E-Commerce site or eBay store?

[JAMES-L67]

Hey guys,

My first venture into e-commerce has started to gain some decent traction, which has led me to want to create a sales funnel that is a little more substantial than just whacking items on eBay.

At the moment I sell exclusively through eBay. I do have a BigCartel store, but I don't give it much love. It was free to get started so has cost me nothing as of yet.

So the main question I have is what is everyone's opinion on what would be a better investment, an eBay store or a paid e-commerce store such as BigCartel or Shopify? At the moment I'm leaning towards BigCartel, as their pricing structure suits my business a lot better than Shopify.

Any info will be greatly appreciated!

James

 

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[sWALK90]

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...n-peace-alternatives-re-price-increase.65699/

 

[Vigilante]

Both

 

[JAMES-L67]

The question with what's discussed in that thread is would it be worth my while to fork out $40 a month for a Shopify store compared to just listing on eBay for free (minus fees)?

 

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[JAMES-L67]

Both

That's the other option. Then the question I have for that is, what would you focus your marketing strategy towards? Let the eBay store run itself and funnel people into the e-commerce site, or give them equal attention?

 

[StevieB]

I'm in the same boat as you and here's my take.

Start building an email list and a sales funnel.

Funnel as much traffic as you can to your ecommerce store. I personally use Wordpress and a webhost and do much of the site myself. Wordpress is fairly easy to use.

Ebay / Amazon should be utilized but you have 0 control over what they do to your store. You can be shut down overnight and it's easier to get into price wars that cut into your margins but these websites have tons of traffic so they can be good for sales if used properly.

Do everything you can to get most of your sales from your ecommerce store. Once you verify demand heavily do targeted advertising and decide on a monthly advertising budget and scale as needed.

If your shipping your own products be sure to include your website with the invoice. Also start a loyalty program that people can only get by purchasing through your ecommerce store.

I also believe you're thinking about this the wrong way.

If you simply want to make a living you can worry about the platform and try to cut out your slice of the pie with tens of thousands of other websites and sellers on Ebay and Amazon.

If you want to achieve the fastlane then find a gap in the market, a need that's underfilled or not met, or a problem that needs to be solved and solve it, then market it properly and the traffic will come to you regardless of what platform it's on.

 

[DrkSide]

The question with what's discussed in that thread is would it be worth my while to fork out $40 a month for a Shopify store compared to just listing on eBay for free (minus fees)?

The difference is that an ebay buyer is not YOUR customer, they are ebays. If someone buys from your site you they are your customer and you can market to them via email.

I would take a different route and go with Amazon. It is the quickest, easiest way to scale (most) physical products at the moment.

With that being said I agree with @Vigilante. You should expand to every marketplace that has buyers that might purchase your product. The more you get in front of buyers the more you will sell.

 

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[JAMES-L67]

Great responses, very relevant!

Amazon would be great but I am in Aus, which unfortunately kills the idea.
@StevieB at the moment I'm just earning more passive income through it, but the idea is obviously to fastlane in the near future (hence why I'm here I guess). For now though, I'm happy to just to keep making a few sales and get my feet wet with e-commerce with minimal risk.

Thanks

 

[ANON29512]

Ecommerce site is the best way to go. As others have said, it's your customer, he'll likely retun to you for similar purchases, he'll recommend your business (not Ebay's) lifetime value is longer, you're branding yourself and you don't pay fees (which is positive, assuming it'd cost more than CPC).

I currently sell on all major marketplaces and my own store and gratefully we get most of our sales through our site, it's much cheaper cost/aquisition. I'm building my business, not other's.

 

[TKDTyler]

Diversify. Truth is you will get much better margins running your own ecommerce site than you ever will on eBay or Amazon. The more you diversify, the more control you have over the direction of your business. If you can learn to drive traffic to your .com store rather than eBay, you'll have a much better chance at taking not only market share of your priducr, but more importantly, full control of your business.

 

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[Jamie T]

what would you focus your marketing strategy towards?

I'd focus (most of your time) on the sales channel that generates the most revenue right now (you've proven it works...how can you make it better?).

Then, set aside time each week to build up the other sales channels (your website, etc).

 

[JAMES-L67]

All gold info their guys, thanks heaps!

I'm going to take it on-board, will start building my e-com site in the next few hours. As has been mentioned, I would much prefer to build my own site (and therefore brand) than build on eBay's. Plus, lower fees, who can argue with that?

 

[JAMES-L67]

Well here is todays work guys. Feel free to have a look and bring forward some constructive criticisms

http://www.tougegarage.com.au

 

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[eCanadian]

Congratulations! I always suggest that people build their own web presence on their own domain and build out from there. Your site is your empire's home base from which everything else is extended, from marketing to online marketplaces.

 

[JAMES-L67]

Congratulations! I always suggest that people build their own web presence on their own domain and build out from there. Your site is your empire's home base from which everything else is extended, from marketing to online marketplaces.

Very true. Now to just find out the best way to bring people to my new site, and convert them into sales! Made 1 sale in the first 24 hours of my new site being live, which is awesome!

 

[Robert Williams]

As per your question I would say that it depends on you to start your own eCommerce store or go for eBay. These both have their own pros & cons for example:-

1. In eBay you will get large sum of active buyers who visit it frequently but you will also face steep competition among sellers to get on ranking page. But if you go for your own eCommerce website you have to attract traffic on your website by heavy promotions.

2. In eBay you have work more on creating your product more catchy & attractive while there you will focus more on customer services to retain your customer for future sales purposes.

 

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