Spearheading your EBay auctions, the shoe dilemma
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How to overcome listing over costs? |
Let's take the example of a shoe salesman on EBay. Shoes come in all shapes and sizes, so if you are indeed serious about making profit on EBay you have little choice but to set up a store. However there will always be one rock in the road that will keep you from reaching your goals.
Shoes, despite being the same product no matter on what feet they are worn, target different types of customers and therefore you need to make a listing per type of shoe. If you need to pay a listing for each type of pair that you sell, well then there is no getting out of paying over costs.
Some time back, just as shoes, I was selling guitar and bass strings, being so many types of strings and having a margin of only a few dollars per set, paying 1 dollar a listing was completely out of the question. I tried putting all types of sets on the same listing but the marketing impact just isn't the same and the customer would tend to go towards competitors who targeted a precise product and not a general listing.
Therefore, this shoe dilemma was indeed something I had to get around. The solution was a little more complicated then I had imagined because it involved using HTML and hyperlinks on my listings. What I did was that I set a store listing for each product, store listings being far cheaper and longer lasting avoided me paying important fees. Now the obvious problem was that in my store the exposure to potential customers was like selling ice cream in Antarctica.
I needed to find a way to get all these store listings out in the open. Then it came to me, having 40 different types of products of the same category all on different store listings I needed a spearhead effect.
The spearhead effect was creating a super listing with extra exposure at the top of the category for a few more dollars. However this super listing was general, kind of having a big sign saying "All the strings you will ever need" or "Ernie's Shoe Shop". The catch was that everyone coming to buy strings or shoes would see this listing and investigate.
The spearhead was that this listing was set up like an online store window. All my products were listed in there and each had a link back to the correspondent store listing. This was quite a boost as the spearhead would redirect visitors towards the specific section of the store, kind of like a clerk on the sidewalk getting shoppers to come in.
If you are currently having trouble with the shoe dilemma I suggest you spearhead your sales by using HTML and hyperlinks. You can learn about this on my website.
Yuki Sugawara
http://www.esalesdesign.com