I'll give you an example. I recently bought a Gucci bag that I intended to keep for myself. Mistake. It's white. I have a two year old son. You see where I'm going with this. I got a really good price on the bag, but in order to recover my costs I have to sell it for 20% more than I paid for it on eBay, whereas on Bonanzle I would only pay $5 to complete the transaction.
As the summer comes to an end and the Fall merchandise starts to roll in it's becoming more difficult for me to find deals that are good enough to make a profit on eBay. I keep thinking that if I ever do decide to turn this into a formal business I need to find a way to take eBay out of the equation but continue to get as many views on my items as I do there.
I thought at first that would be nearly impossible, but I recently bought a subscription to Terapeak and got a free subscription to Sellebrity, an eBay reearch service that allows you to see how many people are visiting your items, where they are located, and which items they're looking at. On a GREAT day I get about 114 visits total. On a poor day, like Saturday, I get about 40. On Bonanzle, on the other hand, I get about 35 visits on a good day, and on this blog I get about 18 people visiting and about 35 page loads, again, on a good day.
I'm not sure that I'm really to take the leap into creating my own virtual store and driving my own traffic. I don't have the first idea about how to do that, and as much as eBay is clearly not without its risks, I don't know that I would trust an unknown website more than I would trust an eBay seller with excellent feedback.
What do you guys think?? If I set up my own online store and could offer my items at a slightly lower price (which, by the way, I can do off eBay for blog readers), would you buy from me??
Posts
3 comments:
I tried doing my own store a couple years ago for the reasons you are stating and I was right back to ebay a few short months later. I just did not make the sales I did on eBay. I started to just think of eBay fees like rent. It does suck to pay them but with out ebay the traffic is just not there. But I think you do a great job building relationships on your blog you can try putting some of your items for sale right here. You can get a buy it now button from paypal.
These ebay fees drive me batty! Are you allowed to link a personal website on your items for sale on ebay? Maybe you could list some items on ebay and then have other items for sale on your site with traffic driven there from ebay.
What about craigslist? Too risky? I probably wouldn't buy from you, because I the items you sell are not in my price range, but I think you do a great job!
I agree with the previous commenter. I used to run my own beaded jewelry online store -- I got nowhere. It sucks to have to pay so much in ebay rent, but it's "location, location, location"!
I also like the idea about also listing items on your blog, through Paypal. That way you could list different prices here than you do on ebay. I suppose ebay would frown on you providing a link to your blog where you state that the items are also available. ;-)
I see SO MANY beautiful shoes that I completely write off my "possibilities" list because they are so expensive. If you offered them here, at a huge discount, I don't see why I wouldn't buy them from you!
Post a Comment