EBay Store Benefits: Is An EBay Store Worth The Cost?

eBay store benefits

What are the benefits of an eBay store and is it worth it for you?

We are asked this question often as we coach others and help them grow their eBay side hustle.

There are several things to consider when deciding to get an eBay store or not, and the answer can differ greatly from one eBay seller to another. 

You may have researched an eBay store, calculated the cost and benefits, and found it was worth it for you.

Or maybe you have researched it and found the extra money per month wasn’t worth it at all for you. 

I’ve been selling on eBay for 24 years and have only recently in the past few years gotten an eBay store.

I got started with eBay when it first started – before smart phones and when there was still dial up! I know,  it was a long time ago and a lot has changed with eBay since then. 

In those 24 years, I have been pretty successful selling on eBay just fine with no eBay store.I have a great reputation with 100% positive feedback and I have no problem selling the items I sell. But a few years ago, we started looking at the eBay store a little closer.

We decided to give it a try and one of the big reasons was for the vacation mode!

Yep, we love to go on vacation, but I was finding when I would leave for vacation, I would inevitably make a sale as soon as I left.

eBay store benefits
From our trek up the 690 miles of the 127 Yard Sale

I would need to go through a whole explanation to the buyer that I was out of town and they would need to wait until I returned or run the risk that they would cancel the transaction all together.    

Now, without a store you can still alter your handling time to longer while you are away, but vacation mode is a nice feature if you are going to be gone a week or longer.

The vacation mode feature happened to be our deciding factor for the store, but over the years we have found some other really nice benefits to having the store and I will talk about 9 of those eBay store benefits with  you today.   

Do these benefits mean you need to have an eBay store?

Absolutely not!

You can sell on eBay just fine without one. But depending on your business model and considering the cost of an eBay store vs. the benefits, it may be the right decision for you. 

So let’s dive in! 

Here Are 9 Benefits Of An eBay Store & How To Get Started With One

  • Discounted Final Value Fees
  • Cap on Final Value Fees
  • Cost of Store Subscription
  • Vacation Mode
  • $25 Free Shipping Supplies Per Quarter
  • Increased Traffic from Google
  • Terapeak Analytics
  • Store Benefits with Big Ticket Items
  • Manage Store Markdowns

Discounted Final Value Fees: 

With every business, there are costs to doing business.

Selling on eBay is no different.

My biggest monthly cost is paying final value fees to eBay. 

EBay brings me the buyer and for that, I pay them 10% of my sale price (unless it is a specialty category with higher or lower final value fees). 

One of the things I took into consideration with the purchasing a basic eBay store and paying a monthly fee is the discount on get on final value fees each month. 

With my basic store, I pay 9.15% instead of 10%. Doesn’t sound like much of a discount right? 

But consider selling an item for $1,000. Instead of paying $100, I pay $91.50. 

Now imagine selling three items at $1,000 each. Instead of paying the $300 to eBay, I would only pay $273. That’s a savings of $27 and that’s the cost of my store per month. 

To us, the discount is well worth the subscription we pay per month along with the other benefits that we receive. 

Cap On Final Value Fees

One great benefit to having a minimum Basic store is the cap on final value values. You may not think about this too much if you sell smaller items. 

However, if you are like me and you specialize in selling large high ticket items, the cap on final value fees is huge. 

With the Basic store, instead of final value fees capping at $750, they are capped at $350. 

So when I recently sold a compressor for $5,350, I paid $350 instead of $535 in fees.  

That’s $185 in my pocket instead of in eBay’s pocket.

When considering if the eBay store is worth it, think about what you sell. If you sell quite a few high dollar items, the cap on fees may be worth it to you. 

If you sell big, high ticket items, it could mean big savings and well worth the monthly fees for the store. 

Cost of Store Subscription Could Save You Money

Ebay store fees vs. no fees. 

I’ll admit it, I wasn’t a big fan of getting an Ebay store for the mere fact I did not want to pay eBay store fees.  

After all, I pay eBay every time I make a sale and I didn’t get excited about paying them more. 

When we first considered the cost of a store, it really didn’t make much sense to us to get it just for the vacation mode. I know, we love vacations but for $27.95 per month?

There had to be more of a benefit for us to make it worth it. 

That’s when we really had to sit down and count the cost and ask ourselves, “Is an eBay store worth it?”

