Your Business & Social media

If we are using this blog as a case study, you have set up your business (real world and/or online) and now have a few auctions on eBay and have maybe set up at least 1 store with ebid and items on there as well.

The next part is to use the Ebid links you have with social media to market your products as well as your store.

When you go into your item listing the logos of the various direct linked social media platforms are there.  On the left hand menu under 'My Options' at the bottom is My Social Networks.  Click on that and you are presented with the various Networks, open up tabs and have the ones you have joined open ready and logged in.  When you click on each link to follow or like Ebid will automatically update with your status.  It is that easy, then when you wish to market an item click on the logo and select where you want it to be displayed.

Social media has maybe been the biggest revolution in the last 10 years, millions daily use 1 platform or more and for free you can get exposure onto the biggest market there is.  I started by watching Youtube videos on affiliate marketing, but then realised that those techniques could be adapted to work with small business.  There are companies out there that do this but they charge a lot of money to do the same thing you can do for free.

They all take work and time to build, nothing happens overnight, but a bit of planning and just sticking to between 20 minutes to an hour a day you can really boost how many people will see your items.  You are not really looking for a youtube video to go viral but if you can get 10K people seeing every one of your posts then that has to be good for business.  

At this time I have not used Instagram, but i am looking at it, so i would not like to put here anything about it until I have used it properly and can give you some figures on it. 

Social Media Networks

1.Facebook:  The daddy of them all, reportedly getting almost 1 billion different users a day on it and can find a page for virtually any niche there is.  A must for your marketing arsenal.

2.Twitter:  quick small posts, has millions using it and brilliant for clickbait and SEO ranking.

3.Google+:  The 2nd biggest social media platform there is, and with links to SEO, Youtube, Gmail, google search really boosts your brand.

4.Tumblr:  a mini blogger with real long term exposure for your posts.  so much can be done with your home page from putting on music to theme templates a good place to start if you don’t wish to devote too much time to blogging.

5.Pinterest: My personal favourite, doubling in size every year since 2011, your pins (what your posts are called) can be seen for months after.  New algorithms from Pinterest means that things you put on can appear on feeds months after you put them on.  However with work these can be updated all the time. 

These are the big 5 I use, some people use more, others only use 1 or 2.  However you can link posts to feed onto other platforms halving the work but getting the specific exposure you require. When it comes to social networks you have to decide what works best for your message or brand, and what your time dictates you have to work on each.

Lets face it your here, you know how to register to get onto websites, so I wont bore you with the basic’s of internet usage.

Getting onto all these sites is easy, hell that’s what these companies want is ease of registration for people to get on there.  They don’t want hard, tough registration, they want everyone able to use it.  

One thing I do suggest is keep personal and business separate, your customers don’t want to know your feelings on Trump, or the EU etc.  Hell you don’t want to put off potential sales by politics, rivalry.  As a business anyones money is good enough, even Chester supporters!!!

What all social media marketers emphasise is a good homepage.  Quick and to the point, explaining what you are doing.  You don’t need to put on you have a cat called Mitsy, or your favourite colour.  But if you are selling stamps, you need to have that in your homepage. 

On your homepage should be links to where you want people to go, preferably your store so they can see updates regular and just click on the picture and takes the potential buyer straight to the product.

Where there are loads of blog posts about this and further in depth, again I have seen there is a tidbit of information and to get the full story you have to buy an e-book, or subscribe and pay for a tutorial course.  I hope this blog will get you started in the world and show you some of the things I have found worked for my business.  Then you can judge what, if any, courses you think would help if your budget allows.  

To find some of the blogs just follow my pinterest board 

Social Media Marketing

or follow me for regular updates through Twitter  Webpresence 

or as you can see my twitter widget to the side

Network Tree

For posts you can link between various platforms, create a family of links, this used to work well for SEO ratings but Google last year changed the algorithms so that familial links don’t count so high on the SEO register. 

