5 WAYS TO DRIVE TRAFFIC AWAY FROM YOUR EBAY AUCTION
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.
Author Info: Jason James runsThe
Auction Resource Network - Where eBay™ Power
Sellers™ Spill
Their Secrets!.
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