Guest Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Presently I run a very small Ebay shop selling football (soccer) programmes. A lot of these programmes sell for between 50p - £3, with the exception being Cup Final and rarer league and cup programmes which can sell for a lot more depending on the individual programme. The little profit I make (sometimes very little) off each programme gets eaten into by Ebay fees and then PayPal fess so it leaves me with very, very little profit. Given the fact that this, at present, is my only source of income I am looking at ways to increase my profit margins. The most obvious one is to ditch the Ebay shop and set up my own e-commerce site probably using Cube Cart, however I do have some reservations about doing so:- TRAFFIC With Ebay pretty much controlling the online auction market you get a hell of a lot of traffic compared to other auction sites, kind of like "a big fish in a small pond". With setting up my own site it will be (at least at first) "a little fish in a big pond". I guess I am a bit wary of jumping from the small pond to the big pond. BRAND NAME Again with Ebay being the way it is, the name is instantly recognisable by nearly everyone. With my shop (incidentally it's called 'Programmes United') away from Ebay the name won't be recognised. Is not really known now, but as I am sort of piggy-backing off the Ebay brand name..........hmmmm I can't seem to quite explain what I mean. Hopefully you guys will know what I'm on about. Anyway has anyone got suggestions on the best way to promote a brand name?. Before I set up shop on Ebay I had considered setting up a site using either Cube Cart or Zen Cart (hence why I have posted on these forums before, but not for a while) but I found setting up a shopping cart on my own a little daunting so I took the easy way out and opened up an Ebay store. Now i find myself at a crossroads, however, if I'm being honest with myself I would prefer ditching Ebay and setting up using Cubecart as I think I would get better satisfaction setting up own my own store instead of using Ebay, but I find the whole process of setting up with Cubecart (or any other e-commerce cart for that matter) a little daunting especially when it comes to setting up payment gateways and also SEO. At least with Cubecart there are a nice set of modules built in (Nochex, Worldpay etc). I guess I'm after a little bit help and some moral support, have I come to the right place Thanks for listening, Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robsta Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 I would definately recommend not ditching Ebay in favour of your own store alone. As you mentioned, ebay have a lot of visitors, and your products may come up in anyones product search. Don't forget that the customers you have from Ebay are unlikely to find your new store, so you will be appealing to a whole new group of customers. The trouble you will have (as anyone has) is getting customers to your new store, CubeCart or not. If you can, I would suggest having your own store as well as the Ebay store, and perhaps reference your own store on ebay? Are you able to do this? I've never set up an Ebay store, so forgive me if I am incorrect in what you can and can't do with an Ebay store. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brosville Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 I'd go the Cubecart route - set it up yourself - if you're fed up with Paypal. look at Nochex! Run it alongside Ebay while it grows - then dump Ebay! I've found that using no particular seo skills, if you're offering something relatively rare or unusual, Google will send people to you....(for nowt!). I built a cubecart shop for a friend of mine with a small local camera shop - he can't compete with the big guys on price for many large items, but does have a strange and eclectic mix - in his first month he's turned over £500-worth of goods - his biggest sellers? - projector drive bands, obscure "obsolete" batteries, and Tamron lens mounts....... (many purchasers having come straight from Google searches) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vokf Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Hi Carl, I agree with Robsta, keep your Ebay store if you can. Setting up a CC store should be fairly cheap. Hosting can be fairly reasonable, and you are not forced to pay for CC- which makes it ideal for this kind of thing. If you get a resonable hosting package, you could run a small discussion forum on it (as a subdomain), which will help keep your customers close to your site. If you promote this forum on the ebay store, you will get some migration of customers- especially if you offer an incentive... Ebay do have rules about selling off-site, so watch out for their T&C. For forum members I would personally suggest offering a bundled discount, with the discount being close to your Ebay fees... Marketing is always a difficult subject. As an point of interest, to kick off a new store, I've spent £30 on Google Adwords this weekend and total sales = 2 which amount to £0 profit once I've paid Adwords... doh! You probably can't afford to do an affliliate scheme if margins are fairly low. I suggest getting active in forums where your potential customers will lurk (other forums/newsgroups) and place a link to your site in your signature, and just join in the discussions. This will have a 2-fold effect, 1 will be increased visibility of your store name in your market area, and 2 most search engines will index forums, and the link to your store will increase your page rank and make it more "important" to the seach engines. Pricing a product is also hard to get right. At the moment, you're trying to price competitvly. This is ok if you have the turnover. Another option is to Premium Price - ie put your prices at the upper end of the scale, and present the product to suit the price. This could mean mounting the programme nicely, or something like that. You could also sell this as a value-added service. If you have someone local that can do engraving, offer a "gift wrapped" service with engraved messaged on the box/frame etc. Suddenly, your £0.50-£3 item could be worth £20? Could you offer to donate a prize to a suitable competition - online or in any of the footballing mags or Fanzines? Most places would give you a decent advert in exchange for this type of thing. CC also has a Froogle generator which can may also work for you. Once you've added your products, you can submit the feed to Froogle which will include your products. Other than that, you're left to the normal link exchanges. To cut costs further, you could also accept NoChex, which has a lower commsion rate than PayPal - and also doesn't require a customer sign-up. In fact, you could also offer payment by Postal Order/Cheque - some people still prefer to pay that way! Just ensure they make the payments payable to you - not your domain/brand name as it takes a while to set-up a buisiness acount and then clear a cheque. (I've been there..) I hope some of the above has been usefull. Regards, Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aikdo Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 