As you can see you can link all platforms to twitter, however even though it is possible to link twitter posts they do not look good and could end up hurting your message.

The beauty of twitter is lots of posts don’t hurt as they are short lived, but try to space out the timing, with use of scheduling tools this can be done without fuss.

This is post automation, where posting on the one site automatically posts to another.

So looking at the Ebid example, you pin your item listing to a board and have linked to twitter, the pinterest link is what will be displayed on twitter.  So when someone clicks on that link they will go first to your pinterest page, then they would have to click again to redirect to your listing.
However while spamming is not welcome on Twitter you can have the same item promoted from all 5 accounts, all have different links but all backlink to the item and displayed at different times.  

Future Posts

A shorter post this week as this is only an introduction to using social media with your online retail business.  

Over the coming few weeks I will explore each of the Networks I use in depth along with apps and tools I use to schedule and post.  We will look at how to get engaged followers so we can get to a point where you can grow organically but on a large scale.

Not Selling Online, Why Not?

Not selling online, why not?

There is a typical attitude amongst bricks and mortar sellers that they don’t have the time to use the internet.  I would feel that as a business owner how can you not afford the time.  There are 7 billion people out there, many with access to the internet and can you afford to ignore them?

A scene in The big bang theory I feel highlights this point.  The guys are playing D&D and Stewart from the comic store is with them, he studies miniatures they are using and asks where they got them from.  Leonard tells him amazon.

Stewart moans a bit about the said giant crushing his store.  Well Stewart there is no real excuse for you not to carry that stock yourself online, and giving access to more than the geekery of Pasadena to your stock.

And for a web savvy group as the gang are supposed to be not one of them says they’ll get him online.  I know it’s fiction, but it relates to a lot of small business owners that they are bricks and mortar and that is it.

Whenever you talk about the internet to store owners (those who are not online), the automatic go to point is eBay, or they think the odd tweet and having a Facebook page is enough, but they also do virtually no promotion through it either.

The last post ended on using ebid with eBay for those online sellers sick of paying the high fees of eBay, this one will hopefully push bricks and mortar sellers towards using the site.  It is a wonderful starting point for a newbie or experienced seller.

The Bricks and mortar owner

As a small business owner, you have done all the work getting it started.  You have your business plan, financing in place, shop outfitted and have hopefully gotten a decent local customer base.  But these days are tough, not only do you have the large internet companies undercutting you (I know I have adds here but hell I want to make a living as well), you also have an economy that has been messed up and money has all been squeezed to the top.  You need advertising and to enlarge your customer base, not only for your bottom line but for the bank manager who looks at your forecasts.  How much better do you think you will be by having proof of 5 online shops, and all your items advertised and available out to the world.  The potential is huge.

The one thing the website adds have right is in this day and age having your business online is a must.  But you don’t have to go the expensive route of using web hosting sites for this.  Ebid does this for you, also it has SEO links with Google, so your business name and items all get backlinks and family links so that you will get higher in the ranking.  Your items also appear in google shopping links as well.  In addition your store page gets a ranking on google so can appear to searches as well.

Each item also has a social media promotion button on them.  Setting up your account to those of your online ones is easy and not very technical, and if struggling Ebid does have tutorials for this.  

I will focus on social media in later posts.  

A good thing as well is Ebid’s Ninja Lister works quite well with eBay’s Turbo lister.  For ease of use Turbo lister is very simple, you can build your selling list on it and then export as a CSV document those items.  You can then Import that document onto Ninja lister and the items built will be on there.  Unfortunately neither work with Mac’s so one draw back.  You do have to make some adjustments but there is a way to make files up and organise it all so with minimal changes you can copy to all things like postage to different areas of the world.  Trial and error works well with Ninja lister.

Setting up a store on Ebid is easy, through your ‘my Ebid' links they have the store button, what you will need is a banner to upload, you can design these at Canva or Banner Jewel or just a quick search will reveal a number of free ebid banner makers.  Once this has been done you just need to decide on colour scheme, what to call your shop and categories, but don’t worry even when online all these can be changed if you feel like.  No coding, no HTML knowledge no PC skills apart from the basics needed.

