How you market your new online business will be something on the top of your mind from day one. Its an important aspect, right? If people cant see your site, you dont make any sales, so it is not surprising that so many people look at eBay and try to work out how to leverage their vast streams of traffic. Without doubt eBay is one of the worlds most popular web sites, so just attracting a very small percentage of that traffic could make a huge difference to a fledgling new business. However, it is not just a case of using eBay to sell your products or services, it is about encouraging them to visit your off eBay web site. This takes a lot of time, the first thing you will need to do is build up a great reputation. Understand the intricate nature of how eBay works and learn how to position your products to sell them best. Once you have mastered this, you can then begin on your strategy to take your business off of eBay. The reason why it is important to do this is because of the fees. Put simply, eBay is an expensive place to sell your wares. If you can cut out the middle man so to speak, your margins increase. Fortunately, eBay provide you with some great sales tools, you will have access to your customers email details, you can send them newsletters and you can pre program automated email responses. In fact all of these tools are powerful in their own right, so try to use them as often as possible as they will come in handy. Once youre comfortable with these tools, there is no reason why you can not use them to highlight your Internet business. Perhaps you might put a link to your site in every automated email you send, remember you can configure the standard eBay emails to whatever you want (within reason), another strategy is to include some kind of direct marketing response. For example, a limited time only offer of 10% should one of your customers buy something through your site. The trick is to ensure that youre encouraging users to click through to your other web site as much as possible. If your ducks are in line, youll be able to continue to grab your customers details. Maybe offer them a free eBook in return for them signing up to your newsletter, before you know it you will have a reasonable sized mailing list. Now every time you launch a new product or service, you can converse directly with people you know are already interested in your company. The great thing about this is that youll soon start to be able to offer affiliate products, this is another way to make money through your site. If your mailing list is large enough, other web site business owners will approach you for inclusion in your newsletter, of course you can charge for the privilege. In summary, eBay is a great way to start life as an online business, however it is important to have one eye on the future. Start planning your migration away as soon as possible, why should eBay take all the profit? They have enough already! |
