If you're considering getting started in e-commerce, having
your own eBay store is a great way to gain experience—it's like
putting your own website up right on eBay. According to eBay
University Instructor Janelle Elms (http://JanelleElms.com,
http://StoresSuccessVideo.com), there are considerable
advantages to starting online with an eBay store rather than an
independent website:

•It's quick and easy. Launching a website involves time and
preparation—you have to secure a domain name, find a host, and
then design your web pages, or hire someone to do it for you.
With eBay, you can literally have a store up and running in a
matter of hours.

•It's cost-effective. At only $16 a month, it's highly
affordable. And many of the marketing and optimization tools
you would pay for with a stand-alone site are included for free
with your eBay store. Says Elms, "The marketing opportunities
are phenomenal. I've had clients who've ranked number one on
MSN, Yahoo, and Google, for sixteen dollars a month."

•It produces fast results. You can spend months optimizing and
advertising a traditional website before you start seeing
results; but with an eBay store, you have built-in traffic from
the moment you go live. With some 212 million registered users,
eBay stores give you the ability to reach a significantly
larger audience. And because eBay's site is already optimized,
eBay stores tend to rank higher with the major search engines
than independent websites.

Excuses, Excuses
While most people realize starting an eBay store is often the
simplest, most successful entry route into the world of
ecommerce, many of them mistakenly believe that, for one reason
or another, it wouldn't work for them. Following are some of the
more common excuses people give for not cashing in on this
valuable resource AND the reasons why those excuses don't work:


•"I sell services." This is just a simple matter of marketing.
Services can easily be packaged and sold in an eBay store, and
you can quickly gain significant exposure for your business.

•"I have a brick and mortar store." If you have a physical
storefront, eBay stores present a great opportunity for you,
not only to find buyers for merchandise that doesn't sell well
in your brick and mortar store, but also to expand your
business to a much wider audience.

•"I already have a stand-alone website." Having an eBay store
is a great way to market your website. By utilizing eBay's
marketing tools, you could have nothing in your eBay store and
just have your business marketed to the entire world on a
shoestring budget—no other place on the internet gives you that
kind of opportunity.

EBay stores offer an easy learning environment when you're
beginning in online retail, and an effective means of expansion
as your business grows. They work well as a complement to your
existing business, or they can become your full-time income.
But Elms asserts, "If you're going to be successful online,
you're going to have to have an eBay store—they're just that
powerful!"


About The Author: Chris Malta and Robin Cowie of
http://WorldwideBrands.com are the Writers and Hosts of The
Entrepreneur Magazine EBiz and Product Sourcing Radio Shows.
Visit http://www.productsourcingshow.com for more FREE eBiz
info from Entrepreneur Magazine Radio!

Few things are more frustrating than visiting an eBay store and
be presented only with a mile long list of items that one has to
scroll through. It is very difficult to find items in a long
list if you are looking for a particular type or genre of item.


What many eBay store owners do not seem to realize is that eBay
buyers are not desperate to find and buy their particular items.
There are so many auctions going on at any particular point in
time, that the browser Back button is probably the most used
function when browsing or searching for items.

The default sort order for the listing display in an eBay store
is listing end time, with those auctions ending soonest
displayed at the top. There are other listing sort orders
available as well, but unfortunately none of those are
necessarily very well suited for a store inventory display.

The primary means at your disposal to make it easier for an
eBay buyer to find what he or she is looking for are the
categories.

Think of the categories as virtual aisles in your store. You
need to use those virtual aisles in your store to guide the
buyer through the merchandise on offer.

The easier you make it for the buyer to find the desired item,
the better the chances that the person will buy your item and
not someone else's.

You know your merchandise best and know how you can slice and
dice the types of merchandise into meaningful categories.
However, do not limit a particular item to only one category.
With an eBay store, you can list an item in two different store
categories free of charge. Make full use of it.

An eBay buyer might miss an item while browsing one category
but notice it in the second category. This is synonymous to
putting cans of the same cream in both the dairy section and in
the baking section of a groceries store.

You cannot predict all the uses that a buyer will have in mind
for your merchandise, but you can at least cover off the most
obvious ones. When a buyer visits your eBay store and sees the
categories, they will first think of what they want to use the
item for and see if there is a matching category.

You can have up to 300 different categories in your eBay store.
Make full use of it to help your buyer easily find the item (or
even similar item) they want to buy.

Generally, a person visits your store wanting to buy something,
i.e., with money in hand. It is a great loss when they leave
your store because they couldn't find your item that is hidden
amongst tens or hundreds of other items.


About The Author: Jason Griffith writes eBay Store reviews for
http://BestAuctionStores.com
(http://www.bestauctionstores.com), a site dedicated to
providing eBay Buyers with the ability to review and rate eBay
stores.