Making the move from eBay to dedicated site.

steven_garner

Hi all,

im getting increasingly hacked off with eBay everyday and the new Power seller discount programme has really got to me!
I want to move away from eBay and start my own website, a chap i work with builds websites on the side and advised me he would normally charge ~£600 to create a professional site but would do this considerably cheaper for me.
At the moment I have multiple quantities of about 30-35 different products (all in the same sort of category) but expanding very quickly (the only thanks I will ever give eBay J)

Has anyone moved from eBay to a dedicated site? If I can route traffic by getting my products on Google shopping, Yahoo, shopping.com ect and accept both PayPal and Google checkout do you think I will attract the same amount of interest?

Cheers.

cyberbob

Your main problem is getting the amount of hits that you can get on ebay. So you would need to get yourself appearing on search engines (which can cost). It can take a long time to build up good traffic (i'm talking years not months) unless you can afford lots of expensive advertising. Also to get people interested a wide choice is preferable, not sure 30-35 products will be enough.

One thing you need to think of the guy you work with had he also agreed to upkeep the site? If not you will need to put time into this as theres nothing worse than visiting sites with broken links and bugs.

People do it. It can be a lot more work upkeeping a site with less sales. You have to constantly put the work in to get your name out there and keep it there. People who successfully do it start small running in tandem with ebay sales and slowly build up over time. You can then advertise your new site by putting flyers in your ebay sales.

Its not an easy option but if you can build it up and put the work in it can be sucessful

steven_garner

Thanks cyber bob,

We don’t have an arrangement yet but he did mention that he can maintain the site and willing to do everything very cheap.
I was thinking about running the eBay shop along side the website then slowly moving across.
I have done some careful research and my products are searched for on eBay and Google very frequently, since eBay automatically put all BIN listings on Google shopping I have noticed a lot more new eBay members buying my popular items, I assume they have seen the ad on Google and signed up to eBay to buy.

Do you think it would be better to expand into Amazon and Play Trade to establish a good customer base before setting up a website?

Thanks for your help on this.

pitkin2020

As cyberbob has said your main issue will be the traffic flow. If your business is a lot of repeat business then I would say continue to use ebay as well, when you sell something put a discount slip in and push people to complete a return transaction through your site. You wil also need to work hard to promote your site everywhere you can to get the traffic up, no easy task.
Once you can get a steady stream of hits and purchases you will find your profit margin increases as you will have no listing fee or FVF and the cost of the website is relatively cheap.

JK1982_2

Steven, I am a professional programmer and work for a web solutions company, we have created and setup hundreds of webstores for our client, my advice to you would be what some of our other customers do.

Trade on all 3 platforms, ebay, playtrade & amazon.

Setup your own webstore as cyberbob mentioed it will take years for you to reach top rankings in google your range of goods, the reason your ebay products show on google is because it is on ebay and not your products that determine the search results, search results all work on a thing called pagerank which through search engine optimisation can be improved on over due course.

You will get results by sending data feeds of your products to google products etc... and if you wish to pay then pricegrabber, pricerunner etc....

But the best solution would be to have your webstore, use all the free methods of advertising available, then also have your entire stocklist on ebay, playtrade, amazon and ebid, and to all your customers from these sources include a leaflet or email marketing to let them know about your dedicated webstore.With regards to payment on your webstore, if you accept both paypal and google checkout you are enabling a wider community of buyers so would recommend both.

For advice on pricing to setup a webstore it depends on what software your friend is going to use, for £600 most probably oscommerce which is free software which he will then edit etc... to your specification therefore if using oscommerce an acceptable price would be more like £300, if other superior software then prices vary, ourselves we create our own tailored webstore packages therefore our prices are in the £xxxxs.

Hope that helps, any questions pleased to help.

steven_garner

Cheers guys,

I have decided to start selling on Amazon to help expand my customer base, once this is up and running I will move to play trade then have the website set up.
By the sounds of it a dedicated website will be pretty pointless at this point.

My friend quoted me £150 to get the site up and running and has been really helpful helping me set up my stock database.
I don’t know what software he uses, he said he can set up some SQL to manage my stock from the site or something if that helps.. im not very knowledgeable in this area.

Thanks all.

the182guy

Hi Steven.

I create ecommerce websites full time as a self employed individual. This sounds a bit dodgey to me (based on the info you have given). I would say just be careful and get a proper signed agreement.

You could probably do everything your mate is doing yourself. As another poster said, it's likely to be some free shopping cart software such as oscommerice or ZenCart and will pocket probably about 98% of the fee.

