBay operates around the world, in Western Europe and—
through an investment, MercadoLibre.com—in Latin America, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia,
and India. It’s a vast, international marketplace, in which millions of individuals and merchants sell
millions of products.

Why Sell Through eBay?
Why would you want to sell through eBay? For a number of reasons:
■ Hundreds of thousands of people have made money through eBay, many of them
enough to live on.
■ It’s very easy to get started selling through eBay. You can literally post your first
product in a matter of minutes.
■ eBay provides a number of different ways to sell. You can sell through an auction or
fixed price, through the main listings, or in an eBay store.
■ eBay provides tools to increase the likelihood of safe transactions, such as PayPal
Buyer protection, eBay Standard Purchase Protection, and a feedback mechanism about
buyers and sellers. You get paid, and the buyer can purchase with confidence.
■ eBay makes getting paid easy; you can easily set up a PayPal account within minutes,
allowing you to accept credit-card transactions for sales.
■ You have a vast audience. Millions of people browse and purchase through eBay.
There’s a reason that millions of people have sold through eBay: it’s easy and it works. By
the way, there are other auction sites. Both Yahoo! and Amazon have auction sites at the moment
(auction.yahoo.com and auction.amazon.com), but these sites only have a fraction of the listings
and transactions eBay does. In point of fact, there is nothing to match eBay.

In order to be an eBay merchant, you must be at least 18.

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