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Ebay Warriors

Almantas

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Hello crew!

I have been lurking on Ebay for a while and heard many contradictory stories as regards to selling for profit on Ebay. I know as long as one has a knowledge of a particular niche and products to fill up that niche the profits should be guaranteed. The point of this post is to hear your personal experiences or experiences of someone you know that has/had been selling on Ebay.

Please do share your Ebay selling experience with us!
 
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Vigilante

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Hello crew!

I have been lurking on Ebay for a while and heard many contradictory stories as regards to selling for profit on Ebay. I know as long as one has a knowledge of a particular niche and products to fill up that niche the profits should be guaranteed. The point of this post is to hear your personal experiences or experiences of someone you know that has/had been selling on Ebay.

Please do share your Ebay selling experience with us!

There are hundreds of Ebay millionaires.

Some people win.

Some people don't.
 

Almantas

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There are hundreds of Ebay millionaires.

Some people win.

Some people don't.
I agree and I read many such stories. I would like to hear more input from forum members that's all. Sorry if wasting anyone's time.
 

ChrisJTurner

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Ok, so here is my take on eBay.

Its all about price
If you are selling product that other sellers are selling, no one will give two hoots about your fancy photos and a description that took you an hour to craft.
The reason being, it literally takes 2 clicks to go from your "more expensive" to another seller that has it cheaper but lacking in the image and description department.
Its not as if they are buying from your particular store.

Buyers dont care about you.
Yes, that right, there are plenty other sellers on there that sell the same product.
So much so, you are unable to build any value.
When I was selling auto body repair products (300 products a month), my customer retention rate at its highest was 3.6%.
My items was sent the same day, neatly packaged and at on point I even messaged every single buyer to make sure they had the product, which took my retention from 2.5% to 3.6%.
My turnover for that store was £8500 per month but running at 10-15% profit, depending on the product.

You want to go niche?
For sure, everyone wants to sell a niche product on Ebay that no-one else sells but you have to ask yourself, why doesn't anyone sell this product?
There are two reasons for this.
1) There is no market or is too small
or/and
2) No one has thought about it.

Lets look at these two reasons a little more carefully
1) There is no market or is too small.
It goes without saying, that if you are heading to sell to a market that doesn't exist, you might as well give up the idea completely.
However, if there is a small market, you could make some good money but you have increase your profit margin to negate the low sales.
Though when you start doing this, you will always have a competitor jump on board to undercut you, which brings me back to my original point.

2)No one has thought about it.
I severely doubt this. If you cant find any other sellers, someone has tried and died selling that product.
(been there, done that)
If you have got an original idea with a list of potential buyers, you'd be crazy to sell it on eBay given how much in fees you have to pay but if you do have an niche product that would work, congrats to you.

It can work on eBay and the ones it works for are the early adopters and the ones with niche products and/or high profit margins. Everyone else is picking up scraps.

If you are going to venture into eBay selling, you have to ask yourself, how much are you willing to sacrifice.
Like I said, I was shifting over 300 products a month nut I had to content with messages, complaints, missed deliveries, stupid people, returns, packaging and maintaining the listings.

I would advise against it.
Design your own e-commerce site and sell from there.
 
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Damage Inc.

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My primary business is selling auto parts, and a high percentage of my business right now is done on eBay. I do a mixture of parting out vehicles, consignment sales for clients, and reselling items from eBay, swap meets, and junk yards. The "fastlane" plan for my model is to continue to grow inventory and hire employees to handle the day to day (pictures, listings, meeting with local customers, packing and shipping, etc.) so that I can focus on buying and begin to detach some of my time. The idea of selling used items seems to get a bad rap around here for not being scale-able but in my opinion with the right processes and systems in place it can be a lot better than people give it credit for. I buy my inventory pretty methodically and steadily, and as long as people are fixing cars they'l be buying it. No I'm not going to go viral and sell $100k worth of used car parts overnight, but I'm also not exposed to some of the risks and volatility that some ecom businesses are.

