Learn How to Set Up a Store on eBay in 2024: A Step-By-Step Beginner's Guide

Whether you're just starting out your ecommerce seller journey or have a few selling channels under your belt, getting started on a new marketplace can be challenging. Setting up a store on eBay involves much more than making an eBay account and creating a few listings; a successful eBay store is made up of much more than a few products published on an eBay account. So how can you set up an eBay store the right way? This guide will give you a general overview of how to set up an eBay store and provide you with some insider tips to help you make your eBay selling account stand out from the competition.

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Understanding eBay Stores

Selling on eBay is not what it used to be. When eBay just started out as an online auction platform, the majority of sellers were listing unwanted items that cropped up after a garage declutter, and sold them to the highest bidder. Customer service was practically unheard of, and, aside from buyer feedback, seller metrics virtually nonexistent. Nowadays, selling on eBay is a far more organized affair, with a variety of requirements for listing items and registering as a seller on the platform. Many sellers on the platform have an eBay Store, and must take considerably more care when listing products, fulfilling orders, and communicating with customers.  

What is an eBay Store?

An eBay Store is essentially your own storefront on eBay. Instead of having just a user page, where other users can look at the items you have listed for sale, an eBay Store subscription gives you an entire customizable storefront that showcases your listed products. You'll be able to create product categories and insert interactive banners to make your store more visually appealing, get your own eBay URL, and get access to eBay's Promotion Manager and Terapeak, a marketplace research tool.

What are the Benefits of Setting up an eBay Store?

Aside from the perks mentioned above, eBay Store subscriptions offer various packages of discounted listing fees. Each package offers a certain number of zero Insertion Fee listings, plus a certain discounted Insertion Fee for each additional listing beyond that number. Furthermore, all subscriptions except the Starter Store offer discounted Final Value Fees, plus varying quarterly discounts on eBay-branded shipping supplies. Finally, Anchor and Enterprise Store subscribers also enjoy dedicated eBay customer service.

What are the Different Types of eBay Stores?

eBay offers five Store subscription plans, each suitable for different selling needs and goals. This section will go over the different types of eBay Store Subscriptions, as well as compare them side-by-side to help you better understand and decide which one is right for you.

Starter Store

The most basic of eBay Store subscriptions, a Starter Store is suitable for sellers who only want to list a relatively small number of items at a time. It gives you access to an eBay storefront for your brand, access to eBay Promotions Manager, plus limited access to Terapeak.

This type of store is great for brand owners who are just starting out, or sellers who have a relatively small sales volume (i.e. sellers whose business model focused on selling a handful of high-value items).

Basic Store

This subscription offers eBay sellers all the benefits associated with an eBay Store subscription – a package of zero Insertion Fee auction and fixed-price listings (250 and 1,000, respectively), and a small discount on Final Value Fees when compared to the Starter Store subscription.

This is a good option for sellers who are making a higher volume of sales, and want to begin focusing on growing their business on eBay. This is the first subscription package that offers you a quarterly discount on eBay shipping supplies, plus a small discount on Final Value Fees.

Premium Store

A Premium Store subscription offers much of the same benefits as its predecessor, but with significantly more zero Insertion Fee Listings in both auction and fixed-price formats. With this store subscription you'll get 10,000 fixed-price zero Insertion Fee Listings in all categories, and 50,000 in select categories.

Offering a big jump up in zero Insertion Fee Listings compared to the previous subscription, Premium Store subscriptions are a good option for more established sellers who have a larger number of items to list and a high volume of sales.

Anchor Store

An Anchor Store subscription is the second largest subscription package eBay offers, and is geared towards professional sellers with a high volume of sales and a very large number of items. At this tier, you get dedicated customer support from eBay for your store and all things selling-related, plus a zero Insertion Fee Listing package of 25,000 in all categories and 75,000 in select categories.

Intended for sellers who have a significant number of sales and a large selection of products, this type of eBay Store subscription is a great start if you're bringing an already established brand to eBay.

Enterprise Store

eBay's solution for the biggest fish on the platform, an Enterprise Store subscription offers a significant jump in zero Insertion Fee Listings – 100,000 in all categories, and 100,000 in select categories. This store subscription costs ten times more than its predecessor, and is intended for very large, established brands with a vast product catalog and a very high sales volume. This is the only Store subscription that enables you to purchase zero Insertion Fee Listing expansion packages of 10,000 listings at $250/mo or $50,000 listings at $1000/mo.

The majority of eBay sellers won't ever need this level of subscription. Enterprise stores are a tailored solution for large-scale companies that have decided to sell on eBay, with dedicated eBay support at every turn.

