My store sales are up! Whoo hooo!

I don't know if the shoppers are just back and ready to spend, or if the new store tab has made that much of a difference, but I am getting store sales and I'm thrilled! I've only sold 17 items this month (and received my notice that I'll be losing my Powerseller status ...:-(...first time since I got it 5 yrs ago), but 8 of those sales were store sales! That seems like a lot to me. I'm happy and I hope they keep up! Trying to get my butt in gear and get listing. I hear that the Back to School shoppers are out and buying!

Hallelujah! The Ebay stores tab is coming!

This was just posted in the Ebay announcements:

***eBay Stores Link in Header and Updated Stores Hub***

If we can't have stores back in search, I truly hope this is the next best thing. I can't tell you how many customers I've had in the last 5 yrs or so, mention to me that they didn't even KNOW about Ebay stores! Truly! So many novice users just assume there are only auctions on the site. I really hope this will help all of us store sellers by making the stores more visible.

Is Ebay "Broken"? A telling tale:

I just came across this article on AuctionBytes that talks about the theory that Ebay "broke" sometime in the spring of 2006 when they implemented Stores in Search and then took it out again. Check it out here: Data Points to Problems on eBay.com Be sure to check out the blog discussion that follows here.

I have to agree with this article. It is dead on. My sales were at an all time high the year of 2005, and peaked when they placed Stores in Search. When the took them back out again, my sales have never been the same.

Someone in the blog discussion mentioned that it was also around this time, that they implemented Ebay Express. This was not mentioned in the article and it very well could be a part of what is "broken". I don't know what the hell is wrong, and I think too much time has gone by for even Ebay to know what the is wrong. All I know is that I agree with many other sellers, that something in Ebay's system is broken, and they need to figure it out. If things don't pick up for me this fall, it may be time to call it quits for me there and time for me to go out and get a real job.

Busy Back to School time soon

I'm gearing up for Back to School time sales on Ebay. My sales in the past and this year again, have been pretty dead since the end of April through June. I'm hoping for things to really pick up this month. I'm hoping that Ebay's announcement of adding a Store Tab to the top of the header, will also help with sales.

I've also decided, it is time for me to close up shop on Wagglepop. I truly hope that they do succeed. But I have been paying them $9.95 per month for unlimited listings for a year now, with a total of 6 sales. :-( I can't afford to keep hoping. I do think their site shows a lot of promise, and I think you can even do well there right now, if you have a real niche type of store. But for me, who sells a little of this, a little of that, the traffic just isn't there yet. Perhaps with Googles new programmable search, it will have better success.

Good news for Ebay store sellers?

I'm really really hesitant to even hope that this may be true. But rumor has it, that it was announced today at Ebay live, that they will be placing an Ebay Stores tab back near the header on all the Ebay pages. There was quite an uproar from store sellers awhile ago when any link to stores was removed when the new header design came out.