posted on October 10, 2001 09:12:13 PM
I have seen sales go up and down on ebay. I have tried selling a variety of items, from New to very used. Not too much luck on either.
I purchased a web site about a year ago, to place a store up for myself. I thought I had a good idea, but started watching and posting some of the items on ebay, and not too sure if these would work on an ecommerce site or not.
A lot of you are probably familier with one of these suppliers. Not sure if I can say their name here so lets just say it starts with S and ends with C, and they have a catalog with over 3000 products. I know you know the one that does drop shipping.
Well I have some of their items in my home, and I do admit that I believe them to be of nice quality.
Me personaly have not had much success with selling these items on ebay, but was wondering how you all thought about selling them from my own site.
I should do something, as I am paying (locked into a lease) of about $100.00 monthly for the site, and would love to be selling something that would make money. And no I would not like to buy a bridge,,,just didn't know what I was doing at the time, but too late now, I'm locked in.
I have heard unless you are a large major store like all of the chain stores that we all shop at, a person can not make anything on the web.
I am open for ideas, success or not from other ecommerce sites out there.
posted on October 10, 2001 09:21:47 PM
IF your Starving in the desert - Move to where the Food Is . Ebay has millions of users who see your widgets - Your lucky to get 100 good prospects in a week on a webstore offsite.
Do both let ebay help you along.
posted on October 11, 2001 08:58:46 AM
It is possible to make a profitible website, but it takes WORK. You can't just set up a website and expect people to find it and buy from you. Think of your website like a retail store on a back road with very little traffic. What are you going to do to attract customers.
Two ways to go here, either learn how to market it yourself, or hire someone to do the marketing for you. My advice would be to learn it yourself. Plenty of books with good advice on it, also many websites some of which have good advice. Don't rule out your library as a source of good books on the subject.
posted on October 11, 2001 11:27:09 AM
You need buyers to visit your site. Being indexed in "shopping" or "price comparison" search engine will drive more traffic to your site.
posted on October 11, 2001 02:19:17 PM
It seems to me with the way things are going,It would be cheaper to drive people to your E-bay store than go through the expense of driving them to a Web-site.Is a Web-Site really worth the money?
posted on October 11, 2001 02:49:40 PM
I am just going to step on the soapbox for a moment.
there is a tendency for "born and raised" eBay sellers to assume most profitable ecommerce exists inside of the eBay realm. While eBay is a relatively large player, it is not all there is.
Most sellers only need a modest 5-6 figure gross sales to keep them satisfied. This is very feasible.
Now keep in mind most eBay sellers will not be successful outside of eBay becase, in a general sense, they lack business acumen. Just take a look at some of the draconian TOS and poor customer service you get from many sellers. To make an analogy, not every flea market seller would survive in a real world retail store, just as not every eBay seller would survive with their own ecommerce site.
Now, as far as the original post goes, there really is no advantage to selling SMC merchandise on the internet because there are a million other cookie cutter sites selling the same thing. You would be very hard pressed to make any money selling that.
But there are other things you can sell.
>>It seems to me with the way things are going,It would be cheaper to drive people to your E-bay store than go through the expense of driving them to a Web-site<<
Depends. You pay eBay a percentage of every sale. If you have your own website, you pay no percent of sales, just a flat fee for hosting. Depending on what you sell, and your sell through rate, and if you use any features, you could end up paying eBay much more than their FVF, sometimes as high as 10-20% of sales.
And while you are driving traffic to "your store" you are actually driving traffic to eBay because these buyers will just click around to other sellers. And when it's all said and done, it's eBay that they remember, not binky22443, the seller.
So, it really does not make much sense for an individual seller to spend the money to drive traffic to their eBay listings, because they don't exist in isolation. Unless you are a major player and have so much going on that you have enough listings to keep browsers busy. If you have a website, the only merchandise listed is yours, so it pays to drive traffic there.
Peterdavis hits the nail on the head. eBay is a very passive marketplace, you just list something and wait for the bidding to start. Whereas having a website involves much more active marketing.
posted on October 11, 2001 03:21:20 PMMaterialGirl's comments are dead on.
I have a web site in addition to an eBay store, an Amazon zShop and eBay auctions.
My web site has done business from the very first month and sales grow every month. Yes, it's profitable.
But there are a few things you have to do to make a web site work.
1. Carry a unique product that you know well, that people want and can't find easily anywhere else.
2. Spend some money on marketing. It doesn't have to be a lot. But you can't just set up a web site and expect everyone to find you unless you tell them how.
3. Be professional, timely, courteous and easy to work with --- treat your customers right.
