Why Use eBay?

A question I've been asked is why do I bother to use eBay when I have my own ecommerce web sites? Why bother with eBay when I have sources of web traffic already coming to my sites? A lot of my peers who run product-based websites consider eBay somewhat of a scourge due to the high cost of selling and the fact that good margins on eBay can be hard to come by. I don't sell on eBay on a regular basis, but there are three reasons I do like to use eBay.

1) Market Testing
If I'm considering selling a product online, there is really no better place to test a market than eBay. Naturally, I've done some preliminary research. It's considerable trouble to set up a web site and it can expensive if your product fails (I've made that mistake). But if you want to be sure you have a viable, sellable product prior to going to the trouble and expense of setting up a website, try selling it on eBay. For the price of a few listings, you will be able to tell very quickly what kind of market you have for your potential web store and it may help you weed out any problems you had not thought of.

2) Getting rid of Customer Returns
One way that I can provide value to my customers is by having a liberal return 100% refund policy. If you're working in product group that has good resale value and can accept returns, this can put you one large step ahead of your competition. Naturally I get returns of the type: "this really wasn't what I wanted". What better way of disposing of product returns like this than an eBay auction? I almost always get something close to my cost on the item. Yes, it's a slight monetary loss, but the goodwill I create by accepting the customer return makes up for it. Oh, and I get some traffic as a bonus - see next.

3) Driving Traffic
It's against eBay's Terms of Service (TOS) to have a link in your auction that goes to an outside webpage if that webpage directly promotes the product and tries to sell outside of eBay. But there is an Achilles Heel in their TOS. Their TOS says - "You may have one link to a page that further describes the item being sold in that listing.."

A way to stay within eBay's policy and STILL use your eBay listings to drive traffic to your website is this:

• On your website, add a blank page. Make sure there is no pricing or purchase information there and no 'buy' or 'add to cart' button.
  
• Add a detailed description of the product to this page. You should be able to use a description provided by the manufacturer or one that may already be attached to the product on its regular product page.
• On eBay, setup an auction with some sparse information about the product (just enough to get their interest).
• In your eBay auction, set up a link that says something like "for more information on this product, please click here"
• Point the link to your information page on your site.

I do this with Customer Return auctions and I usually see extra traffic during the week that the auction runs. As long as you don't send them to a page that urges them to buy from your website, this should be OK to do. The eBay visitor will come to your site and while they're there, hmmm...they might just browse around!

So even if you have your own ecommerce website, remember eBay has something like 140 million users. That's a lot of built in traffic to tap!

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