I do suggest that you build how you want your auctions to look using word, pages etc then in the description box simply copy and paste under WYSIWYG option.  However all this can be exported from Turbo lister if going down that route.  The rest is simple box filling in.

All this is a start for you, listing your items can be done whenever you like and you can schedule start times if you wish (also free).  As much or as little as you want, however your work schedule does for you.

  

You will need to be patient as Ebid takes work, it takes your promotion and effort, but the fees saved justify that work and also at this time competition is not huge on there.  So you can be a big fish instead of a minnow battling upstream.  Sellers and buyers across the globe are starting to find it, but you will need to nudge them as well, put the links on your promotional emails, offer the discounts because of the fee structure you can afford to.  I generally put my items a bit cheaper on there and offer discounts for multi buys.  Also think, there are no recurring fees for non sales, no having to repost the item every 7 days (unless you want to) and pay for it.  You can leave your stock online until it’s sold or you change it, and editing is easy.  Time saving is huge, which to you as a small entrepreneur is vital.

One of my own examples of promoting Ebid is I have saved invoices with the links embedded into the invoice so when a customer buys off eBay, I send them a printed invoice but also email the invoice with any specific promotion direct.  You will know your customer base better than I, push people towards being regular visitors to your items, and lets face it it can be 24/7 for viewing without the costs of opening your premises all day or employing more people to do this.  You will know how your customers will react best and this all added to your business plan, and can be factored in to any future plans for your enterprise. 

I also use google translate on the invoice for a customers own language as have sold not only to the EU and US, but to places like India, Costa Rica and Brazil.  That personal touch can go a long way.

No one can tell you how much of an Impact going online will have, and a guru telling you they know they can boost your business by X amount is only after increasing their own cash.  Not saying don’t do the courses, there are some good ones out there, but get yourself started.  Get confident in using the equipment as you would in any other side of the business.  Ebid provides that start you need to enter the online world of retail, and it is fairly cheap to get going.  You will then have the ammunition to find the genuine help from the buzz word PR people.  When reading blogs about business, they put a lot in about their failures, however using Ebid eliminates a lot of that failure, you are using an established brand, all the work in the background has been done for you, no wordpress experiments, no template buying.  You may alter your listing but Ebid has a multi edit function which can shorten time for those must have alterations.  

I have been doing this for almost 20 years, and have explored many different options and ways to sell.  In the past you could weigh the bad of eBay against the fact that you sold, this has changed.  Also using social media to sell through such as Facebook sites has some advantage, but it relies upon honesty amongst strangers, and I don’t think i would feel comfortable giving private financial information like paypal address to someone on there.  However you can use Facebook to link to ebid stores, without using apps like Shopify.   

Ebid is growing, and fast.  It has millions of registered users across the globe.  In all the time I have been doing this, now is the time I have really seen a growth in sales on Ebid.  Now is a good time to get in, because they are a business like everyone else and once they become the viable replacement for other sites then that may lead to price rises etc, especially if the money men get involved.

Why am I wanting competition?

To be frank, the more people on there the more sales will happen, leading to a better bottom line for myself as well as others.  And instead of people talking about a certain other place, the TV shows etc might start using Ebid in their on air sketches and people will know what they mean.

One thing as a seller on there, I do take part in Ebid first, any packaging, tape, comic bags etc I check there first, even if there is a small difference in price sellers on Ebid generally offer discounts for repeat purchases as well.  The community is quite healthy and helpful and not obsessed with telling you how wonderful things are on the site, and how dare you say anything bad.  They take suggestions and criticism well and listen.  So if you want a category put it on the forums and they have obliged every time I have asked.  Also help is always given freely there, people feel a genuine loyalty to the site, something very rare.

