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However we have seen a competitor recently set up an ebay store and seem do very well with it (you can get an idea of the approx sales by the number of feedbacks they get each day)
We are toying with the idea of setting a ebay store up to.
Are there any pointers that we ought to know before we embark on this?
Can we use ebay to drive traffic to our ecom site too through a link (or is that against ebay TOS)?
What sort of listings should we go for?
How long should we have the auctions for? 5 days, 10 days?
Are there any online resources about ebay optimisation?
Basically is it worth doing, and if we do it how do we optimise? ... help :)
Thanks in advance
Ive sold only a few items on there, the most important points that i learned are dont put a price in too high, start low and bidders will compete with one another. Add a picture, costs a few more pennies but is worth it and make sure you tell truthful descriptions.
Use a reserve price if you want a guaranteed price!
Number of sales does represent the feedback, as most people leave feedback and you cannot add feedback unless you have either bought or sold an item.
Im not sure if it is legal to advertise your site/url, but ive seen lots do this and havent seen them penalised for it.
At the end of the day, you have nothing to loose just put a few items on there, it may take a while to see which items sell and which doesnt, but its worth a try, it only cost about £1.50 for a good listing.
As far as 5 or 10 day listing go, id opt for 5 as most of my bids have happened in the last few hours of the bid, within the last hour it sometimes rockets.
good luck
Andy
added: as far as optimisation is concerned, just make sure you have the title correct, eg "fishing floats" ebay has a good search facility, and i think most people search by category anyway.
Will give it a go next week.
The competitor who has stimulated my interest in ebay has a couple hundred items on there.
Seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut to me, i think we are just going to auction the best sellers. Otherwise it could turn in a big waste of money.
Will also be cheeky and include the url, you never know it could generate some traffic :)
After you get so many feedbacks 10 i think, you can add items in Qty per item aswell so it works out a lot cheaper. I think you can also set this up straight away by credit, not sure though.
thanks again
Youll hit peak times in the mornings for all the major English speaking country's of the world.
Its blinding.
The WSJ did a feature on Ebay "power" sellers about 18 months ago. There was a family from the backwoods of West Virginia that spent a zillion hours a week scouring local garage sales for things to sell. The kids helped too. They were dirt poor farm types who were thrilled to pick up $20-30,000 a year that way. That's not for me!
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Our experience with our own products was:
1) they often didn't sell at all (yet our own site does great)
2) there were far more sellers than buyers
3) selling prices were often around our wholesale price
4) many "buyers" never came up with the moola
5) selling was a ton of work... but kinda fun
6) firms that sell on Ebay tend to come and go quickly
7) Ebay sellers tend to be bored housewives. Small time.
8) for some, Ebay appeals to the gambling juices and financially makes about as much sense
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My main interest, like yours, was to direct some Ebay types to our website. But Ebay has limited ways to do that.
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My conclusion: Ebay is mainly worthwhile for quickly unloading excess junk at firesale prices. No question you can automate the selling process and get better at it with time. Great for selling collectibles like beanies ...and little else.
To me Ebay is still little more than a flea market.
But that was 18 months ago ... is it the same now?
My experience is that if you have got a product that sells well and make a good profit on eBay, it will do stunningly well in a webstore. You are not allow to put in an actual hyperlink to your site, but you can advertise you url. You can also put in your url on your about me page.
Items that do well on eBay tend to be secondhand items that had been bought at a low price. However, people who make large profits on eBay are the speculators. They will buy an item cheap from an unsuspecting seller on eBay who does not realize its true value. After working on the description and perhaps listing in a more relevant category, they will be able sell it at a much higher price. The original seller will then be asked to ship the item to the new buyer without knowing what went on.
this is my point. we have a prod that sells well in a webstore. so we should be able to get extra sales through ebay or is this a false hope?
If you are an established retailer, though, eBay may be a way to reach new customers. We're buying major appliances, and there's a good chance we'll get one online via eBay - a new unit offered by an appliance store that lists items there. Buyers don't like reserve prices or high minimums, but these vendors DO use a high reserve or minimum with little expectation that bidding will drive the price up higher. They expect to sell at the minimum, and can apparently do so profitably (do doubt picking up a few more dollars in their shipping charges).
As has been said before, it's generally used or discount stuff that seems to sell best. People don't go to eBay to pay full price, they go to eBay to find bargains. In addition, a lot depends on what type of item it is. Again, it's something you'll have to research (how other people with similar items are doing) and test.
As far as using it for traffic, you can't put URLs in listings, but you can put them on your About Me page. And, of course, you can always refer buyers to your site during the transaction process (send them a note when you ship the item, or say "Thank you for your purchase. By the way, please check out www.mydomain.com for similar items...").
is there anybody that uses ebay as a supplement to their webstore, would be great to hear some comments from someone who does this?
Here's the "bottom line" for me. In our field, no major competitor uses Ebay. The sellers are often bored housewives - casino boat types.
