posted on July 19, 2006 09:37:19 AM
I know this was discussed a few months ago but I need an update. What I need right now is a low cost web hosting where I can put up my current 100 listings or future 100's of listings. So far, I like godaddy the best. Any info is greatly appreciated
posted on July 19, 2006 12:14:14 PM
GoDaddy is cheap, but even $8 a year for a domain name will be money wasted if you can't figure out a sure-fire way to drive traffic to your site.
I've seen a lot of eBay sellers talk big about their web site sales but I think some (if not all) are exaggerating. There is simply no proof that any are making money. I fear there is much wasted effort from folks who embark on this project with unrealistic expectations.
Sure, we would all like to be free of eBay, but if going the your-own-site route was effective, don't you think the largest eBay sellers (such as PeSA members) would have done it by now?
posted on July 19, 2006 01:03:13 PM
Thanks Fluff, that's the kind of feedback I needed. Here is my thought and you tell me what you think. Set up a few choice items off ebay and onto other auction sites like overstock, yahoo and I don't know who else, maybe even some google ads and craigslist. Then list those as well as others on the website. Waste of time? I bet garage sales are more cost effective.
posted on July 19, 2006 01:24:28 PM
I can state for a fact that the best thing that ever happened at work was for them to dump eBay and start their own website. But they have an exact niche is able to target people that are in need of this specific product.
I also can see, like what I do personally with collectibles, that the same venue may not do as well.
If you want a couple of other venus for listing items, I would say use Yahoo and Epier. Yahoo is totally free for basic listings and Epier only charges FVF's. What I do is put my slow moving stuff on both and when it sells at one place, cancel the auction at the other. Also, Epier has an autorelist option where your item always relists until sold or cancelled.
Yahoo has 5 relists if needed, but still worth the time as relisting there is a matter of three clicks of the mouse.
posted on July 20, 2006 08:14:38 AM
I have been considering Vendio web hosting - have you looked into that Paloma? I'm not sure of the pro's and con's there but I'm going to be checking it out next week.
This site seems like the best I've seen so far (and I've actually been looking the past few months anyhow). I'd really like to hear from the rest of you that already have sites hosted somewhere to see how this compares.
In the product management section, it lists the import eBay listings as a feature. Maybe what I linked to earlier were old instructions and they took them down to revise them? I don't know... but I'll definately be calling them to double-check and make sure that it's still an available feature before I sign up!
posted on July 20, 2006 09:42:18 AM
Here's one I put on another thread as well. They claim they can drive traffic to your store (for a yearly fee of course) through ebay and google. http://www.highfivedomains.com
posted on July 20, 2006 10:06:50 AM
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
I guess it pays to do some research... apparently, the store part of Valueweb (called webstores) is powered by ProStores. ProStores, in turn is actually an EBAY owned company!!!
posted on July 20, 2006 12:16:12 PM
I have a few websites off ebay and do quite well with them when I advertise.
So I introduce to you the toben88 method of marketing and running your independant website. I do this because I really like how paypal treated me last november-january. I will help anyone out who is interested in getting more sales off ebay.
1. Get a merchant account instead of paypal. I can recommend a great one that I use and helped several friends use. I am also getting Google checkout tested but can't recommend it until I do. If you are a very low volume seller your probably stuck with paypal. I use paypal on some websites and merchant accounts on others due to volume.
2. Market it well.
A. The easiest advertisments are emailing all your previous customers and giving them a $5 off and free shipping coupon. I get 3% sell through from just emails.
B. Include your website address on your email, any sold messages, and as the silkscreen on your photos.
C. Advertise your site in froogle/google base. Its free.
D. Try the comparison shopping engines shopping.com, yahoo shopping, shopzilla, pricegrabber, bizrate etc.
E. Advertise through google adwords, yahoo overture and MSN adcenter. Pay attention and read some books on how to do this right.
F. Find a forum or other high traffic site dedicated to your topic and buy an ad.
3. Get a decent host. I had a problem with godaddy last year in that it really slowed down around christmas. I use siteground.com - $5 a month and they are fast on the support. Make sure you get a site that has free mysql databases. You probably need to buy SSL for your site.
4. Use an ecommerce platform that has no fees. I use CREloaded and oscommerce. Zen cart is another popular one. If you cant set it up yourself pay someone to do it for you. The no monthly fees, listing fees and final value fees really can save you some time over the long haul. I even paid $200 for a professional template for one site and it has been really helpful.
This stuff is not rocket science but there is a learning curve to tackle. Study hard, do some trials, find your initial ROI and then turn up the paid marketing once you have a system worked out. I sold about 80 xbox 360's on one of my sites for double the ebay price last december and january when paypal was not cooperating with me.
posted on July 20, 2006 06:44:32 PM
Or you all could follow Jack to the Swap Meet (flea markets we call them here in the east). I suspect if you did, you might just be quite grateful for being able to list for your store at your leisure in comfort even at 5c a pop (or whatever it is).
I'm not surprised that store mech moves slowly. Even when store results come up in searches (and they do more often than not), I find tired items, generally overpriced -- true in antiques and collectables at least. It's the eBay Dump in many cases (not all, lest I offend any of you).