However, I also recognize the huge potential in creating a new product that is more easily scalable, so I'm working on my home decor brand/product as well. After creating and managing thousands of listings on eBay I see the appeal of selling a single line of products and creating a brand around them. Once the product is created, you can focus on selling it - and it doesn't go away once it sells like my other products do.

Overall I love eBay because it's the selling medium that I built my business around and has allowed me to quit my job. The built in traffic that they have for my items is a huge value to me.

Like Vigilante implied though, it's not so much about eBay as it is your products and your execution. You can win or lose with any selling platform.
 

SBS.95

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My primary business is selling auto parts, and a high percentage of my business right now is done on eBay. I do a mixture of parting out vehicles, consignment sales for clients, and reselling items from eBay, swap meets, and junk yards. The "fastlane" plan for my model is to continue to grow inventory and hire employees to handle the day to day (pictures, listings, meeting with local customers, packing and shipping, etc.) so that I can focus on buying and begin to detach some of my time. The idea of selling used items seems to get a bad rap around here for not being scale-able but in my opinion with the right processes and systems in place it can be a lot better than people give it credit for. I buy my inventory pretty methodically and steadily, and as long as people are fixing cars they'l be buying it. No I'm not going to go viral and sell $100k worth of used car parts overnight, but I'm also not exposed to some of the risks and volatility that some ecom businesses are.

However, I also recognize the huge potential in creating a new product that is more easily scalable, so I'm working on my home decor brand/product as well. After creating and managing thousands of listings on eBay I see the appeal of selling a single line of products and creating a brand around them. Once the product is created, you can focus on selling it - and it doesn't go away once it sells like my other products do.

Overall I love eBay because it's the selling medium that I built my business around and has allowed me to quit my job. The built in traffic that they have for my items is a huge value to me.

Like Vigilante implied though, it's not so much about eBay as it is your products and your execution. You can win or lose with any selling platform.

Are you me? I feel like I could have pulled any sentence out of this post and it's something I'd say.

Holy shit you're in PA too--the used-auto-parts competition is fierce!

:wtf:
 

Damage Inc.

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Are you me? I feel like I could have pulled any sentence out of this post and it's something I'd say.

Holy shit you're in PA too--the used-auto-parts competition is fierce!

:wtf:

Haha obviously great minds sell used car parts on eBay.
 
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Guest3722A

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Ebay customer service is a frustrating joke. Plan on spending lots and lots of time on the phone with them and having them think you're at fault. BUT to resolve this, escalate escalate escalate!!! Because the jackass children that answer the phones with their pseudo customer service and do dispute services and all that make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. And they won't admit when they're at fault. Always make damn sure that the supervisors are aware of what the idiot employees do, and ALWAYS take names.

I have to make these calls constantly and cringe every time, but I stay on the line until I get exactly what's fair and right. If I am in the wrong I will absolutely admit it. But because of what I've learned here at the flf, I do my absolute best to give my customers the best service and quality I possibly can.

Fortunately this online marketplace stuff is only supplemental.

To give an example of what I'm talking about, I opened a dispute recently because a customer obviously broke the item and tried to get me to pay for it. When I looked in my paypal account this morning the money was taken out but there was no messages telling me what was going on by the dispute (crack) team. When I got on the phone today (for an hour and one minute total), the jackass customer service rep wasted most of this time trying to tell me it was ruled against me and basically I was screwed. So, obviously I escalated and got an adult on the line who actually investigated and it was discovered that THE DISPUTE WAS RULED IN MY FAVOR. And he said that he didn't know why the wrong button was clicked or whatever they do over there and that the notes on the issues stated it was ruled in MY favor and he didn't know why they didn't communicate with me at all, or make the correct selection.


This put my paypal in negative, pissed me off and wasted my morning.

On top of all this they have so many damn glitches in their antiquated technology that I'm amazed they're able to even keep going. Anyway, got my money back (up to 72 hours thanks to paypal's joke of a system), all bad "whatever" removed (funny how these idiots are the ones who get to judge top rated plus power sellers whose customers love them) and from what I was told, all is now better.

