Is eBay The Biggest Untapped Online Money Making Opportunity?
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Continuing the lessons I’m learning from the Stompernet Orlando presentation DVDs, this time I have some tips for all you eBay sellers or would be eBay sellers (and you will want to be one after reading this!).
I have to admit I was quite blown away by the eBay presentation by Andrew Lock. I’m not sure if everything he presented is accurate, but it sounds like it could be, and here’s the most startling fact – eBay currently does more daily searches than Google does. Let me say that again. EBay currently does more daily searches than Google does.
What that means is people go to eBay and type in more searches for auctions than the number of searches conducted at Google. I can’t verify that with any accuracy and I don’t know where Andrew is pulling his figures from, but even if it’s not spot-on true, the fact that eBay gets a stupid amount of traffic is what we need to take notice of.
Here’s another good reason to consider the opportunity on eBay. All those searches are product related. Not only does eBay potentially do more searches a day than Google, every eBay search is a product related search by someone looking to buy something – Google certainly can’t lay claim to the same thing. As popular as eBay is already, given this information, I believe it’s the most under realized opportunity on the web for Internet entrepreneurs.
It’s amazing as Internet marketers we spend so much time finding ways to convince Google to send us traffic, while a huge monster source of leads is sitting inside eBay, if we just take the time to learn how to tap it.
Capturing Emails Using eBay
Most people think of eBay as a kind of giant online garage sale or swap meet. You can offload your junk for some quick cash. Even serious eBay sellers who buy product at wholesale or drop-ship rarely go as far as capturing an email address. Given the sheer volume of traffic going to the site it’s crazy to think this has gone on for so long.
Andrew in his presentation talked about how he used eBay to sell cheap entry level products like ebooks and other front end items as a means to get people on to a list. From there traditional sales funnel marketing takes over and the big profits are made in back-end sales.
Another tasty tip revealed on the DVD was the power of a front page or main category page feature advertisement. For something around the $50 mark you can get your ad circulated on key pages within the eBay site. Imagine if Google charged $50 to circulate an ad on it’s homepage – what you can do with eBay isn’t far off from this and you can even target specific niche categories. This has to be the cheapest way to advertise on one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the web.
Here’s another benefit of using eBay. Auction pages on the site tend to rank well in search engines for product related searches. Obviously eBay is somewhat of an authority site so if you have hundreds of even thousands of auctions running on eBay, each page is pulling traffic from Google and other search engines. EBay is like the ultimate e-commerce store, where else can you set up a shop and have highly search engine optimized pages instantaneously.
The Average Person Is Not A Smart eBay User
The majority of people who use eBay under optimize their auctions. The powersellers on eBay remain leaders precisely because they do little things just a bit better than the average, resulting in a higher closing price for their auctions and more total sales. Most people are either too lazy or just don’t know how to optimize an auction, hence there is space for smart people to take advantage, like with most business opportunities online.
There was one really obvious tip in the presentation from Andrew that just made so much sense but most ebay auctioneers will not do – add video to their auctions.
Imagine if you go to an auction and there is this little video of the guy or girl conducting the auction, holding the product, talking about it and talking about how trustworthy they are, their previous success rate, reliability and their return policy. People tend to trust someone more if they can see they are a real human and appear to be a nice person, thus a short video can work wonders – people will be willing to spend more on your items and choose you over all the other possible auctions for the product they are after.
It’s not rocket science and makes complete sense, yet how many people are willing to spend two minutes in front a of a webcam to record a video for their auction? – Not many, so guys like Andrew end up profiting big time. Best of all, Andrew sells digital goods over and over again, so once an auction page is set up with a video, he can have it run over and over again without needing to recreate a new ad, bringing in a steady stream of new leads.
How Can You Apply This Knowledge
If you are an information marketer it’s worth testing eBay as a lead source. For example, I’m going to take the Blog Profits Blueprint, create an auction for it with a video of me talking about it and sell it for whatever it goes for (a couple of dollars – I might make it a $7 report, it really doesn’t matter since I just want to use it to get people on to my list).
