eBay Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Posted by Amanda Brooke on Wed, Oct 14, 2009 @ 02:51 PM
Although most of the changes that have been made to eBay during the reign of the current CEO have been decidedly unfriendly to sellers, the fact remains that it is still the giant among online auction sites.
Contenders have sprung up, of course. One or two might conceivably provide eBay with a little competition somewhere down the line. Bonanzle, for example.
But for the present, if you are serious about selling online in an auction format, then eBay is the way to go.
There are some perils and pitfalls on eBay. In fact, there are quite a few. We can’t deal with all of them in this article, so we’ll focus on a couple of the biggies.
Here is the Number One pitfall to avoid on eBay:
Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, even eBay’s basket.
If your livelihood depends on your online sales, you should never, ever depend solely on eBay! Start your own website, ASAP. Things are shaky on the Bay for sellers these days, and getting shakier all the time.
Unless you sell in huge volume, all it takes is a mere handful of unreasonable buyers within a 30 day period to get you suspended from selling for at least a month.
Can you afford to lose your entire income for a month?
If not---protect yourself!
If you are unlucky enough to run across a few bad buyers within a short period of time, with your won website to fall back on, you should have at least a dribble of money coming in.
A dribble is better than nothing.
Another pitfall to avoid: Don’t think of eBay as just your income. Sure, sell all you can. But besides your income from selling on eBay, think of eBay as a marketing tool. Use eBay to help drive traffic to your own website. They refused to allow sellers to post links to their own websites on an About Me page for a while, but apparently the uproar was so loud that the powers-that-be at eBay decided to recant and allow links again.
Post a link to your own website on your eBay About Me page! You are paying exorbitant fees to sell on eBay, get as much back for your investment as you possibly can.
Probably the biggest mistake sellers can make on eBay is to proceed as though it was the be-all and end-all for making online sales.
It isn’t.
So, get your website up and running now!