When to buy an ebay store
Top 11 Reasons To Pay for an eBay Store | When It Makes Sense
so in this video we're going to talk
about when you should sign up for an
eBay store subscription and the 11
biggest benefits to subscribing to one
so signing up for your first eBay
account is completely free and when they
give you your account they actually give
you 50 listings for free meaning that
you can list up to 50 items on eBay at
no charge any listing after that will
cost you 35 cents though now once the
item sells then eBay is going to take
10% of the sale price but besides that
it's completely free to get started now
at some point you will want to sign up
for one of eBay store subscriptions
as they call them this is a monthly fee
that you pay eBay to get some added
benefits and there are different levels
to each of these different subscriptions
so let's get back into my RV sit down at
the computer and we'll go over all of
them together and see what the benefits
of the plans are and when you would want
to switch over to one of those plans
alright so there are currently five
different store subscriptions that eBay
has made available there is the starter
basic premium anchor and Enterprise the
starter and the enterprise are
relatively new those are added within
the last couple of years by eBay so we
used to just have three now we have five
just to make our lives a little bit more
complicated now when you sign up for one
of these store subscriptions again this
is a paid plan that you have to sign up
for and they charge you either per month
if you sign up on a month-to-month basis
it's going to be a little bit more than
if you sign up and agree to a whole year
with using them so in for instance the
starter plan here as you see it is for
ninety five a month or if you sign up at
without a year plan then it's seven
ninety five a month so it's a little bit
more however I always recommend that you
don't lock yourself into a contract with
eBay you never know what's going to
happen you never know if you're going to
ditch this store and start a new one or
whatever so I've never done a year
contract except for on one of my
accounts way back in the past and I had
haven't done it since I always do the
month-to-month but the real question is
what are the benefits of these different
plans now primarily there are three main
benefits to signing up for one of these
store subscriptions the first is that
you get more free listings remember on
the free plan you get 50 free listings
you get more of those each time you
level up here the second benefit is that
after your free listings your additional
listings cost less and less so on the
free plan again 35 cents per listing and
it's less than that for each of these
plans and the third benefit is that your
final value feed is less now have it use
the word final value fee yet but it did
mention at the start of this video that
when you sell an item eBay is going to
take 10% of the sale price that is the
final value fee but as you see that
number that percentage does go down so
those are the three benefits and that's
also going to be the primary deciding
factor for when you should upgrade to
one of these I'll actually break down
the math for you in just a few minutes
but I wanted to go through the other
benefits for you guys as well to one of
these store subscriptions now not all of
these benefits are things that I would
actually consider to be a benefit but I
will show you everything that at least
comes with a store subscription and then
kind of my opinion on them so the first
one is that it makes you eligible to use
promoted listings so if you come over to
eBay and search for an item like I have
here you're going to see the organic
search results which start right here
but above those are always the sponsored
listings those are promoted listings and
those are only available to you once you
sign up for one of the store
subscriptions is not available to you on
a free plan so that's the fourth benefit
the fifth benefit is that it allows you
to brand and customize your storefront
so when you come over to any listing on
eBay and on the right you can see the
buyers name
and if you click on that name it will
bring you to a page that looks like this
and once you have a store subscription
once you're off the free plan you can
brand this you can change this
background image and this logo and make
it look nicer and this is something I've
started to do I didn't really care about
it in the past but it's very easy and
cheap to do so I just figure it's a nice
thing to do it makes you look much more
professional the other thing that you
can do so this would be the fifth
benefit now this would be the sixth
benefit now is that you can change what
items show up right here these are the
featured items you have five of them
right here and you can choose which ones
you want your buyers to see first so if
you have items that sell really well you
might want to stick those right there so
that it even increases the likelihood
that they'll get sold another benefit to
having a store subscription is that you
also have the ability to start to use
categories so you can categorize all
your items into neat little categories
that make sense and this helps keep your
store organized honestly this is not
something that I use if I have seen a
lot of other sellers use it especially
sellers that do like reselling for
dropshipping personally I don't do it
but it is available to you and I think
that all of those things that I just
mentioned all the past seven lead up to
the eighth benefit which that all those
things combined I think do result in
more repeat customers it allows your
buyers to see that you have a
professional store it allows them to see
more of your promoted listings and get
in there and that does I think increase
the likelihood that you're going to have
repeat customers now one of my favorite
favorite features when you level up to
the anchor store which is one of the
higher stores is that you do get
dedicated support so this would be the
ninth benefit the dedicated support so
when you have an anchor store and you
call into eBay you're not going to get
regular customer service you're going to
get anchor support and they
are much better they are more trained or
more well trained I should say they seem
to understand the issues better even if
they're not the right Department who can
speak to you they will connect you with
the right Department and they will kind
