February 28, 2008
Wow - am I falling behind or what? Actually… the answer is a big NO! I wanted to slow down a little… and give you all a bit more time to get your stores running! OK, we know that’s just plain BS… I fell behind! :-)
So… What DID I do for the past couple days? First and foremost, I took my second siteto the point that it is done for a week or two as the indexing begins! I don’t know how many of you sat through the 41 minute video, but it was a walk-through of installing a Build a Niche Store, right up through category selection, on a very broad market.
Ok, well that’s one day, what about the others?
On Friday… with great dismay, we closed down our own eBay store. Hopefully, the trend will not continue with other volume sellers, but amongst a few other reasons, the cost of doing business on eBay just got a bit too high for us! In addition to an almost doubling of eBay fees, they are making the system very one-sided by eliminating the feedback tool for sellers! That’s a “big one” right there now… if a buyer is not happy, they can hold your feedback hostage, until you make them happy! We have been on the receiving end of unreasonable buyers a few times… you know the kind, they buy on a Friday afternoon in California (we closed at 4PM ET) and complain when it is not there on Monday, demanding their shipping fees be returned! Well… they can now leave a negative feedback and you the seller, have limited recourse!
As far as the fee structure… I couldn’t be happier! :-) Higher fees = higher commission! For us, we paid an average of $5500.00 per month in eBay fees over the past 2 years, based on $65,000-$150,000 monthly sales volume. I don’t know how some folks will survive with the increase!
So - we closed on Friday. On Saturday AM, I turned one of my 5 year old HVAC websites into a BANS store that instantly gets 1000 unique visitors a day and ranks top 3 for MANY high volume related terms! Instead of selling, packing, shipping, freight companies, etc… I now just refer people to our old competitors! In total, I own 8-10 of these websites that were all used to support our eBay store… guess what… they will ALL be turned into BANS stores within the next month! :-)
Aside from building and working on a few stores… I have been working on a secondary project, Niche Clouds. Otis is fairly privy to the Niche Clouds project, which is a unique Build a Niche Store ONLYdirectory that I registered for 10 years. It will start as a free directory and as it gains PageRank, turn into a paid directory. (www.nicheclouds.com) At this time, it is not quite complete… but only a few hard hours of coding away! There is a total of 19 main categories that are identical to ebay’s own main categories. The cost to be listed is going to be: Google toolbar PR x $10. In other words… while it is PR0, ALL 1-way links are going to cost nothing. When a page is at PR5, $50. If you are wondering what a Word Cloud is… just click on the directory link in the main menu above. While you are there, refresh your page once or twice… even though the words are the same, it looks like new content with every visit! (Niche Store Directory) I still have about 4-5 days left before I am ready to start accepting links to the site, but once it is live, it will become a valuable resource for getting your first store links!
David Archuleta - Ring a bell? After a bit of research on this kid, I found out he has actually been around quite a long time! Even appeared (maybe won) Star Search when he was 11 years old! I am still working on the rsstoblog site I tossed up last night, but it too, should be completed in the next day or two. The site will focus on mp3 downloads, history of this kid, his rise to stardom, which is yet to even really begin, AND other Amrican Idol information each day. I will monetize the site with Adsense, iTunes, Napster and a few other CJ offers.
Just to be sure anyone reads this far… did anyone catch the very poor use of anchor text I chose in the first paragraph about my “second site” being launched? Anchor text is VERY important and should be well thought out before you just start linking… the words “second site” mean absolutely nothing to a search engine, a visitor, or even me! :-) The better way of listing the link would have been… “Cabinets for Sale” (Main page link) or “Kitchen Cabinets for Sale” (linked directly to the kitchen cabinets page)
I will be back tomorrow with some more work on the subcategories or product pages of our first niche store… i encourage ANY of you to push out 2-3-4-5 more niche sites as quickly as you want now! Get them to the point of your first two stores, and then start going back to re-optimize a little bit each day.
This will ALL be put into a step-by-step before we are done…
Mark
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3 Responses to “Sell on eBay or Build a Niche Store Empire”
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Very interesting post Mark. It is nice to see how you diversify.
I feel your pain when it comes to selling on Ebay. Good for affiliates bad for sellers. I am in the process of shutting down aswell. I will finish out the 1/4 then that’s it. You can still leave Neg FB till May. I will use US Free Ads and iOffer to clear remaining inventory. Thanks for the bait and switch Ebay.
Thanks for being so frank about your eBay store, Mark - I’ve been looking into doing it and was put off by the changes at eBay and you’ve confirmed my feelings about it. It’s good to hear it from someone who has built my trust so much, even though we’ve never met!
Marilla