A recent AuctionBytes blog entry provides another interesting case study of a former eBay seller who found that the grass indeed might be greener outside of eBay.
Much like the scenario in my previous post about Bargainland, Bruce Hershenson was a large volume seller who started selling off of his own platform in reaction to eBay’s policy changes (in this case – fee increases). His site, http://www.emovieposter.com/ , provided more sales than his previous year selling on eBay while incurring less expense.
Bruce left this comment in the remarks area of the blog post:
I full well know that most smaller sellers can’t leave eBay in the way I did, and that is why I very much hope that very soon one of the alternate sites will ”take hold”, and when it does, I urge all of you to give it your full support, for then you will all have a way to leave eBay as I did, if you choose.
I continue to urge small sellers to take initial steps now to wrestle control of their business from eBay. You don’t need to be a big time seller to develop a viable internet presence off of eBay. What you need is a site with good content about what you sell that attracts free traffic from Google and the other search engines. From there you can direct visitors to your eBay listings (an even make a commission doing so under the eBay Partner Network affiliate program) or eCrater or Bonanzle or sell directly off of your site. Visitors to your site will regard you as an authority in your niche and will be predisposed to make a purchase from you vice another seller.
If you should decide to change venues for selling, you already own your traffic, so shifting to a platform other than eBay is as simple as changing the links on your site. So, as Bruce stated above, when “one of the alternate sites ‘takes hold’,” you’re ready to act.
An excellent example of this technique is provided by AuctionBytes’ Ina Steiner in the book, Blogging Heroes:
One eBay seller I know writes a blog devoted to mugs, and he includes pictures, descriptions, and advice on interesting mugs he finds. This is a great way to serve his customers by providing content that’s of interest to them. In addition, he builds up a following of people who are more likely to buy from him in the future, and shoppers doing searches for those types of products will find his blog — and his listings.
You can find a couple of other interesting case studies of this technique on this link:
http://auctions.sitesell.com/insights2.html
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