Each One, Teach One: eCommerce OPEN Discussion Thursday Again
I am really starting to look forward to Thursdays now, just for the opportunity to post these discussions and then follow it. I really am learning alot and the resources are fascinating.
If you missed any of these informative discussions, be sure to check back to the prior weeks:
- Week #1 : Brands and Branding: What is it?
- Week #2 : Keyword Research
These weekly topical discussion are really a great resource and I am enjoying the information that is being shared.
Each Thursday we will post a topic related to us as merchants and the the COMMUNITY…YOU GUYS will come in on the comments and post. You can post your comments on the subject, links to articles or posts to other blogs on the topic, you can post links to YouTube videos or Podcast episodes. I do not care what you post as long as it furthers the education of the community, it qualifies. But of course this will ONLY work if you participate. I want to see if the community would participate to make it great. Come on guys, lets each one, teach one!!!
Topic this week?
Marketing Channels: Which one is the BEST for WHAT and WHY?
Is it eBay? Or maybe Amazon? Even Craigslist? How bout them Comparative Shopping Engines (CSE’s), or even Etsy, Bonanzle, etc. OH dayam this is time for the showdown! Let’s go for the gusto…LMAO
OK, I need your input now so lets start posting to the thread topical information on Brands and Branding.
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Be in it to win it
Conversion Conference
For some clarity here is what an eCommerce Marketing Channel should do:
— it should help you publish. Making it easy to publish means you can talk about understanding of problems, and how you can help solve them
— it should help you build trust. There are many different ways to do this, but if you believe people trust people, then you want an online marketing platform to help personalise your presence.
— it should help you engage in a conversation with your audience. Some people make instant decisions, most don’t. Mostly you want to open a conversation with someone rather than try to sell them on the first visit. Business is business, but life is a lot can also be more fun if you take the time to understand each other.
— it should let you do everything else you can do with a normal or eCommerce website
Amazon – Best for easy listing of items. The marketplace has a very streamlined SKU (asin) system. While it can at the same time be a pain if the item you sell does not have a SKU
eBay – I like it cause that is where I grew up. But just like growing up, my parents piss me off with their house rules….I constantly want to move out LMAO.
Bonanzle, Etsy, iOffer and many others – Pros: They are cheap, and good for one-offs or craft type items. Cons:: LABORIOUS for large volume, customer traffic is slow and the backend is none existent. You have to handle each transaction manually.
Craigslist: It is perfect for selling local or over-sided (pickup) items. I have also found it pretty good for moving event tickets or publicizing a local meetup.
Amazon – Best for easy listing of items. The marketplace has a very streamlined SKU (asin) system. While it can at the same time be a pain if the item you sell does not have a SKU
I sell on 3 sites for 2 entirely different product lines one commodity one is more one of a kind. Amazon, Bonanzle and Ebay. All of them have their good points and difficulties.
Ebay:
Traffic is good for both types of products. Auctions work better for one of a kind items and Ebay still has the largest traffic for auctions. I recently moved commodity items from Store inventory format to fixed price and am noticing better sales.
The trust level for buyers I think is variable on eBay there have been some that have been burned by poor seller or buyers which lowers trust.
Amazon: is great for commodity fixed price items, it takes a little time if you have to create product pages but the traffic is there and I think buyers have a higher trust factor.
With both Amazon and Ebay your customers are not really yours and eBay is working on limiting it even more. Both Amazon and Ebay control payment vehicles however Amazon does ensure you get paid.
Bonanzle- your business is yours, you can choose your payment options, you can brand yourself more clearly there than on either other place. Fees are definitely less and all on actual sales not just listings.
You have to market yourself, there is not built in traffic it is growing but for right now I am not sure people can completely support themselves on as of yet.
I think everyone needs to use a mixture to build their business each site has its good points and bad points and everyone needs to base thinks on their own facts not on the vocal opinions of others.
I sell on three venues and each can toss their hat in the ring for being best. eBay, Bonanzle and eCRATER…. eBay has the most traffic for me and is the big boy for paying the bills. I easily make the most sale per month on eBay and it isn't even a contest.. Though I am undecided on the quality of their feed to Google, being able to link my youtube channel and flicker gets me great Google ranking. Bonanzle's publishing of my items on all search engines is awesome, probably the best of the three, particularly with the ability to customize Google attributes. I have only been on eCRATER for a month but has easily become my #2 venue in terms of converted sales. The way they publish my items to Google for me is unreal, my items consistently rank as the top hits. Throw on top of that NO FEES! Also, I feel like my store on eCRATER is my own site rather than being a part of a larger entity, eCRATER has become a favorite of mine quickly.
eCrater, wow…thanks for that dude.
eBay for some items. Amazon for some items.