Comparing eBay Store Subscriptions

With such a large selection of Store subscriptions, it can be difficult making sense of them all and choosing the right one for you when setting up your store on eBay. eBay has several comparison tables of the available Store subscription plans, but none of them bring together all the information sellers need to know when deciding on the right eBay Store for their needs. The table below clearly presents key information about specific costs associated with each subscription package, plus a breakdown of the additional benefits you can expect from each one.

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Things to Keep in Mind Before Setting Up an eBay Store

There are many things to consider when you begin selling on eBay, ranging from what exactly you're going to sell to the best pricing strategy. Here, we'll go over several of the things you'll want to keep in mind before setting up an eBay Store to help you make the best decision for you and your business.

One of the biggest decisions you can make as an aspiring eBay seller is whether or not you should opt in to an eBay Store subscription, and if so, which one. For sellers just starting out on eBay, we don't recommend getting an eBay Store subscription right away, unless you plan on listing more than 250 products from the start. From our experience, it's best to gauge the performance of your products and pricing for a month or two at least before deciding whether an eBay Store subscription is the right choice for your business.

If you've decided that an eBay Store subscription is right for you and the volume of items you'll be listing and selling, we don't recommend listing your items directly through eBay. eBay Store subscriptions are intended for higher-volume sellers, but eBay's listing interface is lacking. Instead, make use of a third-party eBay lister like 3Dsellers, which will help you not only list your items more efficiently, but also give you a variety of tools to optimize your listings, achieve better pricing across the board, and create better converting listings with a variety of listing templates.

Remember that you can always subscribe to or upgrade an eBay Store, so our advice is to choose the smallest package that you think could work for you. It's always good to plan for growth, but it's important to do so in a way that makes sense financially.

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Setting Up Your eBay Store

Once you've decided you'd like to open an eBay Store and have decided on the right Store subscription for your needs, it's time to actually set up your eBay Store and to do so in the best way to attract buyers and generate sales quickly. This section will go over the steps you'll need to take to open an eBay Store, plus a few of our recommendations for things to keep in mind when opening an eBay Store based on our unique experience with a variety of eBay sellers who have all levels of store subscriptions, selling account types, and sales volumes.

Step One: Open an eBay Seller Account

The first thing you need to know before setting up your eBay seller account is that there are actually two types of eBay selling accounts – personal seller accounts and business seller accounts. As the name implies, you'll select the right one for you based on the type of seller you are; if you sell as a private individual, select "personal," and if you have your own business, select "business."

Secondly, as a seller on eBay, you're not given the choice of whether or not your payouts will be processed via a Payoneer account. eBay will simply notify you, either during the process of opening your seller account or after, that you need to link your eBay selling account to a Payoneer account. If you do not have a Payoneer account, you'll be required to create one and link it to your eBay account in order to sell on eBay. Otherwise, you'll be able to link your bank account directly to your eBay account to receive payouts.

To create your eBay selling account, simply go to eBay.com, hover over "My eBay" at the top right-hand corner of the page, and click "Selling." Follow the steps to set up your personal or business account. When you complete the process, you'll be directed back to eBay's homepage. From there, click "Selling" under "My eBay" again, and click "List and Item" in Selling Overview. You'll need to create a draft for an item in order to register your eBay account as a selling account, but you won't actually have to list anything to register your eBay account as a selling account. From here, depending on eBay's decision, you may have to create and/or link a Payoneer account and go through a verification process on Payoneer, link your bank account to eBay, add credit card details for paying eBay fees, and provide identification and tax information to eBay and/or Payoneer.

Step Two: Choose a Store Subscription Type

As we discussed above, eBay offers five different types of eBay Store subscriptions: Starter, Basic, Premium, Anchor, and Enterprise.

Take a moment to look at the table above to compare the different plans and determine which one best suits your needs. Since you can always upgrade your subscription, we recommend choosing the smallest subscription you think could work for your selling needs, and upgrade as necessary.

Step Three: Choose a Store Name

Your eBay Store name is an important part of your brand identity, and will have a profound effect on your brand presence on the eBay platform. From our experience, the best eBay Store names are those that make it clear what you're selling, so that buyers can establish a connection between your store and your product selection. That said, take extra care to ensure that your eBay Store name does not infringe on any trademarks or intellectual property.

Furthermore, eBay places some limitations on the store name you can choose. You cannot begin your store name with the letter "e" for instance, and cannot end in ".com." There are many more stipulations and limitations, and we recommend you read up on them before deciding on your eBay Store name.

