Having a Professional Looking Store Logo, and Branding Yourself

Logos and Branding.  

With any store or product branding is important.  I figured why wouldn’t this be the same for our eBay store?  If we treat it professionally and seriously maybe other people will too?  

Luckily I work as a graphic designer for my day job, so I was able to come up with a logo and business name for us pretty quickly.  We use this logo for our profile picture and we also had some “thank you’s” printed out that we can put into each package that includes our logo and the words “Enjoy your purchase” and “Thank you for your business” and at the bottom it says “If you have time please stop by and let us know how we did ... we love feedback!”  We also left a blank space where we can personalize each item with a statement like “Hope you like your hat!” etc.  That helps us look like a more legit business while also personalizing each buyers experience. I realize that not everyone has a graphic design background and work station, but you probably have a friend or a friend of a friend who can help you out with a logo for cheap.

I also recommend having a professional sounding url.  Even if it's just a shortened version of your store name, that is fine.  I personally just don't like to see sellers with creepy names, or offensive names, for instance, bob69doggystyleluvr wouldn't really float my boat.  This doesn't mean the person doesn't have quality items for sale, but if I saw that as a seller name on an item I was considering buying I would be immediately turned off. Even though your store is an online store instead of a physical store, you should still treat it as if you had to face your customers in person.  Try not to be rude and always maintain that professional appearance.  Your online presence is just as important as an in person presence (if not more).  So keep it clean and professional!

Happy Hunting!

The eBay Freshman

Your eBay Store is You.

Greetings!

Your Store is You.  

When you first start thinking about an eBay store you will have to, of course, think about what kinds of items you want to sell.  My recommendation which reflects the eBay Scavengers model is to sell stuff that you are interested in.  For me that is yard sale and 2nd hand items.  I love vintage clothes and accessories, antiques and trinkets, and anything that has a little history behind it.  I also like advertising so stuff with nice boxes and in tact directions makes me excited.  Don’t use your store money to go out and buy crap for yourself though, you are buying for someone else.  I'm not saying don't pick up items for yourself while you are out hunting - you gotta live a little, I'm just recommending bringing a separate wad of cash that is reserved for personal spending to not confuse your budgeting later.

Try to trust your gut if you see something that looks valuable, old, gently used and is being sold for cheap, scoop it up (after a quick search on your smart phone of course).  Items with brands and years with original boxes and directions, etc. gives you a lot to work with for your research and descriptions.  This doesn’t mean everything you find at a yard sale that looks old is worth buying of course - I like to take my smart phone with me  to check items out online before I buy. But buy things you are into otherwise it will get old fast and you will have a basement/garage full of boring crap you don’t care about and don’t want to look at.

The items in your store reflect who you are as a person and what is interesting, appealing to you.  Think about the image you want to reflect to your customers and the kinds of customers you want to work with.

Happy Hunting!

The eBay Freshman

Why Open an eBay Store?

Greetings!

The first question someone might ask when they are considering opening up an eBay store might be Why?  Why open up an eBay store versus some other type of business.  The only answer I can give you is from my own personal experience.  My wife and I have been discussing opening up a business for several years now ranging from a brick and mortar 'vintage' or 'antique' store ... to a yogurt shop ... to an out of home daycare ... to realty (the list goes on and on).  About 2 months ago we started to discuss opening up an eBay store.  We started watching youtube videos from people who are turning over clothes and other items from thrift stores and yard sales into relatively big money on eBay, Craigslist, etc.  We started researching what kind of up front costs might be involved with opening up an eBay store and were surprised that it really isn't that much money or work to get going.  You just have to do it!

Check out Will's videos about picking and selling - terminal99

One of the main reasons we wanted to give this a try is because we've recently started a family and would love to be at home more.  We are hoping to build up a large enough store for at least one of us to work from home and be with the kids while the other continues to work a full time job and help with the store when they can.  Ultimately we would love to both work on the eBay store and our other business adventures full time, but baby steps.

First thing we had to decide was do we want to be a regular "user" on eBay that sells occasionally, or actually choose to start up a "store" account and do this more like a professional business than a casual seller.  We chose to set up our business as a store.  There are some benefits to doing this, though, to be perfectly honest I do not know what all of the benefits are at this time.  I believe we are getting discounts on listing fees, and other perks.  We will have to gain more experience before I can really tell you all of our perks.

Read up on opening an eBay store here - Getting Started with eBay Stores

Listen to the Ebay Scavengers show about Getting Started with your Ebay Store here - 

eBay Scavengers Episode 1: Who We Are, How We Started Selling On eBay

But once we decided to open up an eBay store. We had to pick a store name.  At this time we are going to remain anonymous with our store, but I can tell you a bit about picking a store name.  It's really basic marketing and branding 101.  Pick a store name that is consistent with the kinds of items you'd like to sell.  Our advice is to not specialize in one specific item.  Say - model cars - and then you would call your store something like "Bob's Model Cars" ... that is going to be a very thin range of potential customers as well as make it difficult to find that very specific store inventory for cheap.  Unless you have an "in" with some sort of discounted inventory vendor, then maybe specializing would be ok.  For us, we chose a business name that sounded cool, made a great looking logo, and was vague enough for us to sell any item we come across that is interesting, old, unique, well made,  or valuable. 

Once we had our store name figured out, I threw together a logo.  My thoughts from the beginning were if we are going to do this, let's make it as professional as possible.  Once we had our logo (branding) done, we threw that up as our profile picture and were ready to start to dig in to listing items.  

But what do we sell? Stay tuned for more!

The eBay Freshman