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E-commerce site vs ebay?

by Steve Foulds
17 replies
Im a personal trainer looking to expand into supplements. This is a saturated market without massive profits but everyone uses them, id rather they buy from me.

I can add a "store" to my personal training main page, or link from it to an ebay store. I think the pro's & con's are as follows:

ebay pro's: high traffic, trusted, ease of template setup
con's: cost to run, competitors can be compared side by side (competing against some BIG players, some even run at a loss)

store pro's: low cost
store con's: lower traffic, time to setup & maintain

Any thoughts or advice??
#ebay #ecommerce #site
  • Profile picture of the author dadamson
    Good pros and good cons. Personally I would run both, under different names.

    eBay store has huge credibility and a lot more orders will come through this medium, so you can hopefully price lower and compete with the rest.

    Your own store will have 0 credibility so ensure you have your phone number (pay for a 1300 service or similar) and clearly state refund policies etc. Basically make it a simple looking site but professional.

    You can then use AdWords to find keywords that bring you sales. Once you get these and manage to make a profit on top of your AdWords campaign, Naturally rank your products for the keywords that are converting to sales. - This will work out a lot cheaper than spending a pay per click.

    Just my 2c of how I would move forward.

    Dave
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    • Profile picture of the author mings
      That's a great advice.
      It's difficult for a startup business where you have so many options to choose and end up doing nothing.
      I would start with ecommerce and probably ebay later to tap on the traffic.
      If you're not good on SEO & marketing, I'd suggest Ebay first to build cash flow, ecommerce/SEO later on.




      Originally Posted by dadamson View Post

      Good pros and good cons. Personally I would run both, under different names.

      eBay store has huge credibility and a lot more orders will come through this medium, so you can hopefully price lower and compete with the rest.

      Your own store will have 0 credibility so ensure you have your phone number (pay for a 1300 service or similar) and clearly state refund policies etc. Basically make it a simple looking site but professional.

      You can then use AdWords to find keywords that bring you sales. Once you get these and manage to make a profit on top of your AdWords campaign, Naturally rank your products for the keywords that are converting to sales. - This will work out a lot cheaper than spending a pay per click.

      Just my 2c of how I would move forward.

      Dave
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  • Profile picture of the author leclaims
    I have a biased opinion due to a personal experience with eBay's ridiculous fees. If you're selling products that already have a low profit margin, then you might find it even more difficult to make any money using eBay, not to mention the competition.

    My suggestion, start your own store and start with a small local target market, then scale it up. Just my 2 cents!
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
    I personally wouldn't go the eBay route unless your are going to depend on eBay traffic for your sales. Since you want to sell to your own customer base (edit: this was a bad assumption I made - sorry), I would think the last thing you should do is drive them to your competitors (ie, ebay). Plus, you can charge more on your own site (ebay is just a race to the bottom).
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  • Profile picture of the author KimboJim
    With the supplement market, I think it's really hard to decide. What I would do is just setup both. This way you can make a profit from eBay, since there will be more traffic, while you build up your own store's reputation. Doing both will also let you see first-hand which one would be best, so you can drop one if it is not working.
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  • Profile picture of the author harrietfredge
    e-commerce providers are either "pure-play" (having only an Internet presence, such as eBay and Amazon.com) or "brick-and-click" (having both a physical store as well as an online store, such as Wal-Mart, Sears, and most other major retail outlets).

    Thanks! (?)
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  • Profile picture of the author successmonster234
    Hi,

    I have lots of experience with ebay and have advised many people how to go from a bedroom ebay seller to a full e-commerce retailer.

    I advise people to use ebay at the beginning to build a customer list, gain credibility and then as my customer list grows I then point them to my website (via email marketing, offering discount codes for buying direct etc) so at this stage I am only using ebay as a marketing tool! some sales will still come via ebay but eventually it will be overtaken by your ecommerce site. You don't need to spend money on adwords but see it like this...

    - Ebay, build a customer list, raise awareness
    - Ecommerce site, resell to existing customers, grow organically from this.

