Why Every Business Should Sell on eBay
But for the businessperson, especially one on a shoestring budget, eBay is a boon, both for buying and selling – for just about any product you can imagine.
I’ll get to buying tips – but first, look at some key selling benefits:
- You can get up and selling quickly with low overhead.
- It can generate names and contacts for your business.
- It gets you into customer support.
- It can be a great source of market research.
- It can help to test ideas and advertising.
1. If you’re working on your website, researching your market, or any other work, keep doing it – but find a little time to put an auction or two on eBay, and see what happens. You may end up making a few sales, and that can mean cash flow – and as anyone in business will tell you, cash flow is very, very important, especially early in a business (when cash usually flows in the wrong direction).
2. You can also use eBay to generate interest in your site. Every eBay how-to guide I’ve read says the same thing – it’s rare to make eBay your sole sales outlet and succeed. The key is to use eBay to make money – but always drive traffic to your site for repeat business. This way, instead of paying for advertising to get visitors, your visitors are paying you – and since they’ve already bought from you, are more likely to buy again.
3. Customer support is an often overlooked part of eBay dynamics. Frankly, I’d recommend eBay auctions just to see how order filling suits you. You’re going to get annoyed customers, mixed and crossed messages, and very unhappy people – just like in any business. eBay is a cheap way to find out if you can tolerate it. It also lets you practice your customer skills, so when someone later rings you up with a complaint, you’re ready.
4. eBay can also provide an excellent research tool. With millions of auctions, looking at what sells or not can give you concrete information on buying trends. Simply put, if it’s selling on eBay, your chances are much better than if it isn’t. And how often it sells, what it sells for, how many bidders – these all give good indications as to how your product might fare.
5. Finally, eBay gives you cheap copy writing practice. You can list an item to sell for as little as 30 cents – where else can you test ads that cheaply?
Try this – write an ad for your product. Put counters into the ads (available when you list). Then place it three times in the same section at the same time, but with a different auction title (the first thing eBay visitors will see). Try that a few times, and you’ll likely figure out the best title – for a very low cost. From there, adjust items and listings, and you’ll start to find how best to advertise your product – invaluable for when you start spending your advertising budget in earnest.
This is just the tip of the eBay ‘experience’ – moving on, I’ll talk tomorrow about some key points for business buyers on eBay.
