Published October 2004

Need a Web presence?
Set up shop at eBay

By Lionel Contreras
Guest Columnist

Imagine your small store with international marketing power, thanks to eBay.

For those of you who have felt the slowdown of our brick-and-mortar stores in the past couple of years or are dreading possible overstock and sales lags, you may be interested in knowing of a silver lining in your clouds.

It’s called eBay — a powerful tool that many business people have heard of but just as many have overlooked.

What can eBay do for you? Well, whether you are an entrepreneur just starting up or a business owner winding down, eBay allows you heavy clout by letting you open your store online. For as little as $10 a month you can have your store and your wares online with your own URL “Web site” where people can go online to buy things from you.

There are two ways to sell on eBay, with a personal account or by opening an eBay store. A personal account will allow you to unload smaller quantities fairly easily and very competitively. The “store” option, however, lets you do a lot more with little online knowledge or skills.

Here are some of the things an eBay store can provide for your business:

• Credibility and polish: Services by eBay will give your virtual storefront a very clean, professional Web site look; list your sale items; and allow your purchasers to communicate with you.
• Customization: Your site can be modified to look almost anyway you want it to, geared toward Halloween gear, wedding items, industrial clothing or art supplies, for instance. Regardless of what theme you choose, you can get the right look and feel for your online store.
• Web address: With your monthly fee, you get your own URL, which you can put on your business cards and correspondence, which makes you one of the “big boys” when it comes to shopping online. Since anyone can explore your site and place orders whenever they like, you have a much higher visibility then you would without an Internet presence.
• Cross promotion: This is a very powerful tool, useful when someone searches online for one of your items. Your store site will automatically list related items along with the original search request. If someone looks for tires, for example, the site response will list the rims and hubcaps you carry as well.
• Monthly reports: You get free monthly reports on your statistics, activity volume, gross monthly sales and number of buyers, as well as other extras, so you are able to see exactly what is going on and how your business is growing.
• Advertising: Using eBay will help advertise your store to attract more buyers to your “virtual” doorstep for free.

Both eBay and PayPal, an online service that helps you make transactions on the Internet, offer fraud protection so that you’re not left hanging in the wind if someone tries to take advantage of you.

If you have been wanting an online presence but haven’t known how to set one up, this may become your key resource. The eBay service also has an online help source staffed by people who can help you get going.

To find out more — and to start selling online — go to www.ebay.com.

Lionel Contreras is an information systems technician with The Herald.

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