I appolagise if any of the following has been stated before but the best way i have found people doing this is using Ebay as thier advertising platform... Now due to the e-bay rules and regulations you can not place a link on your e-bay store to your own store, but however you can add a small business card or compliments slips to each of the products you send out to your customers highlighting that you have a larger more expancive colection of items for fixed fee's over on your online store. (using the Ebay Brand and stealing thier customers for your own ) Now as well as that you have the beloved paypal feature that allows you to select custom e-mails to be sent when an item is purchased, why not add your link to that? Ok so thats the basics done but you also want to make sure that when someone comes along and uses the other big name in the sky Google that you come up ontop... How can you do that? Simplest way is add your link to every directory site you can find, but link to both sites if you can you e-bay store and your own store have links from your personal store to your ebay store. Make it openly aware to the general public "LOOK I HAVE A VERY POPULAR EBAY STORE... But this store has more items and better prices oh and its going to be going longer than my e-bay store..." ... Your generalisation at the very begining is corect you will be jumping from a small pond to a big one, But what you can do is build a small streem between them where you being the little fish can run back and forth where as the BIG fish of e-bay is stuck as well e-bay... I wish you all the luck, and invite you to add your link to http://www.add-your-link.co.uk once you have your store up and running... Good luck... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Thanks everyone for your great answers, you really are a great bunch in these forums. I had not thought about running both my own shop and an EBay store in conjunction with one another, I guess my single minded thinking was to have one or the other. One further question that is on my mind is about attracting customers. I have heard that one of the hardest things about being in the retail business is not getting customers, it's keeping them. With that in mind I am currently asking myself 'What can I offer that other people dont'?. I really like Jason's idea about the gift wrapping/engraving service because I don't think anyone else in my field currently offers this and it would add a nice personal touch. Also top notch customer service would be vital to maintain a customer base. Are there any other suggestions? Thanks for your great help. It is much appreciated. Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aikdo Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 A great unique atraction i seen from one seller was the amazing way the packaged the items if you requested them too or not, they also had some very atractive business cards with the products aswell probably in all cost them an extra £1 to do the packaging and add the card but i was amazingly impresed by it and have the card pinned to my notice board for any further purchases... Another great touch is that if you are taking thier name and birthdate why not send your customers birthday cards wishing them a happy birthday and maybe a voucher for 10% off ? Some with christmas? Seriously how many people do that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Thanks aikdo that's a great idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest brosville Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 you could also try adding a forum to your site - try to get a discussion going - use it as your "support" board. I'm setting up a site http://gallerytwo.co.uk/, and I've just added a forum http://gallerytwo.co.uk/forum/ (can thoroughly recommend SM F1.0.6 - doddle to setup- looks very good, nice helpful support board.....and I'm running it on the same database as the shop!) ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jethro Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 Am a member of a guild which buys/sells/trades DVDs. Recently the guide runners have removed everything from eBay due to scams, dummy bidders, fees etc. (Have mentioned CC as an option). They are going with a site for members to discuss DVDs make purchases, sell etc the forums are a great idea imho. Anyways if you decide to run a site am happy to add a link at one of our sites as we have a few soccer (as it's called downunder) nuts about the place. Good luck with your venture... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mashurst Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Thanks everyone for your great answers, you really are a great bunch in these forums. I had not thought a Carl everybody has been great with the answers. I add a small bag of candy to the purchase, have an 800 number through a cheap voip service ( I pay 5$ extra for it and it has saved a lot of sales), I have live help on my sight that even if no one is on it, it tracks what the customers do on the sight and shows you what they are looking at, and I use a php based survey program that I send out to the customers to rate their experience so I can see if there are any bad or good trends that I need to look at. The other thing you might consider is free shipping. People love free shipping. If you can find room in the margin to do it, or raise the price slightly to offset it, I know that on the site I assist with the customer base loves free shipping and it really takes business away from the bigger vendors, I feel. All this being said, the number one killer of small business is not understanding your variable costs, i.e. the costs associated with each sale. That may sound simple, but it can get out of hand and destroy you. The second point is, the last factor that you want to compete on between two businesses is on price. Price is the sledgehammer, it is easy to drop price to increase sales, but what does that do to your customer's behavior, to your competitors behavior? You want to be competitive on price, but not to the point that your breakeven is out of reach. You also need the extra margin to fuel your growth. If you are low fixed costs, high variable costs and volume driven, that is fine, just remember that to start out, not only are you getting less customers than a bigger competitor, but you are making less off each sale. i.e. skim pricing vs. penetration pricing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest southbayday Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 One other thing I have not seem mentioned, but is a great way to drive traffic to your non ebay site, is that you can download a spreadsheet of all the payments your receive on ebay. Pluck out the corresponding e-mail addresses. Send them an email that directs them to your new site. Then keep ebay to collect new customers. I use a program called Maxbulk Mailer to send personalized looking individual mails to my customers. It works quite well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sound Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 Intresting ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.