Are you guys keeping your eBay stores open?

[Rick Bradford]

I'm surprised no one's posted about this yet. I don't have a store myself but have been reading all the fury elsewhere...

[fulltimer56]

Hi Rick,

Don't worry it's being talked about!!

Check this out:

http://www.comicscorral.com/viewtopic.php?t=290

Hope this link works but if it doesn't just go the the "Off Topic" section and it's there.

Linda

[btdhome]

So far the "comics" section of eBay stores has lost only one page.
The tell will be as the Aug. 22nd date looms larger.
Will the total amount of comic stores plummet, stay the same, or actually increase?
Myself, I see the bigger sellers continuing to maintain. Probably only lose the smaller owners and hobby types.

For me, I guess I'll see how it goes.
Gonna run me around an additional $50 a month based on my numbers.

If it weeds out some competition and sales increase, it might be worth it, but as it stand right now, that's about a 50% increase in overhead, which takes eBay & Paypal up to around 50% of my take.

Kinda Steep!

[fulltimer56]

Since I'm one of the small hobby sellers, I'm just not sure if I'm going to keep mine open! I guess we will see. Arthur and my Mom says I would be lost without my store to keep me busy! :cool:

Linda

[SatansProdigy]

I'm getting rid of it before the 15th but will be moving somewhere else. I'll keep running my auctions on it ebay.

[Rick Bradford]

Don't worry it's being talked about!!

Check this out:

http://www.comicscorral.com/viewtopic.php?t=290


Ah, I see! I confess I don't read much of the boards besides the Marketplace section... clearly!

Have you folks considered free shops like eCrater and such? The catch to going off eBay, of course, is getting a good amount of traffic to your site. The big benefit of eBay, I guess, is the astounding number of people that are already there.

[btdhome]

I've thought about alternate sites since I first opened an eBay store.
Unfortunately, I've yet to hear a real success story from a small-time seller at an alternate site.
Yes, almost all are cheaper, but they never seem to have any steady sales.
Unless You have a B&M store, or are a active conventioneer, kinda tough to get the word out to buyers.

Oh and an comic stores update:
Top two seem to be letting their numbers dip.
Down three pages from announcement (75 stores).

[veger7]

Right now, I'm planning on decreasing the number of my listings in my eBay store. Probably will rotate through my collection over the year rather than listing everything I have most of the time. Will have to see how sales go and whether sales support the number of listings.
I also plan to promote my web site more to try to generate off eBay sales. Right now I'm offering some discounts.

[veger7]

Here is my site
http://www.bright.net/~veegee/comcsale.html

and eBay store
http://stores.ebay.com/VeeGees-Comics

Mike

[btdhome]

chatted with a fellow on bidville.com about business there.
He's a hobby guy, so he's happy with what he does, but is up front about the lack of traffic on the site.
But, with the $100 for a year with no listing or Final value fees it seems I may move the bulk of my inventory there and try to pull eBay buyers over to look things over.

[faust]

I'll be keeping my Store, but will be reducing drastically the number of individual listings. I still view Ebay as a viable option for listing full sets (which I have way too many of and must clear out to make space) and more expensive minis and keys, but my hopes to list all of my dollar issues just don't seem logical under the new pricing. When I consider how a three to eight cent hike affects a hobby seller like me, I shudder to think of the way it must impact some the big sellers' bottom lines (at 10,000 listings, that three cents translates to an extra $300.00 in listing fees alone).

Mike, how are sales on your personal Web site? I have considered that, but never pulled the trigger for fear of investing far too much effort for too little gain.

-Wayne

[veger7]

So far, I have not had any direct sales through my site. Fortunately it doesn't cost anything but my time.

Just added hundreds of Key Words (comic book titles and publishers) to the main page indexing so hope the search engine crawlers find them, too.

Also sending out an email newsletter to past buyers letting them know about some promotions I'm trying.

Here is today's newsletter. If anyone wants to be included, just send me an email at veegee@bright.net

This morning I have been busy adding BEST OFFER to my eBay listings.

So if you think the 2005 Overstreet Prices are still too high,
now you can bargain for what you think the comics are really worth.
Will look at all offers and be glad to accept the reasonable ones.

The Best Offer will be in effect only for as long as the current listing is running.
Many will end by August 21, and the rest will finish by early September.

Because of the impeding dramatic price increases by eBay on August 22,
Any sales now will help me finance more listings later.

I currently only have about one-third of my collection listed on eBay.
Everything I have available for sale continues to be listed at
http://www.bright.net/~veegee/comcsale.html