I fully expect to do this again, and again and again with these jackasses but FINALLY I'm at the point I worked this entire year to get to. 2016 phase II.

ps - F*ck you ebay
 
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BlakeIC

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Ebay customer service is a frustrating joke. Plan on spending lots and lots of time on the phone with them and having them think you're at fault. BUT to resolve this, escalate escalate escalate!!! Because the jackass children that answer the phones with their pseudo customer service and do dispute services and all that make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. And they won't admit when they're at fault. Always make damn sure that the supervisors are aware of what the idiot employees do, and ALWAYS take names.

I have to make these calls constantly and cringe every time, but I stay on the line until I get exactly what's fair and right. If I am in the wrong I will absolutely admit it. But because of what I've learned here at the flf, I do my absolute best to give my customers the best service and quality I possibly can.

Fortunately this online marketplace stuff is only supplemental.

To give an example of what I'm talking about, I opened a dispute recently because a customer obviously broke the item and tried to get me to pay for it. When I looked in my paypal account this morning the money was taken out but there was no messages telling me what was going on by the dispute (crack) team. When I got on the phone today (for an hour and one minute total), the jackass customer service rep wasted most of this time trying to tell me it was ruled against me and basically I was screwed. So, obviously I escalated and got an adult on the line who actually investigated and it was discovered that THE DISPUTE WAS RULED IN MY FAVOR. And he said that he didn't know why the wrong button was clicked or whatever they do over there and that the notes on the issues stated it was ruled in MY favor and he didn't know why they didn't communicate with me at all, or make the correct selection.


This put my paypal in negative, pissed me off and wasted my morning.

On top of all this they have so many damn glitches in their antiquated technology that I'm amazed they're able to even keep going. Anyway, got my money back (up to 72 hours thanks to paypal's joke of a system), all bad "whatever" removed (funny how these idiots are the ones who get to judge top rated plus power sellers whose customers love them) and from what I was told, all is now better.

I fully expect to do this again, and again and again with these jackasses but FINALLY I'm at the point I worked this entire year to get to. 2016 phase II.

ps - F*ck you ebay
on the topic of ebay glitches, whenever I choose "calculated shipping cost" ebay ALWAYS gives the buyer free shipping no matter what, i had to cancel several orders until i just started doing a fixed shipping cost only
 
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Guest34764

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on the topic of ebay glitches, whenever I choose "calculated shipping cost" ebay ALWAYS gives the buyer free shipping no matter what, i had to cancel several orders until i just started doing a fixed shipping cost only

The buyer should always get free shipping....What buyer wants to spend money on the product then spend another 10+$ for shipping fees?
Just put the shipping cost included with the product and the product will look much more appealing to buy.
 
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BlakeIC

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The buyer should always get free shipping....What buyer wants to spend money on the product then spend another 10+$ for shipping fees?
Just put the shipping cost included with the product and the product will look much more appealing to buy.
I have had higher sales for items with shipping cost included compared to items with no shipping cost included

Plus the majority of my items can be shipped with usps bubble mailers for $5.05
 

ChrisJTurner

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Ebay customer service is a frustrating joke.
ps - F*ck you ebay

Yup, I opened a dispute with them about another seller used me photographs and watermarked his logo over my watermark on several items.
Sent eBay the originals watermarked and unwatermarked with proof of the meta-data and they did nothing about it.
As long as product is sold, they dont care.
To my knowledge the seller is still using my photos, even though I quit eBay now.
 

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Yup, I opened a dispute with them about another seller used me photographs and watermarked his logo over my watermark on several items.
Sent eBay the originals watermarked and unwatermarked with proof of the meta-data and they did nothing about it.
As long as product is sold, they dont care.
To my knowledge the seller is still using my photos, even though I quit eBay now.
Yep, this totally happens all the time. Descriptions, photos, etc. get stolen and eBay does nothing about it.

