If you're brand new to starting on eBay, check out my other lens Get Started Selling on eBay

One of the best ways to expand your business is to offer both fixed price items as well as auction items, if the type of merchandise you sell supports this. While you can attract interest and hope for some exciting bidding wars, there is an entire segment of the market that just wants to buy the goods immediately, and will often pay more to do so. While you can list items fixed price in the auction format, you have higher listing fees than you do using a store... below are some alternatives that you have for selling fixed price on ebay.

Open an eBay Store
A basic store starts at 15.95 a month and allows you several benefits. You can create categories for your wares that are easily browsed by buyers, you can do some limited but somewhat effective branding on your landing page. You also get a sort of mailing list function, that people can sign up for. (Existing store sellers, if you have not seen this feature, look in the "email" marketing" tab of the "manage my store" link from your "about me" page to see if anyone has signed up for your mailings). It is limited to 100 emails per month so may not be worth it to you (i do outside mailings to past customers, but it's good to see which users signed up to recieve mailings from me). It is pretty hard not to sell the 16 bucks a month to justify having a store, so i would recommend at least trying it. I use it as part of my overall eBay marketing strategy which includes some use of the "Featured Plus" option on select key auctions to lead people to my store, where I make over 50 percent of my sales. You also get some traffic stats using the Omniture Service that is okay (see below), and some pretty easy to use and straightforward sales reports.

Sellathon's Viewtracker software
I have been using Sellathon for two years now, and it sort of makes you into a freaky statistic junky, but it's really helpful to understand your market. They offer a one-month free trial, so I would at least do that to learn what you can about your auction and market in a month's time. You can track every visitor to your auction, where they came from, how long they viewed your auction, whether they "watched" an item,etc. I have found it helpful for determining what category to list in an best times to end an auction among other things.

Ebay Store Traffic Reporting
If you have a store, ebay does provide some traffic reporting software online for you. I find it much harder to use than other trackers, but if you choose to use them for your main ananlysis, you can learn what you need here. My favorite thing about the service is the way you can look at your traffic by "referrals" or other, non-ebay sites... which is a great way to see if you are making any sales from search engines etc.

Include a Printed Card or Coupon
When you ship your item, you might want to include a card or coupon for return buyers. You could offer a fixed percentage off of an item in your store, or you could offer free shipping.
VistaPrint
offers 250 FREE business cards (you pay only the shipping which is about five bucks). In about a minute I designed this "Offer" card so you can see how to work with the premade templates to make a coupon type card.





Customize Your Store Header to Increase Traffic
Here is an interesting AuctionBytes article about how to use eBay's custom store header feature to increase traffic.

Craigslist
If you are selling a large item that is local pickup only (furniture), or a highly collectible item, or even a car, consider placing a few listings on craigslist. It's free, and region specific. Link to your auction and voila! NOTE: if you start putting adds in every region, they will most likely get pulled. When people use craigslist for spam type ads, they get reported. But a special item that is possibly local that someone might be searching for? A good bet for some extra views from craigslist.

Optimize your eBay Store for Search Engines
This is one of the better eBay help articles I have read...and really worth doing for your store. It costs nothing to follow these tips, and you can start getting a lot of hits from outside engines... especially if you have unusual items. Outside search engine visibility is another good reason to consider opening an eBay Store

Here are some resources for eBay sellers that I like.

Auction Bytes
This is a great online source for news relevant to ebay sellers. They have a forum as well. Good for news concerning larger trends on eBay that could affect your business.

eBay Community Discussion Boards
The eBay boards can be a little bananas (some off topic and personal posts) in general they are a good resource when you have a specific question about your category, or want to see if there are any changes at eBay that are making a ripple in the seller community. They have some good boards about how to list items and other technical things you can search when you have a specific issue come up.

Freeform Auction Template Creator
This thing does not have the most pleasing examples, but if you look at some of the listing running online that use his template maker (he has a link to them on the home page) you can see that with a little fussing you could make something nice. Free, with optional donation.