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How I got out of the Ebay game
 

Hey guys, if this is out of context of this forum you can delete it but this has pretty much been the foundation of my business for the last year or so...

eBay has always caused me headaches and I was really tired of having to pay commission to a company that was always trying to look over my shoulder and tell me how to run my business! So what I did was branch out and start my own websites selling my own products.

The first thing you need is to get the site up and running. You need web hosting and you need a domain. I suggest namecheap.com for domains, if you are going to have a lot of sites and you know what you are doing give dreamhost a shot. Never pay full price though, there is always a coupon online that you can find via google easily. Should cost you about 10 bucks a month.

if you are going to start with only one website then check out the shared hosting plans from zensix.. the support there is really helpful and it will cost you more like 10$ a year. These hosting plans wont support a busy business, but it is more then good enough to get your feet wet and get the revenue coming in.

so once you have your hosting set up and a domain pointing to your hosting you need a website to put in its place. If you are only selling one product you can easily build a "landing page" or one page website that promotes your product and has a buy now button. If the purchase is more high involvement for the user, (anything they might want to think about) then what I usually do is say that there is limited quantities available at the current price range, and get them to enter their email to secure the price. You can use the email with a mailing list management service like mailchimp.com to keep emailing the customer with emails about your product. Be sure to make it very easy for them to unsubscribe, and send them USEFUL information so you don't appear too spammy.

How do you build an actual site? if you dont have enough experience to do one by yourself, you can easily set up a wordpress blog with a theme from themeforest.net to sell your product. You should have basic photoshop skills to tweak the design to your liking.

If you are going to carry a large variety of products, try a shopping cart software like magento (community edition is free) or oscommerce (also free). You can get themes for them as well.

I wont go too much into the details of setting up your shopping cart since there is a lot of help online for it, you can always ask me if you need a hand.

when you have your site set up, you need to get traffic to it! The easiest way is through PPC (pay per click). You bid on keywords or search terms, and every time somebody clicks on your ad you pay a comission. I use google adwords, you have to be very careful when picking your keywords. Set a low budget and TEST until you know that you are profitable. With no budget you can easily burn through a few hundred a day in advertising costs.

If your keyword is getting you solid revenue, then you can turn to SEO to make your site rank well in google. I have always outsourced this, but the basic idea is to build links to your website. If you are building links to your site that say "johns widgets" then when somebody searches "johns widgets" in google your site comes up at the top.

Anyway.. I am pretty new to the board and not sure if this topic will interest you all.. if it does please let me know and I would be happy to develop on any topics.

I have been wanting to do this for a while. Thanks so much!

Not stealth but useful all the same

I have been known this. The problem is that I cant dedicate money to site traffic right now which is why I have not done it. I think many of us here still do whatever it takes to sell on ebay because ebay brings huge amounts of traffic and fast profits. Thanks for sharing though.

Excellent post koharski

This is something I have struggled with myself many times. I have found that these things always work best when you get started while you are currently expriencing ebay success. Best case scenario you will soon have two sources of revenue. Worst case you lost a few days of profits.

A rule of thumb I have always practiced was to take the profit I make off one sale, multiply by 3, and use that as my "getting started" budget for a new project. If you know what you are doing that should be enough to detmine if your site is going to be profitable.

If you need to learn the ropes with adwords, sign up for a new account and create one ad, but do not enter your billing info. Within 3 weeks they will usually email you a code for 100$ of free advertising, this IMO is enough money to practice with and get a feel for the system. I would suggest it to anybody even if you do not intend to start adwords right away.

A lot of people go down this route after getting tired of eBay/PayPal.

A successful eBay and website is a great outlet combo for sure!

Good thread.

I agree with Shady....good thread!:clap:

I just started a retail online business after amazon started pissing on me (they still are) and annoyed with ebay. :mad:

One trick I've picked up in the past for PPC advertising is buy google vouchers from ebay (one darn thing the site is good for). :clap:

For my current business I have no use for PPC, but in previous ventures I used to provide a service and I used to pay about $20 bucks for $105 worth of PPC. :thumb:

The down side to PPC, although it really will bring a lot of traffic to your website, I was sometimes paying as much as $3 per click and how many of those clicks will result in a sale? I guess you'd have to find out by trial and error. :noidea:

To me, PPC isn't worth it, but if your product in "niche" enough, it could be an absolute goldmine for you. If you're selling something like... say "ink cartridges" - ppc probably isnt for you unless you have a big advertising budget. But if you're selling custom aligator skin boots, ppc might work. You get the idea :)

in the process of building my site :clap:

^Awesome, good luck n all :thumb:

Thanks! I will let everyone know when it is done :)