Should I start my own Webstore or continue selling on eBay?

Okay, a bit about me and what I want to achieve. I am Australian and currently work in a regular, reasonably well paying job. I have always been interested in selling over the internet but never taken the first step. My wife has a better understanding of eBay and online shopping than I do (as our credit card statements attest to).

SO to start with I want to start selling items over the Net whilst still working in my current job. When I am making enough profit to replace my income from my job I will then start thinking about whether to retire so to speak and take up e-Commerce on a more full time basis. This is obviously well in the future and I am looking at starting with baby steps.

I have decided on what to sell (good quality cookingware/kitchenware) and to start with will be sourcing it from large discount distribution stores and then re-selling it.

So where to now, and this is where I am getting stuck and need a bit of advice?

From what I can see I have 2 options. The first is to start selling using eBay with the associated issues that have all been listed on this site and many others. The bonuses are obviously a mass market to sell to. I have always considered eBay as a bit of a garage sale mixed with large sellers able to sell for cheaper that what I could source. In saying this I am of the opinion I should be able to source stock and re-sell it with a minimum net profit of around 10% per item (after fees/postage etc)

The second option I can see is to start my own eCommerce store (have just received the email from Salehoo re stores). There are obviously advantages to this as listed in the email. What I dont know is whether the store will attract the required traffic to actually sell anything.

I appreciate no one will be able to give me quantitative answer on this but maybe just a good poke in the right direction so I can make a fully informed decision.

Thanks for reading the wall of prose. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards

Mick

Hi Mick, firstly let me welcome you to SaleHoo. Nice to have you here on board.

I'm not going to go into all the pros and cons of both formats, and to be honest from what you wrote, you have a pretty good basic grasp at this point.

My general advice, use both formats. If you use both in association with each other, you can make them both work for you. Long term, absolutely no doubt in my mind that you need to develop your own e-commerce store, and may I suggest the SaleHoo would be a good place to start with that lol

Even in the event of establishing your own e-commerce platform, and sales are booming in the future, I think a site like eBay can always play an important role, even if it is more marketing based.

Cheers

Thanks Marc,

I figure the best way to start would likely be to sell on eBay and experience the highs and lows of that type of selling. I am definitely interested in starting my own eCommerce store in the future but figure it also comes with mroe stock holding issues as you would need a bigger inventory otherwise buyers would not likely hang around. eBay can allow me to have one item or many and still be searchable.

Thanks for the reply and hopefully I'll be around these forums for the years to come.

Cheers

Mick