There are two things you'll want to focus on if you want to generate ongoing revenue through eBay: selling individual items and opening an eBay store.
Just want to sell individual items? Then jump in and start selling things! Well, actually, it's not as easy as all that. It's not difficult, but there is a process you'll have to follow:
Keep in mind that aside from some of the optional fees associated with the listing that I mentioned, eBay may charge a fee for listings in certain categories and will also charge you a fee based on the total amount of the final sale, should you sell your item.
If you're really intent on making eBay selling into a business for yourself, you'll want to open a store on their site. This is especially useful if you want to sell large volumes of particular products. For one thing, the listing fees for individual items may take too deep a cut into your profit margin to make it worthwhile, especially for higher-volume, lower-cost items. Plus, non-store listings have limitations on how long they can run—seven days or less. (For an additional fee, you can up this to 10 days.) That means you'll be spending an awful lot of time updating your inventory, and you may find the visibility of your products somewhat limited as well. Don't forget: It's not about just creating each listing, which can be time consuming. You also have to manage each listing, be on top of questions that buyers may ask, watch the auctions as they close. It can be a chore. Plus, there are many items that people may want but might need more time to find an audience. These may lend themselves better to residing in a digital storefront than a limited-time auction. For example, maybe you make handcrafted furniture. In that case, it's probably not an item that people need with such immediacy that they'll want to bid on any of it in a limited time sales situation.
The solution? Open an eBay store, which has a number of benefits. These include the following:
There are other benefits as well, but many depend on the type of store you want. eBay offers a basic store, a premium store, and an anchor store, all at different monthly subscription rates and each with different benefits.
Before you run off with plans to build a store, there are a few requirements you'll have to satisfy first:
With the requirements met, open a store by clicking the Open an eBay Store link. (If you can't find it, you can go there directly by using this URL: http://stores.ebay.com/ .) Then, click the Open Your Store link. After you are signed up with a store, use the eBay Stores Toolkit to help get your storefront up and running. You'll be able to build and customize your store with unique graphics and your own logo, manage your listings, review your sales, manage your marketing, and monitor how well your store is doing.