Finally, while you can change your eBay Store name, we recommend against it for several reasons. Firstly, you risk losing the reputation you've built for your store, and buyers who've made a purchase in the past and are likely to purchase from you again may no longer recognize you. Secondly, your Store name is part of your eBay Store URL, and changing it changes your Store's URL accordingly. This could result in broken links for regular or return buyers who have your store saved to purchase from in the future.

Step Four: Set Up Your Storefront and Listings

Now that you've registered your account as a selling account, purchased your eBay Store subscription, and decided on the perfect Store name, you can begin stocking your digital shelves with products. But, as you experienced first-hand in step one, creating listings using eBay's interface is clunky and limiting, especially for sellers who have a wide selection of products, those who offer product bundles, and those who have products with many variations (i.e. shoes in several colors and sizes). Plus, creating eye-catching, optimized listings that showcase your products and promote your brand is an essential part of getting your products seen and purchased by buyers.

This is where 3Dsellers comes in, with simple listing management, eye-catching listing templates, and a simple way to fully manage as many eBay Stores as you want from one place. Use our listing templates to create professional-looking listings in bulk in a matter of minutes, publish and edit listings in bulk, and even manage orders, all from one place.

Finally, you'll want to create an attractive storefront that showcases your products and product categories in the best way to maximize engagement and conversion. You'll be able to select featured listings and categories, add a clickable marketing banner, add a store video to your "About" section to showcase your brand story, and input your store-wide policies (i.e. shipping policy, refund policy, etc.).

Step Five: Promote Your Store

After setting your eBay Store up, the most important thing you can do is promote your store and listings. While you likely won't be able to promote your listings right away (since you need recent sales activity to be eligible for eBay Ads), eBay offers several ways to promote your listings: Promoted Listings Standard, which works on a commission model and promotes your listings both on and off site; Promoted Listings Advanced, which works on a cost-per-click model and places your promoted listings in various ad slots across eBay; and Promoted Listings Express, for promoting auction-style listings. Check out our informative blog post to learn more about eBay Ads and how to promote your listings through eBay. Plus, when you use 3Dsellers to manage your eBay Store, you'll be able to run and optimize multiple ad campaigns and give your eBay Store a significant leg up over the competition.

Step Six: Use a 3rd Party eBay Listing Tool

Aside from helping you list more efficiently, 3Dsellers is an indispensable tool for managing listings and products, gaining valuable insights, and managing and fulfilling orders more efficiently. 3Dsellers brings together all the tools and information you need in one place, and makes it easier for you to establish, promote, and manage your eBay Store so that you can get more sales right from the start.  

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Tips and Advice from eBay Sellers

Now that you're intimately familiar with the technicalities of setting up a store on eBay, it's time to discover the best way to approach setting up and managing your eBay Store for the best chances of success. We've created this section based off tips and advice from eBay sellers we've worked with over the years, and brought together the wealth of knowledge they shared based on their personal experience of setting up and running a successful eBay Store.

Choose the Right eBay Store Package

An important first step to setting up a store on eBay, choosing the appropriate eBay Store package for your needs right from the start will have a lasting impact on your success as a seller on the platform.

As an online seller, every dollar spend must be spent wisely, and that's especially true when you're just starting out your eBay selling journey. That's why eBay sellers emphasize the importance of choosing the right eBay Store subscription for the store you need as a seller just starting out, not the seller you aspire to be in the future. Having lofty aspirations is good, but without clear goals and actionable insights, you're likely to find yourself with a store subscription that's costing you more money than it's worth, leading to monetary losses as well as disappointment when you're unable to meet unrealistic goals.

Utilize SEO to Your Advantage

The term SEO is used to describe many things these days – from get-traffic-quick gimmicks to taking time to enrich your listings with valuable product information to help potential buyers make more informed buying decisions. The eBay sellers who contributed to this section echoed the same sentiment across the board: Stay away from SEO gimmicks designed to drive traffic artificially; they may offer instant "traffic gratification," but can cost you dearly down the line in removed listings and other eBay penalties. Instead, focus on creating high-quality, informative product listings by utilizing plenty of varied and high-resolution product images, creating accurate descriptions with relevant keywords, and using informative product titles that entice buyers to click on your listings over the competition.

Additionally, they recommend drawing on buyer feedback to make your listings not just search-engine-friendly, but buyer-friendly as well. Getting buyers to click on your listings is one thing, but converting those buyers to paying customers is something else entirely, which is why your focus can never be solely on ranking – you'll always have to take into account conversion rates. In short, making sure your products seen by potential buyers is half the battle, and the other half is providing them with a shopping experience that turns them into paying customers.

