Does it cost anything to open an ebay account

If you are going to take your online store seriously, you need to register your own domain and implement your own website. Ebay, like most publicly traded companies are primarily concerned with their own growth and stock price. What this means is that you are always at their mercy and they can choose to put you out of business at their own whim. Most of their changes recently have been in the form of price hikes for using their service.

If you were to open a store on Ebay, Ebay would take between percent of your gross sales. In addition to this, you also have to pay a monthly store membership fee just for the right to get ripped off. You can be sure that more rate hikes will be on the horizon soon. Unless you feel like paying hundreds of dollars a month, Ebay greatly limits what you can do with your Ebay storefront.

They try to bundle their stores with a bunch of tools to add value, but most or all of these tools are available on the web for free already thanks to companies like Google. Meanwhile, you can build unlimited pages on your own website that you host yourself. When I shop on Ebay, I shop for bargains.

Especially since most of the stores on Ebay are mom and pop shops or individuals working out of their own home, I naturally expect to pay less for my merchandise. What this means, is that you will rarely get top dollar for your items.

Because you are limited by what Ebay allows you to do with your store design, the only way to differentiate yourself will be to lower your prices which will cut into your margins. There are many shopping cart or online store software packages already written for you. Here are some choices. Whatever you decide, stay away from Ebay Stores. If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free! The simple fact is the traffic is so hard to get and the way Google keeps changing their algorithms will never be able to be good at getting traffic unless you have a lot of money to spend a lot of time to be able to work on your website.

Totally agree with tony, Russell and the others who point out that this is a one sided article. And Google is just as likely to changes the rules as eBay. Give me a break. Unless you have extensive amounts of time to work on SEO or blogging, the Ebay or Etsy fees are not that bad. Just my two cents. I would take this article with a grain of salt since the success of an E-Bay seller really depends on several different factors.

Location, sourcing of items at the right price and quality of listings I think are the three most important factors that will be determine the outcome of your success for most individuals. Now, fees are part of any business — whether you pay E-Bay or a hosting company on your own website — fees are a harsh reality of creating your own business. Many people like myself would much rather focus on sourcing and taking care of the actual sales process than spending time, money and effort trying to drive customers to your site.

I am looking forward to reading your free course. I am needing to find a second job. I have a job I love courthouse court room clerk but I just want to be able to get extras for my family a lil fishing boat or take a vacation gasp!

And save for retirement. Remember, Ebay gives you access to a huge potential customer pool and although most of them are looking for a bargain, if you have the right mixture of goods at reasonable prices which you should have in ANY business , the financial logistics are actually very good. Is the author really saying that the thousands of people who currently operate Ebay stores are misguided and could do better on their own? I think a moch more solid strategy would be to open your own ecommerce store in tandem with an Ebay store so that as you begin to grow your customer base, you can educate them about your alternate sales channels.

You can have 2,, Then one day you wake up and boom. OK, what do you do next with 30, dollar merchandise? The only way and I repeat, the only way that eBay would shut you down the way that you are describing is if you were actually ripping people off. I left my job and started selling on ebay thinking I will be my own boss, however one morning I find that still I am employee of ebay difference is I am paying them for working under them as well as I dont know when they will kick me out and I will be without business.

I didnt have my own identity on eBay what so ever. Now I have my own website and I have peace of mind,my buyers recognize me as Owner of http: Im always amazed how people like to explain how this is bad or that, didnt you do any research have any business experience , you think ebay is bad , have a idiot post a false comment on a google review or yelp etc on a standing store , it can be devistating,.

Its all the same you cant get away from it reviews and reviews its the future. And to the guy above with his 5 percent profit margin , try having a store , insurance business lic , etc plus pay employees , workmans. Comp , power should i go on , ebay dosent sound that bad now.

Ebay is a good start and the big successful people on there have a web sight , and a store. Go for it , for every person having a issue ,theres s that do well that goes for any business. Start small stay focused and grow as you get sales , but always have a growth plan , it isnt dreaming its called being positive and diaciplined.

But hey thats jus my opinion lol. It would be nice to know when this was written because the eBay fees mentioned here are no longer accurate and are, in fact, substantially less in June than the figures quoted.

These sites have no where near the ebay traffic. I also had my own site for awhile, it didnt get near the traffic ebay did.

I have tried both eBay and Amazon. Steve is absolutely right when he says eBay Shoppers are Inherently Cheap. By the time I lowered prices to where the items would sell and then paid the final value fees, monthly store fees, and various other fees.. Amazon is somewhat better.. Everyone spends all day hanging in their Amazon account.. For the price of all the fees.. Great article but there is a slight problem. It takes a lot of SEO and time to get traffic to your website. Ebay has millions and millions of people, which is instant traffic, so in reality, that is what you are paying for, is that instant traffic to your auction, and SEO Does take a lot of work and knowledge to implement it.

It does take some time to get ahead in google for your key words. Like I was saying, SEO. If you notice how Agnieszka Bane, left a link of his website on his reply? You will find yourself doing alot of that which is all part of generating the traffic to your site.