It amazes me how much more I get for some items on Amazon compared to the same item on eBay.(sometimes 3 times as much) Etsy does some good for me around the holidays but is dead the rest of the year. eCrater has done well for me considering the limited # of items I have listed there. If I could somehow find the time to get all of my items posted there(12-15,000) I think it could be a real money-maker. Like another poster said. My eCrater items show up high on Google search. Every sale I have had on eVrater has paid with Google checkout btw
I have been hearing a lot of good things about eCRATER lately. It is on my list of things to check out. Maybe after Vegas I will give it a try. I also have a BISI store attached to my inkfrog account. However as much as I don't want all my eggs in one basket I think I need to limit the amount of baskets I am trying to carry.
I am only 1 person and am trying not to have duplicate listings on the various sites.
The various e-Commerce marketing channels can be divine if they fit the objectives of the buyer and/or seller.
Moreover, the sheriff rides into town and bang bang with a bulls-eye great equalizer shot to allow small biz America to jump on the e-Marketplace/e-Commerce pony express trail. As John (ColderICE) states, having an integrated social media platform built into the ecommerce systems can provide added roping of the steers (revenues).
At times the social media component is overplayed in the ecommerce space…The goal is to bring in sales based on products and services offered by the merchants… not the locale — and not the business.
At the end of the round-up..Consumers want what they want and they want it immediately. Scalability really is a key factor in the B2B/B2C consumer experience. If the product or service doesn’t exist for them (because of a lack of scale), they simply move on. All of us as web users have the attention spans of gnats. The great e-tailers embrace this and use it as a competitive advantage when providing their services and products on the web.
The various e-Commerce channels provide the gold rush into the siteless web and to get into the ecommerce rodeo and ride with the great equalizer holster to outgun the big cowboys!
Yee haw…continue your marvelous spreading of the ecommerce knowledge & education John along the pony express trail…you do it with gusto! I tip my Stetson 10 gallon hat to you John!
best venue? hmm.
I have a very simple relationship with venues.
I list my stuff, I pay my fees, I pay them commission – their job to sell.
I get on with my other business.
With this optic, ebay works for us, reasonably well. bonanzle was a dud, (although we might try again ) We haven't tried ecrater, bluejay, etsy, or others.
I might try a venue which has a simple csv file import for listings — so we tried BISI once, importer didn't work, dumped, probably still have live store there somewhere LMAO.
As you can note, not a lot of patience.
If I put 10 hours into listing items, I want to see $$ returned for that. I don't want to spend time having to promote my items on that venue after. If I do I want to see a return for that too.
Since venues change rules often, I have never found one I wish to spend extra time promoting. It takes time, and a time period, before promotion ROI kicks in, so, not even ebay items are promoted by us. At most, we'll insert an RSS feed into our website or groups.
As an example, we have over $80K of stock we havne't put up on eBay right now.
Their file exchange (currently) does not accept html, and our listings utilize html for embedded self-hosted images. So, result is no thanks, we'll sell those direct from our own websites for now.
I think one can make any channel work well for their biz, so long as the channel doesn't force you to change the way you do your biz, or at least doesn't make you work too hard to adapt.
So in the end, our best channel, is our own website, where we have complete control. We put 99% of our efforts into that, and 1% into venues. We know, at least, that that 99% of effort can't be gobbled up in venue changes tomorrow.
The ROI we look to is since we only put 1% of our efforts into venues, yet they seem to maintain at 10% of our revenue….. we don't give them up, it's good for now, go eBay!
When we used Bonanzle, we found that inserting the listings was simple, but most of our time was consumed with simply deleting llistings we sold on eBay or on our own websites. ROI was practially 0%. If we went back to bonanzle, I have about 20 hours unpaid I want to get back — so it would have to be a really hopping place to get us back.
Because of this, we find that even trying other venues has a cost, and are seldom willing to add to OUR costs just to try other venues. Although, it seems you're getting good comments on eCrater lately, we might take a peek.
cheers.
vince.
Yah, vain enough to reply to myself
Had to share this, a bang up video from a guy who sorta thinks like I do re: “venues” , although the video speaks about “social media” like facebook and twitter, just sub in your favourite selling platform in this video, and it could be me speaking.
hope it cheers you up somewhat
and hope the embed works.
if not, here's a direct link to it :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIZzu3hsLXc&feat…
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Oh god, I am all too familiar with Loren LMAO! I remember that one.