e-Bay Disadvantages

Higher Final Value Fees Cost of Final Value Fees is one of biggest drawbacks to an eBay store. The Final Value fee is the cut that eBay takes from the sale after an item sells. eBay store final value fees are almost twice that of eBay's regular listings. You can compare the two to see the differences. Standard eBay Fees eBay Store Fees You will have to price your items with this extra level of fees in mind. No Built-in Traffic Many people mistakenly assume that an eBay store will automatically tap into eBay's huge user base of built-in traffic. This is not true and the reason for this has to do with searches. Items listed in eBay stores do not show up in eBay searches. When a search is entered within eBay (either by keywords or by browsing categories), only the regular eBay listings show up. In some special circumstances, they do show up. But in general, you will not benefit from eBay's built-in traffic unless you take some other actions to drive traffic to your store. The only time you will directly benefit from eBay's built-in traffic is when users explicitly browse the eBay stores (don't count on getting much traffic this way). Sub Domain of eBay You only get a sub-domain URL with an eBay store and you don't really own the domain name. For example, if you started an eBay store called "High Flying Stunt Kits", you would get a URL like this: stores.ebay.com/high-flying-stunt-kites. This would create a problem if you ever wanted to grow your business off eBay -- you would not be able to move that domain name off eBay to another hosting provider. You would have to get a new domain name such as www.high-flying-stunt-kites.com and start over. Any inbound links you had would have to be re-established and any external sources that pointed to your eBay store would have to be changed. A way around this issue are the relatively new eBay Pro Stores; an actual hosting solution outside of eBay that is only lightly integrated with eBay.

However much you might dream of a truly international marketplace, international postage costs will always bring you back down to reality with a thud. Do you have any idea how much it costs to send even the smallest thing to the other side of the world?

Then there’s the fact that eBay is packed with fraudsters and scammers, preying on the innocent users who’ve heard that eBay is a great place to buy stuff but don’t know the risks. People can lose thousands of dollars, and eBay do nothing. Is that fair? It is hard to even leave negative feedback for the very worst sellers, for fear that they will retaliate and leave a black mark against your own account.

eBay is unfair to buyers when other buyers don’t play fair, and unfair to sellers who end up selling things for a very low price, only to have eBay’s fees take away the last part of their profit margin.