Selling on ebay resembles gambling in many ways. The seller can sometimes (rarely) make a windfall. It is a ton of fun to sell on Ebay and no doubt that is part of the attraction. Gamblers keep going to casinos even when they lose money. Similar too to online stock trading.
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Derek: like gamblers, I wouldn't be surprised that even those who claim to make $1,000 a month are really making far less.
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Another problem with Ebay: if you make customers happy, they return to Ebay (a huge auction) and not your website.
Also, everything that goes on, including your selling price and number of sales, is instantly visible to competitors. If you find a great product, you'll be drowning in competition within days.
<IMO>
A big part of the appeal for them is the casino like aspect of checking to see if anyone has bid on their auctions. They run a great business customer service wise, with (so far) over 100 feedbacks, all positive.
Due to their interest, I've made it a point to read up on ebay a bit. I've read profiles of several full time ebay sellers. What strikes me is how much of a low paying sweatshop operation every single full time ebay business "success story" I've read actually is, IMO.
These profiles talk about folks grossing -- not netting mind you -- $2400ish or $3600ish per month from their full time ebay home businesses in their "top month so far". That's success? I doubt many of them net 60% of their gross sales on average. Not much per hour.
I recall an article on one of -- if not the -- biggest ebay sellers, a husband and wife team. They sell thousands of CDs I think. The husband and wife both work lots and lots of hours. I think they said they took just a handfull of days off in the four or so years they had been running their full time mega-successful (to them, I guess) ebay business. Don't recall the amount of money they likely earned (one could reverse engineer ball park it from the article), but I think it likley was around $80,000 per year combined income from each working 80 hour plus weeks with just a handfull of days off per year, IIRC. Again, not much per hour, nor much of a life outside the "working on ebay from when I get up until I go to bed" ebay business for both of them from what the husband and wife said, IIRC.
Also, my family member tells me ebay regularly does stupid stuff that gets sellers mad at ebay in her categories. Stuff like changing and combining categories without telling people ahead of time, and other stuff that sellers posting on ebay discussion boards feel will adversely affect sales. Sometimes ebay changes it back, sometimes they don't.
Also, there apparently are a LOT of people doing analysis of what's selling profitably on ebay at all times. My family member tells me that if something does sell for a good price, soon there are so many new listings put up offering the same thing that buyers are spread too thin and the final sale prices are thus quite low, with lots of listings for the same thing not getting any bids.
I think ebay is great -- for ebay. Especially for the insiders looting the company equity via the very large stock option grants handed out over the last few years. I think I read something about a recent round of options for insiders equating to 20 percent of ebay stock. Guess the insiders full time salaries aren't enough -- they need a big chunk of equity too. Ebay also seems good for buying stuff at good prices, too. But I guess that means ebay mostly isn't good if you want to *sell* at a good price.
</IMO>
Midwestguy
[edited by: midwestguy at 4:43 pm (utc) on Oct. 24, 2003]
"An idealized market structure in which there are large numbers of both buyers and sellers, all of them small, so that they act as price takers"
surely it isnt that bad
You ask if anyone uses ebay in connection to their non-ebay online store/site.
One of the articles I read quoted a guy who had a physical store, online store and ebay pressence. Because the same item will sell for a lot less on ebay then it will in his physical or online (non-ebay) store, he keeps his ebay and non-ebay operations separate. He figures ebayers wouldn't pay his higher online or physical store prices, but that his non-ebay customers would love to desert his physical and online stores to get the lower ebay prices.
So folks might want to consider that before linking ebay with their non-ebay businesses.
FWIW & best wishes to all,
Midwestguy
We did find the ideal product once, it sold at 50-100% profit margin on eBay. We would have made over $1000 per month in profits from eBay.
However, our competitors on eBay soon complained about us to the manufacturer. As a result, we were forced to raise prices. However, we were able to offset this increase by offering free shipping. Our competitors then swamped eBay and our listings were lost completely in a sea of their listings.
Now we are out of eBay altogether. Because of this, the manufacturer also forced us to raise the prices on our webstore and our business has gone downhill ever since.
I sell (Sold) reproduction oil paintings on my site not one sale in two years! Tried everything to no avail then ebay.
My god paintings sold for over twice the site price and I didnt have to hold stock the customers would wait 4 - 6 weeks for delivery.
I did show an exact photo of a previous example though, so that Im sure helped.
Your other point about buying cheap etc and sell back on Ebay.
I work in Silver and silver plate, I can buy cheap on ebay tweak the listing polish the piece and rephotograph it and bingo! 50% - 150 % profits, I can too find cheap silver plate at boot sales as no one understands the markings at times.
My markup on some items is incredible.
I think ebay works if your targeted and really know what your doing. I thought about selling tiffany lamps on ebay and found a good supplier in China but hell I dont know how they make a profit on the ebay sales I wouldnt be able to.
Dont know how the hell people make a good living at it though. Seems easier to work in McD's!
True; but to what degree compared to the alternatives for marketing online?
Some items no doubt would be a good fit for ebay if the item, copy and promotion were right. I recall an "ebay barbie" auction I read about referenced in an article that got a lot of attention and sold for $400 or so (IIRC).