In regards to the original post selling on eBay can be profitable but it is no longer as simple as throwing up products and raking in the money. On many products there are now hundreds of Chinese sellers that ship from Hong Kong for free and offer prices that anyone in the U.S. simply can't compete with. The rules get skirted/all out broken all the time and eBay does absolutely nothing about it.

I got out of selling on eBay at the beginning of this year. I set up my own website and started selling on there. It has been the absolute best decision I have ever made. You are able to do so much more with so many less restrictions and you don't have to give in to scammers because of them threatening to leave negative feedback.
 
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BlakeIC

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Yup, I opened a dispute with them about another seller used me photographs and watermarked his logo over my watermark on several items.
Sent eBay the originals watermarked and unwatermarked with proof of the meta-data and they did nothing about it.
As long as product is sold, they dont care.
To my knowledge the seller is still using my photos, even though I quit eBay now.
amazon is just as bad too
 

Damage Inc.

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I have a pretty great takedown record on eBay. VeRo complaints work perfectly if you have brand authority.

Do you mind sharing the process that has worked best for you? Do you just fill out the NOCI and email it and they take care of the rest?
 
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Vigilante

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Do you mind sharing the process that has worked best for you? Do you just fill out the NOCI and email it and they take care of the rest?

I don't remember how we got set for VERO certified as the brand holder. It's been a few years. But now, all we have to do is :

1. I send a Cease and Desist through eBay to the offenders. This knocks out 99% of it, including ALL retail arbitrage as people don't want to screw their accounts up over something they don't own.

2. The 1% that don't heed our Cease and Desist warning... we send a VERO email over to eBay with the infringing listing, and 100% of the time eBay takes the listing down and warns, suspends, or kills the offending account (depending on if they have any other previous infractions of eBay policy or not)

The smartest ones just immediately take the listing down when they get the C&D. Most of the time, infringers are just using scraping tools to replicate listings, but they don't want a fight. The 1% is comprised of douche bags, ignorant boobs, and people who think for some reason that they can stand behind bullshit fake interpretations of fair trade laws. They can't. eBay owns the sandbox.
 

Damage Inc.

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I don't remember how we got set for VERO certified as the brand holder. It's been a few years. But now, all we have to do is :

1. I send a Cease and Desist through eBay to the offenders. This knocks out 99% of it, including ALL retail arbitrage as people don't want to screw their accounts up over something they don't own.

2. The 1% that don't heed our Cease and Desist warning... we send a VERO email over to eBay with the infringing listing, and 100% of the time eBay takes the listing down and warns, suspends, or kills the offending account (depending on if they have any other previous infractions of eBay policy or not)

The smartest ones just immediately take the listing down when they get the C&D. Most of the time, infringers are just using scraping tools to replicate listings, but they don't want a fight. The 1% is comprised of douche bags, ignorant boobs, and people who think for some reason that they can stand behind bullshit fake interpretations of fair trade laws. They can't. eBay owns the sandbox.

Thanks, nice to know that the C&D works so well.

Sorry to bring this thread off track (maybe an eBay tricks and tips thread would be worthwhile?) but it's interesting that you bring this up. I've been suspicious of people arbitraging my items but I think they're doing it outside of eBay. Just this week I had somebody buy one of my parts and ask that the outside of the box be labeled with the order number (probably so they can forward it somewhere easily without opening it or checking where it came from) and they have a TON of feedback as a buyer only. Since I'm selling used parts I almost don't care, since I'm not trying to protect any IP or a branded product. But I was curious how to find out what's going on. I googled my own listing text and only my listing came up. I'm more curious than anything else. Have you ever tracked down someone who was arbitraging you on some random international site or anything like that?
 

Vigilante

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Thanks, nice to know that the C&D works so well.