I have no idea how much traffic to expect from eBay for an ebook about how to make money with blogs, but given the data Andrew presented about eBay traffic, it could be a lucrative traffic source.
There’s no reason why you can’t do the same with your information products. Set up an auction, use some compelling copy to sell a cheap ebook or audio or video and set up a process to automatically capture the email address of anyone who buys it on eBay.
If you are not an information marketer or you don’t have an Internet business up and running yet, consider giving eBay a shot and take a little extra time to create better than average auctions. This alone could be enough to create a thriving eBay business.
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Great tip Yaro! I sell a few things on ebay, and have never even considered adding video.
I saw a documentary news show on America’s Discovery Times Channel (associated w/ New York Times) called “The Ebay Effect.” In it, they said that all the Ebay buyers and sellers constitutes the world’s ninth largest economoy.
I take what Andrew Lock says with a grain of salt. I have heard him pitch his wares at several locations, but he never gives you concrete sales data, past user names on E-bay or anything else. I want to see some proof. I would like to see some concrete opt-in rates, improved sales percentages using video, etc. Without those it is all regurgitated information you can find in several places such as the “Silent Sales Machine.”
Why do I say this? Because I have used several of these ideas myself and seen first hand what the opt-in rates are (about the same as adwords or other traffic generating sources). I haven’t used video, but have used audio. I don’t sell e-books on E-bay for a few reasons, one of them is your feedback could be immediately run down with a few disgruntled bidders (which there are plenty). If you are going to sell an e-book or report I recommend that you seriously over deliver. I don’t recommend you sell high priced e-books, they just don’t seem to go (most bidders have a flea market mentality on E-bay, nothing wrong with it, it is just reality).
Bottom line, I will trust what Andrew Lock says when I see a real E-bay user id along with sales statistics and comparisons. Until then, I am skeptical of his “expertise”
Great post, Yaro!
It really got me thinking when I watched a video of Joel Comm during an internet marketing seminar.
He spoke of becoming an eBay affiliate. Way less hassle than selling and there are claims that the affiliates make more money than sellers. (not the famous power-sellers, obviously)
It certainly is a great tie-in with any website or blog you may have. Just add eBay affiliate script and you’re good to go!
You’re so right about eBay being under-utilized, Yaro. Just imagine where this company will be in 3 years!
Cheers,
Karen
Hi Yarok,
Thank you for the interesting post. Though there are several variables that come into consideration when offering low priced items to drive the marketing funnel.
For the eBook/digital product model, it is valid but there is a need to list alot of auctions so as to gain optimal exposure on eBay. There is an exponential effect listing a horde of products, crossing-linking them across each other in an optimal manner. Idea being, prospect sees one’s ad, high probably he’d see the rest of the related ads. And of course there’s the optimal listing strategy of scheduling your ads to end during hot time periods and days. Since by default eBay search function returns ending auctions.
All this is not possible if the eBay seller merely has a few eProducts (Or loss-leaders in some cases) to list. Taking your mention of selling your Blog Profits Blueprint on eBay. I’m not too sure whether it’d be successful if you only list that. But there might be the need to list multiple blog products, or possibly “making money online” related products so get the exposure you need. Otherwise, a couple of listings will just be lost amongst the sea of competing products available on eBay.
Regards,
Alvin Huang
I did post some video for some Thai amulet auctions I had going. Didn’t help. I will change it and see what happens. Maybe show my wife instead of me! Good idea this video idea, I think it has promise – but one must know how to make the video sell the product and not inhibit sales… a bad video might make it worse!
Awesome idea, I’ve had this in the back of my mind for awhile now. Maybe I’ll do something on ebay and see how it goes.
=0)
- Andrew
Great info Yaro…I’ve known eBay to be untabbed for IM opportunities, but never heard anyone explain it quite so simply.