    *** Tip of the day ***

    When creating a header image for your ebay shop, you cannot add a link to your website but what you CAN do is add your company phone number in BIG LETTERS, taking calls from potential buyers who you can then process via your website!

    Hope that helps
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    • Profile picture of the author Ryan Rieth
      Originally Posted by letsdothistogether View Post


      When creating a header image for your ebay shop, you cannot add a link to your website but what you CAN do is add your company phone number in BIG LETTERS, taking calls from potential buyers who you can then process via your website!

      Hope that helps

      Good advise on the phone number in BIG letters. I've been selling on eBay for years and the phone number trick always brings in more sales on our website. But you can post a link to your website. You just cannot let the link go to a page that sells anything. So if you take them to a squeeze page or a contact us page that's fine. You just cannot have the link go to a page that has a add to cart button.

      What ever you do don't post a email address on eBay. A link to a contact us page on your site is fine but don't post an email address. I made that mistake before and got flooded with spam. Or on second thought I suppose it would be fine to post your email address if you made it an image so bots couldn't read it.
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  • Profile picture of the author supershoesclub
    AT present time, more and more left ebay coz the expensive ads fees and low sale volume due to so many seller

    focus on the ebay stores to promote their products.So you could think how competitive it is to use ebay.unless

    you list the low competitive items.
    I do suggest you should open the e-commerce store for promotion.Coz, there are so many ways you can get the free

    visitors,like google merchant,thefind, etc.They are very helful for our sales.and we can do good seo work for

    high site ranking in search engines to get the free traffic. more and more... I think you should choose the

    ecommerce store.even though it is a big investment in the beginning.I think it is more profitable and meaningful

    than to list on ebay in the future.
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    • Profile picture of the author StevieA79
      Originally Posted by supershoesclub View Post

      AT present time, more and more left ebay coz the expensive ads fees and low sale volume due to so many seller

      focus on the ebay stores to promote their products.So you could think how competitive it is to use ebay.unless

      you list the low competitive items.
      I do suggest you should open the e-commerce store for promotion.Coz, there are so many ways you can get the free

      visitors,like google merchant,thefind, etc.They are very helful for our sales.and we can do good seo work for

      high site ranking in search engines to get the free traffic. more and more... I think you should choose the

      ecommerce store.even though it is a big investment in the beginning.I think it is more profitable and meaningful

      than to list on ebay in the future.

      Exactly! I completely agree with this and I have been with Ebay since around 2006 and noticed a sharp decline in traffic for Graphic Design items. I have also noticed a sharp decline in other items however such as SEO services such as Press Releases and Backlinking.

      The fees are only increasing, and there's such a difference in the traffic levels back in 2006-2009 I could list my Graphic Design items and have 10-20 watchers for each listing, I would make sales within hours. Not only are Ebay making it more difficult with the lack of traffic which leads to much lower conversions but they are stamping down on duplicate listings. I have found if you add the item number to your listings and change the titles for duplicate listings then you can keep the listings live much longer as this confuses the system.

      When you do start an Ebay store be sure to do some thorough work on the keywords because these are going to attract potential customers and traffic to you. I had great success with keywords and found having an Ebay store really does make a difference in this respect.

      For me though due to the lack of traffic, low sale volumes and increasing listing fee's I have decided to look elsewhere and so far I have found the following to be effective.

      1. iOffer (only pay listing fees when the item sells!)

      2. uBid (only pay listing fees when the item sells!)

      3. Craiglist

      4. Amazon

      5. Gumtree

      6. Facebook Market Place


      For me Ebay was always a means to an end, it was to attract initial interest from clients or customers but you should always back up the Ebay store with an Ecommerce site. As many have said use Ebay to create a list of customers and then market to this list and slowly move away from Ebay, even without spending money on Adsense campaigns and SEO you should see a good percentage of sales coming through the Ecommerce site as word slow spreads. Some customers prefer to go directly through Ecommerce sites believe it or not without using Ebay.

