Help with Web Design

full-time-mum

John_M_Business wrote:

The trouble you will have - and I have sold enough on ebay during the last few months to realise - is the greatest asset that eBay has is ... the people using eBay. You get customers 'for free'.

OH has sold loads on ebay over the last few years and it is great for the rarer items, he now has a good rating but the trouble with ebay for us is that

1000 x 15p listing fee = £150
average profit per listing session is around £100, less commission
not financially viable!

We saw this as one way of getting a list of items into the public domain.

John_M_Business wrote:

No one parts with cash for on a 'homebrew' website... or, if they do... you have to wonder!

Point taken, I think we were hoping that we could use ebay rating by way of a reference in someway!

John_M_Business

full-time-mum wrote:

OH has sold loads on ebay over the last few years and it is great for the rarer items, he now has a good rating but the trouble with ebay for us is that

1000 x 15p listing fee = £150
average profit per listing session is around £100, less commission
not financially viable!

We saw this as one way of getting a list of items into the public domain.



Point taken, I think we were hoping that we could use ebay rating by way of a reference in someway!

Firstly, you really have to wonder whether you have a business at all with those margins!

If you are going to point people to your website you will have to invest in marketing to achieve this, but with so little profit in each sale it really is going to be very tight - even if you have a nice site.

Your eBay rating will help, but people want reassurances on the site they are transacting with. If it's too basic, then they won't buy - particularly at those huge volumes!!

full-time-mum

John_M_Business wrote:

Firstly, you really have to wonder whether you have a business at all with those margins!

If you are going to point people to your website you will have to invest in marketing to achieve this, but with so little profit in each sale it really is going to be very tight - even if you have a nice site.

Your eBay rating will help, but people want reassurances on the site they are transacting with. If it's too basic, then they won't buy - particularly at those huge volumes!!

I don't think we saw this as being a business as such, we thought we would do some experimenting, find out what was what etc. We're still looking for that elusive moneymaking idea like the rest of the world - we just want to be ahead of the game if and when it appears!!!

What we have is really a private collection, we want to get rid of the duplicates. Some times more items are brought in bulk just to get one or two items to fill in the gaps in the collection. (Personally, I'd like to see the whole lot go and free up shelf space but that would be a bit mean!!!)

I presume, then, that you have to pay to be listed on google or whatever or is that just to be a sponsored link?

talby-wan

Hi

Just joined the MSE forum today and noticed your post. I do a bit of web design in my spare time (mostly for my own amusement/education).

It's free to have your site listed on Google and several other search engines but obviously if you want sponsored listings linked to keywords it's going to cost you something.

This is a good site about search engines detailing which ones are free to submit to and all sorts of other info.

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/

If you've got no marketing budget you'll also need to do some serious
research into search engine optimization i.e. trying to optimize your site to get the highest listings in search engines through the use of keywords, meta-tags, alt tags, title lines, appropriate domain names etc.

SEO isn't an exact science and can be a bit bewildering. Not many people can give you a definitive answer on how to get a good ranking for your site as firstly all search engines use different algorithms to produce their listings but there are several good practices to give a decent chance.

If you Google 'search engine optimization' you'll find tonnes of info.

Good luck,

Paul

full-time-mum

Thanks for that talby-wan.

I will be looking at all the information shortly and having a go.
First I have to get my broadband conncection sorted. My 2Meg connection is currently running at approx 9.30kbps
Tiscali said it could take 10-14 days to sort out:mad:

Have been recording speed tests and will be asking for a refund!

Flexible_Friend

Ebay is by far the best way to run a small business like yours. It gives your products exposure to a ready made market of potential customers - millions in fact - worldwide. More than any personal website could attract. It is, therefore, very cost effective provided you cost your products in a way that there is a margin of profit. There's no point running a business if it's not making any money.

When you do find a customer through Ebay, when you send them the item they have just purchased, why not send them a full price list of all the other items you have for sale with either a fixed price or a "make me an offer" price?
Maintain a mailing list of all your customers and keep sending them price lists from time to time. You have to try to retain these customers for repeat business.

Syman

full-time-mum wrote:

I would like to make my own web page to eventually flog some stuff as Ebay is proving to be too expensive in this instance.

I was a programmer in a former life so I feel that it is something that I should be able to do - in fact I would enjoy the challenge!

Any advice would be really appreciated, bearing in mind that when I stopped working, Windows95 was still at beta test stage, www didn't exists.....

Apparently, I have access to a web page via Tiscalli but there is so much I need to find out about; HTML, actually producing the page, getting it to appear in searches etc......

you could look at vision 2 learn here they do a free course on web design

Dunstan_2

Would you be able to slightly mark up postage prices on Ebay? Although slightly annoying for the buyer, if you do not charge too much, it may not be noticeable and you would gain more profit for each item.