Going from ebay to own website

[cmsbfent]

Hey folks

Just after a bit of advice on opening a website. Basically, i'll be doing the reverse to what a lot of guides and testimonials say in going from ebay to the real world.. so to speak.

I suppose i'm after a success story to read through that will push me over the line and get me started on coding. My ebay store only started as a little idea and its doing well but I can imagine a website taking forever to get perfect (there will be around 600 items) and taking up a fair bit of time.

Luckily though, time is something I'm about to get a lot of as I have a very steady 8 weeks coming up where I can hopefully get it up and running.

So, convince me :) :) :)

What are peoples profits like when comparing a website to an ebay store, assuming that the SEO is at a decent level and traffic is coming your way?

Thanks a lot

[paretowasright]

I have never had an ebay business of any significance but my gut feel about the difference would be 15%-17.5% saving in combined ebay and paypal fee's BUT ebay does of course provide customers!

A new website may take 3-6 months to get fully optimised by Google and 12 months for the full benefit so factor in either a ppc campaign or an affiliate program to get sales in the first 3-6 months. Also bear in mind that ebay does have a higher level of price sensitivity so dependant on your category and price positioning that needs to be carefully thought through.

No doubt you will get various offers of services on here but do your own research, get various quotes and digest the considerable experience of people on here who do not have a hidden agenda!

[CS-Cart]

Your own store is a good idea in general, especially if you:

* Would like to promote your own brand;
* Have a decent product catalog;
* Can provide some extra information on your subject which can be useful for your customers;
* Wish to build a popular (more or less, depending on a niche) web site where all traffic is yours ;)

However, it all takes time, investments and hard work (too obvious to even mention all of this). As a risk-free option, I'd suggest trying to start with a ready-made ecommerce platform (free or paid) with a modified design in order to save on development and concentrate more on SEO, sales and marketing.

Act further depending on results and build custom features in case of success in order to make a more memorable, recognizable solution.

[Alicatt]

Hi,

It's definitely a good idea - on ebay you are stuck with whatever rule change they come up with next. Some may help your business, others could wreck it overnight.

I agree with CS-cart to start with a low cost "off the shelf" solution. The important thing is to get started - don't wait until it's perfect.

Good Luck

[TopShopper]

The most important thing about selling with your own website is marketing. Do your homework with regard to marketing before you start your website. The format of your website greatly affects the marketing strategy. Pay per Click marketing will get you going but you should aim to bring in some organic traffic later on.

[MH1]

I have never had an ebay business of any significance but my gut feel about the difference would be 15%-17.5% saving in combined ebay and paypal fee's

If the goods are priced the same then ebays 10% commission can be reduced, but someone will be charging for payment processing.

A website seems to always be a work in progress to myself.

[Toni Anicic]

I wrote an article on the topic not so long ago, you should check it out - Selling on eBay vs. RUnning a web store (http://inchoo.net/online-marketing/selling-on-ebay-vs-running-a-web-store/)

[cmsbfent]

Thanks for the replies :)

I was thinking about going dowen the root of self developing a website as I'm not too bad with it and assumed it would be much easier to implement SEO doing it this way. Is that right?

If there are any decent DIY type options that allow for easy SEO editing, which ones are they? I've got my domain name sorted, and for the last 6 weeks or so, I have been sending out advertising for the domain name with orders which currently links directly to my ebay store so hopefully when its up and running a few people should no about it.

On a side note.. when considering SEO, links to your own website from other sites increase your visibility with google. Obviously you cant simply place a link to your website on forums (I dont think) so in what ways can you post links

Thanks again

[Toni Anicic]

Well most of the forums put rel=nofollow on links making them of no value for your website's SEO. Even if they don't they are mostly buried deep inside the link structure of forum and their effect on your SERPs is negligible.

[cmsbfent]

So where would you place your links?.. or dont you?

Cheers

[Toni Anicic]

So where would you place your links?.. or dont you?

Cheers

Getting quality and relevant backlinks is a hell of a job. You might consider hiring a professional SEO company to do that work for you.

Basically, you need good content that attracts backlinks naturally. You need to make friends in your niche, socialize, communicate and hope they link to you from relevant sources.

Submitting websites to major web directories might also help a little bit. Link exchanges with relevant websites are sometimes helpful and so on...

[Drn55]

We had an eBay shop for just over a year. About 2 years ago we began migrating to our own website, and after a couple of months decided to shut down the eBay operation entirely. Here's what we found during the migration:


Customers who came to our website without knowing about our prior ebay store spent more money and bought higher priced items.
These same customers bought with greater frequency and complained less.
We kept a proportion of our eBay customers, but some just didn't migrate to the website for some reason, preferring to turn to other eBay suppliers.
Over time, as we raised prices and our MOQ, we lost most of the old eBay buyers, keeping the new customers who came to us through our website.
The business grew significantly (almost doubled in the first year), and is still growing as we acquire new customers.
After a while, we upped our prices (3 times, I think), and no one complained apart from the few old eBay customers who remained - a clear indicator to us that we were vastly under priced to begin with.
We were in total control of our web site. There was no more worrying about what eBay might do to affect our profits.


