Using ebay to drive traffic to your site

[wayzgoose]

But then you're not complying with:

the recipient was given a simple means of refusing (free of charge except for the cost of transmission) the use of their contact details for marketing purposes when those details were initially collected

unless you asked them.

 

[Cibbers]

The biggest issue for me at the moment with eBay is the shipping costs against the competition.

my business is in it's infancy, I have a unit full of stock ready to sell and our website is due to launch this month. This week I have opened up my eBay shop and I'm listing products as we speak.

I too have succumbed to the "rumour(?)" that eBay will drive customers to my site, however due to my business being in its early stages I cannot demand the absolute best prices from my suppliers, meaning my margins are lower. But in conjunction with this, my direct competitors are offering postage at a CONSIDERABLY lower rate than what it actually costs, even free, and the prices of the products are hovering around the RRP.

I've worked it out that one of the companies (providing they are getting the same price for the product as me from the manufacturer who has a set trade scheme) they are actually making a loss on each product they sell once it is shipped and they've paid their eBay/Paypal fees.

I just can't get my head around this, I am considering putting my items on eBay at a cost which I am happy to sell and ship and just leave it at that, hoping it will drive people to my site. If anything does sell, then it's a bonus. But that said, if my shipping costs are realistic then people may not go to my site as they will initially think I am overpriced and simply not bother looking - it's a double edged sword I think.

I am aware however, that eBay is used predominantly by 'Bargain Hunters" who don't even bother looking at the product list until they've clicked the 'lowest price + postage' button. I do it myself. So it may be the case that I just pack in using eBay all together due to the somewhat crowded market out there.

 

[HobbyMounts]

But then you're not complying with:

the recipient was given a simple means of refusing (free of charge except for the cost of transmission) the use of their contact details for marketing purposes when those details were initially collected

unless you asked them.

I think there is some confusion over opt-in, opt-out and soft opt-in.

Your definition above is opt-in, where you ask for permission prior to emailing, however, if your email is gathered in the course of a sale/negotiation you can email using the soft opt-in option and offer an opt-out.

The exception - the 'soft opt in' rule. There is some good news for marketers who want to email consumers but who haven't gained their prior permission. If you have a previous relationship with the consumer and gathered the user's details in the course of a sale, or negotiations for a sale of a product or service, you can email them on an 'opt out' basis. This is the 'soft opt-in' rule. Your emails should be marketing and selling similar products and services. So if a holiday rentals company gathered someone's email in the course of a negotiation about a holiday villa, the reader should expect them to send them an email about similar holiday rentals but not, for example about mortgages.

 

[Rough Outline]

I can do, but why do you ask?

I want to steal all your products and ideas

Honestly just curious.

 

[shutzy]

i have been listing on ebay on and off for quite some time. i have been constantly doing it since nov-12. i understand that many ebayers will go for the cheaper priced item. but not all will. i have over 250 items on ebay, all Good Till Cancelled. i also have a shop. i initially used ebay to get rid of old stock. i was selling it at a price where i would get all my money back to re-invest into other lines. now i have nearly cleared all the stockk i have continued with all of my inventory.

i have a spread sheet that i use to work out how much profit i make. i take into account all the different expenses, work out the postage and then i know what i have to sell it at to make the margin i want. i tend to look at 10%. i do have the advantage that its an off shoot of our full time businesses but it still makes a profit.

i use html to design my listings. you can even put your website logo in the listing(business name) and [a href] to your web index. the pluses with this is that google bots crawl the internet all the time. they crawl such sites as ebay and forums very often. sometimes 4-5 times a day or even more. they pick up on all these little a href's and image tags. you can indeed virtually spam the bot if you put enough tags behind the scenes. so what i am saying is that ebay will help drive traffic to your site but it wont come directly. it will come from search engine rankings. the more bots see your site the higher ranking you will get.

adwords: its a dirty word for me. of course google wouldnt even exist if it were not for adwords so someone has to pay for it for my website to be shown for free.

i like ebay. it hard work when things go wrong but its generally ok.

Amazon: god they are harsh. i was selling many items, probably250+ a month. making a fortune and i had 3 items go missing. i had 3 strikes and i was banned for a year. i blame royal mail but amazon would have none of it. they are more expensive for little priced items but better for higher priced items. they take 17.5% for the category im in. thats even including the p+p.

have a go

 

[thomasm1964]

Given that you sell Japanese hobby kits, I assume that you are busily compiling lists of hobby websites and clubs?