I think its great to have your own website. Just learn good SEO practices. When eBay randomly lowers the search standings of sellers items, or hides them completely, they do this due to supply and demand.

With the World economy in the state it has been in since the financial decline of , there are too many sellers and not enough buyers. So the corrupt Ivy League brains at eBay came up with a strategy.

Encourage sellers to post, while secretly lowering their search standings and hiding their listings. Just enough to bring in a montly amount of sales to make it appear worth while.

That no matter how much effort and time they put into their postings, they could not surpass a certain amount of sales per month. It made no difference. We were capped at 3K to 4K each month. No matter what we did.

How much we invested. This is so the executives can deny culpability. January 16 at 1: They point the fingers at what they unleashed. Blatant fraud as all of this was reported to eBay and they did nothing.

I think it is very difficult for Sellers to wrap their minds around all of this. And they tend to project their morals and ethics on to strangers. This is also why the Banks and Wall St. This IS an all-out war on the middle and lower classes.

Standard selling fees

I am on eBay and have my own website. Ebay costs but it is virtually a no hassle with high fees. The easiest part of a website is building it. Search engine optimization SEO is the mothod of doing that. And it takes a long time especially if you are in a highly competative business. I know several people who tried this shopify lunacy and got screwed royally.

The charges to reach others thru more search contacts, constant fees, constant promises that are not kept, made them all close and regret ever trying. They are more expensive thru search engine charges, than all of Ebays fees and Paypals, COMBINED!!!!

Exposure to millions of potential buyers. The biggest problem for smaller online sellers is getting traffic to their sites. Luckily our website http: Shame really as ebay started out as a great selling platform , now its all about how much they can make from us sellers. Your claim regarding fees on PayPal is as truthful as Donald Trump. Our fee was 3. Yes, it costs to use ebay.

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It costs to host a website, too. I can also ship internationally through ebay without having to actually do the shipping myself. Ebay takes care of that through their global shipping service at no cost to me. I just make sure the item is received by them to forward to the international customer.

I had an eBay store and my own website. I hardly got any traffic through my own site because there are millions of sites are there. I lost of lot of money paying for Google and Facebook fee per click ads.

A site like eBay is well known and more trusted than http: I started my business on Ebay, then slowly build my online store. I have an Excel table to calculate my prices and the prices on Ebay are higher than the prices on my online store, to make up for the percentage they take. It is not cheap, but in my view it is worth it. Ebay does A LOT of advertising. My products often get seen o Google searches because of Ebay. There is sooo much traffic, you will never get so many people to see your logo, even if you spend thousands on Google ads or any other ads.

You just have to be clever on Ebay. The pictures I have on my Ebay listings are all from my website links to my website from a very reputable site with a lot of views means my website gets higher on searches too.

Often people find us on Ebay, go searching on Google, find my website, notice that the products are cheaper and buy direct from us. I sell a lot of cheap, small items on Ebay such as travelling locks, breathalyzers, earplugs, hi-vis vests, etc.

This is at best an attention-grabbing piece to generate readership, and at worst a reckless scare-tactic post based on little substance. There are many situations where an eBay store would not only be beneficial for sellers, but borderline necessary in order to succeed.

Your argument holds no water. Perhaps you are the one who needs to take a course on this particular lesson instead of spewing misinformation for your own gain.

No overhead, pick my hours, have a ton repeat customers, I straight list in a t-shirt and slippers. Point is, if you use common sense and sell stuff that people use or collect, you can kill it on eBay and be YOUR OWN BOSS.

As far as Shopify ect…. Time to update your post about eBay fees. Your info about eBay fees is outdated and simply incorrect. With basic subscription, you can list up to fixed price listings and up to auctions per month with NO insertion fees. You are being silent about certain store features that boost sales, such as Markdown Manager.

What Are the Advantages of Using eBay for Small Scale Sellers? | Your Business

And I am sure a few more features. There is some truth to the fact that eBay has a lot of flaws. However, eBay also does a lot of advertising. How much do you need to spend on advertising in order to get the same sales volume on your site as you get on eBay?

I can compare because I have both. Ebay is flawed, ruthless and unethical. From a seller viewpoint, they know the marketplace lacks competition, so they do whatever they want. Raise fees, lower profit for sellers and side with buyers and ridiculous claims.

Almost every comment here that sides with ebay says the truth — ebay provides a name and traffic to sell your goods. They know this and like I said, they know there is no competing website, so they take advantage of every seller on the site. My main gripe is the poor handling of customer issues. Thankfully I have had minimal customers complain — but holy smokes when they do, even if the customer lies, ebay will side with them.

At the end of the day, you have to look at your costs. Can you start your own site and do it cost effectively, or do you need to use ebay?

Once you figure out the answer, go get some lube and let ebay bend you over. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. A completely FREE mini course on how to develop a niche ecommerce website in 5 easy steps! Learn how to find products to sell and setup your online store.

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