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5 reasons your brand should be selling on eBay

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

eBay was founded in 1995 and was one of the original success stories of the dot com boom. However, nowadays it can be overlooked by brands as they begin their e-commerce journey and take a b-line for Amazon. We believe that a lot of brands miss a huge opportunity by bypassing eBay and should consider selling their products on this worldwide e-commerce platform.

In this blog, we are going to cover the pros of selling on eBay and how to see if it is right for your brand using examples of our awesome clients that have benefited massively from expanding their selling to eBay!

5 pros of selling on eBay
– at a glance

  1. Protect your brand
  2. Reach a different market
  3. Cheaper fees/commission than Amazon!
  4. Utilise shipping methods already in place
  5. Easy and user-friendly design

1. Protect your brand

eBay is full of third party sellers, so if you’re not selling your products on eBay – somebody else probably is! By listing your own products on eBay, you have full control over how that product is represented. Gain consumers’ trust with high-quality products sold using the right branding, excellent images and your brand’s tone of voice with the right customer service.

Hillfarm eBay Shop Example - eBay Shop Service - marketplace amp

2. Reach a different market

There are 187 million eBay users worldwide, which is a 7.47% increase from last year! This is not a stale market. In fact, it’s thriving with the eBay app used by 35% of US mobile users. eBay hasn’t just seen growth in the US, with approximately 19 million Brits shopping on eBay each and every month!

By listing your products on multiple marketplaces, you can expand your reach and accelerate sales.

3. Cheaper fees/commission than Amazon

Fees on eBay and Amazon differ depending on the category of products, shipment type and other added extras but overall eBay’s fees are lower and more flexible than Amazon, ranging from 5% to 15% – leaving your brand with a higher profit margin!

To make things easy, there’s an eBay fee calculator for you to see the exact costs before signing up.

4. Utilise shipping methods that are already in place

For a lot of brands, Amazon is the next step after already completing their own e-commerce website to help their online presence and generate more sales. This means that they already have a warehouse and shipping capabilities in house. Unlike Amazon, eBay doesn’t offer its own fulfilment method. However, this does mean that brands can save on shipping costs by using what is already available, without paying Amazon’s prices, and yet still reach massive marketplaces audiences. This is especially true for products that are larger/heavier, allowing for more competitively priced courier services than that of Amazon.

5. Easy and user-friendly design

If you are new to marketplaces, the back-end can be a very confusing place. Luckily eBay has an easy-to-use interface to help even the most novice user find their way around. To help you on your way, we’ve put together an eBay glossary with all the terms and acronyms you’ll ever need!

Hillfarms Example - eBay SEO service - ebay shop - eBay agency - marketplace amp

How to decide if eBay is right for your brand?

Before signing up to eBay, ask yourself these three questions;

  • Will eBay increase my profit margin?
  • Do I have the capability to manage the shipping and delivery?
  • Do I have the time in-house to set up and manage different marketplaces?

First, start with the market research

Even with its massive customer base, there are certain things that sell great on eBay and others that don’t… For example, when looking at ways to accelerate sales for the pet food brand, Gilbertson and Page, we found that in the last 365 days there were 64000 searches for dog food and £4.3million in dry dog food sales! This showed the potential demand for our client’s product on Amazon (which we manage) and eBay too.

Luckily, Gilbertson and Page have their own warehouse and found that shipping their dog food via a courier service was much cheaper than through Amazon’s FBA. This is due to the weight and pack size – not to mention that more bulk buying happens on eBay, allowing them to sell multipacks at no extra cost. 

This meant that they were able to reach a bigger, interested audience and increase their profit margin with a 16% increase in conversion rate!

Having a multichannel e-commerce presence is hugely beneficial for brands selling online but constantly exploring new marketplace opportunities and managing multiple accounts can be massively time-consuming. That’s where a marketplace agency comes in.

Here at amp, we were able to find solutions and opportunities for Gilbertson and Page to help them grow their online presence and amplify their sales. But there is more than just listing your products on eBay that makes it successful!

Once we set up the Gilbertson and Page eBay account, the next stage was to optimise their product listings by curating content and using the right keywords. After this, we created advertisements to promote their listings to the top of the search results. We continued to test different ads to maximise their return on ad spend (ROAS). By doing this we were able to decrease their advertising cost of sale (ACoS) to 5.5% compared to an average of 10% ACoS on Amazon.

Gilbertson and Page didn’t have the expertise or the ability to spend the time in-house to expand their e-commerce presence. With our dedicated team of experts, Gilbertson and Page were able to achieve higher profit margins and reach a much wider audience.

There is huge potential for brands on eBay and it is definitely a marketplace to consider for your multichannel e-commerce strategy. If you need help setting up your brand on eBay or other online marketplaces, get in touch! Our team of e-commerce experts are here to help.

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