I'd have thought there would be some mileage in offering competition prizes, coupons and affiliate schemes and using whatever exposure those websites have to attract business to your website. Perhaps offering a prize for hobby clubs plus discounts but do it in such a way that potential customers have to come to your website first to enter the competition ....

Of course, you would arrange with various webmasters to ensure that the prize-giving / winning entry was suitably publicised.

 

[japancool]

Given that you sell Japanese hobby kits, I assume that you are busily compiling lists of hobby websites and clubs?

I'd have thought there would be some mileage in offering competition prizes, coupons and affiliate schemes and using whatever exposure those websites have to attract business to your website. Perhaps offering a prize for hobby clubs plus discounts but do it in such a way that potential customers have to come to your website first to enter the competition ....

Of course, you would arrange with various webmasters to ensure that the prize-giving / winning entry was suitably publicised.

I'm not asking for advice on how to get traffic to my site in general. I'm specifically asking about using ebay to drive traffic through.

 

[japancool]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be rude.

I appreciate that people are trying to help, and I'm grateful but I am engaging with the community. That's where most of my traffic comes from. I'm looking at additional - and cost effective - ways to reach my target audience, and ebay is one of the potential avenues, and that's what I'm interested in here specifically.

 

[bartonz20let]

Bit of advice, the vast majority of eBay buyers are price whores seeking out the very best price they can, pennies difference can mean the difference between selling hundreds or nothing. They don't care much between one dealer and the next most of the time. eBay is full of busy fools selling at silly prices and going bust, and there's plenty more to fill their boots when they do.

I tend to agree with this, I worked for what is now a competitor of mine and I managed some of the ebay operation.

The idea was to get the customer to ask a question and answer with the necessary info but inform them that products were cheaper on the website and if they purchased from ebay to include catalogues with the sales.

Hardly any customers converted to the website but the main downside to this side of the business was that the 3 of us in the sales operation spent around 60% of our time dealing with ebay to generate around 10% of the companies profit. We were busy fools for the large part.

I feel that money could be better spent on real world and social advertising driving traffic to the site and have built my business on this mantra and to be honest I don't think I'm missing out on ebay.

The fact that only the company I worked for operate on ebay and all my other competitors don't speaks to me, if I were to go onto ebay I'd struggle to find a company I knew, they are all random unknowns.

Ebay is one of those markets that if you have a product that nobody else has or at some fantastic price then it can be great but you always risk being undercut at any time and the price is all that matters.

I think the internet market is split between ebayers/amazoners and googlers.

 

[cariman]

the people prefer to use ebay because of buyer protection so there are small chances to drive traffic to your website and if ebay notive you try to make some tricks will delete your account.

 

[cariman]

the people prefer to use ebay because of buyer protection so there are small chances to drive traffic to your website and if ebay notice you try to make some tricks to drive traffic to your website will delete your account.

 

[Tronn]

You can put a discount voucher to your website in each package sold through your eBay store.

 

[Tronn]

Waterhouse Research can show you which products on eBay make over 100% margin.

 

[japancool]

Waterhouse Research can show you which products on eBay make over 100% margin.

I'm not interested in selling "any" product. I have specific products I wish to sell, and I know what price level for them is, meaning I know what my margins would be.

 

[Esk247]

Basically I don't think it's worth the effort of trying to convert eBayers in to your web customers. Any that you do manage to convert will only buy something once then completely forget you and return to eBay or Amazon to buy something else. So you rarely get customer retention unless you have a massive stock offering of hundreds or thousands of products that they cannot buy on eBay cheaper.

People also like that PayPal is fully integrated so they can sell second hand things and then use that money to buy something new from another eBayer. It works better as a community than a profit making platform imo.

We also hit that snag of not being able to use ANY of the email addresses on PayPal. So the value of customers who paid for items in the past is now zero as we cannot use their details, we cannot send them any offers, we cannot promote any new products to them as it's too risky.

eBay and Amazon are great for turnover but useless for profits and trying to drag customers across just doesn't seem to work imo. I'd love to see a company that's able to do that regularly but I'm yet to be convinced by the eBooks that say 'Make 1 Million on eBay'

 

[Murray Cowell]

If you want exposure for your website, then just advertise it on social media and email marketing. IF you have products to sell, then I would suggest Pinterest, it's a great way to get out there!

Best of luck!

 

[lardizabal]

Do you or have you sold on ebay as a businesses?

I saw something like this wysjg.com online shopping website. Is not it also can be promoted on eBay.