Given the new changes that are coming out for Spring 2010 on eBay, many of us are evaluating our eBay stores, the number of products we carry, eBay’s latest promise that stores will go back into core search results (like they were 4 or 5 years ago) before people in high positions decided to mess with a good thing, and whether to keep a basic store or move to a premium one.

The move to a premium store would be prompted by overall savings on fees, albeit the store fee itself increases from $15.95 to $49.95 ~ however, given that listing and such fees would go down for the premium store, also given the extra exposure premium stores get over basic, it seems like a good idea.

You cannot make that move unless you seriously examine your business model for your particular business however. It’s not just about cost savings, it’s about increased exposure across the board, the number of items you carry, and how you also plan to use auctions and fixed price listings to bring traffic INTO your eBay store. You also need to utilize a blog plus social networking outlets to bring traffic to your eBay store as well. The days of  “if you sell it the people will come” are long gone, and an eBay store owner needs to make a serious commitment to their store as well as to promoting it plus SEO.

Many of the people I’ve spoken with have either moved already to a premium store or are very seriously considering it. Some are just waiting for eBay to “prove” their trustworthiness that stores will actually reclaim their rightful place in core search.

If eBay management has half a brain cell left in their heads, they WILL keep their word this time and not weeble wobble on whether / should / will Stores get their place in core search. WHY?

With the amount of old time current eBay store owners willing to move to a premium store, eBay stands to gain two things:

A) regain trust that they notoriously and unskillfully destroyed

B) make more money from the upgrade from basic store to premium store

Now, enough about worrying about whether the big corporate gorilla actually will play fair. What if you, like many, have already upgraded to a premium store for whatever reason,  what do you do with those extra pages you can add to your store?

For those who are not aware, forgot or otherwise didn’t know, a basic eBay store gets 5 “extra” pages and a premium eBay store gets a whopping 10 “extra” pages? What are they for, and what do you do with them?

Usually when we have a client who wants us to design an eBay store for them, it’s generally a basic level store. We utilize the 5 extra pages with a fantastic home page, the required policies page because this way all of your customers are on the same page regarding your particular store / seller policies and it helps reduce troublesome issues moving forward.

So, that’s two pages used. We generally try to encourage our clients to utilize the other 3 pages with featured merchandise, revolving specials, or informational pages about your product which lend credibility to you as a trusted seller. And, that effectively uses up the other 3 pages.

When we have clients who have a premium store subscription, there are 5 more store pages to put to good use.  With what? Our best advice is to use them featuring seasonal merchandise, new arrivals, on sale merchandise, and items being discontinued or in low quantity so you can clear out the old inventory to make way for new.

We work with you to utilize these pages in a way that best fits your current business model, whether you sell high end items, mid level items, specialty products, or discounted merchandise for those folks looking for a money saving deal. We then design those pages so that you can easily update them yourself without having to spend money to have us do simple updates for you. We’d rather take the time to design the code very friendly and then give you a lesson or two on how to do this yourself.

Those are just a few ideas to get you started in using those extra eBay store pages that come with your premium subscription. Remember, the whole idea of having those extra pages is to give your eBay store the essence and value of a website. The extra pages, if used intelligently and in accordance with your business model, bring search engine value as well as incoming customer value to your overall eBay store presence.

Visit us at Maureen McCullough LLC to find out how we can help you out with all of this.