Marketing your own website through eBay, cost effectively!

OK, everyone knows it's a great idea to have your own website, but the difficulty is in marketing it effectively and driving traffic through the door!

We often speak about using ebay as a sales funnel, that is driving your ebay traffic to your website. Now of course ebay has set rules and regulation as to what you can put into a listing and those regs usually make it impossible to sneak your website domain into the listing.

Of course most try to drive traffic from a Buy It Now or Auction format, however these are where the restrictions are the tightest. Consider using a classified listing where at all possible.

Now a classified listing will set you back around 20 dollars for 28 days, however the regs for a classified allow you to actively promote your own website without any drama at all. Classified advertising on ebay means that no one can bid or buy your item through ebay, it's designed to sell items off ebay, while using ebay to market your items.

How do you set up an effective classified, well you really do want something eye catching, so a template is a must to be effective in my opinion. If you have vector graphics software that will allow you to design your own, then that's a bonus. You'll just need to host the template somewhere and use the HTML code to upload your classified.

If you don't have the ability to do one yourself, I would strongly suggest looking at having one done for you. You don't need to constantly update your template, you just relist every 28 days. You can also use your template to cross market all your items, just use the right keywords for the search string to ensure you are driving your target traffic to your listing.

For my money it's a no brainer, ebay classified advertising is the absolute best way to drive targeted ebay traffic direct to your own website, whether that be a SaleHoo Store or some other independent platform, and for 20 bucks over 28 days, unbeatable value!

If you're not familiar with ebay classified listings, you can check out one we have running to give you an idea. This is just a graphic designed in Corel, then coded into HTML and uploaded to ebay. We do change the stock in this listing every 28 days, but you if your stock is static, then you have no real need to change yours.

Link hidden: Login to view

If you want ideas on how to do your own, check out websites and magazine layouts for ideas, see what you can come up with. You want to sell internationally, upload the same template to other ebay sites, very simple. Of course you will pay for the extra classifieds, but a very cost effective way to get the word around for very little money.

Give it a try, I think you'll find it a very effective and inexpensive marketing tool to be using.

Hi,

How do I get to classified ads page so that I can list my items? It's pretty hard to find that direct url.

When I tried to list my item, I saw Auction style and Buy Now option only.

Thanks.

Ok, I just noticed that ebay has limitations on categories. My jewelry items cannot be listed as classified ads on ebay.

Thanks.

Yes, unfortunately they don't allow classified listings in all categories. About the only way around that problem is by finding a product that you can list as a classified, then use your template to advertise both that product and of course your main product.

Now you won't be listed under your primary category, but you can still use the keywords to drive traffic through the search engine. Just a crazy example, but let's say you found that you could list donuts as a classified. So then in your keywords you could use the words, dount, jewellery, ruby, diamond and so on. When someone used one or more of your keywords when searching for an item, your classified would still show up in the search results.

You would have to be careful as to the template layout, but very doable, if not just a little sneaky :)

If someone tries doing it this way, would love to see how it turns out so post a link for us all to see and let us know what the results are.

Thanks for the feedback. That was my initial plan, as I've read about many countless successful sellers that use eBay to drive traffic to their site. I even have an eBay store (Link hidden: Login to view) that I've paid to have professionally designed (I haven't put any product on it yet). Now, my concern is that starting out on eBay with hurt me long term, and as much as I want to jump out there, I don't want to do anything that will jeopardize my long term strategy. To be competitive on eBay I would have to sell my items substantially lower and that's not the reputation I want to build. If I start selling my items way below market value, build a customer base, then move to my own site, my customers aren't going to take kindly to me all of a sudden charging market value. But, that puts me back in the same spot - no place to go for now. I have everything in line. I just need a home.


However, if I'm much higher on I think starting out on eBay is not aligned with my long term strategy. I would have to substantially lower my prices to be competitive. Once a build a customer base and move to my own site I know I can't all of a sudden start charging market value.

You haven't quite grasped what that post is about. It's not about listing your products on ebay, it's about how you can list products on your own site, a Salehoo Store for example, and then use ebay to drive traffic to your store cost effectively through a classified marketing strategy on ebay.

My apologies, you are correct. I wasn't completely getting it. I'm still a little confused but I'll look further into this. Again, thanks for the feedback. I will say, the $67 I spent for Salehoo is one of the best investments I've made since starting this journey.

Have a great day!
Rosha

Thanks Rosha, definitely take a close look at classified marketing. If you can do it, it will give you access to ebay traffic, without the expense of listing there. That in turn will allow you to list far more stock, as listing and final value costs are no longer an issue.