Sorry to bring this thread off track (maybe an eBay tricks and tips thread would be worthwhile?) but it's interesting that you bring this up. I've been suspicious of people arbitraging my items but I think they're doing it outside of eBay. Just this week I had somebody buy one of my parts and ask that the outside of the box be labeled with the order number (probably so they can forward it somewhere easily without opening it or checking where it came from) and they have a TON of feedback as a buyer only. Since I'm selling used parts I almost don't care, since I'm not trying to protect any IP or a branded product. But I was curious how to find out what's going on. I googled my own listing text and only my listing came up. I'm more curious than anything else. Have you ever tracked down someone who was arbitraging you on some random international site or anything like that?

99% of the time what we see is scrapers taking FBA items off of Amazon, applying a percentage markup to them, and trying to sell them on eBay to unsuspecting buyers.
 
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I was once talking to one of my suppliers and he was saying that eBay is killing his brand.
Quiet simply, if you have a brand on eBay, you have no control over how much people sell your product for, which just bastardizes your brand.
Too many people in price wars and other seller looking to do stuff for pennies profit, is no kind of business I want to be in.

The future for eBay is bleak.
 

BlakeIC

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I was once talking to one of my suppliers and he was saying that eBay is killing his brand.
Quiet simply, if you have a brand on eBay, you have no control over how much people sell your product for, which just bastardizes your brand.
Too many people in price wars and other seller looking to do stuff for pennies profit, is no kind of business I want to be in.

The future for eBay is bleak.
Eventually amazon could also become the same thing

With ebays shipping program there is now hundreds if not thousands of vendors selling direct from china out competing everyone in terms of price + free shipping

Now that amazon on FBA is becoming more popular, more and more chinese vendors again will start exporting to FBA facilities and compete on penny margins killing many others businesses

I'd love to hear others insights
 

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I was once talking to one of my suppliers and he was saying that eBay is killing his brand.
Quiet simply, if you have a brand on eBay, you have no control over how much people sell your product for, which just bastardizes your brand.
Too many people in price wars and other seller looking to do stuff for pennies profit, is no kind of business I want to be in.

The future for eBay is bleak
.

I actually have an client that tripled his sales this year alone and the store is doing millions,
It was a vicious battle initially but that store is now murdering it's competitors to a pulp.

Nothing is really ever "dead" or "saturated".
 
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Damage Inc.

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Eventually amazon could also become the same thing

With ebays shipping program there is now hundreds if not thousands of vendors selling direct from china out competing everyone in terms of price + free shipping

Now that amazon on FBA is becoming more popular, more and more chinese vendors again will start exporting to FBA facilities and compete on penny margins killing many others businesses

I'd love to hear others insights

Again it comes down to the products and the execution. It would be very hard to jump into eBay right now trying to make a living selling USB flash drives. It's a commodity that nobody really cares about and the Chinese have the upper hand. But if you sell something like rare European car parts or high quality hand made branded items this is much less of an issue.

Not to say that fees and competition won't change the landscape or drive some sellers away, but I wouldn't consider eBay or Amazon as being dead or not worthwhile to get into.
 

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It would be very hard to jump into eBay right now trying to make a living selling USB flash drives. It's a commodity that nobody really cares about and the Chinese have the upper hand.

This. Basically if what you are selling can already be found in every Walmart in the country, then you probably want to reconsider. If it's in every Walmart, then you can assume there are 10,000 people online selling the same exact product.
 

SBS.95

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I was once talking to one of my suppliers and he was saying that eBay is killing his brand.
Quiet simply, if you have a brand on eBay, you have no control over how much people sell your product for, which just bastardizes your brand.
Too many people in price wars and other seller looking to do stuff for pennies profit, is no kind of business I want to be in.

The future for eBay is bleak.

I don't really understand how "ebay" can kill this guy's brand. If all you are doing is importing a product from China and then reselling it, I can see how saturation would ruin profit margins. But if you truly have your own brand, and are a distinguished seller, people should still want to buy with you. I frequently purchase products from sellers I trust rather than going with some unknown retailer to save $2. Most people hate change and are the same way.
 
