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Article Title: eBay Or A Web Site? The Optimal eBay Strategy
For Launching A New Ecommerce Web Site.
Author: Jerry Work
Word Count: 822
Article URL: http://www.isnare.
Format: 64cpl
Author's Email Address: jwork[at]workmedia.
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I am a professional Internet marketer. I deal with the issue of
driving traffic to web sites and converting that traffic into
customers. My wife runs an eBay-based business selling vintage
clothes. She likes using eBay. It has a built-in user base of
well over 100 million users and offers the tools to allow her
to accept several different forms of payment, including credit
cards and PayPal. eBay also allows her to operate a Web store,
while also selling items via auction. eBay allows anyone with a
computer and Internet access to go into business for themselves.
A lot of people are making a lot of money on eBay.
However, a letter my wife recently received from eBay has
bothered her to the point where she is seriously considering
pulling out of eBay and running her business through her own
standalone site. eBay claims that it is losing money on the
stores that it hosts, because so much of eBay's inventory is
now contained in the stores rather than in the auctions. To
counter this, eBay is dramatically raising its fees for items
listed in eBay stores.
The argument that eBay is losing money by hosting stores sounds
like crap to me. Web hosting is dirt cheap. Web hosting for a
small business can be purchased for $5 per month, with more
hard drive space and bandwidth than a typical web site would
ever need. eBay store hosting starts at about $16 per month for
the basic store, which is heavy in mandatory eBay-branded top
level content. eBay is raising the base fee to list an item in
a store from 2 cents to 7-10 cents - up to a 500% increase.
So the question is: is it worth it to continue to do business
on eBay when it is so much more cost effective to do business
with a standalone web site?
I believe the answer is to use a combination. eBay delivers
customers. It is a great way to build a customer base. If you
are just establishing your online business, the following would
be a strong formula for acquiring customers:
1. Set up an eBay store. Make it look as good as you can. Stock
it with products.
2. Start running auctions. Use the auctions to drive eBay
traffic to your stores. Do this consistently, placing some
number of items up for auction every week. I suggest ending
your auctions on Sunday night.
3. Maintain consistent inventory in your store. Try to get
visitors to your store to leave their email address. What you
want to do is get people returning to your store on a regular
basis to check out what you have.
4. Build a standalone web site, outside of eBay. Populate your
new store's inventory with the same products you sell on eBay.
5. Contact your eBay store customers and tell them about your
new web site. If your ecommerce platform allows, give your
existing eBay customers a coupon to use at your new site.
6. Use search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing,
articles, etc., to drive new traffic to your site. This step
will be a lot of work and will require a lot of planning, but
it is critical to your success.
7. Gradually phase out your eBay store. When you are confident
that all of your old customers now know about your new site and
the new site is picking up customers on its own, then shut your
eBay store down. Give yourself a pat on the back.
OR
You may choose to continue to run your eBay store in addition
to your own web site. If eBay continues to generate business
for you and the fees still allow you to show a good profit on
the items you sell, then you might as well continue to use it.
When all is said and done, you will have used eBay as a
stepping stone to establish your online business. If you
already have an eBay store and have been running auctions, then
you may start at Step 4 above.
Now...this is probably not the way eBay wants its customers to
operate. The company has built an incredible platform to allow
anyone to conduct business online. But the fact is, with its
recent hike in fees, it is becoming less and less economically
feasible to use eBay as a way to conduct business. We believe
that using this kind of strategy is a good way to take
advantage of eBay to build your business, but then shift to a
more economical ecommerce platform to maximize your
profitability.
This article is a very high level sketch of a way to establish
an ecommerce business. There are many details to fill in. You
might want to seek the help of an experienced web site designer
and Internet marketing professional.
About The Author: Call Jerry Work at 1-888-299-4837 or email
info@workmedia.
your online marketing campaign. We help businesses: drive more
traffic to their web site, convert more traffic into customers,
and make more money. Contact the Work brothers or get more
Internet marketing advice at http://www.workmedi
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