Cheers

Happy new year Marc! What a great post to think about. Classifieds are seldom brought up in our community and I agree it's a good strategy to promote your own site. Every little helps! :)

Question, how to effectively track traffic from eBay Classifieds?

Cheers,
Lace

Hi Lace, and Happy New Year to you also!

It would come down to how effective the analytical software is you are using as to how effectively you could refine specific data fields like determining individual URL break downs and such I would think.

Maybe the best way would be to get a data line of traffic now without the classified, then see how that line charts once you put that marketing strategy into place. Not 100% fool proof, but I would think it should be enough to give you a decent idea, especially if your original data line has been established for quite some time. The more reliable the data line, the easier it would be to see any spike form ebay classified marketing.

Cheers

^ Sounds like a good plan! :)

HI Lace,


If Marc doesn't mind me chiming in re tracking, on the CruizCalifornia listings, the image that serves as the listing body is hosted on our website -- so we have a very good, direct way of tracking views of each ad, including stuff eBay's visitor counter won't tell us (repeat views, country of origin etc.) This info can be gleaned from any standard Awstats installation, which comes with cPanel and by extension with almost any hosting package in the universe. For advanced user tracking, I use Piwik, which provides very similar data as Google Analytics, with the advantage of the data being on our server instead of Google's.


Frank

Great article, I keep forgetting about classifieds. Let me ask this question. If I am running auctions and BIN's, can I, within my auctions and BIN's direct people to my classified?

Also can I put a clickable link to my website in a classified?

Thanks.....I'm a new member of SaleHoo and so far I am really liking it a lot!

Jim

I like your thinking Jim!

If you could get away with just running a few BIN or auctions and then direct customers to a classified listing for more details on all your items type of thing, that would be a sensational way of getting traffic off-site.

Can you do it?, well I can't give you a definitive yes or no on where ebay policy comes down on that, I don't have a clue actually. My gut feeling would be that they would have an issue with it, but I can't be sure. It almost makes it too easy lol, I mean they leave the door wide open with their classifieds as it is, if they left it that open to be able to drive traffic to it and then off-site.....well let's just say that would be most unlike ebay lol

I can't recommend that you try it, but if you do, we would love to hear how you go lol

In regards to links, that I'm really not sure of. I mean you openly market your website link there, so I don't see why not, but it might just be one of those things that draws a little too much attention, and ultimately might cause an issue for my money.

Cheers

HI Lace,


If Marc doesn't mind me chiming in re tracking, on the CruizCalifornia listings, the image that serves as the listing body is hosted on our website -- so we have a very good, direct way of tracking views of each ad, including stuff eBay's visitor counter won't tell us (repeat views, country of origin etc.) This info can be gleaned from any standard Awstats installation, which comes with cPanel and by extension with almost any hosting package in the universe. For advanced user tracking, I use Piwik, which provides very similar data as Google Analytics, with the advantage of the data being on our server instead of Google's.


Frank

Thanks for covering that Frank :)

Thank you all!

Jim

Thank you Frank, looks like you're an expert on Awstats! Is it also ideal to see how often a file is being downloaded from a site? We were just talking about it here inside our community: Link hidden: Login to view

As "eAuction" posted in that thread, Awstats is the easiest way to do it, especially given that it's included in cPanel. If you click on the Awstats logo when you first log into your hosting (assuming you have cPanel or WHM hosting) and scroll down about 3/4 of the way, there is a list of all files that have been downloaded. Link hidden: Login to view for a demo page for Awstats, and to see the download section I'm talking about.

Awstats is not without its shortcomings - it is notoriously bad about not filtering out bot hits and other things which can tend to skew or inflate overall statistics,but as far as the simple task of keeping track of how often a file is downloaded, it will certainly do the trick.


Frank

They removed it!

Can you be a little more specific? eBay removed something? Removed what? Under what circumstances? Did they send you a notice? What did it say? etc. etc. etc.


Frank

Do you still pay listing and final value fee if you opt for this classified marketing method?

Hi there,

Welcome to SaleHoo! I would just like to request that you PM me your preferred forum user name so I can add it to your member profile. Right now you are showing as Anonymous user on the forum which ideally should not be.

Talk soon!

Do you still pay listing and final value fee if you opt for this classified marketing method?

No final value fee, only a listing fee. Now there are plenty of downsides. Classified listings aren't available for many categories, so you may well have to find a creative way around that. It is more expensive upfront, but you do get 28 days (Australia does at least) and it's a one time charge per each listing cycle.

The benefits, well they're quite clear. Being able to direct traffic straight to your own website gives you complete retail flexibility.

Yep, that's smart business. Never let a free opportunity to market yourself slip by!