EBay for Dummies (46 page)

After your item receives bids, eBay allows you to add to your item’s description. If you feel you were at a loss for words in writing your item’s description, if you discover new information (that vase you thought was a reproduction is actually the real thing!), or if a lot of potential bidders are asking the same questions, go ahead and make all the additions you want. But whatever you put there the first time around stays in the description as well.

Don’t let an oversight grow into a failure to communicate and don’t ignore iffy communication until the auction is over. Correct any inaccuracies in your auction information now to avoid problems later.

Always check your e-mail to see whether bidders have questions about your item. If a bidder wants to know about flaws, be truthful and courteous when returning e-mails. As you get more familiar with eBay (and with writing auction descriptions), the number of e-mail questions will decrease. If you enjoy good customer service in your day-to-day shopping, here’s your chance to give some back.

Chapter 11

Save Gas — Drive Your Mouse to an eBay Store

In This Chapter

Shopping eBay Stores

Opening your own eBay store

Searching eBay Stores

Sometimes you just don’t want to participate in an auction. Sometimes you want to buy your item
now.
The easiest place to go for this type of transaction is to purchase an item from a fixed-price listing or from an eBay store, where you find ready-to-buy items. Visiting the stores can save you money because buying multiple items from one seller allows several items to be shipped in a single box. Even if the items have to be shipped separately, many sellers will discount shipping costs on multiple purchases.

Much of the fine merchandise that you can find on eBay can be found also in the eBay Stores area. Regular eBay sellers run these stores, which are located in a separate area from the regular auctions. eBay Stores is a place where sellers can list as many additional items for sale as they’d like for a reduced insertion fee. Buyers are lured to the store by the small red eBay Stores icon that appears next to the seller’s user ID.

Whenever you’re looking at an auction and you see that the seller has a store, be sure to click the Stores icon. The seller may have the same (or similar) merchandise in his or her eBay store for a lower buy price.

If sellers have an eBay store, they can list individual items for different sizes of an article of clothing, different variations of items that they sell in regular auctions, or anything that falls within eBay’s listing policies. The store items have a listing time of at least 30 days, so sellers can also put up specialty items that may not sell well in a short auction term of only one to ten days.

The requirements to open an eBay store are basic. However, I highly recommend that you transact business (sell) on the site for quite a while before you open a store because you need a solid understanding of how eBay works and how to handle all types of transactions. These are eBay’s requirements:

You must be registered as an eBay seller, with a credit card on file.

You must have a feedback rating of 20 or more (or be ID Verified).

You must accept credit card payments, either through PayPal or through a merchant account.

The eBay search engine does not directly search the eBay Stores area. If you perform a search on eBay, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to see whether the particular item is available in an eBay store. Store inventory listings appear in the search results when there are 30 or fewer listings for the item on the core eBay site.

To get to the eBay Stores main area, visit the eBay home page and click the Stores link, which is below the search box on the upper portion of the page (see Figure 11-1). Alternatively, you can type
www.ebaystores.com
in the address box of your Web browser.

Unlimited Shopping from the Stores Page

Okay, you’ve arrived! You’ve come to the hub of power shopping online, the eBay Stores home page (see Figure 11-2). Just like the eBay home page, this is your gateway to many incredible bargains. In this section, you find out what you can expect to find in eBay’s stores, how to navigate the stores, and how to find the deals.

Conducting an eBay Stores search

On the top-left of the eBay Stores home page is the search engine for eBay Stores. The store search link is available also by clicking the Buy button in the navigation bar. (There’s a search box on the resulting page; just below it is an eBay Stores Search link.) You can perform your search in eBay stores on different levels. You can search for Buy It Now items — seems a tad too obvious for me, isn’t that why we’re here? Anyway, if you type your keyword in the box and stay with the default search, you can find every piece of the fixed-price inventory in the stores that matches your keyword.

eBay Stores don’t just list fixed-price items. If sellers have current auctions on eBay, those auctions are listed in their stores as well — only regular auctions won’t come up in an eBay Stores item search. So if you find an auction that interests you on eBay, click the item to read the description and the condition of the item. If you want to buy the item, click the Visit My eBay Store link next to the store name on the top of the item page and you go to the seller’s eBay store. You just may find some related items that you want. And the seller probably combines shipping so that you save some money!

If you remember a particular seller’s store name (or part of it), you can also search eBay Stores by store name. All you have to do is type the store name (or part of the store name) in the Search Stores box and click the Search Store Name and Description button to produce the results shown in Figure 11-3.

If you can’t remember the store name but can remember what it sells, type the keywords in the search box while selecting the Stores with Matching Items option. For example, you can search for
terrier t-shirts.
If the seller has used those words in his or her store description or title, it shows up in the search results listing. In Figure 11-4, I typed the name of one of my books and was transported to my own store.

Browsing the store categories

Browsing store categories is a great idea when you’re looking for a specialist — you know, someone who carries a particular type of item that appeals to you. Perhaps you have an affinity for jewelry, art, limited edition books, or needlepoint. Whatever your interest, you’ll probably find a store here to suit your needs.

To browse eBay Stores, just click Buy in the navigation bar on any eBay page. Near the very bottom of the page on the bottom link area, click the Browse Stores link, and you travel to the eBay Stores hub. Look for a list of categories on the left side of page; click a category that suits your fancy. When you do that, the left side of the page (surprise!) lists subcategories within that category. I clicked the category Coins and then the subcategory U.S. Coins, and got the subcategory hub page.

Browsing eBay Stores categories is like strolling down a mall filled with your favorite items. Note that stores with the highest inventories in the category are listed toward the top.

Just like in the brick-and-mortar world, more “general” stores on eBay carry a wide breadth of merchandise. By browsing individual categories, you may be missing them. Try visiting the Everything Else category, and you’ll find, well, everything else.