Offer Promotions and Sales

It's the oldest trick in the book, and for good reason – sales, promotions, and discounts drive sales better than almost any other tactic. As an eBay seller with a Store subscription, you'll have access to a wealth of on-site promotional tools, and our eBay seller community recommends you make good use of them to entice buyers and drive sales.

Focus on Quality Customer Service

The most valuable asset you'll have as a seller is not the products you sell, but your customer base. Customers listen to other customers more than anything else when deciding whether or not to make a purchase, and happy customers today are the key to new and repeat customers tomorrow. Even when things go wrong with an order, good customer service can turn an initially negative experience into a positive one, and result in a glowing positive review of your eBay Store as well.

The quality of your customer service will also be judged by eBay, and will be reflected in your seller metrics. Consistently poor buyer experiences and low-quality feedback will result in limits placed on your selling account, and in extreme or ongoing cases can even result in account termination.  

As our sellers succinctly put it, it's better to lose revenue on a sale than to lose a customer.

Take Advantage of eBay Advertising

For those unfamiliar with eBay Ads, it can be difficult to appreciate just how much of an effect they can have on getting your eBay Store established, and how effective they can be in driving visibility and sales. We've written a thorough guide about eBay Ads already, and our sellers can attest to the effectiveness of a well-planned eBay Ads campaign. eBay Ad campaigns are particularly impactful for eBay Stores at the start of their journey, as they help you gain visibility and "get your foot in the door" when you're competing against larger and more established sellers.

While eBay Ads have come a long way in recent years, offering sellers the option of PPC or commission-based ads, the interface for creating and managing ad campaigns is still somewhat lacking. The eBay Ads interface can be limiting for sellers who want to run, manage, and gain insights from multiple campaigns, however, which is why we recommend 3Dsellers' eBay Ads interface for launching, managing, and optimizing your ad campaigns.

Take High Quality Photos

We touched on this briefly above, but the importance of quality item images cannot be overstated. The nature of online sales means that buyers are unable to interact with your product in person, and that has a profound effect on their ultimate buying decision. If they can't hold your item physically, they need to be able to envision themselves using it.

And this is precisely where quality images come into play. The images you include in your listings should be high quality, consistently staged, and above all informative. Using quality images is key to SEO and ranking highly in search results, and crucial to maximizing conversion rates. Sellers who've taken the time to improve the product images in their listings report an almost instantaneous boost in engagement, and an unmistakable increase in sales over time.

Research Your Competition

Researching the competition is a good first step to determining what you're up against in the race for catching buyer attention and attracting sales. You can learn two very important things from your competition – what to do and what not to do. For the former, it's easy to analyze a competitor to see what's working, whether it be the keywords they incorporate into their listings or the product ads they consistently choose to run. The latter is somewhat more difficult to piece together, but it's valuable information nonetheless.

Solid competitor research should be supplemented with wider market research that will help you identify who your buyers are, what they're looking for in a product, what their pain points are, and how they're going about finding the item that addresses those points.

Offer Attractive Shipping and Handling Times

In today's ecommerce landscape, Amazon Prime has set the tone for delivery expectations among consumers. For a large swathe of buyers, one of the main determining factors when deciding whether or not to buy an item is how fast it can be delivered to their doorstep. The experience of our eBay sellers shows that this rings true on eBay as much as on other ecommerce platforms – items that have shorter delivery times simply sell better than those with longer delivery estimates.

One thing that came up consistently, however, is a word of caution against setting overly-ambitious handling and shipping time frames. Failing to meet handling time frames can not only disappoint buyers and result in negative feedback, but also factor into your seller metrics. Sellers who consistently ship orders late (3% of tracked orders or more for the given evaluation period) become ineligible for Top Rated Seller status, and those who have an even worse on-time ship rate can expect further hits to their eBay account health. All this to say – keep your handling times as short as possible while remaining realistic, and make modifications to your logistics process as necessary to lower and achieve your handling time goals.

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How to Set Up Your Store on eBay – Final Thoughts & Key Takeaways

Setting up your store on eBay requires a significant amount of preliminary research on eBay Store subscription options, as well as thorough market research, keyword research, and competitor research. Some sellers will need to open a Payoneer account in order to sell on eBay, and you'll be required to provide documentation to verify your identity, as well as link your credit card and/or bank account.

