topic Re: Ebay verses a website? in Selling

Ebay verses a website?

funkyflamingo* — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 10:05:07 GMT

I am seriously considering getting my own website due to the cost of ebay, and their policies which is costing me money, time and stress.

Before I jump into the deep end, I would like to know if there are other small to medium size ebay sellers who have their own website and are doing quite well.

My worries are: Are the websites getting the traffic through like ebay does? Many of buyers only shop on ebay, haven't heard of other sites such as bEtsy, or selling on facebook. I won't go near Gumtree, as that is a time waster.

I know it takes time to build up the traffic, and it's all about marketing. I have gone to website designers, and all of them say, that you shouldn't leave ebay all together.

I would love to hear from sellers who sell on both, ebay and a website.

Happy New Year!

New beginings for 2015

Retrovintage

Re: Ebay verses a website?

horizon1907 — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 10:11:16 GMT

I don't have a Website, but have tried Facebook and love it. There are all sorts of Groups run by admin & they run a Tight Ship. It's becoming very popular because of the steady demise of ebay. IMO I would most certainly look into it. I am. Setting up your own Site would, I think be Great. Give it a try. I don't think you will look back. 🙂

Re: Ebay verses a website?

funkyflamingo* — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 10:20:03 GMT

Thanks Horizon

I appreciate your support. I see we both sell vintage items, so it gives me hope!

I am so glad you are doing well outside of ebay.

Happy selling in 2015!

Re: Ebay verses a website?

horizon1907 — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 10:25:42 GMT

Thanks. I was very nervous to start with, because I didn't quite understand all the rules and how things work. Once you start, it just becomes 2nd nature. Put up a few things on your own Facebook Page and you will be amazed at how fast the word gets out.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

shipahoys_antique_and_collectable_centre — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 11:29:58 GMT

Selling on Facebook reminds me of how eBay once was, when we first started. Its vibrant, easy, uncomplicated and extremely successful so far. At presant, its free and we can build our target audience. I could not recommend it more!

Re: Ebay verses a website?

chameleon54 — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 11:34:01 GMT

Facebook wouldnt work for my product range as my client base is from all over Australia and OS. Mainly middle age men who wouldnt look at facebook. Having said that, the wife listed a few music related items on facebook a couple of days ago. This was our first try at facebook. It was easy to use and sold one item, paid full price and picked up within three hours. Several enquiries on some of the other items, so it looks very promising for some types of things. Retro vintage would probably work well as it would fit the facebook demographic of young trendies and middle age women well..

Re: Ebay verses a website?

thecatspjs — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 12:00:16 GMT

Loving facebook at the moment

Too easy to post and NO FEES

Loads of vintage groups for you to join & trial with.

Recommend posting goods via private groups only though - stops spammers trolls & other sickos

Re: Ebay verses a website?

horizon1907 — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 12:01:08 GMT

I couldn't agree more shipahoys. You hit the nail right on the head.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

ourphonecase — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 18:12:58 GMT

If you go with a website you need to invest in growth hackers.. Without them your website is dead. For me I get around 500-1000 sales a week on eBay where-as my website only generates 10 max a week, sometimes less than 3.

eBay provides you with traffic and I used to spend money on adwords to gain traffic for my website but it came out too much and was making a loss where as leaving as is did a much better job in terms of profitability.

Facebook seems like a good alternative, but like youtube, apple and eBay eventually they will sell themselves out to big companies and the system will then again turn into the rich gets richer and the poor will stay poor.

They will screw us over again as proven in the past.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

funkyflamingo* — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 23:37:58 GMT

Thank you for the insight ourphonecase, on having your own website.

It is food for thought!

I am guessing you sell phone cases? If so you have many competitors, hence a website may not work as well.

I think that is my main concercen, not getting the traffic, and having to pay more in the marketing sections "google clicks" to be found by new buyers.

My items are one offs, or hard to find items, so I really need my clientel knowing where and who I am.

I have started a shop on facebook the other day,thanks to reading the ebay forum. You can have a shop with 10 free lisitngs, for as long as you like.

More than 10 listings you then have to pay a subscription.

I haven't tried other facebook pages where they sell vintage items. I'm like Horizon, a little nervous, but I will try anything once! Well almost anything!

thanks again for responding!

Re: Ebay verses a website?

transport-posters — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 11:42:23 GMT

I would recommend it. I am a web developer and create and sell prints on eBay as a hobby. I spent some time to make my own custom website to sell them through PayPal and it has paid off well, working well alongside my eBay sales. If you can find a good, cheap and reliable web developer to do it for you then it could work out very well.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

clarry100 — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 12:21:14 GMT

As I understand it tho its not just the web site development its the developers knowledge of how SEO works to get your site out there with Google mainly.

