Newbie here...still setting up over the course of several days - think I should transfer to my laptop, but now I may need a new laptop...anyway...

At ebay Live/Boston I heard tons of contradicting opinions on the value of the ebay store - positive is the complete integration, ebay's builti in marketing, appearance on search results etc. But others pointed to the ever rising ebay store fees and voiced a desire for 'other than ebay' - ie, website - gear towards search result marketing etc...and that this was the way to go. Just use ebay for it's listings to ulitimately drive traffic to your own, ebay-fee-free site.

I see there are some people here who have websites, but they seem to be marketing tools for their auctions and ebay stores rather than marketing tools in and of themselves. Am I making any sense here? Just starting to thing about strategies...

I primarily sell costume jewelry - presently liquidating tons of estate/vintage items but have alot of contemporary items to slowly add for a transition on multiple item products. that's the game plan - to create the model. This year will be spent liquidating vintage/antique items and slowly begin a transition to non one-of-a-kind items that I can easily and quickly scale up via staff.

I'm tired of having ebay and Paypal as my silent partners - the fees go up but their focus is on the buyer and not the seller way too much.

Anyway, I'd like to hear some opinions and the pros/cons of an ebay store outlet!

Maybe we could get a group of people together for ebay live next year! how cool would that be!!! anywaz, your thoughts?