We decided to give it a try for a few months, do the math, and really ask ourselves if the benefits outweighed the cost.

Was an eBay store worth it since we would have to pay them every month whether we sell anything or not?

Because we sell large, high dollar items, that was the deciding factor for us. We felt the benefit of the $350 max final value fee definitely would outweigh the cost and I think it has for us. 

Whether you sell large, big ticket items or hundreds of small items, it’s a personal decision to decide whether the final value fee savings is enough considering the monthly added fee for your store subscription.

A good rule of thumb is if you have over $3,500 a month in sales, you make your money back in final value fee savings alone if you choose the basic store of $27.95 per month.

Take some time and do the math. Take an average of what you do each month and consider if the benefits outweigh the cost. 

Schedule Time Away

You know we love vacation right? We love to take off on weekends or weeks during the summer and travel to our favorite spots. 

We’ve left on some long adventures before we had a store and as soon as we left, inevitably we would sell an item!

We would need to contact the buyer, let them know we were out of town, and see if they were ok to wait until we returned. If not, we would run the risk of having to refund the buyer’s money.

This was one of the big reasons we wanted to get an eBay store!

We can go into our store settings and easily put our store on “Time Away” mode. This used to be called vacation mode.

Now you can schedule “time away” and you can either allow the buyers to see and purchase your items or you can set them to “pause” and you will have time away without making your items available.

This is nice when we take off on vacation or if you just need a little break from selling and shipping.

This has worked well for us and we love the feature. I have to admit, though, I still sometimes forget to put my store on time away mode even with the store!

Time away mode is a very helpful feature, but honestly not enough to pay $27.95 per month. 

We really needed some other really good benefits to the store to keep  us paying the fee each month. 

$25 Of Free Shipping Supplies

We found this sweet benefit by accident – and one of the best benefits of eBay stores!

One of our course members posted it in the group that every store subscriber gets a $25 coupon quarterly for free shipping supplies!

Last quarter, we got 8 rolls of tape for a total of $1.27!  We used our $25 coupon and paid the difference. Not too bad since we use a lot of tape when we ship and the coupon offsets the eBay store subscription.

eBay store benefits

We are always trying to cut corners when it comes to our shipping boxes, bubble wrap, and tape. Every time we have to pay for these items out of pocket, it cuts into our profits. 

Free shipping supplies is another nice benefit to a store and if you think about that’s another $8.33 saving per month when considering the cost of the store subscription. 

Increased Traffic from Google

Since alongside being flippers we are also bloggers, we have been learning quite a bit about google SEO and how it is able to bring traffic to our blog. 

EBay is a multi-million dollar corporation and believe me, they are looking to google to bring in new buyers.

Great news for those who have a store. Google trolls your store listings and picks them up in google. This brings in more traffic and hence more sales.

EBay store subscribers also have access to free SEO optimization tools to help optimize their listings to be google-friendly.

Google is obviously a huge player on the interwebs and is definitely something to consider when you are thinking about an eBay store. It may be worth the monthly store subscription fee if google is finding your listings.

I recently did a search for some of my more unique items in google and my eBay listing showed up on the first page of google. 

Google is king!

It’s a very effective tool that can bring in traffic for more sales.

Terapeak Analytics

I will be honest, I don’t use Terapeak analytics with eBay.

We sell unique, hard to find items and there is not a lot of data to be analyzed when it comes to what we sell.

However, if you are selling items in a competitive market, it might be a good idea to look at Terapeak analytics and what it can tell you. 

What is Terapeak? 

Terapeak is one benefit of being an eBay store subscriber for Basic store or above and gives you years of hard sales data for millions of items.  

Some things Terapeak analytics can tell you about your item:

  • What has sold and how many 
  • Average price of what they sold for
  • What the condition was for the item that sold
  • Sell-through rates
  • What the average cost of shipping was on the items sold
  • How many of those sales offered free shipping
  • Location of buyers and sellers
  • Sale trends through the years
  • Sell-through rates
  • Number of unsold items
  • Formats for listings that sellers used

Depending on what you sell, this may be very valuable information for you and may give you the edge on another seller in a competitive market where others are selling the  same items you do. 

For me, it’s overwhelming to look through this much information and for the specific business model we have, it does not provide good information for us.

However, I do have course members who comb through these analytics and it is very helpful for their business. 

