Does Anyone Use a Website to Sell?

[chanticleerantiques]

Is it beneficial to have a website along with an eBay store? Currently I have a link to my eBay store in my social media profile, but have seen others who also sell through a website. Seems like a lot of redundancy and work, but was wondering what others experiences were. 

Thanks!

Lisa

[ebooksdiva]

The website I sell on is eBay and I have an eBay store.

[ittybitnot]

@chanticleerantiques 

I have an independant website.  I sold on eBay for 24 years or so, but no longer sell here.  I sold on etsy for ten years, and no longer sell there.  I did extensive research PRIOR to committing to opening an ecommerce site,  because of the various costs, hosting, and etc. to find and explore the benefits/downsides of many of the options.  If you are thinking about it, start reading, Google articles should be 2018 or newer.  I would suggest you find a plan with a "free trial" just to get an idea of how it works.  The format and terminology is basically the same across these options, but some plans will charge extra for each thing you need to operate an ecommerce site, while others include them at no extra charge.  Mine is running at about $7 a month now (payable a year in advance), and the only other fees are for the merchant services which are somewhere in the 2.3% + .20 if I recall correctly.  I do no PAID advertising, since if you are creative, you can certainly do your own at no cost. 

[mam98031]

If this would be beneficial for you, only you can determine.  @ittybitnot gave you some great information.

I would add if you have just one of any item to sell, don't post it on multiple sites.  That is a recipe for disaster.  So if you consider a Website or another site similar to Ebay, don't cross post.  

Some sellers do it and say they are successful at it.  I say they just haven't experience the disaster that may be awaiting them.  None of us are at our computers 24/7/365.  If you are sleeping and an item sells on your website at 2AM, then you have the same item selling on Ebay and it sells at 4AM.  You now have two sales but you only have one item.  So one order has to get cancelled.  That leads to disappointed buyers as well as a Defect on your selling stats on Ebay which affects the health of your selling account.

I wish you the best of luck in whatever you decide to do.

[coastaltechsolution]

If you know how to code API calls then you can use eBay https://developer.ebay.com/develop/apis 

then you can make sure the sale on the website ends the eBay listing. 

[tools*]

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@chanticleerantiques wrote:

Is it beneficial to have a website along with an eBay store? Currently I have a link to my eBay store in my social media profile, but have seen others who also sell through a website. Seems like a lot of redundancy and work, but was wondering what others experiences were. 

Thanks!

Lisa

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Does it make sense to direct someone who finds you on social media to a site that charges you a fee of 15-25%?

[coastaltechsolution]

Sure it makes sense to some business models but not to others.

ONLY the seller can decide what works best for them

[ittybitnot]

Does it make sense to direct someone who finds you on social media to a site that charges you a fee of 15-25%?

@tools* 

Of course not, if you have your own site. 'Here is a coupon for 10% off your entire cart".   

[chanticleerantiques]

Thanks again for everyone's feedback and advice!

[dukehalestorm]

@ittybitnot what host / domain co you recommend? I don't recommend goDaddaa (mispelled on purpose) for a domain or anything. Shobify seems good just expensive. 

[chapeau-noir]

That's Shopify.

[theteamsetguy]

@dukehalestorm ,

Why not Go______.com?

[reallynicestamps]

Before we retired we had a B&M shop, eBay, our own website, and listed on two or three other sites.

But.

We also had one employee who specifically was assigned to removing sold items from all other sites  when sold on any one, because our products are OOAK.

This meant that any item had been assigned an inventory number, just to make sure it was found and delisted on sale.

Two things are necessary to make it work, especially if you are cross-listing,  having an inventory control system in place, and daily removal of sold items from all sites.

But some weeks the B&M was buzzing, the next eBay outsold the shop, the next another site was making sales, then sales might drop off on all sites, then the shop was busy again.

There is no short term consistency in retail.

In the long haul you will start to see patterns. Over three decades in business, we found December to be our worst month. We think it is because our collectors gave themselves a hobby allowance and in December they used the allowance for gifts for others.

Unlike most sellers, our busiest time has been January to March.

If you are very busy, twice a day is better.

[reallynicestamps]

If you are sleeping and an item sells on your website at 2AM, then you have the same item selling on Ebay and it sells at 4AM.

One site we still crosspost on automatically lists our new eBay products and deletes them when they are sold on eBay.  Unfortunately it doesn't work the other way.

And I don't know of any program that will do that for your personal website.

[greatmidwestcoin]

Don't even think of trying to sell on your own website. I tried it over 10 years ago. I spent countless hours & $20k+ over a 10-year period before I finally threw in the towel. You will NOT drive customers to your website no matter how much you spend on SEO and advertising.  I spent thousands on advertising and SEO. I even mailed out thousands of postcards to other dealers and customer lists that I obtained. Meanwhile, I had to hire Freelancers to support the website when it crashed or with never-ending software upgrades. I also had to maintain two inventories which was a huge deal and I had less than 200 items. I finally did away with the website inventory and put a link to my eBay store. I only use the website for informational purposes. Hundreds of hackers from all over the world continue to try to hack my website daily. I have several expensive licensed security software installed I have to maintain. Maybe if you can build and maintain a website yourself, you can try it. If you have to rely on outside help, forget it. This from a retired IT Mgr of 35 years.