What does your friend do as a day job? Is it completely unrelated to I.T? Does he have any websites (particularly ecommerce) online at present, and are they making any money?

he can set up some SQL to manage my stock from the site

With respect this sounds like he could be spinning you a few techie keywords or worse: creating the impression he's carrying out work that he isn't because it's already done. That statement actually makes no sense because the free software has basic stock management included, and even if not then you wouldn't describe it that way, especially to a client - I realise he's your friend and he might not be a proper business but you are his client nonetheless.

Also the fact that he's happy to do it much cheaper for you suggests that he might otherwise be overcharging for the amount of his time and his overheads.

The web developer you use is going to have a significant bearing on your business and your 'brand'. It's not just about getting the store up and running but also driving a Search Engine Optimisation campaign to get traffic on your site.

There is a lot to consider such as security, maintenance etc etc. For example, if 12 months down the line somebody finds a security hole in your site or the site breaks for any reason, is he going to be available to fix it promptly and will he do that for another fee or free?

I'm not trying to put you off - I actually think it's a great idea to expand into your own site instead of 100% eBay/Amazon, I just want to give you a developers point of view. Best of luck.

steven_garner

The guy works with me, he is a Server engineer - i have known him for a couple of years and seems genuine to me.
I dont know if he has his own website but will ask him when i bump into him next.
I know he does alright from doing it privately (company pay is rubbish and he is doing ok for himself)

Cheers for the heads up, i will defiantly be finding out about maintance agreements and do some research

the182guy

steven_garner wrote: »

The guy works with me, he is a Server engineer - i have known him for a couple of years and seems genuine to me.
I dont know if he has his own website but will ask him when i bump into him next.
I know he does alright from doing it privately (company pay is rubbish and he is doing ok for himself)

Cheers for the heads up, i will defiantly be finding out about maintance agreements and do some research

Sounds good that he's a server engineer. Best of luck with it.

ArmitageShanks

steven_garner wrote: »

Hi all,

im getting increasingly hacked off with eBay everyday and the new Power seller discount programme has really got to me!
I want to move away from eBay and start my own website, a chap i work with builds websites on the side and advised me he would normally charge ~£600 to create a professional site but would do this considerably cheaper for me.
At the moment I have multiple quantities of about 30-35 different products (all in the same sort of category) but expanding very quickly (the only thanks I will ever give eBay J)

Has anyone moved from eBay to a dedicated site? If I can route traffic by getting my products on Google shopping, Yahoo, shopping.com ect and accept both PayPal and Google checkout do you think I will attract the same amount of interest?

Cheers.

In answer to your last question, straight off no. That said if you think what you are doing has potential having your own website is definitely the way to go, as well as look at other selling portals, even on different countries. The fundamental principle of e-commerce is making your products as accessible on as many different platforms as possible. Everyone goes about the internet on online shopping in a similar way. However transcending from that it encompassing many avenues, and as such you have to cover them as much as possible.

From experience a website will get you more interesting sales, bigger sales, more repeat sales and in general make you look more professional. The bottom line is selling on ebay is not much of a business, and certainly not one to brag about as at a drop of the at hat your trading circumstances can change over night. A website brings an air of security that ebay cannot and will never bring.

That security does come at a cost, websites are not cheap. Particularly good ones. The bottom line is a good ecomerse website will cost £2k. This will get you magento, zen cart, os commerse etc. based website with a custom made skin, and all the code adjustments you need. Out of the box websites which you pay monthly are nothing short of pointless, why? You never own the site, the site goes- the content goes, the support is terrible and they're not SEO friendly. SEO success is the holly grail for website owners, this translates to high google search ranking. However, they may be pants but £2k is pretty probative and it was to us back in the day. So in many ways monthly payment template based site is a devil you cannot avoid. The -£600 you have been quoted, the bottom line is it's a hobby for him by the sounds of it. Problem is if your good a web design it's doesn't tend to be a hobby.

To give you some idea of what £2k will pay for. This is perhaps more of brouchure/e-commerce, rather than fully e-commerce with hundreds of products but it gives you and idea [FONT=&quot]RapidFire Catch Cricket Nets[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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Brooker_Dave

steven_garner wrote: »

Has anyone moved from eBay to a dedicated site? If I can route traffic by getting my products on Google shopping, Yahoo, shopping.com ect and accept both PayPal and Google checkout do you think I will attract the same amount of interest?

Cheers.

I moved from ebay to my own website, and have not looked back since.

I use http://www.uk2.net/shopping-cart/ and it's been great.

My products normally are near the top of the google search rankings too.

Although I think taking google checkout helps that.