Is it more profitable to start your business on E-Bay or have your own website?
Which would most likely generate more profits? Also, is there anybody or companies who has websites where they get more money off their own websites than E-Bay? The only bad thing I see about going on E-Bay is it’s your first business and you want to show everyone your website and how successful it is….Like…"Yeah, I did that!…Look!" With E-Bay it’s already someone else’s website and you’re not really going to get the recognition you deserve.
Tagged with: e bay • money • profits
Filed under: Website Business
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You can’t sell stuff unless people can find your offerings. People like me often only buy on eBay and from major name websites (LLBean, Land’s End, etc). The odds of someone like me finding your independent website are very low.
So with an independent website, you have lots of expenses and possibly low income (the people I work with lost money). With eBay, you can minimize your expense (especially if it turns out you don’t have the ability to sell) and maybe make money.
It’s not an either-or situation — the more channels you can have in selling your products, the better. They could and should work together — that’s why you’ve got big businesses such as Dell, National Geographic’s Novica, even Sears selling on their sites as well as on eBay
But here are some pros and cons to help you understand the benefits
CREATING YOUR OWN WEBSITE
Pros
- allows you to establish your own "real estate" on the Web;
- allows you to attract a bigger audience; not limited to eBay buyers (not everyone buys on eBay)
- scaleable as it allows your business to grow;
- allows you to give more information about your business to your visitors and give them reasons to trust you
- allows you to give more information about the product, play around with factors that can increase conversion
- gives you a more professional look
- makes you look like a "big" business (an e-commerce seller that also sells on ebay "looks" so much bigger than a purely ebay seller)
- you can put in as many items you want without paying listing fees
- you can sell as many items as you can without paying value added fees
- less restrictions than eBay (you are more free to write your sales copy)
- easier to market on the Web
Cons:
- requires technical knowhow to create a website (or money to pay someone to do it for you)
- fixed price (price you set is what you get)
SELLING ON EBAY
Pros
- auction format; prices can go up higher than you originally set it for
- eBay’s brand and size of its market
Cons
- listing and final value fees
- lots of restrictions
- harder to get onto search engines
- link exchanges are more difficult
- increasing competition (it is not as easy to sell now on eBay compared to others)
I would say it depends on what you want with your business. If you have a steady supply of product to sell (not just based on what you can find in your attic), I would go create a website – and THEN use eBay as an additional sales channel. You just have more room to operate and grow your business with having your own store.