Because of all the above, we significantly changed our operation to include:


Selling more higher priced items
Reducing the number of cheap items we sold
Raising our Minimum Order Quantity to filter out smaller buyers
Business hours became Mon-Fri, 9-5, or thereabouts - no more working in the evenings or weekends as we had when running an ebay shop
Migrating all our shipping from RM to DHL. We've yet to lose a package, and we're never worried about strikes.
Advertising. We began using PPC ads almost straight away, and they proved very successful.
Over time, we gained a lot of web knowledge, which included designing our own site from scratch, SEO, blogging, etc. All things we had no need to know on eBay.


The bottom line for us is that our business is now far healthier, in that we're far more self reliant, and have a far greater capacity for growth. Though we lost most of our eBay customers, this was more from choice on our part as we increased prices and stocked more expensive lines. Despite the economic mess, this year is on target to be our best year yet. We now have weekends and evenings off.

[paretowasright]

Yes very interesting and proves that for ebay the main demographic is CD1's and the mindset of the majority of ebay consumers is totally price led.

[Emcar Vending]

It's hardly surprising that eBay buyers are price led.

Ebay push that they are the place to grab a bargain and very few buyers are prepared to pay decent prices.

[Red Eye Media]

I'll put us forward for this. £29.99 per month. Easy to use and SEO'd as standard. If there is anything I can tell you about Shop Maker, please let me know.

[cmsbfent]

Thanks Drn55.. and the rest of you. Very helpful stuff

I think i'm gonna give it a go and see what happens. I've never made a website outside of uni and they were only around 10 pages max so its gonna be a steep climb I think but should be enjoyable

After 6 months of trying in vain to get my products visible to google, it will be nice to see if the SEO i've learnt is any good

Red Eye Media, I'll take a look. Thanks.

One more thing Drn55. How come you decided to make the jump. I personally seem to have reached a sales peak that I cant get much improvement on no matter what I do. Its still very profitable so I think I'm getting the earge to try and take over the world.. with the assistance of google

Thanks

[Stampy]

I don't think you need to start from scratch with your website. Prestashop is a free open source shopping cart that pretty simple to get going and relatively easy to make changes to. It's fairly easy to SEO (if by that you mean page titles, search friendly urls etc). It's also easy to integrate Paypal, and has a growing base of modules and themes available.

[Drn55]

One more thing Drn55. How come you decided to make the jump. I personally seem to have reached a sales peak that I cant get much improvement on no matter what I do. Its still very profitable so I think I'm getting the earge to try and take over the world.. with the assistance of google
Thanks

We didn't make the switch overnight. To begin with, we were like yourself - unsure whether or not it would work. But then we got the database driven website up, started running some Google ads, and saw immediate results. That's the beauty of PPC ads - when they work, they can work straight away, without any SEO.

We'd also had a couple of scares with eBay, where it looked like some changes that were being proposed could seriously damage us, so there was a degree of "We'd better do this now, just in case..."

The site was very basic to begin with (comes with designing it ourselves), which it turns out was a very good thing. Our site had none of the bells and whistles that you find with so many off the shelf sites, and our customers seemed to appreciate this.

Even now, 2 years later, we know we've only reached a fraction of our market. eBay, despite its size, is tiny compared to the customer base out there who don't use eBay. You have greater potential outside eBay than inside.

[silvermusic]

eBay, despite its size, is tiny compared to the customer base out there who don't use eBay. You have greater potential outside eBay than inside.

So true, any new product that you get is soon duplicated and discounted to death by others, I've found the selling life of a product on ebay is six weeks if you're lucky before it becomes unprofitable. On a web site that limitation dissapears.

[Place of design]

Do both. I have customers who have e-bay stores, bricks and morter stores and online stores. Generally when launching the online store eBay says remain pretty static, and the new store adds turnover

Advantages
more scope for marketing
each sale can be cheaper in terms of banks/paypal etc..
Using microsites and online stores can enable you to pinpoint market brands and products, causing a nock on effect in your e-bay sales too

call me for more info
Richard
Place of design
015 845 8953

[MH1]

Nice post by Drn55, I am in the same process at the moment, I will keep working with ebay whilst my own website grows, but more control of your business is a good thing IMO.

Hard to prove anything, but I am sure ebay traffic manage your visibility and sales to maximise their revenue across all sellers, ie once you sell so much in a day you seem to be switched off, with your own website you will know this is not being done.

I am experimenting with prestashop at the moment, seems quite good on the whole.

[PrettyPaws]

Have to admit there is a huge difference between having your own store and running on ebay. There is a hell of a lot more work involved in the former, customers don't just get servered up to you in the real world! I really would think about it before diving in.

[Chris34]

Although it's a lot of work it is the right decision to be starting up your own website. Trading on Ebay alone is putting all your eggs in one basket and on top of this is the fact that there is only so far you can grow on Ebay. As a businessman you should always be looking at new opportunities to help keep your business healthy and having your own website is a must in my opinion.

This week I have found out that another business owner I know has had to close down. One of the main reasons for this is they refused to set up their own website having been trading from shops for the last 25 years. They did sell on Ebay but unfortunately the competition were too cheap and they didn't sell enough to make it worthwhile. Now they are regretting not setting up a website because although they know that it might not have changed anything they also know that it might have changed something for the better, and this they will never know because it's too late.

So the moral of the story is to always look ahead and keep pushing for more, don't just sit back and settle for what you have got.




Chris. (soon to be launching my first website)