Last month I opened an eBay store to see if I could earn a little extra money. It’s easy and inexpensive to set one up, and there’s no long-term commitment.
Unfortunately, I realized eBay does a very poor job of driving traffic to its site. There are so many sellers and stores now, I had a bunch of items listed for 30 days and they only got 1 – 5 views in that whole time. A couple of things did sell, but not enough to make it worth my time. I had even done research and checked past auctions to figure out which types of items sell best, but no luck.
It’s also tricky to navigate eBay’s fee schedule. Everything I read said sellers get 5-cent listings, but I couldn’t ever post anything for less than 20 cents. And of course they take a cut when something sells, and Paypal takes a cut when the buyer pays. So unless you’re going to get a wholesale permit and start a massive operation reselling crap from China, it’s probably not worth your time to open a store.
I gave up on eBay a few years ago. They took everything that was good about their brand and turned it into a pro-business environment while eliminating everything that benefited the "garage sale" seller. eBay's greatness was always in selling cool used stuff to people who either collected it or needed it for whatever reason. Now it's just a big shitty online marketplace for overpriced new products. So sad.
ReplyDeleteI've never bought anything from eBay, to be honest I don't trust most of the sellers on there, which makes me not want to deal with it. I have however bought quite a bit from Etsy, so depending on what you are trying to sell that may be a better deal? though I am not sure what their rates are in comparison to eBay as I have no skills and nothing to sell lol. good luck!
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