If you wish to join Ebid just click here.  This is my buddy link I get no money (yet!!!!) from it but I can use the points to bid on promotional items.  You can join completely for free and it is just registering your name and email, no obligation.

Websites
Maxies Subbuteo
My Remote Hobby

My Ebid stores

Boarder Comics

Boarder Table Games

Maxies Subbuteo  

BGC Sports Cards Stickers

My eBay links

Comics        Subbuteo

Using Ebid To Grow

The Small Seller

Using Ebid to grow your business

I have been wanting to write about this for about 6 years now, never really finding the time to do so.  

A touch about me, I have been selling on and off the online auction circuit since about 1997.  I started like everyone else on Ebay, at the time they were free to list and you paid only on sales, imagine if you can an eBay that didn’t charge percentage on postage, stupid unexplained DSR’s and a seller could leave a negative back against a buyer who wanted something for nothing.

They were carefree days, you could look forward to selling on there, and even if things went wrong and sales did not go smoothly, you could accept a neg or a neutral (which is now classed a neg in all but name) and business went on.

Then eBay found new CEO’s, new board people, new investors all wanting more money, and in that time they forgot who their customer base was and went from the online ‘flea market’ to wanting to be amazon or 365 games etc.

What nobody actually explained to these soul suckers was that eBay had been set up for the small seller, the collector, the sole trader and things worked well.  There were a few con men out there, but feedback etc. took care of it, then eBay came in and took a shotgun to cure an itchy toe.  They forced hundreds of thousands off the site with idiotic rules and regulations that made selling on eBay a stressful experience, and all the time sucking up more money from a disgruntled customer base (and yes eBay the seller are your customers, the buyers are to be looked after by the sellers, if they don’t they wont buy from them again).

Back in 2001/2002 I noticed things change, and felt that 7 days was not enough and i did not want a store on eBay, so began looking for an alternative.  There was Ebid.

I joined them early and listed, and listed, unfortunately while sellers were getting tired of the fees and headaches of eBay and the encroachment of Chinese business able to smash sales due to their government paying for shortfalls in profit as long as they had generated sales (also what puzzles me to this day is how someone in Hong Kong can send something for £2 postage, yet it costs me to send £8???) the buyers were few and far between.  Also they were free from charging VAT etc. so the goods not only were being offered at cost they were outdoing our own business.

Now what has prompted me to start writing now?

Simply put I went on a ratings site through Ebid and even though the vast majority were 4 to 5 stars there were about 30 1 star reviews, so being a bit of an agony aunt nosey person, I went for a read. Virtually everyone was the same, moaning about paying for the £50 lifetime membership and not making sales.  There was no real complaints about the service Ebid supplied, just the £50 for a lifetime membership, but not even that is compulsory to sell there.

I don’t work for ebid, but felt this was wrong, as I have been looking into affiliate marketing etc, and getting websites up and running and for a number of years now looking at e-commerce sites., An e-commerce site costs start at £20-£30 per month all rising the more items you want to list.

I ask where could you get an established site, with security for both buyer and seller, an invoicing package, 5 stores and unlimited items to list all for £50 one off payment, then 2% fees if you happen to want that style of listing.

Ebid has faults, it needs to get an advertising fund ready, I have suggested that it go through crowdfunding so it can get good you tube videos made etc.  They have the things in place to do this.  Buyers are still low on there, but sales are happening all the time, not once every few months like old, some have made ebid work very well for them with ratings in the thousands.  However it still has a way to go.

It can be a little more complex than eBay and it’s ninja lister does take some working out, but these are things that can be fixed or dealt with if you give yourself time.

As a small seller you need to treat ebid like you would your own site, you market your products, you build links and look at SEO ratings to get noticed.  it takes work on your part, but fortunately ebid has provided links from the listing page direct to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+, also you can make links to Tumblr, all this is time saving if you set up correct in the first place.

