Own eCommerce vs eBay

[thesuperhero]

I have a question for merchants that want to sell online. What are the pros and cons of setting up own ecommerce website, compare to selling on eBay?

[NetConneXions]

Having your own ecommerce site bypasses the ebay extortionate fees :)

Running both together is a good option, the zen carts i setup can have an ebay exporter so you can enter your items into your online store and export them right over to ebay.

Lots more reasons but im really pushed for time im afraid.

[Mr_Wizard]

I do some work for a small business who does both. Our intention is not to sell too much through eBay and the results are worth noting - eBay accounts for 5% of the turnover but 80% of the sales leads. It depends on what you sell but eBay can be a great place to harvest contact data for a relatively small budget.

My general opinion of eBay though seems to fit in with most people around here - what with listing fees, commissions, and their Paypal 'skim off' I think it's an expensive place to do business given what it is.

[thesuperhero]

What I'm thinking about 2 of them:-

1. eBay is a marketplace, we can easily get the visitors and prospects. Although it charges of fee for the transaction, it may be worthwhile as it pays for the advertisement.

2. Own ecommerce site is more professional. It cost more and time to setup. But need to spend lots of time building the traffic.

So, from what you guys say, combine 2 of them will have produce good success. People that buy from eBay will eventually become our customers where they can then shop more from our own site.

[MH1]

People that buy from eBay will eventually become our customers where they can then shop more from our own site.

That is a very big assumption, what research have you done to back that up??

[thesuperhero]

Actually it's not based on any research, but just my thoughts only. Perhaps is there anyone who can help to comment leveraging on eBay to help drawing traffic to own ecommerce site?

[SFD]

We have just recently had a template done to start advertising on ebay.

We sell high value items which come in lots of colours, variations of size.

We will market a single colour choice on ebay and ask the buyer to contact us regarding other colours sizes which will be displayed on the ebay listings.

Hopefully this will then lead to sales outside of ebay, either through our website or over the phone.

We already seem to get a lot of clicks from google adverts coming from ebay pages.

[ken_uk]

ebay spends millions on advertising/marketing/seo both online and offline in order to get visitors (both buyers and sellers) on their site.

Your own ecommerce site spends whatever you can afford.

Its more likely you will get many more sales on ebay than you will on a unkown site, at least until that site is well seo'd and marketed etc.

[cslee81]

ebay spends millions on advertising/marketing/seo both online and offline in order to get visitors (both buyers and sellers) on their site.

Your own ecommerce site spends whatever you can afford.

Its more likely you will get many more sales on ebay than you will on a unkown site, at least until that site is well seo'd and marketed etc.


i agree with Ken_uk, we will need to spend a loads to establish our own website, spend money to buy cust / leads' Trust. if now your early stage of your investment, combining own site and ebay is good, at least u 'buy' traffics from ebay with those inserting fees.

[edmondscommerce]

If you can make a profit on ebay then great, do it!

If you have a web store as well, there are some opportunities to promote it to your ebay clientelle, but not really that many.

Basically its only worth doing either of them if there is money to be made with that approach. If there is cash to be earned on both, then do both and there may be some synergistic benefits but I wouldn't count on it too much.

It needn't cost a lot to get a basic ecommerce site up and running, and the sooner you do and start to put some effort into SEO the sooner the site will start to generate traffic.

However, unless you opt for instant results via PPC or similar, then using ebay to get your initial turnover whilst you wait for shop to incubate could be a good compromise.

[Red Eye Media]

Ebay does do a good job of marketing and while people like to moan about the costs, consider how much you would spend getting the results they can give you.

I suggest to our clients that they should run both an ebay shop and their own online shop. Be sure to include a leaflet with every purchase pointing them to your own shop and of course your url if you get into emailing a customer.

Might be an idea to work out the ebay cost per transaction and offer a discount to buyers if they buy through your online shop.

Hope this helps.