But then you're talking more one of a kind type things -- that are often time intensive to do right -- rather than something you could sell again and again and where each item sold doesn't consume a lot of time.
Just the other day somebody linked to an article on ebayers finding out their cost of sales were lower using adwords compared to ebay fees. This is the kind of trend that will increase, IMO.
I think the problem with ebay is the changes that have taken place over the last two or three years. Like the huge increase in the number of people selling on ebay compared to the increase in the number of real end user buyers, and not just sellers who buy to resell. Supply and demand says that's not good for prices and profits.
I think a decent analogy could be made comparing the profitability of selling on ebay with the profitability of selling shared hosting. Lots of new competitors over the last few years exerting a downward pressure on prices and profits.
Many folks open up shared hosting companies with a few bucks and find that their new hosting business that was so easy and cheap to get into doesn't return as much per hour as they had hoped -- and takes up as much time as they will allow it to consume, especially considering customer support demands.
I recall reading stats from a group tracking average sale prices for collectibles sold on ebay. The percentage declines in *each* of the last couple of years was shocking. I don't recall the exact numbers, but I think it was somewhere around 50% over 2 years. That means that stuff people used to be able to say, double their money on a few years ago, is now more of a break even proposition. Not good for one's profit per hour.
With your own site selling your own stuff properly marketed online, you not only have a web site property worth something (hopefully), but also a customer base you can lovingly tend to and control the interaction with, whom you may be able to earn additional profit from. Ebay listings get deleted, along to any links pointing to your site.
And those customers go back to ebay and tell their friends about ebay, not your site.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against ebay. I'm a different strokes for different folks kind of guy. If someone likes to "do it ebay", I hope they enjoy and do great.
My point is if you're talking what avenue of selling online is most likley to be most profitable for someone, I think what it comes down to is wether a person has the knowledge and skill to effectively market their stuff online outside of ebay.
If so, I think ebay is a poor choice -- profitwise -- for selling online today for most stuff. If not, then the choice to use ebay seems more reasonable, even though it might result in a lower dollar return per hour consumed.
I think for a lot of listings in a lot of categories, if folks would divide their traffic counts into the listing fees (and final value fee charged by ebay for items that sell), they would find the "cost per click" for the traffic ebay delivers is not all that cheap, if viewed by that metric. But it is a great deal for ebay if you think of what they are selling as primarily short term hosting, a dab of space and bandwidth and some traffic/clicks.
Hope the above is helpful to some,
Midwestguy
Ebay isn't too bad if you sell the same kind of item(s) over and over and can just recycle the photos/descriptions you've already uploaded. The people who rummage at garage sales or whatever and take pictures, manipulate pictures, upload pictures, go through 5 pages of item-listing pages, etc for every item so they can make a $2 profit are nuts.
As far as supplementing an online store, I have a buddy who has an art supplies web site and she sells a handful of items on ebay at a few bucks above cost. She sends a magnet/card dealy with her main site name along with the packages, and she's had quite a few of her ebay customers become repeat customers at her online store.
The pieces I sell have at least $20 left in them, up load 15 - 20 in an afternoon and Im happy. Its better than being with the inlaws for the afternoon.
Most of the items had counters indicating from 30-100 page views. Not much for all the work in getting a product going.
The two or three times I tried selling on Ebay, it took me hours to get the product online there.
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Over the years, I've seen many discussions of how to use Ebay as an adjunct to ones website. This is the first one with a generally negative tone. Glad to see that others also "don't get it" when it comes to the supposed glories of Ebay.
Are there any online resources about ebay optimisation?
Speaking only for electronics/computers category, most buyers use search to find products. So, a title is extremely important. Fluff words like L@@K or NEW! is just wasting space. Same rules apply to SEO as they do for eBay titles. Descriptions should anticipate buyer questions so they can make an informed decision without asking questions. If they do ask, revise your description (unless, of course, the answer is already described. ;) )
eBay Hacks (O'Reilly) is geared towards the sole-proprietor seller. I found it has lot of practical tips on setting up an eBay business.
eBay Store would be beneficial in that you can upsell accessories or related products within your eBay description. But ultimatelly, to save yourself from eBay fees, direct your new buyers to your web store. Use "purchase confirmation" e-mails to drive traffic to your site. I know other sellers that adds an eBay item to their web store shopping cart. Then the buyer can shop for other items from their web store. Its a brilliant idea that I will be implementing next year.
My final advice is use an auction management software to handle all aspects of your auctions. If you use desktop software, most of them use Microsoft Access so you can load your inventory directly into the software.
Im sick of people who turn over maybe $200 a week thinking they are going to be the next Getty.
What do you mean exactly when you say
"It is always possible and a good idea to get the traffic from Ebay and divert it to the website."
How do you divert the traffic, i thought ebay prohibited links from the auction pages
and ...
"We have done many successful campaignes, using our customer database from Ebay. "
Could you clarify how you do this?
Thanks
[edited by: gibbon at 9:21 pm (utc) on Oct. 28, 2003]
