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5 Ways
to Drive Traffic Away from Your eBay Auction
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>> eBay
is a one-stop solution to any one who wants to make
money online. Whether you just selling a few unwanted
items from around your house or your want to develop a
work from home business, eBay removes many of the
obstacles for you. Not many other websites can help you
drive targeted traffic towards your sales, process the
order on your behalf and accept payment though paypal.
All you need to do then is dispatch the item to your
winning bidder.
And let's not forget the biggest advantage over selling
on eBay. The majority of users have money in their hand
just waiting to find the right item.
So if eBays so great why would you want to drive traffic
AWAY from your auctions?
Well there are a few reasons why you'd be better off
selling from your own website, rather than though eBay.
Firstly & most importantly, think of all the listing
fees & final value fees you could save if everything you
sold on eBay you could sell on your own website.
Personally it would save me thousands of dollars per
year alone in listing fees.
Secondly, you'll be protecting yourself from eBay policy
change. Imagine you were selling thousands of ebooks
weekly and then suddenly eBay policy changed to prevent
any ebook listings.
Overnight your business would simply disappear & your
income would vanish. It's the same with listing fees - A
sudden hike in fees could wipe out your business &
profit overnight.
With any business, especially an online one you need to
safeguard yourself against measures that are out of your
control. So by driving traffic away from your auctions
to your own website you'll slowly start building up an
alternative source of revenue. The following methods can
be used on eBay. Some are on the borderline of eBay
policy & you should check out any policy violation
before using them. Saying that, a huge proportion of
sellers use these on a daily basis.
1) Image Hosting
All the best sellers have auction templates developed to
maintain a professional listing. And of course those
sellers ALWAYS use images or graphics to accurately show
the condition of the items their offering.
eBay itself allows you to upload the images to their
servers, other commercial & free services are available.
However really you want to store any images on your own
server. Not only will search engine robots follow the
links from your listings to your site (helping in
improved visibility in any search engines), but many
browsers will show the address of where the images are
loading from in the status bar - For instance "Loading
Image From http://www.visitmyshop.com" or "Waiting For
http://www.visitmyshop.com". This is a great way for
your visitors to see to become familiar with your site.
2) Feedback
Many sellers include their own website in the feedback
comments they use. Strictly it is against eBay policy
but many Powersellers use comments like "Thanks for your
custom from http://www.Visitmyshop.com" as standard.
This is perhaps one of the widely violated policies on
eBay. I've never known of anyone receive a warning for
this policy, but use it with caution as you could be the
first.
3) Email Address.
eBay allows your listings to contain one email link
address, in addition to the "Ask The Seller A Question
Link" they already provide. Use the opportunity to show
the an email account associated with your domain name
for example sales@visitmyshop.com. The only condition
about showing your email address is the one shown must
also be your registered email account with eBay. Before
you list it, make sure they match up.
4) About Me Page
eBay actually allows you to link to your own website
from your About Me page, as long as the actual page does
not directly offer to sell items. Therefore make it an
information or about us page that you link to, BUT one
where visitors can easily navigate to your catalog of
items for sale. Additionally drive traffic to your About
Me Page by including a link on every listings, for
example "Click here to learn about me". An average basic
shop on eBay will get over 1500 item views within a
month. If you can drive just a small proportion of these
to your about me page & then to your site you'll
certainly see a difference in your non-eBay sales.
5) User Id
While eBay does not allow your user id to be that of an
website, you should have it as closely to resembling
your site name as possible. You CAN NOT attach .com,
-com or *com to the end of your user id - this is
strictly against eBay policy. However nothing would stop
your id being VisitMyShop. The idea is to get your eBay
visitors comfortable with dealing with you away from
eBay.
I hope these tips help you drive traffic away from your
auctions towards your site & lessens eBays grip on your
business. Remember, Ignorance is not an excuse eBay
accept if you do violate their policy. While you
initially get a warning for policy violation continuous
offences may result in your account being suspended.
Having said that, eBay mostly rely on policing from
other users to enforce their policy so as long as no
reports you should be in the clear.
Good luck with your eBay activity. << |
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