Using eBay for Internet Marketing in 5 Easy Ways

Posted: Si on Apr 17 | affiliate marketing, ebay

eBay is one of the most visited destinations on the web. While most people sell physical goods there are many ways in which it can be used to generate income without having to have the hassle of buying goods, packing them, posting them and all the other time-consuming business that goes with running a physical eBay business.

Here’s 5 easy ways to tap into the vast amount of eBay traffic and use it for your internet marketing activities:

1. Sell ebooks & other digital products.

OK, nothing new here. A quick search will find millions of ebooks on eBay - most of them crap. To do well here you really need to find a niche with little competition that you know you can produce a quality product about.

What do you know about? (Or could find out about?) Write about it. (Or pay someone to research and write for you if you prefer.)

As with a lot of this internet marketing game it’s about finding something that people want and giving it to them.

If your new to this then go for something you are actually interested in, then it’s a lot easier to research and write about it!

It’s probably best to stay clear of trying to sell ebooks about internet marketing and eBay guides as there are so many about you’d need to do something really special to stand out. It’s much easier to focus on a niche where there demand but not much competition.

Maybe you are a keen gardener and could put together a killer book on how to grow roses?

Or are you a musician? Could you write about the best ways to learn an instrument or write a song?

In the age of high speed internet access you don’t need to stop with just text and a few photos - make videos and sell them as a downloadable course.

Here’s an example:

Paul is a guitar teacher, he’s great at explaining how to play the guitar but finds it hard to write about it as he can’t easily demonstrate what he is teaching.

Paul sets his digital camera on video mode, props it up on the table in front of him and his guitar, and goes through what would be a normal lesson. He creates a series of lessons, uploads them to his computer and sets up an eBay listing. He decides to let the customers see what they are getting and creates a short sample video, which he uploads to YouTube and includes in his eBay listing.

OK, guitar instruction videos aren’t new, but specialise even more - maybe there’s a demand for lessons on playing Spanish guitar? Or on getting the most out of the latest effects pedal?

There are plenty of untapped niches out there (on eBay and the internet as a whole).

With eBay’s downloadable media feature you don’t even have to send your ebook/videos etc to the customer! Just set it up, upload your files (if you don’t have web hosting then use a free file hosting service) and when you get paid by Paypal eBay will email a link to the buyer - nice and simple.

Creating a series of videos might be a lot more work than writing a book (or teaching guitar) but if there is demand for them then they could carry on selling for the next few years with hardly any extra work needed from you.

As with the ebooks you don’t necessarily have to do it yourself, maybe recruit a film student to record an expert in a certain field or there are companies around who will produce top quality films for you - at a price.

So, find a niche, produce a good product that people want to buy (and a killer listing, but I won’t go into that now), price it sensibly and you should do well.

2. Give away ebooks.

No, you can’t actually give away anything on eBay - but you can price it so that is just covers your fees, or even sell for a penny.

Why would you want to do that?

Well, look at this article. Although it’s nice to spread useful information, unfortunately I’ve got bills to pay! Hopefully people will find this useful and out of all the people that read this a percentage will click on the affiliate links, hopefully some of them will buy something. It doesn’t cost the reader anything and it makes you money.

If you are going to promote affiliate products in this way then firstly, make sure they are relevant and secondly, don’t over do it. An affiliate link on every other word will soon get annoying!

Select products that are genuinely going to be useful to your readers, don’t try to sell them whatever will make you the most money!

Here, as I’m writing about eBay I’ve included eBay and Paypal affiliate links - kind of obvious really. I also mention Amazon and a service at the end which is both very relevant to the subject of this article and also genuinely useful to the readers.

If I was to start promoting a high-paying ringtone site in an article about eBay it would put off readers and they’d be less likely to look at the services that are going to actually be useful.

If you are going to write a “give-away” ebook on gardening, promote a seed supplier or garden tool website, if you try to sell loans and mortgages you are unlikely to get any buyers!

eBay and Amazon are great catch-all affiliate programs, Amazon has books on just about every subject under the sun and eBay, well if you are reading this you probably know just how vast the amount of products on eBay is - something for everyone. They are also both very easy to setup.

You can sign up for eBay’s affiliate program at Commission Junction and Amazon’s at their associates website.

3. Sell a service.

eBay is mostly about physical goods, but more and more people are using it so sell services.

This can be quite straightforward if it’s a fixed price service, say Paul from the example above sells a package of 10 guitar lessons for $300, simple.