For some, information is power and it may be well worth the monthly subscription to have access to this information. 

EBay Store Benefits with Large, Big Ticket Items

What do you list? Large items vs. small items is definitely something to consider. 

As most of you know, we sell large, big ticket items. This is our business model. We have definitely found that the benefits of having an eBay store are worth paying the monthly subscription for this reason. 

So what are the benefits of having an eBay store if you sell large items vs. small items? 

  • Our Items show up on Google because they are big, unique and hard to find
  • Discounted Final Value Fees for all sales
  • Cap of $350 for Final Value Fee (for the Basic Store)

Because we sell expensive items, often over $2,000 on average, it pays for us to have a store.

We pay only 9.15% in fees instead of 10% every time (including shipping) and anything over $3,500, we will cap out at $350 for final value fee (instead of $750 without a store).

eBay store benefits

Another benefit? Google picks up our listings and we see them popping up with google searches.

One reason for this is our items are often unique and hard to find. Google helps to bring in the buyer and that’s a nice benefit of a store. 

With a couple big ticket sales per month, this could potentially equal hundreds of dollars in final value fee savings for us and well worth the $27.95 per month for our basic store. 

If you sell expensive items often, having an eBay store might be the right fit for you. 

Manage Store Markdowns

I like having the ability to put my whole store on sale. When I get too much inventory and I need to liquidate, I will put my store on a 10% off or 20% off sale for a couple of days. 

I can do this with my entire store or I can do this with just a few items that I have had for too long. This feature is only for Basic stores and above and it has been a very useful tool for us!

It will show up with a nice red 10% off sale tag on my listings. Often, if I have watchers, the sale might motivate them to buy and increase my sales. 

Although I can’t prove it, I do think eBay likes this and will give me favor with eBay’s algorithms. With that said, I find my items are getting seen more and can potentially bring in more sales even after the my store sale is over. 

If you have a huge amount of inventory like I do, and you like to have sales with the items you’ve had for far too long, consider a store. The store markdown  feature can definitely bring in sales for your store. 

How Much Does it Cost to Have an Ebay Store

So now you’ve seen all of the benefits of having an eBay Store. So what are your options and how much does an eBay store cost?

  • Starter: $7.95 monthly; $4.95 yearly subscription
  • Basic: $27.95 monthly; $21.95 yearly subscription
  • Premium: $74.95 monthly; $59.95 yearly subscription 
  • Anchor: $349.95 monthly; $299.95 yearly subscription
  • Enterprise: $2,999.95 yearly subscription

If you ask me, the starter store is not worth it. It will cost you $7.95 per month for only 100 free listings. There are no other benefits included in that price that would bring any benefit to your business, in my opinion.

For all of the 10 eBay store benefits that I talked about today, you will need at least the basic store to receive them.

Please see the list below for benefits and costs for each store. 

EBay Store Subscriptions Costs & Benefits

How to Open an eBay Store

Now that you’ve seen the prices and eBay store benefits, and had time to think about it, it’s time to make a decision. Is an eBay store right for you? Below is a review of eBay store costs and advantages of eBay store.

If you’d weighed your options and you find an eBay store subscription is right for you, with a few clicks you will be on your way to your own store!  Follow these four steps to set up your eBay store:

  • Go to “Choose a Store Subscription”
  • Find the eBay store subscription that works best for you and choose “Select and Review”
  • Select the subscription term (yearly or monthly) and put in the name of your store 
  • Select “Submit Order”to purchase your store subscription

So there you have the eBay store benefits in a nutshell.

So when is an eBay store worth it? That’s an individual question that has to be considered and answered by each seller. 

We hope our breakdown of the 9 tips will help you to look over these options and make the best decision for your business.

There really is no right or wrong answer. It’s what works best for you! 

Looking to get started with your flipping side hustle? Check out our FREE Intro Workshop to get you started!

Further Resources

Free 5-Day Intro To Flipping Video Course 

FREE Workshop How To Turn Your Passion of Flipping Items Into A Profitable Reselling Business

Flipper University

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Robert Stephenson

I grew up in Central Florida and have lived here my whole life. I first got into buying and selling items when I was 16 years old, and have been hooked ever since. It has mostly been a hobby that makes some extra cash, but sometimes it serves as my main income as well. I don't plan on stopping any time soon. I find too many fun toys for my family (or myself), and just love the whole process.

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