Personal business website VS eBay ?

Question

I sell on eBay and have noticed that I pay eBay and PayPal about 50.00 bucks a month or per invoice and I sell less then about 10 items a month, being as that is would it be more cost effective for me to hire godaddy.com and have them build me and maintain a online business shop and domain? Would I get as many hits as I would on ebay, I mean is that why it costs so darn much to sell there?

Answer 1

eBay can charge a lot because you do very little work in terms of marketing -- they already have a huge captured market. With your own website, your site is just one of the billions out there and it needs to be marketed heavily for it to be visible to your target market

CREATING YOUR OWN WEBSITE

Pros

- allows you to establish your own "real estate" on the Web;

- allows you to attract a bigger audience; not limited to eBay buyers (not everyone buys on eBay)

- scaleable as it allows your business to grow;

- allows you to give more information about your business to your visitors and give them reasons to trust you

- allows you to give more information about the product, play around with factors that can increase conversion

- gives you a more professional look

- makes you look like a "big" business (an e-commerce seller that also sells on ebay "looks" so much bigger than a purely ebay seller)

- you can put in as many items you want without paying listing fees

- you can sell as many items as you can without paying value added fees

- less restrictions than eBay (you are more free to write your sales copy)

- easier to market on the Web

Cons:

- requires technical knowhow to create a website (or money to pay someone to do it for you)

- fixed price (price you set is what you get)

- just because you build a website doesn't mean buyers will come. You have to market it and learn how to convert visitors to buyers

SELLING ON EBAY

Pros

- auction format; prices can go up higher than you originally set it for

- eBay's brand and size of its market

Cons

- listing and final value fees

- lots of restrictions

- harder to get onto search engines

- link exchanges are more difficult

- increasing competition (it is not as easy to sell now on eBay compared to others)

I would say it depends on what you want with your business. If you have a steady supply of product to sell (not just based on what you can find in your attic), I would go create a website - and THEN use eBay as an additional sales channel. You just have more room to operate and grow your business with having your own store.

Answer 2

I'm in agreement with imisidro's comments.

Save your money, by getting a website through Office Live Small Business.  You get the domain of your choice (as long as it isn't already taken) completely free for the first year.

They also have a store manager add-on for products and you can also sell your products on ebay through this add-on of your store website.

I actually signed up for the store manager add-on because they were running a special right now for this feature.  It's usually like $34.95 or $39.95 per month (something close to that anyway), but I got it for $14.95 a month guaranteed for the first 12 months.  Hopefully they are still running this special.

I also added PayPal (in the store manager) to my shopping cart and it looks just like my website, unlike when you just put in the regular PayPal buttons.

The store manager add-on gives you the option to add products to your store and also to ebay at the same time, depending upon the choices you make when you are adding products to the database.

It's really a great deal.  Check it out if you like.

Direct Link:  http://smallbusiness.officelive.com

Answer 3

I say make your own website, you can create your own personal identity and allow you to build up your business long term. eBay is in a bubble at the moment and I would never advise a business basing itself in a bubble.

Get a web hosting package and use something like osCommerce a great only store package that is Free Of Charge as it is Open Source yet very stable.

You can market yourself relatively easily and with a bit of thought cheaply as well. I.e. Car Graphic Advert, Local Paper etc.