Sell on eBay to Leverage Traffic to your Wholesale Dropship Inventory Site

Despite eBay's policies, there are still several ways to use eBay to drive traffic to your ecommerce website

It is improtant to learn how to sell products on your own ecommerce website.  You make more money selling a product on your site then you do on eBay.  The only person that gets a cut of your profits is your merchant account provider, but even brick and mortar retails shops have to deal with this.  Secondly, any item you list on eBay is surrounded by your competition. When a person does a search for your item on eBay, your listing will be buried by the items of hundreds, even thousands of other sellers. Regardless of the reason, it's easier to sell an item to a person that doesn't have dozens of other sellers clamoring for their attention.  Think of eBay as a loud outdoor bazaar, would you rather try to sell your product with all of the other shop keepers telling the customer that they will beat your price, or would you want to get the person to look at all of your products without other resellers acting as a distraction?

The most important reason for why you should leverage your eBay traffic directly to your wholesale dropship website is the potential for repeat business. What makes a successful retailer is the ability to develop long-term relationships with your customers. It is difficult to develop loyalty among eBay buyers,  but it is much easier to create repeat business with your dropship web store.  Inventory Source can help provide you with a great ecommerce shopping cart with full inventory automation, and we can also recommend other great platforms like osCommerce, CRE Loaded, Zen Cart, X-Cart, Yahoo Stores, Miva, Virtuemart, and more.

Some resellers go to a great supplier program and just try to post a few items to sell on eBay.  I call these "ex-attic cleaners".  They have enjoyed posting items on eBay from clearing out their attics, garages, and other collectibles.  However, they are now called "ex-attic cleaners" because their home (and that of their friends and relatives) is now void of anything left to sell on eBay.  Now, they must seek out products to sell on eBay through wholesale dropship suppliers.  Sadly, these eBay sellers are spending all of their time pecking through dropship product catalogs and listing items on eBay.  There profits are eaten away with dropship fees and eBay fees.  These "ex-attic cleaners" can still enjoy the fun and benefits of eBay, but also take advantage of eBay's greatest assets: its website traffic.

The easiest way to leverage your eBay traffic is to  create an eBay About Me page on your wholesale dropship ecommerce site.  You can talk about your business and build the trust of buyers. Also, it is the one place on eBay where you are allowed to link to nearly any kind of website, including your own web store.  To help drive people to your About Me page, place links to it in all your eBay listings.    One easy way to link all of your eBay listings to this extremely important page is to post your products to eBay in bulk with a Custom File from Inventory Source.  We can add your prices to your entire dropship eBay inventory, apply any filters you need, and add content, such as linking to your ecommerce dropship site as part of your entire product listing details.

Another method of using eBay to drive traffic to your ecommerce shopping cart platform is eBay's policy that allows you to link off eBay in your auction listings, as long as the link goes to a page that providing information about the item that you are selling.  This page cannot offer the item for sale, but it can tell the person more about the item or the page can have more photos of the item.

Here is an example of how this could work:
You can provide links to a larger image of the item that you are selling.  Also, you could provide them a link to a page where you have reviewed the item.  Most shopping carts have a review page, such as osCommerce CRE Loaded sites.  You can create reviews for a large number of your products.  If you cannot create the content for a review for your all of your items, then take advantage of the all of the information in the Inventory Source Product File Downloads.   For example all of your Inventory Source product files would have the manufacture for each wholesale dropship item, including the eBay Turbo Lister file formats. You could create content based on that that manufacture, then give the product specifications or use the short description in your file to give the customer more information about your product.  Now, on this page with more product details, you can bring attention to more of your product catalog offering through a link.

One thing you don't want to do is push the limits of eBay's policy by having links directly to the item that reads something like, "Buy this item now at my store, and not eBay!" If you're creating a link to your non-eBay web store, it is sound advice to create a less conspicuous link like "For more great deals, visit my store." Also, it is better to link to your web store's home page or another content or information page on your site rather than directly to the item that you're selling on eBay.  You could help encourage the customer to jump from eBay to your site by promoting a coupon code that could be used on your site or some other promotion.  A promotional page, like an ID page is a great way to have a content filled page with sales details but no products fro sale.

People who use eBay want a bargain.  If they are reading about a product that they consider a bargain one moment, and then see "Get 10% Off the next time you shop on-line!"  listed under the product details the next moment, they might easily go to your site.  Also, by linking to a coupon code information page on your website with the words "the next time you shop on-line", you are slyly making it seem that you want the customer to purchase the product through eBay, but only the "next time" they shop do you want the customer to try your site.

Why does the link-to page matter?  There is a non-specific nature to some of eBay's linking policy. You are specifically allowed to link to a page that does not contain items that you have for sale on eBay. But, even though it is not expressly prohibited, eBay undoubtedly would not appreciate a link directly to any items off of eBay that you're simultaneously selling on eBay. It's always better to fly as far under the radar as you can.  If your home page has a Featured Products or Specials section, then you must at the very least make sure that you have not placed any of these same products for sale on eBay.

Besides adding content and reviews for your wholesale dropship products listed on eBay, you can try to get people to sign up for a newsletter, which will allow you to advertise YOUR store to them through email.  eBay Stores owners have access to a newsletter tool provided by eBay. This is great, except for the fact that you aren't allowed to advertise your web store (other than your eBay Store) in it. Many shopping cart platforms have a newsletter feature already installed.  If your site does not have this feature, you might want to consider another platform solution. The Inventory Source Hosted Site Solution has this tool.  You can also try Yahoo Stores, osCommerce, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded, Virtuemart, and more.   There are many shopping carts, like these mentioned here, that are fully integrated with Inventory Source Full Inventory Automation Services.

Similarly to the link options above you could say, "For more great information on my Super Deals, sign up here!" and link to your dropship ecommerce website's Newsletter page.  There is no product data displayed on this page, so it is a very safe option.  You could also add this content in your packaging if your dropship supplier allows you to have customized labels.

You want to stay in regular contact with your customers.  One of the hardest things to do in ecommerce is to get a customer.  Once you found someone who has purchased your dropship product you should try to get them back for more purchases.  Your time will be better spent trying to get repeat sales then always new sales.  You must be careful not to contact a customer too often or they will get annoyed and unsubscribe from your newsletter and never return to your site. Newsletter marketing is a very important part of internet marketing, and one of the many great ways to use eBay as a way to drive traffic to your own web store.