How important is it to have your own web store

Hello All.

How many sellers online actually own an online store?

Selling platforms are all over the place. Who hasn't sold on eBay and Amazon? I just wonder how important is it to have your own web store. I have tried several with varying results. I still have to go to work at my job tomorrow.

The only places I am making consistent sales is eBay. Not even Amazon FBA is showing any results. I hate to admit it eBay at present is my best option. (UGH!!!!)

My job consumes 50 hours of my week and huge amounts of my energy. When I get home I don't feel like taking pics and writing descriptions. Web surfing is mostly what I do. Then there is time with family on a daily basis.

The thing I like best about eBay is I don't need to promote anything. I sell as much as 50% of everything I list on the first attempt. It keeps me depressing encouraged (encouraged because I sell. Depressed because it is eBay.)

Those of you who have turned online selling into your full time income, how do you find balance along the way?

Thanks for a few minutes to listen to my ramblings.

Dale

Hi Dale,

My own personal opinion is that an independent website is almost vital for long term success these days, but eBay is an integral part of a good marketing strategy to make that work.

I think competition is already at a point where simply relaying on an eBay alone makes life tough, especially if you're NOT buying in massive volume to secure the best price and then slashing your margins to compete. It's a market place that is only going to get even more competitive, especially for new products and even more especially for popular dropshipped products.

eBay means massive traffic flow for sellers, but tight prices mean little profit, if any at all. So I see eBay more as a marketing tool and a damn good marketing tool as well, but not so much a long term sales platform option for most people.

It's a good conversation to have, would be interesting to hear other views.

Hi,
Good question. I run both eBay and Web (only recently started).
Ebay for me is easy sales.
All this SEO, Analytics, Keywords, H1, H2, backlinks etc, etc is like studying Greek and still no traffic, still no sales.
I sell the same products at the same price to the same audience on both.
My opinion, if you dont know what youre doing with a web store, you need to pay to get somewhere.
Regards
Jackie

When I started online selling, I started on Ebay and they are better to their sellers than Amazon (they are a nightmare). Ebay is in decline now. Unique visitors were as high as 90 million a month before the Google Search Engine change a year ago. They are down to 60 million unique visitors a month now. The way of the future is your own site.

My advice is to use Ebay to launch yourself into it, but to get full time income, you'll need several channels to sell.

Another method that seems to be the future is affiliate marketing. You're site reviews or otherwise promotes products and you link to the seller's site. You get a commission for every sale directed there from your site.

I hope that this helps and if you have an interest in selling our products, we'd be glad to do business with you!