Whether you’ve been selling on Ebay with some consistency or you’re just starting to dive in, you might be considering a store. Ebay store subscriptions give you some nifty tools and benefits like:
- The ability to run percent off sales
- Other types of sale promotions (BOGO etc)
- Automate leaving feedback (at higher subscription levels)
- Vacation Mode
- Free shipping supplies with a quarterly coupon code
There are additional benefits but I think that hits the high notes for most sellers (You can check out Ebay’s full list here.) Being able to put the store on vacation mode or run a sale is cool and all but this decision should be based purely on the math whether you are looking at the Starter store or deciding if you should upgrade to the next level up.
For example, if you don’t have a store, Ebay gives you 50 free listings a month, and your insertion fee is 35 cents per listing after that. The Starter level store is $4.95. So the math tells us if you get to where you are listing 64 items a month then you should invest in the Starter store subscription. The 14 listings over your free allotment will cost $4.90 (14 x .35 = 4.9) and the Starter store ups your “free” listings to 100. So you can continue to grow your Ebay business for a flat $4.95 a month, until start to approach 100 active and sold listings a month.
The same formula is true as you move between the subscription levels too. Don’t like to math? No problem, I’ve done it for you in the spreadsheet below:
It’s worth mentioning here that getting to where you need the first store subscription or growing enough to move to the next level should be celebrated. It’s exciting to grow your business and yes, that will come with additional expenses. I’ve seen sellers who refuse to grow their business to avoid paying Ebay the additional subscription fee. To me that’s a real head scratcher. It’s like the guy that complains about paying more in taxes than he did the year before. That usually means you made more money, which is good, right?
If you’re at the Basic store or higher, be sure you know how to find and use your quarterly shipping supply coupon.