6 replies to this topic

[adi_azar]

Guys,

What are the advantage I may have from selling products on my own site instead of selling on ebay or amazon? Will having my own site with my shopping cart better than my ebay or amazon ?

Thanks

[Tom Philo]

E-Bay: Built in cart, fraud alert & liability, payment options, checking /banking setups all done for you. You lose % to them for them doing all that for you. You also do not have to worry about updating carts, SSL, banking, etc and just concentrate on making your site findable and useful to people - then direct them to a site that is well known and trusted to handle financial transactions.
It comes down to which is least expense in both direct and indirect costs to maintain.
If you are doing less than $100,000 a year, then better to go with E-Bay. Based on 7.5% back end fees to cover everything before it becomes worth it to do your own. Your bank fees will be much higher than what e-bay charges.

[rolf]

To an extent I agree with Taphilo, but I don't think you necessarily need to turn over 100k before your own site becomes viable. Certainly if you can do web design/maintennance in-house (as we do) then the bar is much lower.

Once you have your own site up and running, and making some money, it's also an insurance against anything that might happen on eBay (think eggs and baskets). For what we do eBay seems to go completely dead at times and the website is essential during these slower periods.

[jspope]

Hi!

I agree that you should not have all your eggs in one basket. You should definitely not be overly dependent on one supplier or income stream.

On the other hand, eBay/Amazon is another way of generating traffic for your websites and obtaining more customers and income.

You have more control with your own websites (building your own e-mail lists, obtaining your own high rankings, what ads to show, upsells, et cetera). However, don't completely writeoff the value of selling through other sites.

eBay/Amazon versus your own websites?

Use both.

Regards,

Stephen :-)

Edited by jspope, 27 March 2007 - 08:03 AM.

[rolf]

Use both.

Definitely! both eBay and the website are important for us.

We looked at selling on Amazon when we were only selling one product but it never worked out. As I understand it you can only sell products that already have the details in their database and, as it was (is) a unique product we make ourselves, there didn't appear to be any way to use the system :-s I wrote to Amazon asking how to get our product details added to their database but never got a reply, I meant to chase it up but got caught up with other stuff, you know how these things go.

You've actually reminded me, Stephen, that I should have another look into that - any ideas how one would go about getting a product added to their database?

[Ignoramus]

Use both is good advice - until you sort out which is best for you.

It really depends on what you are selling.

Remember that on eBay buyers are looking for rock-bottom deals. Your products will compete with a load of others - some genuine and some crud. It might be difficult for buyers to distinguish between them.

As Rolf says - it's not turnover that is the deciding factor (turnover is easy) - it's the margins you make on that turnover that decides your investment.

[arlen]

It really depends on what you are selling ... Remember that on eBay buyers are looking for rock-bottom deals.

This rings particularly true, to me anyway. I've considered eBay, but my so-called competition are low-ballers, often selling stuff for less than I can get at wholesale (think volume discounts). The manufacturers of my products are slowly coming down on the low ball crowd as they completely devalue their products, but it's still happening and will continue to. OTOH, most of the eBayers don't have the same selection, and a few of my real competitors do have eBay stores, so I'll be looking at it again - but when I considered it last time things just didn't look feasible.

There is a lot to learn running your own site, and it's a long-term commitment. I might have chosen a yahoo store or something like that with a built-in marketplace if I was unsure I wanted to manage my own from ground up. But I figure if you're in it for the long run, you need to build your own site and learn to promote it. If you start somewhere else and then decide to launch your own site later, you'll largely be starting from scratch anyway.