Our eBay Story

The following Christmas season (2002), I decided to give it one more try. I'm very stubborn and don't like to not succeed at something.

This time I did more research (which is an absolute must) and also found the eBay Discussion Boards, a great place to learn from other Sellers how eBay worked.

I learned everything I had done wrong the year before; simple things like not having a ME page or a well written listing explaining the important things like a more detailed Terms of Sale just to name a few.

The previous year I had not been aware of these Discussion Boards and the wealth of knowledge that other established eBay Sellers shared. Don't ask me why I never did this, I spent the time and effort researching about setting up a website and online selling for almost four months. But at least now I was prepared!

In December 2002, transaction by transaction our sales slowly increased and we decided to stay.

Our main sales have always, and will always, be our website. After selling on eBay for a couple of years, we had around 200 successful transactions, a very low number when compared to our website. The additional sales on eBay were nice to have, but I wanted more and I knew it could be done.

In 2005, we had around 100 items on our website and it was always difficult trying to choose which items to list on eBay. I had always kept our fixed price listings to a reasonable number due to the listing costs.

I started to read about eBay Stores and wondered if this might work for us better. I browsed the eBay Stores Discussion Board for several months. I decided in August 2005 to open an eBay Store and spent the month adding listings and preparing our store and custom pages.

I found the answer to increasing our sales on eBay, for us it was definitely to open an eBay Store. With our entire product line listed on eBay, buyers could now browse through our store and decide on what they would like to purchase vs. me choosing a few items to list.

Since September 2005, our sales have continued to increase, we now have well over 1,300 transactions. I am now pleased with the additional sales we receive through eBay.

An eBay Store doesn't work for everyone, but it was perfect for us. And the one thing I have learned over the past couple of years is that eBay customers like to buy on eBay. And the buying habits of our eBay customers is completely different that our website customers.

In July 2008 we closed our eBay Store and decided to keep just a few listings running. Sales were still good, but just didn't like the way eBay was heading. Too many changes, too many problems with the site, site becoming over complicated, lack of customer service, and it just wasn't a pleasant experience anymore, too many unhappy buyers and sellers. I almost felt like eBay didn't know what direction it wanted to go.