      Ebay have really gone down in my estimations they are making it harder for the seller to win disputes. Believe it or not disputes used to be a rare occurence and now they are very much common place because of the system Ebay have put in place, this just encourages disputes and I truly believe this system has been put in place for Ebay/Paypal to profit from but that's a whole other story!

      Remember you can do classified ads on Gumtree, Craigslist and Ebay to help drive more traffic to the Ebay Store and I can tell you classified ads can make a real difference to your business.

      Overall I would say Ecommerce is the way to go but be sure to take advantage of shop windows such as Ebay, Amazon and even Facebook Marketplace in order to create a list and create a following because ultimately that's going to be your biggest asset going forward.

      I hope that helps!

      Some great tips guys!

      Steve

      P.S If you do have an Ebay Store don't just rely on Ebay and email marketing be sure to add flyers and business cards to any orders just to ensure repeat business from customers. Not only will they be tempted to make an other order soon if they've had a good experience with you but they'll pass these onto family and friends and basically vouch for your service which goes a heck of a long way!

      Also take a look at mobile marketing too! It's getting cheaper all the time.. Try and create a following through Social Media if you can and market to that growing fan base.
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      Check out my website at www.steve-ashworth.com
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  • Profile picture of the author Brandon Mack
    Hi Steve,

    I would suggest taking both routes to start with, use eBay and it's traffic while you build your own site and gain credibility. I don't recommend that you should lower your profit margin to be to lowest on eBay, if you believe in your product sell it at the price you feel it's worth and that offers value to your customers. At the same time start a list from those that purchase from you on eBay.

    Once your site is up and running email your list and let them know that you have decided to open your own dedicated site to meet their needs, keep selling on eBay but send a flyer out with each new product you sell on eBay directing new eBay customers to your new website for future purchases. Then you decide when to stop eBay.

    Jack
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  • Profile picture of the author chris00129
    Originally Posted by Steve Foulds View Post

    Im a personal trainer looking to expand into supplements. This is a saturated market without massive profits but everyone uses them, id rather they buy from me.

    I can add a "store" to my personal training main page, or link from it to an ebay store. I think the pro's & con's are as follows:

    ebay pro's: high traffic, trusted, ease of template setup
    con's: cost to run, competitors can be compared side by side (competing against some BIG players, some even run at a loss)

    store pro's: low cost
    store con's: lower traffic, time to setup & maintain

    Any thoughts or advice??
    Costs are quite high taking the ebay route especially if you don't have a profit margin to work with. You might be good to start out by testing ebay with a couple products or atleast research what they are selling for.

    I personally would say focus on your own store regardless of the time frame because you have more control
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    • Profile picture of the author RyanJohnson
      My opinion as a "Seller":
      -I like the idea of setting up both so that you can make a small % of profit from eBay while reinvesting in your own site/business and building relationships and trust there. The great thing about supplements is that people continually come back as they run out... especially if they got a good deal the last time. leverage both markets.

      My opinion as a "Buyer":
      -I would never buy supplements/vitamins off of eBay. Too many horror stories about products. Maybe I am being paranoid about it but to be honest, this is stuff we are talking about putting INSIDE our body.... not the same as a knock off t shirt.
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  • Profile picture of the author Duckyshucky
    The real benefit that eBay provides is traffic and name recognition. However, hefty fees and less than great customer support make some users turn the other way. If you can get interested buyers into an independent site, all the more power to you.
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    • Profile picture of the author williamjames
      good question.
      i have an ebay store for 5 years now and ebay is becomming harder and harder. Ebay fees are higher, to much competition since the listing is only 3 cents. im still doing great but i think im not touching the maximum of it. i think of doing a website. we never if it will work or no but i will never know if i dont try it. im trying it this week and then i have the seo to pay and a lot of other things. i think you shoud try. you never know if you dont try.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jay Moreno
    I read somewhere that at the Paypal conference in October will be releasing a new open commerce platform that's partnered together with PayPal, eBay and Magento!

    Perhaps this might be the solution your looking for - unfortunately got to wait till 12th/13th of October for more details!
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