Is that true?

We are currently getting a site built using Woocommerce(??). The developer is a family friend but he is a professional in that field. He was trying to explain the importance of SEO and how proper implementation within the site is very important but it goes over my head.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

character_parties_aus — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 16:37:47 GMT

My website runs woocommerce so,I assume therefore you have a wordpress platform? I do all my own SEO. I know jack about SEO but Wordpress makes it easy and I rank top 5 on google for most items i sell. My website is now 90% of sales, fee free and a much better 'quality' of customer than on ebay with higher average order value.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

clarry100 — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 19:45:48 GMT

Yes it's WordPress.
So even without paying Google for adwords your search ranking is still up there. That's encouraging for us to hear. We were thinking we would have to pay them $$$ to get the new site learned about.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

2106greencat — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 23:33:02 GMT

If you PM me I can send you a SEO pdf and links to some awesome google sites to adv your site.

I would however keep eBay for a while and use it to link to your website, you can not do this on the items pages but you can do it from your about me page without breaking any eBay protocol.

I included links on my items also, but then I was ready to get out of eBay anyway and did not care if my account was suspended. It took about 3 months after I had my site up and running to get a good customer base and good exposure.

Good luck with it, and my suggestion is you organise merchant cc facilities to negate the need for paypal, it is not as expensive as most people think once it is set up.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

character_parties_aus — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 01:57:00 GMT

Ive never paid a cent for adwords.

Ever.

A lot of the time its a waste of money.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

clarry100 — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 02:08:35 GMT

We tried Google Adwords about 12-months ago to try to up our ebay sales.

It cost about $125 to try it for a month but $100 of that was donated by Google in order to suck us in so cost us $25.

We could clearly see the results in that when we searched for the popular words people would use our ads were always right there on top. And we asked various friends to search and they reported seeing our ads too right on top.

But we could not detect any increase in ebay sales.

We even went so far as to contact quite a few buyers during the period asking them if they found us via Google.

Not a single one responded with yes.

So we concluded that the $125 was 100% waste of money.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

ourphonecase — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 06:42:55 GMT

I might need to invest in some growth hackers to boost up the keywords because I seriously have no clue on how SEO works. I read tutortials and all but I am just too dumb to figure out. My page is made by myself using woocommerce/wordpress templates with tweaks to the look of the page. I had to learn **bleep** by myself. However I am aware I am in a competative category and that going to the top is quite hard. I've invested like $100 on some chinese people who seem to use some method of keyword spamming to increase page views (and that I was willing to sacrafice the website anyways if Google deemed it bad). Quote strangely they caused my website to generate sales on their own without the need of adwords and it actually paid off. However sales are coming in very slow so, it didnt get me to the same sales daily like eBay.

I'm trying out Amazon now and so far it gets a few sales a day (still at 0 feedback though). Hopefully more sales will come thru when I build up the feedback.

Re: Ebay verses a website?

character_parties_aus — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 03:37:48 GMT

The internet industry loves to create an air of mystery around SEO as some kind of amazing skill. The reason this is done is that it is actually quite easy to do your own with the correct discipline. If you have a nice and easy manouverable website good site map clean categories and well labelled pages and sort your Meta tags and content out accordingly over time you will have as much success as paying someone. How do I know this? I've done it myself on 4 websites with equal measures of success each time an never paid one cent for SEO or Adwords ( which does not improve SEO). I dont know nothing about SEO per sae, I know about structuring a website well and making sure I have highly relevant key words with a good stie structure. That is all!

Of course most people go for cruddy freebie websites with poor Content Management Systems and Structure and dont set them up well....hence they fail.

It's worth spending a bit more on getting a professional developer to build you a decent site and structuring it correctly rather than doing an on the cheap site nobody can find.

JMO

Re: Ebay verses a website?

funkyflamingo* — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 07:36:23 GMT

Thank you to all, to whom took the time to correspond to my question "ebay verses website".

All that information was very helpful, and I will printing out and taking it to my web developer!

I have decided that I will get a website designed by a web developer, since I have gone as far to get a warehouse/display shop. I find people who pick up items just want to look at all the items I have, but it is not set up as yet, and having a webiste and open hours to the public, will also increase my sales.

As for facebook vintage sites, I am actually having problems finding them. There is facebay, and local area in selling but nothing really just vintage, unless it is a group in WA, but you have to be living there. I found buy swap hippy site but that is more for clothing.

Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place???

Then I thought, maybe I start my own page for vintage sales in Melbourne/Australia! Then realality set in, as already do 100 hours a weeks, with working and ebay sales.

Again, thank you!

Retrovintage