The process of setting up your eBay Store can take as little as a few hours or as long as a week or more, and the most important thing you can do to give your eBay Store a good start is to have your products and listings ready to list as soon as your store is live. With 3Dsellers, you'll be able to set up your product catalog and publish your listings in bulk as soon as your eBay Store launches, so you can have an eBay Store with beautiful, optimized listings from day one.  

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FAQs for Setting up an eBay Store

Still not sure exactly how to set up a store on eBay? Not clear on what costs you can expect or how you can optimize your new eBay Store for SEO? Check out these frequently asked questions to find out everything else you need to know about setting up a store on eBay!

Q: What are the different types of eBay stores?

eBay offers five different types of eBay Store subscriptions: Starter, Basic, Premium, Anchor, and Enterprise. Each subscription tier comes with a certain number of Zero Insertion Fee listings, plus additional perks such as access to Terapeak and discounts on eBay branded shipping supplies. For a simple comparison of how each subscription plan stacks against the others, check out our comparison table above.  

Q: How much does it cost to open an eBay store?

eBay Stores work on a subscription model, with an increasing monthly or annual fee based on the subscription level. The expected monthly costs (billed annually or billed monthly) for each subscription tier are listed below.

• Starter Store: $4.95/month when billed monthly, or $7.95/month when billed annually
• Basic Store: $21.95/month when billed monthly, or $27.95/month when billed annually
• Premium Store: $59.95/month when billed monthly, or $74.95/month when billed annually
• Anchor Store: $299.95/month when billed monthly, or $349.95/month when billed annually
• Enterprise Store: $2999.95/month when billed annually. There is no monthly billing option for this subscription tier.

Q: How can I optimize my eBay store for SEO?

eBay's search algorithm, Cassini, uses a variety of parameters to determine how your listings rank in buyer searches. As a general rule, the more information you provide, the higher you can expect to rank in search results. To optimize your eBay Store for SEO, you'll want to follow a few key guidelines:

• Use High-Quality Product Images and Videos. Making full use of your listing to showcase your product in clear images and videos is not just a customer-friendly approach, it's also a key part of creating an eBay Store that's optimized for SEO.
• Make Use of Relevant Keywords. Conducting thorough keyword research and utilizing relevant keywords in your product title and description is important for SEO and helps you rank better in buyer searches.
• Categorize Your Products Correctly. Categorizing your products correctly helps buyers find them more easily within product categories, and ensures that they appear in relevant eBay search results.
• Create Attractive Offers with Free Shipping. Listings that offer free shipping are of course much more attractive to buyers, but they also rank better than competing listings with paid shipping.

Furthermore, it's equally important to avoid bad SEO practices that can end up hurting your eBay Store. The most common one is creating duplicate product listings in an effort to "flood" search results. This is a violation of eBay's marketplace policies, and could get your eBay Store suspended or even shut down. Secondly, it's important to avoid keyword stuffing and using trending keywords that are not relevant to your listings in order to attract traffic. This will only end up hurting your rankings, and could result in sanctions on your account. Finally, don't use click-baity titles (think ALL CAPS or titles that are just a string of keywords) for your listings. It not only looks unprofessional, but also has no benefit in terms of SEO.

Q: What are some tips for promoting my eBay store?

There are several avenues you can use to promote your eBay Store, both on and off eBay. Here are some of the most effective methods of promoting your eBay Store:

• Keyword Optimization for SEO. Do your keyword research and optimize your eBay listings to rank better in relevant buyer search results.
• Leverage Social Media. Promoting your eBay Store and listings on social media is a great way to get the word out about your store off eBay, too.
• Focus on Positive Feedback. The impact of positive buyer feedback cannot be overstated – it's crucial for maintaining your eBay account health, establishes trust with potential buyers, and has a direct impact on your eBay Store's visibility.
• Make Use of eBay Ads. Sellers on eBay can use eBay Ads to promote their eBay listings both on and off site.
• Run Promotions on eBay with Promotions Manager. Make your listings more attractive with sales and discounts, and leverage them to promote your eBay Store.

Q: What are the benefits of using a 3rd party eBay listing tool?

There are many benefits of using a 3rd-party eBay listing tools like 3Dsellers to list, manage, promote, and grow your eBay business. With 3Dsellers, you'll be able to list products in bulk, launch and optimize multiple eBay Ads campaigns at once, create optimized listings, fine-tune pricing with smart rules, and even manage multiple eBay Stores from one place simultaneously. With its seller-oriented approach, 3Dsellers brings together all the tools you need to not just set up a store on eBay, but grow it into a successful and thriving ecommerce business.