What Is an eBay Store?

An eBay Store, like the one shown in Figure 27.1, is a web page where you can sell fixed-price items that are not currently up for auction on eBay. Your eBay Store also contains all the items you currently have listed for regular auction on eBay. The non-auction items in your eBay Store appear only in your eBay Storenot in the eBay auction listings.

Figure 27.1. The author's Molehill Group eBay Store.

As you can see in Figure 27.2, merchants on the eBay Stores home page (stores.ebay.com) are organized by the same categories as the eBay auction site: Antiques, Art, Books, and so on. Buyers can also search for a specific store or a store selling a certain type of item, or view an alphabetical list of all stores.

Figure 27.2. The home page for eBay Stores.

The items offered by eBay Stores merchants are a combination of items currently for auction on eBay and additional fixed-price inventory. When buyers access a particular eBay Store retailer, they have access to this entire collection of merchandise. If they tried searching on eBay proper, they wouldn't find the non-auction items the retailer might have for sale.

For a buyer, purchasing an item from an eBay Store retailer is a little like buying from any other online merchant, and a little like winning an item in an eBay auction. On the one hand, it's buying from an actual merchant at a fixed price, and the buyer can always pay by credit card. On the other hand, eBay Stores offer all the niceties found on eBay, including the ability to check the merchant's feedback rating. Checkout is handled from within the store.