What if the service you can provide can’t easily be packaged and sold at a fixed price? Say you are a web designer and charge by the hour.

Well, the easiest solution is to sell a voucher. Something like this:

“This auction is for a $100 voucher towards my web design services”

Then list your rates along with examples, testimonials etc.

You can even give eBay buyers a deal - sell a $100 (£50) voucher for $50 (£25), or a $10 voucher and start it at 99c.

What if you don’t have a service to sell? Find one! There’s loads of business that want extra customers and you can sell their services for a commission.

You could use an established affiliate scheme or even find local business and do a deal to promote them on eBay - there’s plenty of opportunities selling services on eBay.

One thing to bear in mind if you are selling for someone else is that in order to stay on the right side of eBay you will most likely have to receive the payment then forward it on, so make sure you can do this and your pricing takes into account any Paypal fees.

4. Use your About Me page.

The only links you can put in an auction listing are ones to more information or photos about the item or to additional terms and conditions, shipping policies and such like. You cannot link to another site selling anything.

However, on your About Me page you can link to your website.

So, from your auction direct them to your About Me page, then you can send traffic to your website.

The eBay terms state:

“The eBay About Me page may be used to describe the seller’s business, and may contain URLs or links to the seller’s individual web site. It may not specifically promote off eBay sales or sales of items prohibited on eBay, nor may it contain links to commercial web sites where goods from multiple sellers are aggregated by a common search engine.”

Say you’ve found a niche and are selling ebooks, a video course or even physical goods. You could find a relevant affiliate program to go with it, setup a site to promote the affiliate program then direct buyers from your auctions via your about me page to your website. Sure, you’ll lose a few people on the way but with enough visitors and some good writing then you should get sales.

Make sure you are not specifically promoting off eBay sales and you should be OK. So Paul could maybe setup a blog about guitars that recommends a certain guitar store for example.

5. Write guides.

eBay guides and reviews are an excellent way to get extra visitors to your auctions and About Me page. Write about something related to the items you are selling and you will get more people looking at your listings and therefore more buyers or higher prices.

Continuing with the example, Paul might write reviews on different model guitars. Paul could also use the same reviews as the basis for a blog or website. With each review include links to buy the guitar he’s writing about.

So, our man Paul the guitar teacher decides to do these five things:

1. He creates a video tutorial series - “Improve Your Spanish Guitar Technique” - puts a sample video on YouTube and sells the series as a digital download on eBay for $20 (£10).

2. He writes a short ebook - “What to Look for When Buying a Second Hand Spanish Guitar”, including affiliate links to places selling second hand guitars (such as eBay). He sells this for 99c (49p).

3. He sells $20 vouchers towards a course of his guitar lessons, starting at 99c to encourage buyers. He doesn’t sell many of these as it’s a local service, but gets more buyers looking at his other auctions and website and as the voucher is towards a whole course it brings in a reasonable amount of business.

4. He sets up a blog with reviews of different guitars, adding to it over time. With each review he includes links to buy the guitars and some related products. He also promotes his video series and gives away his short ebook on his site. His About Me page refers visitors to his site for useful information, relevant to the niche of Spanish guitars. In each auction listing he directs visitors to his About Me page.

5. He posts some of his blog reviews as guides on eBay, referring visitors to his about me page and his auctions.

Soon Paul starts being more choosy about when he teaches, doing it more for enjoyment than for the money. With some of the profits he outsources some writing, building up his site he starts to find - without any effort - that paulsspanishguitars.com is ranking fairly high in Google and he’s getting more organic traffic, which in turn is sending more buyers to his eBay auctions.

Paul’s happy!

If you have a website or blog then you probably know how useful it is to have visitor statistics. By seeing what people are searching for and where they are coming from you can improve your site accordingly.

On eBay however all you have is the standard counter. This only counts page loads, not even unique visitors.

Sellathon ViewTracker 3 shows you what words visitors are searching for on eBay when they find your auction. By using this to refine your title alone it will easily make you more than it costs.

Sellathon also shows you when someone visited your auction, where they are geographically, unique/returning visitors and loads more. It even gives you lots of pretty graphs so you can easily see all you could ever want to know about your visitors.

Seriously, no BS, this service is really good and pays for itself in no time. It’s also free for the first month so give it a try! (They also have a great affiliate program!)

Please let me know what you think of this article by leaving a comment below. Thanks, Si

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