of act almost as a representative for
you they they do fight for you and try
to get you as a seller the resolution
that you're looking for with within
reason of course and I have found that
to be a really huge benefit because it's
really helped me a lot
call in they seem to know more about
current policies and I find it easier to
get some negative feedback removed when
I speak to the anchor support as opposed
to the regular support team now the last
two benefits the tenth and eleventh one
they're ones I really don't care about
either but I do want to throw them out
there so that you guys knew about them
the first is that you can have a custom
URL for your eBay store as a drop
shipper this is not something I
particularly care about but again if
you're like a reseller and you want to
give your friends your family post on
Facebook information about your eBay
account that is something helpful to
have and the last benefit is that you
can use vacation mode once you get off
the free plan but I advise no one to
ever use vacation mode I've done it in
the past and my tests around it we're
kind of inconclusive I saw that my store
once I got off vacation mode a lot of
people believe that your sales just
never do as well as they were before
vacation mode my cells were fine after
vacation mode but there were a lot of
factors that went into that there were
some changes and algorithms that could
have actually boosted up my sales and
just from speaking with a lot of friends
and colleagues and other drop shippers
who have tried vacation mode with with
almost disastrous results I would advise
you not to use it that feature I still
think it's worth it eBay has been called
out for this before and they haven't
really had a good answer as to why
vacation mode causes that to happen
best thing to do is if you have to go on
vacation just raise the price of all
your items and then people just won't
buy them or really unlikely to buy them
but I wouldn't actually use vacation
mode alright so now let's actually look
at the numbers because that's what's
actually going to determine when you
should be signing up for one of these
paid plans now as I said before we start
with a starter plan it's for ninety five
a month but again don't do that one
do the month-to-month option which is
795 a month the next plan is the basic
which starts at seven twenty seven
dollars and ninety-five cents a month so
those are the two that we're going to
look at right now and you also have to
look at what discounts come with those
so the starter plan you get a hundred
listings for free the basic you get 250
starter plan the for every listing after
one hundred it's gonna cost you thirty
cents the basic will cost you for each
additional listing twenty-five cents so
if you stuck on the free plan and listed
a hundred items that would cost you
$17.50 which is quite a bit more than
the $7.95 that it costs you to upgrade
to the starter plan in fact the
break-even point there is seventy three
listings I won't bore you with the math
but that's what it is seventy-three
listings so if you have seventy three
listings it makes sense for you to ditch
the free plan and sign up for the
starter plan now unfortunately when you
should move from a starter plan to a
basic plan the math isn't quite that
simple it's not just a matter of how
many listings you have because there's
one other factor that changes and that
is the final value fee so the final
value fee for a free plan is ten percent
for the starter plan it's also ten
percent but for the basic plan
it's just nine point one five percent
now that doesn't sound like a lot but it
does add up so at this point you do
actually have to do the math yourself
and determine at what point based
not only the number of listings that I
have but also how much I'm selling each
month does it make sense for me to be on
the basic plan instead of the starter
plan now my general suggestion for most
people is just sign up for the basic
plan it makes the most sense if you get
to the point where you're selling about
twenty three hundred dollars a month
then the basic plan makes sense based on
the final value fee so if you're in this
to win this if you're already drop
shipping and you're know that you want
to make this work then you will be
selling that month much every single
month so it is worth it for you to just
get the basic plan right away and the
good news is that once you are on the
basic plan the math to move from basic
to premium and then premium to anchor
begins to get a lot easier because the
final value fee percentage doesn't
change the only thing that changes is
the number of free listings and the
price per listing which drops from
twenty five to ten to five cents now I
want to talk about some things that
signing up for one of these paid
subscriptions what it does not do first
of all it does not increase your limits
so eBay does limit each account with a
certain number of listings it will tell
you you can only list 50 items this
month or a hundred items this month and
that number will grow over time they
will continually increase your limits
but just signing up for one of these
paid services by itself will not
increase that limit it also does not
turn your account into a business
account and in and of itself there's no
clear evidence that just signing up for
these will boost up your sales by itself
now obviously doing things like listing
more items using promoted listings and
using some of the other benefits those
things could in fact of course increase
your sales and finally my last warning
here is that these numbers can and do
change sometimes eBay increases the
price of these subscriptions sometimes
they increase the fees or the cost of
the in
certian so underneath this video i hope
i will have a link to the page that it
just showed you so you can see what the
current fees are what the current prices
are so you can kind of do this math for
yourself if all these numbers have
changed so I hope you guys have enjoyed
this video if you did you know what to
do
smash the like button down below and
then let me know in the comments section
what store you are on whether that's a
free starter basic premium anchor or
enterprise plan and what you like or
don't like about it and consider
subscribing to the channel for more
content about eBay Amazon and drop
shipping thanks so much for checking out
this video and I will see you in the
next one bye for now
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