This one is little amusing and I only know of a few people have done this and I was the one told them that it even existed.
The Background
While running my own eBay business and few years back, paying out +£200 for an eBay shop was a large expense, back then it was nothing like today’s eBay shops, I had to be ‘authorised’ by someone in in eBay USA and it took several weeks to be set live, none of this flop £350 on the desk and off you go stuff.
Neither did the store have the kind of listing exposure that you probably enjoy now. We used to have something called ‘Store Inventory format’ or SIF for short. Also in short, it was expensive and equally crap.
Without the exposure and added costs, you were truly left to your own devices to promote your store and its listings, which lead me to explore the threshold that makes one store appear in a category in the eBay shops directory.
The eBay Shop Directory
There is a eBay shop directory (Matt hears *gasps* from the readers, no there really is a eBay shop directory) on eBay that follows the eBay category structure, you can see it here and a screen shot is below:
Taking a closer look we have these features:
- A search box
- A set of categories to the left, that look a lot like the normal eBay categories
- Images of the Anchor stores
- Several featured shops
You can see a similar layout in the screen shot below, this is shown after clicking into a sub category on the left. You’ll also notice that no basic shops are shown in these results.
Pay Close Attention
Now pay special attention to the left bar, as I hinted above, this is a copy of the eBay category structure. What I found that the threshold was really low, you just need 5 listings in a given category to provoke the store to show up in the eBay shop categorisation.
So if you’re paying out what is now £350 for an anchor eBay shop (even £50 for the featured eBay shop subscription level is a lot to some), this tactic could gain you extra visitors to the shop and your listings.
Not Spam
I know exactly what one reader (yes that’s you Mr David M!!! I told you I would mention your name this week) of this blog will be thinking when he reads this article, spam.
No, I am not suggesting you spam eBay with random miss-categorised items. I am suggesting that you selectively tailor a selection of items to each category to optimise your search results, while adding variety to the passing buyers.
Possible Example
For example if you sold batteries and mainly computer related items, you’ll naturally be shown in the computing categories, however you could make 5 different battery packs for a specific toy and list it in the toys category #234 or similar.
Check this eBay category structure link, the numbers to the right of the categories similar to (123456) are the item counts for that given category, this tells you which category you should be looking to make packs for.
If you’re anchor level, you should see the most benefit, as the added logo helps convert and the listing fees are dead cheap, even at the ‘Feature eBay shop’ level where the listings are 5p a pop, for 25pence, you can be exposed to an entirely new section of eBay.
Do Not Leave a Comment!
Don’t want to comment on this article? You’re not the only one I can tell ya!
I love receiving emails from my readers, several blatantly say they do not comment because they do not want reveal their names to the outside world, because they do not want others knowing they read this blog, its quite amusing and quite a paradox too.
Mail me directly: [email protected]
I’ve not hammered out the exact details yet, however, to give you an insight around this, for many years the eBay shop has been one of the most under-loved and under-tapped resources on eBay. I’m currently writing a book that will be given away free on this site that will be “Ultimate Guide to eBay Shops” that is going to change this forever.