MBA1634 3 Reasons Not To Sell Your Products on eBay

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 show. Business truths delivered daily every single day with their daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the hundred dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and in today's lesson you will learn three reasons not to sell your products on ebay. Many e commerce businesses and people that sell physical products find large marketplaces like ebay attractive. They think, hey, people are going there anyway. They're going to be searching for products. I should be there. I should be showing my products. Where's the downside? Well I could tell you from firsthand experience because I had an ebay store in the past. There are some big disadvantages to displaying your products on ebay. There's a whole lot more than three. But I'm going to give you three big reasons why why you don't want to be on ebay, where you want to keep your products on your own website and sell it from your own property. Like with a Shopify store, if you sell physical products you need to listen up because there are some big mistakes people are making that are really hard to back out of, hard to reverse once you make them. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Ebay is still a huge player in e commerce, especially internationally. Yes, Amazon is the big player, but ebay is right there and in some countries the only player. So naturally, people that run e commerce stores have physical products will explore the idea of, hey, let me put up my, my products up on ebay so I can leverage that power, so I can leverage that traffic. In a lot of ways, it's fool's gold. And let me tell you why. I'm gonna put aside all the obvious reasons why ebay has some negatives, like the fact that they will charge you a cut of your sales every time you sell something because you're using their platform. I want to highlight three big reasons that can hurt your brand and business long term. Ebay in a lot of ways is like shark infested waters. There's a lot of competitors in there and there's a lot of people that are looking for interesting products that you like, yours that are unique, that are somewhat different from the competition because guess what, they want to rip you off. They want to duplicate, replicate your product. There are tons of ebay stores that just exclusively do this, and I know this from firsthand experience, as soon as your product starts to trend, starts to get some traction, starts being recommended by ebay because of its, you know, popularity, these companies will analyze your page, even buy your product and go ahead and duplicate it for a fraction of the price price, because they have the mass production and the facilities for it. And a few months, even sometimes a few weeks later, your precious product ends up in their listing and they undercut your price. Ebay is not very good at sort of policing this because it's such a huge marketplace and it's really kind of hard for them to police it and to verify. So you're opening up yourself to being ripped off and really not being relevant. And the problem is, is that now there's an ebay seller that's selling your exact product that they probably would never know about unless you were on eBay versus just selling in your own store on your own website. Number two, and this is a huge one that people overlook, is that you can't control the customer experience. Ebay is an experience on its own. The way people buy, the way they check out or what they're offered at checkout, upsells, downsells, follow up, even the way you communicate with the customers during and after the sale is all up to ebay's system. And you really have no control over that versus Having your own website, your own store, Even if you use a platform like Shopify, which allow you to really customize the checkout experience, the whole experience for the customer of really their buying journey and really offering tailor made suggestions based on the items that they choose. Instead, ebay will suggest other items from other sellers rather than on your site. You'll be suggesting products that you offer, right, that would work well for that customer as an upsell or checkout offer. You can communicate directly with the customer the way you like, whether it's via chat or via text or via email. You can set your own policies, whether it's for returns or shipping. You control the whole experience. And if you don't believe me, go ahead on ebay and look at some of the negative reviews of any product. The vast majority of those reviews are not about the product or about the experience. Whether it's the way it's shipped or the way that it was delivered, or the way it was presented or the way it was communicated. The whole experience is really what they're reviewing and not really the product. So you're getting a bad review based on an experience that you don't really have full control over on eBay. The third reason is probably the biggest reason of all and is that you're building on quicksand. What do I mean by this? You're selling your products and services on somebody else's platform. If for any reason ebay wants to remove your products close, your store is going to decide not to sell your type of product anymore on ebay. You're at their mercy. And you've built this customer chain through ebay and that gets cut off in one moment. This could be the end of your business as you know it, versus you having full control over how you sell your product on your website. You're building on solid ground. It may take you a little bit longer to market your website, to sell your products in an exclusive store, to, you know, leverage your search engine optimization, to leverage your email marketing and your blog and your content marketing. But it's well worth it because it's an investment that will pay for itself tenfold and more over the years. And again, you hold the keys. You own the property. This is why traditional brick and mortar businesses, even like a store in the mall, their lease is rock solid. They make sure that they have long term leases, that the conditions of kicking them out are very, very clear and give them enough warning. Because hey, if you're getting all your business from a certain amount of foot traffic in a mall and that's your store, that's your bread and butter. Relocating is not easy. And that's why they make sure, hey, you can't just, you know, pull me out of business. Out of no time, nowhere. Now, platforms like ebay can do this. It's in their rights. They can do this at any time with no warning. And you go from six figures in sales to zero literally overnight. If that scares you, it should, because you should be building on your own property, on your own website. It's worth the investment. You heard me mention Shopify a few times in today's episode. It's my recommendation when it comes to building an e commerce store, it's the most robust kind of e commerce tool out there, highly customizable, and it's your own.

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As I mentioned, I had an ebay store back in the day over 15 years ago when ebay was really rocking and rolling. It was the wild west and it was very, very lucrative to be a part of ebay that time, you know, there was a lot of opportunity. But one of the things I have to say is ebay is probably a good ground for testing for idea validation. You don't want to live there. You want to basically have a hotel stay there. You just want to kind of test it out, see how it feels. See if your product sells, but leave immediately. Okay? This is the only kind of utilization I would say you should use it for. And of course ebay is great if you're selling personal items, things you're trying to get rid of, trying to sell your car, trying to sell your computer, you're not trying to build a recurring business where customers are having experience and they're coming back to you. This is totally different. Anytime you see an opportunity business that looks kind of like this looks easy. This looks like too good to be true. It's probably too good to be true. Okay. It's probably, you know, a catch there. You gotta see, hey, why is it so lucrative? Why is it such a such an attractive thing? What is the downside? And this is why I wanted to deliver today's lesson. That wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening. If you love it, you're here. Hit subscribe right now. So you never miss a beat by hitting subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Whether it's Stitcher Radio or Apple Podcasts or Himalaya or Spotify, you get our next episode automatically right on your device. Before I go, I want to leave you with this I was a part of ebay in the early days and it was never really intended to be a place for big business, for actual businesses. It was seen as more of like an online garage sale, a peer to peer place for people to sell their personal items, use items, use books and clothes. But it evolved over time, just like any product or any service. And it's predominantly now bigger businesses selling products, thousands of products on their stores, from iPhone accessories to pet accessories, from clothing to food to shoes. You get it. I just find it interesting that, you know, products will start out one way and evolve over time. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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