eBay stores are great, and if you want to become a PowerSeller as fast as possible I suggest you open up your own eBay store as soon as you reach the feedback required (10) to open one. Most PowerSellers have eBay stores, and almost all of the PowerSellers I ever talked to recommend opening your own eBay store.

Store sellers can see an increase in profit of up to 25% in the first three months of opening the store (according to eBay). Having your own eBay store will save you a ton of money in listing fees and let you sell items in a fixed price format as well as auction.

You can list items for a much longer time and store them in your inventory list for 30, 60, 90, 120 days and even "good till canceled". You will also be allowed to feature links to other auctions in all your listings with a cross promotion tool that makes cross promoting your inventory extremely easy.

There are also bonuses like your own search engine and monthly reports from eBay featuring statistics and dada about your sales in the past month. Those are all great reasons for getting an eBay store, but they are not the biggest. The biggest reasons for getting an eBay store are, it gives you a location!

It gives you a base of operation, a place where people can easily find you and a place where repeat customers can come back to. That is why you need a store, you need it because you want people to search through your listings, instead of the search results from the eBay search engine.

You want people to type in your web address and check out what you're selling before typing in ebay.com and doing a search from the home page. The eBay store will give you an identity, a name, it will give you a chance to stand out from the crowd and start gaining repeat customers that keep buying from you on a monthly basis. An eBay store is a major step towards turning your business into an actual business.

Not only will your customers be able to bookmark and return to your store, but it may also be indexed in the major search engines like Yahoo and Google! So if you’re selling watches, and someone does a Yahoo search for watches, your eBay store may appear in the results along with the usual online retail websites! This can increase your traffic greatly, and likewise boost your sales.

Identity: Just like we talked about your listings regarding branding, your eBay store needs to look different that your competition, so don't bother using the design templates eBay will offer you, they are a waste of money and everybody uses them. You need to use original graphics to make your eBay store stand out just like you would use original graphics in your listings.

As you can see, eBay Stores are highly customizable, and this is one which has done a good job of branding itself through design and graphics.

To establish your name your eBay store needs to appear like your listings as much as possible. Same colors, design and look. This will implant the image of your listings and store in the visitors head and further separate you from your competition in the mind of people that visit your listings and store.

If your listing and eBay store look the same, every time a person comes across one of your listings or visits your eBay store they will recognize you. Being recognized is a big part of standing out from a crowd and building your identity.

If your listings and eBay store look different people might not make the connection between all those listings they keep coming across and your eBay store. You want the connection to be there, you want people to recognize you and feel as if they know you even though they have never bought anything from you before.

Remember, people tend to trust businesses and companies they recognize more than those they don't. To be recognized you need a strong identity, you need a "look" that sticks in people's minds and that look must appear on everything that is connected to your business.

You must brand your listings and eBay store so they look the same, this will give you a strong identity and as a result you will gain credibility and people's trust. If your listings and eBay store have a different look, your identity will be weak and it will be harder to stand out from the crowd.

Get a domain name, this is very important. You need to get a simple and memorable .com or .net domain name that sticks in peoples heads. A domain name makes it simple for people to find you. The standard web address eBay will give to your store will look like this: stores.ebay.com/yourname, this is not a very memorable web address and it is too long to be easy to type into your web browser.

You need a web address like yourname.com or yourname.net Your own domain name will make it easier for people to find you. You want to be easily found because if you are you can start gaining repeat customers that type in your web address before they type in ebay.com. A.com web address will also separate you from the sellers that have a standard eBay address.

Credibility: an eBay store will let people know that you take your business seriously and are not just looking to rip them off. If you don't have an eBay store and your listings look like they have been sloppily put together in 1 minute, people won't trust you as much because you won't look like your taking your business seriously.

An eBay store will give credibility to everything you say in your listings. You will look like a serious and professional seller that has no time to play games and no reason to lie to anybody. The bottom line is you should get your own eBay store. Your business will be more organized, will look like an actual business and feel like a business as well.

You will be able to save a ton of money and sell stuff at a fixed price as well as auction formats. A store will also let you attract repeat customers, these customers can become true assets to your business. So if you want to become a PowerSeller as fast as possible...get an eBay store.