Hi mediapusher - The following description is from Help>FAQ's>Store:
"What is my Auctiva Store?
Your Auctiva Store is a collection of all your active listings (auction, fixed price, and store listings). You can customize your store and then promote the domain name to drive traffic to your store."
This rather sparse explanation, while accurate as far as it goes, certainly should be expanded in my opinion, as it doesn't really answer the many questions that a new member needs answered. I think much of the confusion is due to the fact that it is called a "store", so people naturally equate it with eBay's "store", while in fact there are fundamental differences. Maybe it should be called "gallery" to avoid this confusion.
I did a forum search of "Auctiva store" and found many posts asking the same question: "What is the difference between the Auctiva store and the Ebay store?" Here are a few of the many posts that offer some insight:
https://community.auctiva.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5796099...031086632#7031086632
https://community.auctiva.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2556093...271017491#3271017491
I would say that Auctiva is certainly more than just a "glorified image hoster", the store and scrolling gallery are great promotional features, but Auctiva was never meant to be a independent selling site. Since the Auctiva store is linked to your ebay listings, it may not be possible for it to function as a standalone selling site since this would violate ebay's rules against linking to outside sales venues.