Pros and Cons of Opening an Ebay Store

Pros:

-Easy setup and managment of your store
-A complete customizeable online store front(no technical or html knowledge required)
-Advanced merchandising and marketing tools to attract and retain buyers
-Business analysis and and reporting to track and understand your preformance

If you're new to website design but want an online store ebasy stores is a great way to go. The traffic to Ebay.com is a huge benefit that makes it easier to focus your efforts on your products, services and the look of your store.

Cons:

If your foucs is strictly Ebay.com and you are not looking to expand into your own website many times it's better to start with regular auctions and when you know what you can sell your items for start a store.

The reason?

People come to ebay.com looking for a good deal. When they find one they bid. It's hard for you as a seller to make enough of a profit to make a living off ebay if you aren't selling a large volume of items. Basically if your profit margin is $5.00 to $15.00 per item and you sell 10 items per week your profit isn't going to be something that's gonna pay the bills. But if you were selling as much as 200 items every week with the same profit margin-well you do the math.

When you start an Ebay store all your items are "buy it now" and if you haven't done enough sales to feel comfortable selling more than say 10 items per week your volume of sales could be less simply because people can find a better deal on itmes that start with a low bid.

Ebay stores is usually better for high volume sales that make it possible for the seller to give the customer a "good deal" (remember people come to ebay.com looking for a good deal) and still sell enough volume to make a good profit.

So if you're just starting I'd suggest doing auctions to get a feel for how much people are willing to pay for items before you move into a store and larger volumes, this will make it easier to set prices in your store if you decide to go that way.