The guidelines for the TRS program:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/top-rated.html

Ever since I did get my top seller stautus, not only have I saved more money, but I have been able to sell more items.

I can't quote it off the top of my head.  It might be $3000 and then you have to maintain $1000 in sales per month to maintain it.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/top-rated.html#what

 

this is what I'm seeing. I can't find anything about $1,000/month to maintain it.

You don't really need the $1,000 a month. I have an account that I have not used since Sept and it still retains the status.

I wouldn't sacrifice profits, how many more sales do you need?

TRS sales requirement is 100 transactions and $1000 in sales over latest 12-months period.  You also need to follow their tracking and DSR requirements.   To get the discount, you need TRS Plus which means having TRS status, plus following even more requirements. 

 

You get evaluated every 3 months.  If any of the above requirement is no longer true for the evaluation period, you have a good chance for losing your TRS status.

 

 

ETA: Where is frog when you need her

 

Raichu's got it right, as usual.

 

To elaborate, the TRS Plus status (and discount) require TRS status and also a minimum 14 day return policy and 1 (business) day handling time.

 

The benefit to following eBay's best practices (which is what they're rewarding with TRS and TRS plus) is the discount, a search boost, and less of a need to make sudden changes in your own policies when eBay changes their "suggestions" to "requirements" which happens very regularly.

 

The Spring Seller Update is due out any time in the next few weeks. Always an exciting and slightly hair-raising time. ;-)

And Top Rated seriously boosts sales. You will have an obvious jump.

 

I made silver rated power seller. I don't know what I get for that, but I made it.

Question: Once you make TRS plus when does it make sense from a cost standpoint to have an EBay Store versus just an individual selling account? In other words how much sales volume does it take to warrant moving from an individual selling account to a store account?

It's not so much sales dollars that make it make sense to jump to a store, but how many items you have listed.

 

This is the link that breaks it all down:

http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/subscriptions.html

 

With 3000+ items listed, an Anchor Store makes sense for me because of the listing fee discounts. Basically, paying the $179/month means I'm paying a little over 7 cents per month for the first 2500 items I have listed, and 5 cents per month for every item over that (this would be a good-till-cancelled listing on a monthly rotation, which is about all I do).

 

The store perks are also nice: vacation settings, markdown manager (putting things on sale), and categories for your buyers to browse more easily.

 

Do the math on what it costs you or would cost you either way (store or no store) for your current number of listings and your future planned/desired number of listings, and it should become clearer which is better for you.

 

Someone using only their 50 free/month doesn't benefit from a store.

And Top Rated seriously boosts sales. You will have an obvious jump.

 

I made silver rated power seller. I don't know what I get for that, but I made it.

Silver rated means: Congratulations, you have spent too much time on eBay, but still not enough $ for eBay to give you any preferential treatments over the Bronze  :D

I've been on eBay for a little over 11 years, but don't sell consistently, a few times a year I'll sell a bunch of stuff, then I don't list anything for 3-4 months. It never fails that when I'm in the middle of one of my times of heavy selling eBay will email me about setting up a store, and if I sold consistently throughout the year it would make sense, but the way I sell the numbers that I looked at did not favor a store. At least not yet. My guess is that if you sell enough to reach TRS you will start getting the same emails that I get. Somewhere on eBay if you look around is a calculator that if you enter in your average months sales and listing volumes will show you what method of selling benefits you the most.

It's not so much sales dollars that make it make sense to jump to a store, but how many items you have listed.

 

This is the link that breaks it all down:

http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/subscriptions.html

 

With 3000+ items listed, an Anchor Store makes sense for me because of the listing fee discounts. Basically, paying the $179/month means I'm paying a little over 7 cents per month for the first 2500 items I have listed, and 5 cents per month for every item over that (this would be a good-till-cancelled listing on a monthly rotation, which is about all I do).

 

The store perks are also nice: vacation settings, markdown manager (putting things on sale), and categories for your buyers to browse more easily.

 

Do the math on what it costs you or would cost you either way (store or no store) for your current number of listings and your future planned/desired number of listings, and it should become clearer which is better for you.

 

Someone using only their 50 free/month doesn't benefit from a store.

Thanks that helps. I remember seeing this before but forgot how to access it.

Raichu's got it right, as usual.

 

To elaborate, the TRS Plus status (and discount) require TRS status and also a minimum 14 day return policy and 1 (business) day handling time.

 

The benefit to following eBay's best practices (which is what they're rewarding with TRS and TRS plus) is the discount, a search boost, and less of a need to make sudden changes in your own policies when eBay changes their "suggestions" to "requirements" which happens very regularly.

 

The Spring Seller Update is due out any time in the next few weeks. Always an exciting and slightly hair-raising time. ;-)

 

Yes, I expect they will be announcing another "drop in fees", which somehow ends up costing us more.

 

I would rather have them say "We like money, and we like more money even more. So, since you have nowhere else to go - we are taking more money"

Yup, the calculator is actually located at the bottom of the page linked by justafrog

http://www.fees.ebay.com/feeweb/feeillustrator

I've been on eBay for a little over 11 years, but don't sell consistently, a few times a year I'll sell a bunch of stuff, then I don't list anything for 3-4 months. It never fails that when I'm in the middle of one of my times of heavy selling eBay will email me about setting up a store, and if I sold consistently throughout the year it would make sense, but the way I sell the numbers that I looked at did not favor a store. At least not yet. My guess is that if you sell enough to reach TRS you will start getting the same emails that I get. Somewhere on eBay if you look around is a calculator that if you enter in your average months sales and listing volumes will show you what method of selling benefits you the most.

Yes that's exactly what happened to me I got one of their email messages about setting up a store which is what got me to thinking about it and wonder if/when it might make sense.

Great information here. Some of you guys are big fish and I'm not even close to that level. It's a hobby/time killer/way to buy more toys for me type thing. I need to sell 60 items to get to the power seller level.