Moving Beyond eBay - Are You Ready?
So you have started up an eBay business, but what comes next?
Now some of you will only sell on eBay to clear out a few things from around your house and make a couple of extra dollars - and that is cool.
Some of you though, have started up eBay businesses, or at least want to. So my question for this newsletter is, have you thought long term about where you want to end up?
I love eBay, you know I do, but I get very nervous at the thought of anyone basing their entire business on just one site - any site - no matter how good it is. It's time to get together a long term business plan.
eBay is the perfect place to learn how to sell on the internet, to add an extra sales channel to your offline store and to see how well your products might go selling on the internet.
If you had never sold online before, I couldn't recommend eBay highly enough to you. Here you can learn many important skills you will need for online selling, without it costing you too much.
Once you feel that you have mastered selling on eBay, and you know that your product line is a winner, then you need to start planning your next step ASAP. The next step being, your own website.
Why? Well, once you start REALLY selling on eBay, you are going to notice the fees. In fact the fees that were so enticingly low when you were starting up, will now start to mount up and you will find that you could be paying out $1000 or more to eBay each month.
Some full time eBay sellers are giving eBay as much as 10-20% of each and every sale - THAT IS MASSIVE!
Most people are put off starting their own website, as they have been scared off by unscrupulous companies wanting thousands of dollars to set up a simple website. Plus they want extra money for each and every change they make to your site. It all starts to look expensive compared to eBay.
Thing is, once you have set up a website/online store, you will find that the costs are then minimal. You will need to advertise it, but even with a modest to reasonable Google budget, say $100 per month, your per month bill is going to be alot less than from eBay, plus with the reduced costs, you don't need to sell as much from a website to match your PROFITS from your eBay sales.
You'd be surprised to know just how well selling on eBay has actually prepared you for running your own site and there are several low cost ways to get into one.
- Start your own from scratch. You can get hosting space for around $50-$100 per YEAR and a ".com" domain name from around $7.00 per YEAR (or ".com.au" from around $30 per year).
Starting your own from scratch is a steep learning curve, but there are several very good, free shopping carts you can download, such of oscommerce and zen cart.
- Trial a "pay per month" online store. I have found several sites that offer excellent online stores from $10- $15 per month to $50-$100 per month. Obviously paying that bit more gets you are more deluxe store that is easier for you to set up.
Most of these stores have been created so that you can easily upload your own logo and change the colours of the store, to customise it yourself. It won't be as fancy or as unique as a custom designed store that you would pay thousands of dollars for, but with a little bit of creativity you can get it looking very presentable and ready to sell - which is the most important thing.
You can also find many designers (I am one of them) who can make a per month web store look less like the rest and more like a custom site, for a small price.
- Get a designer to set up a website for you. Ok, that gets back to a big up front outlay scenario, but it doesn't have to cost the Earth. In fact you can a great looking website, made for you for around $500 or so, depending on what kind of custom work you are looking for. They are out there, you just need to look. I am currently in the process of setting up a recommendations page on my site, to bring together great low cost designers (who don't spend alot on advertising so they can keep their cost to you low), together with people who need honest, cost effect work done. Keep your eye out for the new page ;-)
Please don't think that I am saying that you need to run out and get yourself a website straight away, but it is something that you should be heading towards once you realise that your eBay efforts are becoming successful.
By setting up your own website sooner rather than later you will give yourself time to use your eBay sales to promote your website (eBay legally of course!) and gradually shift the balance of your sales from one format to the other.
Once you are getting significant website sales you can start to cut back on your eBay selling, but don't cut it out completely. Use it as to perfect advertising tool that it is.
Good luck and keep your eyes firmly on your business to know when it is time to start to branch out.
