The most profitable and consistent income for us at the Queen of Auctions is our eBay Store. If you don't have an eBay Store, I highly recommend that you get one. Once you have it set up—or if you already have one—here are three great tips to drive traffic to your store.
1. Auction banner with store categories
As most of you probably already know, you can create a banner that will appear in all your auction and store listings. This is a huge marketing and branding opportunity for you. Brand yourself so that your customers will remember you and want to shop with you again and again. About 30 percent of our sales come from repeat customers.
And another great reason for this banner is that eBay lets you list your internal store categories in the header to the right of the banner.
I recently updated my banner with my new book and logo! It took writing this article for me to actually change it out. Thank you Auctiva!
| Antiques |
263 |
| Auction Tools—Books & Videos |
25 |
| Bing & Grondahl |
23 |
| Christmas Items |
309 |
| Collectibles |
4,959 |
Just as eBay has categories, if you have an eBay Store, you get to have categories to organize your inventory. Just to show you an example, here are a few of my eBay Store categories. The numbers after each category are how many items I have listed in that category.
I currently have 24 categories. I don't recommend having more than 35, because it makes your listing time too long if you are constantly changing your store categories while listing.
Make sure that once you place your banner in your listings, you also choose your top-five store categories and have them show up as clickable links. You will also want to make sure that you have a box for them to search your store for more items. You can see this in my banner shown here:
2. Low price leaders at auction
Put one of your most expensive items up for auction every 3 to 7 days and start it at a ridiculously low price.
I do this with a Royal Copenhagen plate every week. They retail for $80 but I start them at $9.99 in order to entice people to my auction. I sell a lot of collector's plates from my eBay Store.
By listing an item at a price they can't ignore, it will drive customers to your auction page and once they are on your auction page, your eBay Store logo with the search box will encourage them to check out your store items.
Also, make sure that you are utilizing Auctiva's scrolling gallery that shows items from your auctions and your eBay Store in every listing.
This is what the scrolling gallery looks like:
As an ending note, even though I start that plate at $9.99 every week, I still make money on it. It usually sells for more than $60, so I am making a good profit and still driving good customers to my eBay Store.
3. List one item in an auction, and the rest in your eBay Store
This works quite well for dinner sets and flatware sets. I did this recently with a Gibson Embossed Fruit dinner set. I listed one of the dinner plates at a starting price of 99 cents and then listed the rest of the set in my eBay Store.
In the auction description, I wrote that I had more pieces in this pattern up for sale this week in my eBay Store.
This tip didn't work the week I tried it, but it was summer, which is typically slower for me. I will try it again closer to the holidays.
In conclusion, make sure that you have an eBay Store and keep it fully stocked. The more items in your store, the more you will sell. As my grandmother used to say, "You can't sell from an empty wagon." Once it is stocked, use these tips to drive more traffic to your eBay Store items.
Good luck to you and happy eBaying!!
Lynn Dralle is a third-generation antiques dealer and a PowerSeller who's been selling full-time on eBay since 1998. An award-winning author, she's lectured around the country on eBay and appeared on national television. Dralle is the author of iBuy and iSell, a two-part auction-tracking notebook system carried in The eBay Shop. She has built up a loyal following of thousands who subscribe to her weekly e-zine through her Web site.
Opinions expressed here may not be shared by Auctiva Corp. and/or its principals.
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