Hi, I've had an Ebay store and a Auctiva www.domain.com for my store and have also been consumed by fees. SUre its cheap to list an item in your store, but they still nail you with end of auction and paypal fees and the monthly fee. Having a store relies on only savy ebay shoppers to find your items as they do not show up in normal searches. A person must use an advanced search and choose search store inventory in order for store items to show. There are occasions when the search shows only a few items, then the search engine will show store items after the 0 items found notice.
Plus I have been getting my store items auctions deleted by click happy ebay employees looking for the slightest justification. Then they only send you a long complicated general ebay rules and regulations policy where you have to figure out what they justified their actions on. I finally got through to a manager only to have him justify their employees actions talking to me like I was stupid. When I point out over a 1000 links to exact items like mine that aren't being deleted, they ignore that part, but in the same breath tell me my airsoft toys will continue to be forbidden as they have the same name as a firearm, lol.
I am sick of paying to be abused, if it isn't Paypal causing problems its Ebay, if it isn't them, its a customer who thinks we are a retail store making us feed bad for daring to charge for the packing materials we use to mail their items with.
I wish I had the answers, but investing more into Ebay now is a bad idea, someone needs to come along with a better market tool that supports sellers.