On Site eBay Marketing Ideas

by Games2Puzzles

Driving visitors to your eBay store can be a big challenge and will be one of your largest expenses as well as the most important factor in running a successful ebay business! In this guide I will share with you all of the on site marketing strategies that you have at your disposal in the eBay community. Using these tools will be key in making your store a success.

Remember these are marketing strategies within the ebay community and does not include any off eBay marketing ideas, which is probably deserving of a second guide by itself (at a later date maybe).

Auction Listings 

Unfortunately ebay stores do not even receive a fraction of the traffic that regular auction listings do, so in order to drive people to your store it is important to implement a strategy of regular auction listings to improve your visibility. Try and take a good sampling of your products and keep a nice variety on auction at all times! Consider these as a marketing expense as you will most likely end up loosing money on those products if and/or when they do sell. To me this is the equivalent of buying advertising on Google AdWords.

If you are hesitant about doing this, at the very least consider placing auctions when eBay runs it's frequent discounted listing offers. Visist the announcement section on eBay to daty up to date on upcoming listing discounts.

Also remember it is not only about selling that particular item but also to try and drive traffic to your store, so be sure to include messaging or imagery  in your description  that will encourage people to visit your store.

Discussion Boards

eBay has a very nice members only Discussion Board broken down into sections based on just about every category eBay has going. Here you will find people posting questions, having general conversations and best of all helping other members out with problems, issues or concerns. In order to get the maximum promotional value from this venue you need to make sure that you create a board signature with your store logo and/or a text link that can take the user to your store front. Consider it like having a free banner ad that will be seen by hundreds.

One thing I have to stress is DO NOT SPAM the discussion board! Contribute meaningful information and conversation, don't just go in and say "hey look at my store and buy!" You will get more people looking at your store by just being a value contributor than a spammer. You can get banned or kicked off eBay for spamming. Read the board usage policy before contributing to make yourself familiar with all of the regulations.

To set up your signature link and/or logo go to the settings section

Reviews and Guides  

Why not share your product or other related expertise with other eBay members by writting some Reviews and Guides. It is a sure way to help educate and at the same time encourage people to shop for your products and maybe even buy at your store. For example if you sell video games, why not write some reviews on some of the games that you sell or maybe even write a comprehensive guide to video games in general! Just like the discussion boards it is important to not spam and actually contribute something of use to ebay members. It is even more important here than on the discussion boards to be honest and insightful when writting your reviews and/or guides since here members will be able to rate the helpfulness of your material. Good member ratings means more visibility and poor member ratings means less visibility!

At the close of every review or guide be sure to include a linked logo or text link to your store to help convert a reader to a store visitor. You can also include links within the article itself as long as they are relevant to the content. Remember eBay guides and reviews do not allow linking to off ebay sites.

Want It Now  

Buyers have a section on the eBay site Want It Now where they can post exactly what they are looking for and sellers can post links to the items that they have in stock relating to that particular request. All of the requests are categorized and easy to locate but you need to only post items relevant to the request or face sanctions or suspension by eBay. I have converted many sales from this tool but it requires that you frequently check the postings in order to beet your competition to the punch.

eBay Express  

eBay recently created a new marketplace called eBay Express where buyers can shop for items that are available for immediate purchase (buy it now) and which come from only experienced and trustworthy sellers. In order to be qualified to have your items listed on ebay Express you need to meet the strict eBay Express seller criteria set forth by eBay.

Listings on eBay Express are at no additional cost and can be managed just like your regular listings so it is a no brainer in utilizing this service if you qualify. About 5% of my total sales come from eBay Express! Not a large amount but considering the service is free and takes very little time to manage, it is well worth the effort!

Hope you all enjoyed reading my guide!

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