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Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

The only problem with that is the FEES. They can be VERY EXPENSIVE. Not a big deal if you have great profit margins, but really bad if your profit margins are just average.

Personally, I would only use one of these services like 2CO if I had no other choice. If it comes down to it, a little profit is better than no profit.

But I have no had a problem creating PayPal accounts to accept website payments. Of course I use them for eBay first and then start adding the website payments. An I always sell related items on both eBay and the website.

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

It definitely takes time, money and PATIENCE! The first six months, I had almost NO sales on my website. But I enclose a coupon and a flyer with each of my eBay and Amazon orders. Technically it is against their rules, but I have not had much of a problem doing this. It got reported to Amazon ONCE and I apologized, telling them I didn't know it was against the rules and I promised not to do it again. My account was OK.

I really didn't do very much with SEO as I got BADLY BURNED on my first website and it was banned by Google.

But now, it is about 5 years old and my sales range between $5k and $6k per month (GROSS, NOT PROFIT!) so it CAN be very worthwhile.

I also started using Adwords, thanks to Six Figure Boss. I found out I was originally using Adwords ineffectively, so it was costing me a fortune and providing no results. Now that I know how to PROPERLY use Adwords, it is profitable for me.

I highly recommend ALL of Aspkin's guides. Each one I bought paid for itself VERY quickly!

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

I am very surprise to read this. I actually started a thread few month ago
asking if Amazon allows business cards in packages I send. Most,
if not all replies from users here were - yes. I then called Amazon CS,
and after he checked with I guess his supervisor, he came back and said
it is OK to include flyers, bc, or other promotional in packages.
I know many reps in both Amazon and eBay, don't know what they are
doing, and I really don't want to lose my Amazon account over this issue.
I hope there is someone here who can give me a definite answer. Thanks!

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

At the end of the day the biggest argument in favor of running your own site is that you own your customers, not eBay or Amazon.

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

I have my own website and I've got about two sales so far (Started about 9 days ago). One from a random google searcher, and another from my mailing list. (Just started a weekly giveaway and am getting people on my mailing list that way. Trying to figure out how to make it viral/exponential, but it seems to be fairly linear to how much time/money I invest.)

I started SEO and I'm still waiting on the results. Current position is about 20 on average for all the important keywords, hoping that improves over time. (Nice thing about my market is that I have no /real/ direct competitors on google, as of yet. Most of my would be competitors don't have the skills and/or inclination to run a site.)

I've been getting more sales from etsy, and I'd imagine I'd probably get more sales from ebay/amazon (My accounts have another 30 days to age before I can effectively use it. Even then, though, ebay limits are retarded compared to my ability to expand on etsy/my-site/amazon/etc; ebay effectively hampers my ability to sell. Even then, though, it still might be worth the "cost of doing business" on ebay since my listings got like 10x the traffic etsy does and I believe I got around 1.5x-2x the amount of sales per view as compared to etsy. In terms of sales/item-listing cost (Not including FVF), ebay is cheaper and you get much more traffic sooner. However, including FVF, the cost of doing business on ebay may be much higher depending on your going price. Nice thing about etsy is that they give you keywords people used to find your listings and all sorts of traffic stats that you can easily apply to other platforms like ebay/amazon/google. I.e., don't list the items on ebay that get no traffic on etsy, or least make them the lowest priority. Now, on google(Your website)/amazon, there's no penalty for listing more products (In terms of fees and listing limits), so there's no reason to not list something on those platforms.

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

Good start swbluto

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

Never ever rely on eBay - set up your own website and use that to grow your sales. I'm looking for a good online shopping cart...shopify or big commerce seem a good bet

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

prefer shopify, trouble with using a platform like that is they can just increase their prices whenever they like, bigcommerce are doing that now for people selling a lot.
Set up your own site on woocommerce or magneto, woocommerce is a lot easier to learn but magneto looks more professional

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

you know its not very hard to make a website, you make a website with magento cms, host it and buy the domain it actually costs about £8, obviously if you can't code just buy a theme and customize it yourself it ain't hard, seo is the big thing but how you get round that is to use PPC advertising,

i mean the original poster is right 35k in ebay fees is steep and you can always sell a website once you have added value

Re: Ebay vs own websites
 

I created a website about 3 years ago
You get sales for sure but are slow and never compare like the big sites ebay, amazon or etsy. We need lot of cash to get rank well and start getting good results. Even if we have a very good product to sale.