Using ebay to get traffic and get paid for it too

Yes, I've used eBay to drive traffic. You just have to be careful of how you do it so you stay on the right side of eBay TOS.

How did you do it?

Are you sure this is not against eBay's rule?

Tell us your secret.

It's easy. You can post an eBay classified ad (not the free CraigsList knockoff type) for $10 for 30 days. You can put in as many images as you like and load it with as many links as you want because their Classifieds don't have the same rules as auctions and buy it now.

I use Ebay classifieds ads and I generate quite a bit of traffic from them. I heard that they were going to stop allowing outside links in the ads, but I don't know whether or not that is true.

Hmmmmm, this is very useful I may have to scope it out!

It reminds me...I will tell you a story of when I lived in Australia for 13 years I did some work for a Chinese entrepreneur who ordered a 20 foot container full of gymnasium equipment every month regular as clockwork. His name was Winston and he and his charming wife I talked to one day about all this gymnasium equipment, I asked where are you selling all this, are their more gyms starting up all over the country? (Australia has only 22 million people now, it had much less then). He said 'I sell it on Ebay'!

I was gobsmacked!

He said that has he was the direct importer for this Chinese made equipment no one could undercut him. He had retailers from Toowoomba to Wagga Wagga and they always came back for more.

So don't knock the power of eBay - provided you have physical goods to sell - that is.

EBAY IS GOOD!

Hi,

yes ebay classified ads are great but that's not what I've been using. (Plus ebay Classified ads in Australia where I am redirects to their recently acquired site called Gumtree.com

So here is what I did last couple of weeks on ebay:

- I am promoting a retail style site which appeals to people that want to get a good deal/discount
- I then found a good downloadable coupon/offer that has mass appeal. In this case I found a coupon that allowed people to buy a burger and fries for $2 from a well known chain. (What can you buy for $2 these days ☺ )
- I put the coupon link on my site behind my opt-in page
- ebay offers you 3 free listings then you pay $0.50-$1 per ad posting after that
- I put an ad on ebay that read something like “$2 burger and fries coupon x 10”
- In the ad I offered 10 printed coupons, starting at 1cent auction!
- In the ad I described the coupon, what they got, the conditions, that it was free postage and how much a 10 coupon savings would be
- Throughout the ad I mentioned that they can download an unlimited number of these coupons for free and included a link to my site – this was my primary call to action in the ad
- So basically I was offering the service of printing these digital coupons for those that don’t have access to a printer and in the process driving traffic to my site. I’m pretty sure there’s no T&C issues with this
- And to over deliver I would post them 30 coupons if they won the auction (3 A4 sheets colour printed with 10 coupons on each)

The Result:
- Each ad had around 60 views. I estimate 50% of those visited my site
- I also got a nice hyperlink from ebay which is a follow link I believe
- And here is the killer the first set of coupons sold for $5.20 with 3 bidders!
- Some of the ads sold a lot lower but overall I was making a profit
- So I was making a profit from selling these coupons while driving traffic to my site – a potential perpetual motion machine if tuned properly!
- I also noticed that it didn’t matter whether I made the ad run for 10 days, a week, or 24 hours, it still got similar type of views. I believe this is due to the fact that ebay will feature ending-soon auction that have a low reserve (1 cent in my case) all over the site
- And there’s nothing stopping you from running multiple ads for different offers at the same time

The above was a little experiment to see what ebay auctions can deliver, it seems to have some potential.

Never tried this to generate traffic to any of my website but I knew that this is possible. There is a goldmine of traffic in ebay. I personally, does visit a link in ebay as long as its related and interests me.

I shall read the links policy now and take advantage.

Ryuchi

yeah ebay is an interesting beast. So many smaller shop owners build their whole offline business using ebay leads.

I have been using eBay to generate traffic to my sites for years and still work fine. I also sell my guides on eBay and make good money doing so.

Simon

Simon, sounds interesting. Up for sharing your ebay techniques?