I have spoken to Channel Advisor but they want £300 pm + a percentage of sales and this wont work for me.

I sell consumable goods and can direct cutomers from ebay to my website for future purchases.

I see that Auctivia will be doing one soon which seems good

I look forward to hearing your advice!

http://www.aston.co.uk

I imagine it would be easier to convince Norf to move to London rather than get a website

so listing it in 2 places would be barmy

It’s important to understand, as Chris says, the extra work involved in doing this. We prepare the ebay listing first, submit it and then ‘paste’ into our website. It adds 3 minutes to each listing. Remembering to delete sold stock from the ‘other channel’ is the hardest part, and we have been caught out a couple of times, so we’re lucky to have such friendly and understanding customers.

To us, it’s worth the extra work for two reasons:

1. Having your own website and maintaining it properly with stock and fresh content establishes you as a serious operation and builds your own brand seperate from eBay.
2. We decided that having our entire business at the mercy of eBay policy changes was a risk that’s just not sustainable – financially or emotionally.

There’s certainly a gap in the software market for a system that automates stock control between auction sites and own website(s). Also, the hardest part of running your own website is marketing – small sellers should form alliances to drive business at manageable cost.

I do keep a much bigger range of stuff on ebid but sales are rubbish. Only 8 items sold there this year! 3 in September made me think it was picking up but then nothing until December (and then only 1). On the other hand when people enquire about whether I can do things that I don’t have on ebay eg a matching bracelet or something in another colour, I direct them to ebid and several times they have come back with a list of things they want to buy – they don’t buy on ebid (presumably because they don’t have an account) they just ask me for a price inc postage and buy directly from me. So I think in that way it works almost like a website for the jewellery. (I do have a website but I just use it to direct people to ebay).

I’m thinking of trying Etsy for the expensive labour intensive beadwork I do that I have nbo chance of selling on ebay – Etsy seems like it might be a much better bet for stuff like that now that I don’t do many craft fairs. And I’ve been told about Folksy.com – seems to be a new site, a sort of UK version of Etsy – anyone tried either of these?

But despite my whingeing I’m still here and still selling on ebay so something must be working somehow. I’ll keep listing and hoping until the stuff stops selling.

Turnover is just numbers, it maybe cheaper to list, but is it cheaper to sell? with your products I have no doubt you have the right formula, but with me I have unlimited supply of the same item so its a no brainer.

The main thing is we are all happy! I am happy with my channels, you are happy with yours, who has the right to say we are wrong!

#12 eBay is cheap enough – 5p for 30 days, can’t beat it for the traffic it brings. Compare to Google adwords and it’s a bargain

So we will see how it goes.

Whenever I hear, “that will not work”, I suspect an opportunity, as that means a lot of people will think the same way…

Mark

full page adds in the yellow pages,, radio adverts, etc etc

the tail starts to wag the dog, and you end up working for the business rather than the the other way on, if your not careful

WHY ??

that said ebay is now as cheap / cheaper than google to list common product conversion costs wise since they saw the light and removed the high up front costs.
from something we dropped a few months ago to something that look positively foward thinking now, we are planning to eBay for the foreseable future here.
roll on free p+p and only 1 listing per item.

Then a have a HUMUNGOUS ePN tracked link.or banner to my eBay auctions.

If they cannot buy from the website (and I understand why with one-offs) why not generate some traffic, send them to ebay and get paid for it?

A possible idea is that I am guessing you don’t flood the market with your items so you could put it on your website first then onto ebay when your ready, you can then just copy and past the details over……

Also it maybe worth just having a holding page for your company name, as people who see this on ebay will search on google for you as well. Then just have some bumf about you, maybe a newsletter sign up, then push people to your ebay store, plus if you use the affliate scheme earn some money to!

But as you say Sue you wont change people who don’t want a website but all I can say is its amazing…………..get one! lol

Stu

There’s also the repeat customer question. I’m certainly not going to put effort into bringing back customers to my eBay store when for the same effort I could save myself the 15% eBay fees and have them come back to my website.

But I suspect that people who say they don’t *want* a website will never be convinced. Good luck to them.

Since being kicked off ebay last year I have learnt so much about the world outside of it and its a wonderful place. A good website won’t cost that much and there are lots of places you can have one set up within hours! Write some good text, keyword rich and also research your market and what customers are looking for and they will come and they will buy!

Our profit since being kicked off has almost doubled! I am not saying don’t sell on ebay but you should have your own site it takes alot less work than ebay I can tell you!

Plus I’m not delusional I’m living it and I am not putting all my eggs in one place!!!!

Stu