You also have a far more varied way of listing on ebid than anywhere else, it is more in your control, if you want 7 day auctions, you can have them  want a timer from first bid, want to run until item is sold, they are here.  One thing I would suggest is don’t put items on low hoping for bids, ebid still doesn’t have the buyers as yet for that to work, but as an e-commerce store what more do you want?

Should you choose ebid or ebay?

Simply put, no!  use both.

Why pay for eBay and if you are why are you still doing so.  We all hear oh put that on eBay it will get loads of bids, unfortunately those days have all but disappeared and sales on eBay have dwindled badly.  It is quite rare for items to get loads of bids these days.  Saying that, eBay still is a great advertising tool for you as a small seller.  

Most of the time you have 20 free listings a month (WOW), but I think and this is just an observation, that the free listing weekends and months now are coming more frequent and this may be due to eBay realising it has milked people for too long.  Use them, put your items there, use a combination of auctions and buy it now listings.

However remember you are limited to maybe 100 listings a month to start, and if your exceed the 20 or agreement limit you then pay a listing fee as well as every other fee. 

I may seem down on eBay as In the past have fallen foul of their maddening policies on sellers who don’t give them tons of money.  I have been there when eBay have closed all my auctions stating having 3 negative feedbacks off 1 person when I had 890 positive ones was a problem.  I asked them what company would consider a 99.9% positive rating as poor, still waiting for an answer on that, only 10 years and counting.  They also tried to charge me for listing that they ended without warning, but i fought that and won, and at that time I was almost at power seller status without being a drop shipper or limited company that can have hundreds of negatives.

Initially I was going to call this blog ‘How to use eBay, don’t let eBay use you!’  But I have branched out into other areas and will in future posts talk about using social media.

How I do use eBay is slowly and not have too much on there, I hold 2 accounts, one for Subbuteo and one for comics and game pieces, so if problems develop again most of my items stay on ebid.

I tend to put my comics on for 7 days, if doesn’t sell then I put on for 30 days with BIN or best offer.  if it doesn’t sell then it goes onto my ebid store.  

I have also got prepared invoice pages with links to my various stores which I email and post with an item, as well as all my advertising material, flyers, business cards, social media posts and sticky labels all show ebid.

You as a seller have to work, drag those buyers over, explain that the deal you offer is so much better as well.  This works far better too with buy it nows as ebay are trying to stop combining postage on these sales too.

Sales on eBay is still a bit better than ebid, but not by too much these days, however items that you feel could get bids on, or an item you feel the market will drive the price is still worth putting on but check out these fees to see that even selling on eBay even with free listings is not cheap.

Here is an example of the fee structure, remember you have to pay 10% on postage as well as your item on eBay all to make you offer free postage, yet postage let alone packaging is not free.

Item sells £20 plus £4 postage & package

Ebay fees £2.40 plus paypal £1.01

Ebid 40p and you can choose payment method.

To use eBay as well you have to offer paypal, on ebid all payments can be accepted even cash.

You may ask that I am almost expecting to have my account stopped, unfortunately check out most comments about eBay from small traders, private sellers etc and you will see there has been a 10 year drive to force them off, and with the complicated DSR’s which mark a 4 star as a fail and you find that you suddenly have a suspension for no real reason.  In fact the only way to stay on ebay's good side is to lose money, so all you are doing in fact is putting money in their pockets with your hard work.

It may seem all doom and gloom, but with a bit of work and using other sites you can beat the eBay beast.  I use ebid as have checked out sites like Etsy, Amazon, 365 games etc and they charge a heck of a lot more and are just as restrictive as eBay.  But explore those options too, they may suit your business model.

To join ebid you can click here, it is free and no obligation,  I don't get any money but I do get buddy points.

p.s. one last thing, your listings appear on all Ebid sites, there is no ebid UK, ebid USA, so you have access to every member all the time.

Websites
Maxies Subbuteo
My Remote Hobby

My Ebid stores

Boarder Comics

Boarder Table Games

Maxies Subbuteo  

BGC Sports Cards Stickers

My eBay links

Comics        Subbuteo