I did ebay for 3 years before beginning Internet marketing. I was in the car niche, and can tell you that capturing emails would have doubled my business.
I’ve done a few affiliate promotions by setting up a page on ebay, copying in my sales letter and affiliate link, and setting a high reserve. Using tracking, I was able to see that quite a few sales came as a results of this page.
I’m still trying to figure out how to do classifieds on ebay. Their search doesn’t help much. Anyone know?
Absolutely no way that Ebay does more searches than Google in my opinion, given the differences in traffic the two receive. I’d be very surprised if that were the case.
Other than that, some good points.
I have long been waiting for Ebay to be usurped by a completely free auction service which runs ads instead of charging sellers. Facebook are trying to muscle in there too, with their classified systems, and sites like Gumtree are growing in popularity.
I’d be surprised if Ebay can continue to operate in the same way it has thus far for many more years.
Ebay does more seraches per day than Google? I was shocked! Look Alexa comparison of ebay and google. You must be wrong
But you’re right about the target of searches – it’s commercial.
Thanks. It’s interesting.
I’m skeptical as well, but let us know how your test goes. There’s no way to REALLY know if something works without testing it.
@egorych – Google users are a lot more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed than Ebay users. So the Alexa data will be skewed.
eBay is definitely one of the online money making opportunity, I’m not so sure about it being untapped though.
As with any form of traffic model, we (marketers) are facing an ever increasing amount of competitions. Some things that work before easily may now take a real expert to produce the same effect.
Reference your post on blogging – which need one to be exceptionally good at it nowadays to compete well, compare to a few years ago.
Echoing Alvin Huang’s comment, harnessing eBay’s traffic now require more than just these ideas (which are great) and may require a significant amount of time/effort to learn the ropes (and strings) so as to stand out from the rest of the eBay opportunitists.
These are just my opinions. I’ll be very interested to read about your Blog Profits Blueprint eBay venture too.
Cheers,
Hans
Previously John Chow was auctioning his ad space on eBay, i think he did it for the same purposes – driving more traffic from other source.
Great post! You provided some excellent tips and advice for ebay users. I’ll be trying the video auction idea on my next auctions, I’ve heard of this idea before and if you think about it, a video adds a visual appeal to an auction and should work great in today’s media driven world.
I actually move away from Ebay to do Affiliate marketing. I guess I will be going back. Thanks Yaro.
The stat about eBay processing more searches than google on average came from Nielson Net Ratings, and it was announced by Meg Whitman at the 2005 eBay conference.
I use Andrew’s lead gen system and it’s phenomenal. The reason he doesn’t give his or his students user id’s is because he wants to protect everyone’s income! People will obviously copy what we’re doing if it’s handed to them on a plate!
What swung it for me was when I found out Andrew’s system is being used by Dan Kennedy and Yanik Silver, two of the most astute marketers around.
If you saw Andrew’s presentation at Stomper, he did give a specific example of how he first discovered the system that he uses today. He explained how he produced DVD’s for magicians, and created a big list within 90 days. He gave all the stats although I can’t remember the details now.
Like the last poster, I reasoned if it’s good enough for Dan Kennedy and Yanik Silver then it’s good enough for me. I bought Andrew’s lead gen workshop on DVD and the system rocks! It covers everything, even if you’ve never used eBay before.
I see Andrew’s offering his lead generation training workshop on DVD for a $1 trial. http://www.andrewlock.com/H3Workshop/
Another thing to leverage at eBay is that they allow you to include outbound links in your auctions if it is to a page that includes more detail or related information to your auction.
There are a couple ways to use this. If you are selling a laptop, you can put an affiliate link the page on Dell that provides more info about your laptop.
Or if you are selling a product related to your website, put a page on your site providing more information about the product and then link to it from your auction page.
Capturing emails and using video are great tips too!
