Question about pricing for those of you who create stores to sell whoesale/dropship goods...

[Charles Montgomery]

You guys who have your own physical products. Do you create your websites/store based on the lower ebay prices, or do you create them with higher, closer to retail prices?

I see such a huge difference between most websites' prices and the prices ebay offers across nearly every niche. How are they competing?

[steveweber]

No, you really can't build a site and try to compete with the cut throat selling on eBay. We used to sell a product on eBay but got tired of eBay's games and the low ball selling.

We built a site for the same product but with higher prices. It was one of our better business decisions.

[FaJeeb]

I plan on finding a good average. I'll always want my stuff to be cheaper than retail because that's really my only incentive for buying from me online and having to wait a couple days but save a couple dollars versus being able to go to the store and buy it for a higher price but have it instantly.

I feel that it should be every eBay sellers goal to slowly transition from eBay to their own website once the time comes. (Hence why most huge eBay sellers have gone from eBay to their own ventures within the last couple of years.)

[jayveen]

Originally Posted by steveweber

No, you really can't build a site and try to compete with the cut throat selling on eBay. We used to sell a product on eBay but got tired of eBay's games and the low ball selling.

We built a site for the same product but with higher prices. It was one of our better business decisions.

I guess I don't understand. You say that its _not_ possible to build a site to compete with eBay, but then you say that you _did_ create such a site.

[CBSnooper]

When I was selling wholesale products, I'd have ebay auctions at a slightly higher price than my website. This is because I was after repeat business, I was only using ebay to get the buyer to buy once, realise I have a website that's cheaper, then use the website after that. It did work, although I did have a couple of buyers who insisted on buying from ebay even though they knew (or at least I think they knew) you could buy the same items cheaper on my site.

[JamesRad]

I have run a few adwords campaigns pointing to one of my clients ecommerce stores and 10% of the traffic actually came from ebay search.

Ebay Auctions can be used as a traffic ramp to your main store. Use special offers or surplus stock angles can drive more traffic to your true ecommerce website.

James

[zaneypop]

Pricing is something that you have to test over time. Competing on price against ebay is a recipe for disaster.

[Charles Montgomery]

So websites with higher prices than ebay is the norm?

[FaJeeb]

Originally Posted by Charles Montgomery

So websites with higher prices than ebay is the norm?

I'd say so. eBay is like... a real word market place in a major city, everyone is selling everything they can to make a couple pennies just to make SOMETHING so they sell their stuff before the next guy does. Now say you go to the market place but also have a nice retail store across town. eBay is the dirty little market on the shore ran by a 4ft guy with an attitude problem that gets a cut of EVERYTHING. Your table, everytime you sell something, every day you show up, but in return, he lets you stay and have your little booth and you get the foot traffic of people looking for items like yours and other stuff too. Now imagine the little guy with the attitude problem comes up to your booth and looks at your customer and says "Psh, why buy this guys' bucket of oats for $1.00?! Mr. Bobo19201 a few booths over is selling it for 89 cents!" - Yep, everyone is going to Bobo19201, but of course, you'll probably still make some money from the people too lazy to walk a few booths over, or from people who have enough money where an extra 2 cents doesn't mean a thing to them. Now imagine a guy just like you that brings a ton of stuff to this little dwarfs market, he brings everything you can imagine, blankets, food, clothing, lamps, books, you name it, he has it. The dwarf loves this guy because this guy can buy so much stuff that he can get it for cheap and resell it for pretty much whatever he wants because you can get your blankets, books, and candle holders from this guy. Of course, the dwarf gets his money too.

Say you build up a good amount of customers, people who know what you sell, who you are, how much, etc... your best bet would be to open a store across town. (This is your ecommerce website) but you still don't have that foot traffic that pissed off little dwarf that owns the marketplace has, right? Well, you spend just a couple of your dollars and you make signs all around town saying "Hey, I have oats! Better than anything at that crappy market! Come to my store!" (This is online paid traffic and advertisements)

Now your running your own little store, you don't have the dwarf putting his hand in every little aspect of your business, but once you've built up your reputation and people know who you are and where you are located, you don't need that little dwarf with the attitude.

This is why eBay is starting to care less and less about "the little guy" because the little guys are really the ones who don't care if they make a profit of $1.00 or less as long as they make that money quickly. This is also why a lot of people who are established online are always moving away from eBay.

[steveweber]

What I meant was that you can't try to compete with eBay with respect to always beating some of those sellers' low-ball prices.

There are plenty of people who wont' buy on eBay at all. You can get those people to your site. You will never be able to pull away the buyers on eBay who absolutely go after the lowest price no matter what.