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I don't really understand how "ebay" can kill this guy's brand. If all you are doing is importing a product from China and then reselling it, I can see how saturation would ruin profit margins. But if you truly have your own brand, and are a distinguished seller, people should still want to buy with you. I frequently purchase products from sellers I trust rather than going with some unknown retailer to save $2. Most people hate change and are the same way.

It wasn't a Chinese product, its a major manufacturer of body shop consumables.
When a manufacturer sells its products to suppliers; suppliers have the responsibility to keep prices high enough so there is enough profit in the product for everyone to make some money.
However, a lot of his suppliers are now in a price war to have the cheaper product on eBay, so of course this is not good for the brand.
For starters, it cheapens the brand and secondly, suppliers lose confidence in the product and end up selling a rival product from a different manufacturer so they can make profit.

Anyone who sells a product on eBay that has high market saturation is a fool in my eyes, unless they are willing to sell their soul and make little money for the amount of effort put forth.

"I frequently purchase product form sellers I trust"
This is not representative of what happens on eBay.
My highest customer retention rate in single month was 3.6% and I had 100% good feedback, so I beg to differ.
 

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It wasn't a Chinese product, its a major manufacturer of body shop consumables.
When a manufacturer sells its products to suppliers; suppliers have the responsibility to keep prices high enough so there is enough profit in the product for everyone to make some money.
However, a lot of his suppliers are now in a price war to have the cheaper product on eBay, so of course this is not good for the brand.
For starters, it cheapens the brand and secondly, suppliers lose confidence in the product and end up selling a rival product from a different manufacturer so they can make profit.

Anyone who sells a product on eBay that has high market saturation is a fool in my eyes, unless they are willing to sell their soul and make little money for the amount of effort put forth.

"I frequently purchase product form sellers I trust"
This is not representative of what happens on eBay.
My highest customer retention rate in single month was 3.6% and I had 100% good feedback, so I beg to differ.
In general if I had a branded product I would never sell it on ebay and I would make sure nobody else resold it there either

For amazon I would sell there, but i would make my prices a bit higher compared to my own website to slowly bring my customers to me so if and when I get shut down by amazon again I don't lose part of my consumer base
 

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from my experience:
Pro's of Ebay stores
first thing first. MUCH cheaper than opening (and maintaining) a physical store. duh
large customer base
once at top of eBays 'best match' system, selling can be very easy
Listing products,editing prices and quantity, adding photos is almost a dream
nice graphs to show item sales

Cons of eBay stores
Extremely competitive
fee's - "final value fees" will quickly ad up with rates from 4% to 9.9% per item.
Customers - some customers just do not and seems will not ever understand some basic things such as postage costs and times.
Generally, unless you have created your own niche, you will be required to run some extremely tiny margins
Getting a start can be difficult against established stores with tens of thousands of sales

Disclaimer: my entrepreneurial attempt at an eBay store was not wildly successful. However, it is certainly attainable. I would rather recommend supplementing an existing business with an eBay store. Rather than the other way around
 
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Texan

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I had a recent nightmare experience with eBay. I don't sell on there (we have our own site) but I had an 11-12 year old account that was taken over. The people who took it over sold lots on it in a fast time frame...then I got billed for it. I got my money back, but only after 10 days of stress and misery and hours on the phone with eBay employees. It was hell...

They eventually suspended the account permanently, which is fine. It's what I wanted to happen anyway. I no longer use eBay even as a customer if I can help it. It scares me now...
 
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JAMES-L67

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I've recently started my first expedition selling on ebay. Here's my thoughts so far:

Pros:
- Easy - it literally takes 10 minutes to create a good looking template on crazylister, then copy it over to ebay and list
- Cheap(ish) - the fees take their toll, but no monthly subscription for basic packages is a bonus
- Postage is easy - in Aus we have ebay postage labels and prepaid satchels (not sure if this is a thing worldwide?) which makes it super easy to make labels and post items

Cons:
- Margins - generally smaller margins unless you find an awesome niche product

That's it for me.... The way I see it, it's easier than any other platform but the money is smaller, makes sense really
 

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