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DO SELLERS REALLY NEED AN EBAY SHOP FRONT?

I find it really strange that alot of sellers insist on having an ebay shop. With fees for them ranging from a basic £6 a month, to a staggering £300 a month (as well as listing and final value fees), it's like flushing money down the toilet. True, they can list more items for longer, and can personalise these shop fronts with their own logos and themes, and they have extra selling tools.

But wouldn't having their own websites allow them to do that and be far better?

Most ISPs offer free webspace with their packages, and together with all the free image hosts out there, it would save these ebay shop owners a great deal of money each year. Important in these uncertain times, with a recession looming ever larger and people tightening their financial belts. They can get their own selling tools and have full control over the content without any insane ebay rule interfering with them, such as the enforcement of paypal. With their own webshop they can offer any payment option that they, or their customers, feel comfortable with.

But, for some reason, sellers believe that having an ebay shop gives them credibility and importance on ebay - it doesn't! You're only made to think that it does. You just get a little red door next to your username, and if you think that's important then you really need to re-assess your life. There are numerous ebay shop sellers who don't even have the high volume listings that these shops are supposed to cater for. I've seen sellers who only have a dozen or so items listed in their shops. This is a complete waste of money! Same goes for those who use "Buy It Now" listings. You might as well have these on your own website, and (if you really need ebay for anything) have ebay for auction listings, linking to them from your own site to a basic selling account.

Alot of these shop sellers are unaware how piss-easy it is to construct their own website. It's this ignorance of the internet that ebay relies on to charge what they do for using their selling tools. They do say that "knowledge is power" and this is a good example of that saying. The thing is, though, the knowledge of creating your own webshop on your own website nowadays is so minimal that it's laughable! But ebay knows that the majority who aren't internet savvy don't realise this. With a little research you'll be surprised how simple it really is. You can even get cheap menu-driven web software that will do most of the work for you.

Then, when you have your own webshop, you'll see how easy it actually was, and then be suddenly sickened at how much ebay ripped you off when you had an ebay shop

Even knowing this, you'll still get the defeatists who'll say things like: "But I'd need to get my own domain name, design the webshop, sort out the selling tools....blah...blah...whinging excuse....blah!"

Ebay loves lazy bastard sellers like that and, to be honest, such people deserve to be fleeced.