Advanced Selling - Opening an eBay Store

Advanced selling - opening an eBay store: if you want to be taken seriously on eBay you need a store. Although you can sell your products on eBay without one, a store is recommended if you have more than just a few items to sell. It creates a professional image which promotes your branding. The difference between a seller who has a store and the seller who does not have one can be equated to the difference between a high street seller who has a shop and the hawker who sells his wares by the side of the road.

Opening a store is as easy as opening your seller account. A basic store can be set up in your chosen color scheme and displaying your logo. It has facilities for searching for products by keyword and/or store category and you can also created customized pages for providing information to buyers on your shipping cost and methods, payments, terms and conditions, and information about yourself and your business.

Many sellers do well with just a basic store but if you want something more attractive and individual, perhaps to mirror your e-commerce site, the store can be customized with the help of an experienced web designer and/or web developer. You can find many of these on freelance websites by searching the internet.

Selling manager and selling manager pro

Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro are two tools that eBay provides to help you manage your eBay business. Selling Manager is free but there is a monthly charge for using Selling Manager Pro which offers more advanced features. Key features of both products is a suite of reports which enable you to see at a glance your monthly and quarterly sales. Selling Manager Pro is the real powerhouse though and has a number of features that are well worth checking out. These include:

1. Automated feedback to buyers. This is a definite boon especially when you have hundreds of buyers that you need to leave feedback for.
2. Inventory Management. Providing stock control features such as low-stock alerts.
3. Multiple sales templates per product.

Images – the best way to sell your products

We have all heard the saying “Pictures speak louder than words”. This is certainly true of eBay. Your images must be good and eBay has a number of rules regarding them:

1. Images must be at least 500 pixels on the longest side and the bigger the better. To show them at their best they should be at least 1400 pixels on the longest side because buyers can then zoom in and view parts of the image in greater detail.
2. Images must not contain decorative borders.
3. Images must not contain any added text or logos.
It is surprisingly easy to create professional quality images. This is what you will need:

1. A designated area to be used as a photography studio. It is a good idea to reserve an area where you can set up your photography equipment on a semi-permanent basis so that you don't have to keep setting it up and dismantling it.
2. A good digital camera. You don't need an expensive photographer's camera. As long as the camera can produce high resolution images it will do.
3. Tripod. This will keep the camera steady so that the picture is not blurred.
4. Light-box and lamps. These are used to eliminate unwanted shadows and to make sure that the light is evenly distributed. Light-boxes can be purchased for a reasonable price and it is also possible to construct a very serviceable light-box yourself.

There are several tutorials on youtube that show you how to do this.
Other items which you may find useful include: -

1. A turntable. This can be handy for taking multiple pictures without having to remove the item and then reposition it.
2. A ruler. If you are selling small products it can sometimes be a good idea to show the ruler in the picture of the item so that the buyer can get a better idea of the size.

On ebay.com you can have up to 12 images of a product. All for free! So why not take advantage of this and show the product from all sides and angles and provide close-ups of details and tags which show-off your products and make the buyer's experience as enjoyable as possible.