Home › Forums › Buying and Selling › Selling on eBay › Do you save on fees with multiple stores? Or better to stick with one?
- This topic has 16 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 6 months ago by
Sigilini.
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03/11/2018 at 8:27 pm #34801
I have been wondering, now that we are approaching the 1,000 items mark, if it would be a good idea (or bad) to open another store since there is no mid range store between 1,000 and 10K items.
Would we save on fees or just cause ourselves extra work?
Your input and feedback are always greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
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03/11/2018 at 8:36 pm #34803
It’s a really good question. Not sure if there’s a good answer.
–How large do you plan to grow your inventory?
–Over what period of time?If you plan to have 5000+ items in the next six months, then it would make sense to get the Anchor subscription at $300/month.
But if you only plan to grow your store to 2000 items, might make sense just to have two Premiere subscriptions.
Really just about doing the numbers.
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03/11/2018 at 9:00 pm #34804
Good point, Jay… we do plan to grow but it is a slow process. It took six months to get to 700 items. But if we plan to get to 5000+ then a second store would slow that down… my mind is thinking now…. that is also a slow process. (c:
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03/11/2018 at 9:20 pm #34805
You can calculate a break even point for when all the extra 10 cent fees on the premium store adds up to the price of an anchor store. I think it is around 3400 items. If you never plan to get that size, then it wouldn’t make sense to go to an anchor.
Just remember though, if you have two premium stores, you can’t move your items from one store to another automatically without the help of outside software. So, if you decide you are getting close to anchor store size, you would have to move each item over manually, or you would have to have an outside software package that would do that for you.
I should mention that I’m not talking from experience. This is what I’ve learned from other conversations on this forum, and you could do some searches to find what’s been discussed in the past.
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03/12/2018 at 1:33 am #34809
A Premium store costs $59.95 a month on the Yearly plan and gives you 1000 free fixed-price listings a month, then additional listings are a dime each. So if you have two stores with 1000 items in each one, that would be $119.90. The same 2000 listings in a single store would cost $159.95, for a savings of $40.05 a month. But if either store ever dips below 1000, that eats into your savings, and you could even wind up behind. You’d certainly be behind for however long it takes to build up the second store to 600 items. I guess it depends on your tolerance for the hassle of managing two stores, but to me the savings don’t really seem worth it.
Also consider what happens if eBay changes their store pricing again and suddenly you’re paying more for having two stores instead of less.
On the other hand, if you have a lot of one kind of item for sale — and if it’s something that people like to collect lots of, like baseball cards — then having a separate specialty store might be useful to increase cross-sell and repeat business. That would tempt me more than the fee savings.
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03/12/2018 at 8:03 am #34824
I agree with Sharyn. The breakeven is 3400 items. As a reference I started my Premium store in Oct 2016. As of today I have 2318 listings. I figure it will be fall to early winter before I get to the 3400 listings. Then I will make the switch.
Even when eBay offered the first month free on the Anchor store it didn’t make sense for me.
As for 2 stores or more… Seems like a hassle I don’t want to deal with in my life. Trying to maintain that perfect balance of 1000 in each store.
I have always wanted to ask Jay and Ryanne why they have 2 stores. Seems like they are spending an extra $59.95 each month. They have the Anchor store with 10,000 free listings and are only using around 6,000. Why not put all the second store items in the Anchor store. They are still free and you don’t pay for the Premium store.
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03/12/2018 at 8:08 am #34826
Good question, but we’ve had this discussion before. eBay doesnt allow us to merge two stores. So we’d have to buy into one of the third party services (world lister, etc) to index both stores and then merge them. or at least this is what we’ve been told.
Having that second store is certainly a little wasteful, but at $60, it’s nice having an experimental store. We try things out there that we hesitate to do on our man store.
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03/12/2018 at 8:19 am #34829
Thank you both, Sharyn and Margana. Both points are very good.
