Comments on: Anchor Stores - are they worth it?

By: trevor

trevor — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:04:07 +0000

Chris,

True, but I don’t think that this approach looks at the return on advertising investment, £3600 over the course of a year is a lot to spend without any noticable upside

By: Sue @ TameBay

Sue @ TameBay — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 06:41:42 +0000

I had an anchor shop for six months last year as a result of an eBay competition. My traffic rose *very* slightly, and sales in line with that, but like you, the change was nothing significant, and nothing that couldn’t be achieved with simply listing a bit more - if you have £270 extra to blow on eBay fees, spend it on 27 Featured Pluses instead. Until they start pushing the Shops hub a bit harder at buyers, I see no advantage in an anchor shop at all.

(And I do always think that including the email marketing costs in their comparisons of the different shops is a bit of a cheek by eBay. 2500 emails paid for would be twenty five quid!!)

One other thing - UK anchor shops are very expensive compared to the rest of the world. The .com site slashed its price from $499 to $299. In France, a Boutique Premium is EUR59,99 (about £40).

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:04:32 +0000

Trevor the way I would view it is on a cost per item basis. If I sell 500 items a month a Featured shop costs me 6p per item which is sustainable. If on the other hand I sell 5000 items per month an anchor shop will only cost me 6p per item so what the hell… might as well have it.

Whilst a featured shop has verifiable benefits over and above a basic the advantages of Anchor are questionable…. but if it’s costing a minimal amount per month what the hell Justify it as a cost per item and if it’s affordable go for it.

By: Randy Smythe

Randy Smythe — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:29:20 +0000

Trevor, I have personal experience with Anchor stores through Glacier Bay DVD. We were an anchor store from the beginning but the reason had little to do with increasing traffic instead it was an effort to brand ourselves. Having our logo show up on the homepage or on more pages had a benefit in regards to name recognition but it did little to increase sales.

On today’s eBay, branding has even less of an impact then when I sold. I wouldn’t recommend Anchor store. A seller would be better off spending the additional money on increasing the number of listings. We know that increase sales.