I don’t know if I would agree with all of Andrew Lock’s facts, but this was a good blog post none-the-less.
Great tips Yaro. I used to use ebay years ago to find new customers, but I haven’t done it for a long time.
The main thing that concerns me is being buried underneath all the other info products on ebay. Do you have any ideas for overcoming that challenge?
There are a lot of product searches on eBay. That much at least is true.
As for the rest, his basic method is a well-known spammer’s scam which is prohibited by the eBay’s user agreement and is on dangerous legal grounds. The short version is: do not sell e-books on eBay to get emails for a marketing list.
I don’t think Yanik Silver uses this system, unless something has changed recently. When Yanik interviewed Andrew he said he didn’t use E-bay (same with Dan Kennedy) and about a month later Yanik put out information about an auction he was testing using Andrew’s system. Yanik was trying to auction off his car. Both Yanik and Kennedy/Glazer interviewed him, it doesn’t mean they are actively using the system.
I’m a member of both of their monthly programs, I’ve never heard anything from them that they are.
John A – what is you typical opt-in rate on your auctions? How many auction views lead to opt-ins? I would like to know if it is working better than my own “homegrown” system.
Some very good tips in there. I have used ebay on a couple of occasions and had some pretty good success.
Interesting post. I an an active eBay power seller. I use eBay to build my mailing list as well, but using indirect methods. My second business is eBay Coaching. I prefer to give away my ebooks (filled with links to my coaching sites and resources) rather than focus on selling them. A taste of some good information leaves them hungry for more.
There are some guidelines set forth by eBay regarding post-transactioanl marketing, and as an active power seller, I am careful to abide by these guidelines. eBay has an anti-spam policy (located here http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-ov.html) so to protect my seller account and reputation, I don’t spam.
But yes, after selling 13,000 items you better believe I am keeping a list for down the road. The power is in the list.
Regarding your comment “most sellers are too lazy to optimize an auction” – I couldn’t agree with you more. That is the roadblock of my coaching – you can talk a blue streak and tell sellers every secret in the book. The question is, will they get off their duff and to what you suggest? In my experience, and overwhelming NO is the answer. Most are even too lazy to start a blog directed towards their target market.
ITA, information marketing is the key. Visit my blog link above and just look at how much information I give away for free, just to entice sellers to learn more!
Regards-
Suzanne Wells
Hi Thanks for the info on ebay. I’ve been thinking about ways to utilize ebay. Floyd
Ok Yaro, SPILL IT! Where would I go to find the cool add a photo to the comment section plugin at WP? Is there such a thing or did you have that custom programmed?
Vern
I listen to Andrew Locke on his podcast “Renegade eBay Sellers” and I must say that some of the “techniques” he recommends are either on the edge of ethics for eBay or word for word complete plagiarism of other sources. He has a great way of presenting the information however and you can not shoot the messenger. Andrew is only sharing knowledge, which is the definition of Information Marketing. Where he gets his information and how much he makes by re-presenting it to a new audience is his own business. If you did not know the information prior to hearing it from Andrew, then you received your moneys worth. There can be no dispute about the immense marketing power eBay can generate. Using that power for your own betterment is the trick! eBay is the 400lb Gorilla in our marketing world, it would be a mistake to turn your back on it!
Hi Yaro,
I’m in a mastermind group with Andrew and he’s shared a lot more of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ info with our group.
Yanik Silver and Dan Kennedy are using Andrew’s system which in itself is an incredible endorsement of how useful it is.
Andrew’s a straightforward guy who doesn’t blow his own trumpet loud enough in my opinion. Every time our group meets he produces incredibly ingenious marketing ideas that blow us away.
I’m using Andrew’s H3 system in a small way for my mortgage loan officer business and it’s phenomenal. I’m getting a steady stream of leads for about a buck a day.
Great tips and a well written article! Your blog is definitely worth visiting again! All the best to you and a huge load of success!