It seems that you could save money at the start but as you grow, it could be a big hassle. Just picking a random number like 3000 items, might look like this:
one store 60.00 = 1000 items– 3000 items $300.00/month
two stores 120.00 = 2000 items– 3000 items $220.00/month
three stores 180.00 =3000 items –3000 items $180.00/month 5000 items/$380Save money at 3000 items and loose money at 5000 items.
Food for thought…
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03/12/2018 at 10:45 am #34865
Jay just curious, what kind of experiments might damage your main store? And how would it cause damage? Or have you already had this conversation before?
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03/12/2018 at 10:52 am #34866
I wouldnt say “damage”, more to avoid complications trying new policies.
For example, we wanted to try Shipping Policies. Some turned it on our smaller 1000 item store.
It did create some work trying to clean up some unintended consequences which would have been worse on our 6000 item store. Now that we know what to expect, we can do it on our larger store.-
03/12/2018 at 12:04 pm #34887
Cool, that makes perfect sense.
By the way, store policies are a total mystery to me. Is there a podcast or youtube video that might provide some help in understanding that subject?
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03/12/2018 at 1:28 pm #34902
As I’m getting close to 10,000 items in my main store, I maintain a secondary basic store as well. I think it’s at the very least good to have a back-up store, or at least seller account.
My main store is currently at 9,100 listings, while my basic store is at 90 listings. My main store is niche, while my secondary store is filling up with all the weird stuff people discuss buying in the forums. I probably won’t turn it into a premium store, as I don’t have the space for that many larger items, but it is fun to list stuff I’m not used to normally dealing with.
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03/12/2018 at 3:17 pm #34918
how do you have almost 10,000 items in your store? that is amazing.
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03/12/2018 at 4:05 pm #34937
Sigilini, the policies are quite simple and easy to implement. The difficulty comes in transferring your existing listings to the new policies. eBay tries to be helpful in converting for you, but it can turn into a bit of a mess, mostly with the shipping policies.
Here’s eBay’s original announcement, with some info.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/ATTENTION-SELLERS-BUSINESS-POLICIES-NOW-BEING-TURNED-ON/ba-p/26163287Payment and returns policies are really very easy. It’s the shipping policies that will turn into some work, but a couple days dedicated attention will get it all sorted out. I didn’t find it complicated, just time consuming. My top tip would be to pick one category to work on every 24 hours, e.g. all First Class shipping. If you can’t clear up that category in a day, work on it until you’re done, then wait 24 hours. I discovered that eBay’s systems usually need 24 hours to process changes and sometimes I’d have to repeat actions, or undo actions that had been repeated, bc I’d jumped the update process. Once I realized and waited 24 hours between categories, it all went very easily.
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03/12/2018 at 5:18 pm #34952
Thank you Amatino, I read the link very helpful.
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03/14/2018 at 3:01 am #35116
Shipping policies.
1- USPS First Class Mail and USPS Priority Calculated. (This one should be your default)
2- Priority Mail Calculated and Smartpost (or Parcel Select)
3- USPS Media Mail and USPS Priority Calculated.
4- USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Padded Envelope.
5- Fedex Ground and USPS Priority Calculated.
6- Free Shipping Expedited (USPS Priority Mail)
7- Free Shipping Economy (First Class, Media Mail, SmartPost etc.)
8- Free Local Pickup. (Optional)Of course you can add more or change these as you see fit. Handling charges will complicate matters somewhat. Make sure the one with USPS First Class is your default.
Once these have been set up listing will become quicker as will editing.
I’d also recommend that all your new listings include a store category. You’ll probably have to go in and create a bunch, even if they are no listings in them yet. As time goes by, you can edit the old listings and put them in individual categories. This isn’t to drive sales, but to enable you to edit your items quicker.
Good Luck.
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03/14/2018 at 6:53 am #35119
Thank you Joe! Super helpful as usual. I printed this so that I can work on it.
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