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How Can I Use My Website in
Conjunction with eBay?
Driving Traffic, and Business With the
Auction Giant
Paul Smithson - 13th November 2008
You may already know that eBay doesn’t
allow the direct promotion of websites within auctions, but did
you know there are ways to promote your website on eBay without
violating any of their terms of service so that you can
directly benefit from the millions of visitors they bring to
the table?
First of all, you can put practically
anything you want on your ‘About Me’ page. eBay allows
you to advertise almost anything there, as long as it isn’t
illegal or offensive. This is a wonderful starting point
for you to add links to your website, and direct any visitors
who view your ‘About Me’ page to your main web site, or any
other web site you might want them to
see.
Another place where you can freely add
links to your site is on an eBay blog. Many people aren’t
even aware of the eBay blog feature that lets you host a blog
right on the eBay site. You can put almost anything you want on
the blog too - including a link to your site. This gives
you an instant back-link from a domain with huge
authority. As of right now, there are no ‘nofollow’
attributes on links there, so it’s a great place to get a
back-link.
You can also promote your site through your
auctions by advertising your site within your products
themselves. If you’re selling info products like eBooks
or videos, you can provide the URL of your website within the
product itself.
If you’re shipping physical goods, you can
include your URL on a ‘thank you’ card inside the
package. If you have an e-commerce website that sells
similar products, you can send your buyers to your site to buy
related merchandise, instead of having them buy through eBay.
This will save you from having to pay the eBay fees for those
purchases.
You can also include your URL in every
email you send out to winning bidders, and to those who ask you
questions about items. You should consider setting your
email signature to include the URL to your site so that you’ll
never forget to give it a plug.
Another common tactic is to watermark
photos with your URL. If you’re listing a product on
eBay, you’ll most likely be including at least one photo of the
item. You can put your URL on that photo, so people who
view the auction will see the URL, and might visit your site
and purchase there instead. This is another way to avoid some
of your eBay fees. You might even get lucky and have
several visitors come to your site and purchase from a single
auction listing, which means increased revenues and a
substantial saving on eBay fees as you won’t have to pay
anything on the sales that come directly through your
site.
One final point is that it’s worth
remembering that not everyone likes buying from auction sites.
Many people prefer to buy direct from the seller, and by using
the above techniques you give people a chance to do exactly
that. Of course, you will still be paying fees on any sales
made through eBay, which is only fair, but by using the above
techniques you can help generate additional business on every
single listing.
About Paul Smithson -
Paul Smithson is the founder of Intellimon and the driving
force behind the best-selling XSitePro web site development
tool. Since graduating in Business Strategy and Direct
Marketing from two of Europe’s leading business schools, Paul
has set up five multi-million dollar companies, one of which is
now owned by the BBC. His areas of expertise include business
strategy, e-commerce, on-line and off-line marketing, software
development, and maximizing the potential of on-line
businesses.
For more information about
this, and many other Internet Marketing-related
topics, visit Paul Smithson's site,
www.xsitepro.com. |
Source:
http://www.xsitepro.com/how-can-i-use-my-website-in-conjunction-with-ebay.html
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