RubyLane is pricey to use (starts at around $45 to $60 a month if I recall), pricey to buy at B&M store levels or more, and designed for higher end antiques and collectables.
posted on July 21, 2006 02:56:34 AM
Well just for the heck of it I opened a ecrater.com store. Can't beat their price, it's free. Very basic store design and simple account setup. It has a checkout function and has PayPal as a payment option. Best thing is it automatically places your store items in the froggle and google base search engine system. Kind of convient since I was going to try listing some thing's on google base. Now I don't have to worry about it. It does it for me. If someone clicks on one of my items they are dirrected to my ecrater store. Took me about 2 hours to set up the account and do all the specefic's, create about 25 listing's and get them all put in the store. I'm sure it will be a few day's until they hit the search engines though. I tried going to google and searching for the items and guess what. The results it came back with were items in the ebay store I CLOSED 2 day's ago. Guess it takes them a little while to index everything. Like I said, can't beat it, it's free and didn't take up much time to set up so I won't be out anything if it does not work. If it does woopie! Screw febay.
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
posted on July 22, 2006 01:02:12 PM
Fluffy - just because your site didn't do well for sales (or your friend who spent thousands of dollars to sit on the beach - lmao), doesn't mean no off-eBay sites do well.
posted on July 24, 2006 11:15:35 PM
shoporium.com is a good, simple, inexpensive way to set up a web store. With your own domain name total cost is under $20 a month. No per item fees, no final value fees, unlimited inventory. Free Batch software to create and manage your listings, free shopping cart. Nothing fancy but easy to use and it works. You can set it up using paypal as a payment option if you like (I think). The software no longer supports ebay or the other auction sites but the shoporium part works fine. If you know how to ftp image files to a host you have enough skill to run a shoporium site. Do a little submission to the search engines and you can generate some decent traffic and sales. Also works well as a companion to your ebay listings.
posted on July 25, 2006 04:52:17 AM
I think you need to be realistic about moving off eBay. It can certainly be done successfully, but probably not if you are just selling a random collection of "stuff".
As an example, I buy a lot of stuff, and am reasonably computer literate. However, I rarely search past eBay unless there is some compelling reason to do so. The fact that a seller is tired of eBay fees will probably not be that compelling to me.
If you have a customer-centric reason for selling (whether price, selection, availability, etc.) you could probably do well with your own site. Of course, in that case, you could probably still do well with eBay, too.
posted on July 25, 2006 07:32:59 AM Fluffy - just because your site didn't do well for sales
You are making an incorrect assumption.
I have never had a web site for jewelry sales.
People can say anything. If I had a web site I wanted to promote, I sure as heck would be telling the world it was already wildly successful. (Just as the TV networks run their "See the new hit series everyone's talking about" ads before a single episode has yet to air.)
Generating buzz, hyping the product... It's all marketing.
fLufF
--
[ edited by fluffythewondercat on Jul 25, 2006 07:37 AM ]
posted on July 25, 2006 07:56:56 AM
mike - I saw a post of yours on ecrater's boards. Glad to see you other there! I think it's a great program. I also think the stores look far more professional than eBay's!
Edited to add: You have to advertise your off eBay site. I send an email to all my customers when they pay. I've sent one to previous customers and those who still buy off me. Many, many of them want an email when I finally open the new store. I've had bookmarks made up by a fellow eBayer that I put in packages and my business cards find their way everywhere.
Cheryl
[ edited by cblev65252 on Jul 25, 2006 07:58 AM ]
posted on July 25, 2006 11:12:14 AM
It is useful to check and see how your webstore comes up in google or yahoo when a customer would be searching for something you sell in your webstore. Think of the most likely search terms a potential customer would use when searching for the items you sell in your store and then run those searches on the different search engines. If you come up near the top of the page chances are pretty good you are going to get some business. If your webshop shows up on page 43 of the listing you may be in trouble. Working a little bit on meta tags and titles and word choice on your home page and in your listings can make a lot of difference. Product density can also be important. You do not have to have an expensive web site or spend money on advertising to get the best search engine results. There are lots of websites that will show you for free how to tweak you webstore to get the best results. I have generated a lot of sales simply because searches for the items I sell in my webshop generate results that pop up at the very top of searches run on google. Many customers have told me they just searched on google and found my webstore and placed their order. So if you are going to set up a web shop it is worth the time to work on this aspect a bit.
posted on July 29, 2006 06:01:10 PM
try to do a little more homework on bravenet. some directories will not accept submissions from sites like geocities and i think bravenet is another one from which submissions are sometimes not accepted but am not positive though. geocities, for example, tends to be more for free personal web pages as opposed to business web sites.
posted on August 1, 2006 02:01:21 PM
My web host is very decent - webmasters.com. $119.40 per year (you have to pay annually, but it is a good deal), 10 gb storage, 1000 pop email boxes (don't know what you would ever do with that many!), $5.00 for secure socket layer, free mysql database, frontpage extensions, several free shopping carts (phpcart, zencart). I've used them since 2002, have never had a problem, they have always been very responsive to questions.
I have heard good things about CubeCart (cubecart.com), free if you leave in the copyright notice, $70 per year if you want to take it out.
posted on September 2, 2006 08:29:06 AM
How much bandwidth do you feel is enough to set up a site for off ebay sales? What do you recommend? I am considering godaddy but am still looking around. I want to make sure that when I do pick a hosting site, I don't have to move to another soon. If you know what I mean.
posted on September 6, 2006 11:49:06 PM
I use Powweb
www.powweb.com
I like the astronomical bandwidth 400 GB/mo and storage 20 GB.
If your store uses up that bandwidth, well you will probly have your own full time tech staff by then.
Comes with standard shopping cart softwares.
Another option I have seen is a Yahoo store. Pretty much cut and dry setup, plus gets you into a network of stores that will get you some traffic. Havn't tried it personally, but have considered giving it a go.
posted on September 8, 2006 01:16:43 PM
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1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS