Anyone sell on their own website along with selling on eBay?

[moviemerchmania]

I'm just curious if anyone runs their own website and sell on eBay.

I primarily sell cards and movies and was considering open both an eBay store along with my own website.

In particular im interested if anyone has opened their own web store and the problems and success they have encountered.

My biggest concern would be starting a website to sell my products and not have any traffic.

[ricarmic]

At one time, many years ago though, I had my own website as well as selling on eBay etc. The problem isn't having a website, it is having people come to your website. Generally pulling people to your website costs time and money. At the time I shut down my own website, I was selling more in a week on ebay than a year on my own website....

[mr.elmwood]

Another seller and I were chatting about this. eBay is so much easier to use. Everything is in pplace and already administered for us.

If I had a highly specialized item that was not eBay suitable, sure, I would take a shot at it. That is not the case.

Where else am I going to find worldwide exposure with an integrated message and payment system?

[pierrelebel]

Back in the last century, when I opened my eBay store, I had a website offering items similar to those listed on eBay and much more.  I closed the website three years ago as I was getting ready to retire.

What I did was very simple and it worked: whenever a buyer would purchase from me on eBay (or elsewhere online, as I sold on Amazon, Yahoo, Zillions-of-Stamps, etc...) I would direct them to my website for future purchases,  Their email address would be added to my mailing list.  Since I sold to collectors, it made sense for them to come back.

Generally, prices on my website were 5% to 10% lower than on eBay (or other online sites).  Basically fee savings were passed on to buyers who were invited to pay by personal cheques, money orders, bank email money transfer (Interac), cash, etc...  Many buyers prefer those methods of payment to PayPal or other online services where they have to give their credit card and/or banking information.

After ten years, slightly more than half my overall annual volume came from my website.

What one needs is patience.  It takes years to attract traffic.

[mr.elmwood]

My genre does not attract much in the way of repeat sales. I would need tens of thousands of tertiary parts, aka "Have ya got.....?".

I know a guy like that. He has a warehouse with about 2,000 sq metres and his racks go 4 metres in the air.

[moviemerchmania]

Okay, thanks for the reply's guys. If I did make a website it would be to fully dedicated to the sale of movies. I wonder if movies in particular would be more successful at selling at my own web store compared to items in other categories.

[reallynicestamps]

The eBay DVD sellers with tens of thousands of items and feedback probably also have their own websites and also sell on Amazon.

Know your competition before you spend any money.

[brandeentertainment]

My advice is wait till your big enough to do it ... MAke sure you have all the connections in place to compete etc...

I want to open my own site but I don't have the time to do it so I don't and I am shrinking my store not growing ...

i have made connections over my time that can easily have me compete with Amazon,Inetvideos and many others but I don't have the time for it anymore Well I should say my family deserves my time more then my business...

If you can not compete with the big boys don't try to .....

I have direct connections with all major movie manufacturers except Disney and I the same supplier as I net video and more  but I do not have time or deep enough pockets...

I mean I can wholesale blu rays all day For $1-$2 making 50-200% but I need the time that i do not have which is a shame becaus I have some amazing suppliers to which the only way to have them is to spend 100,000 $$ or find the right circle of people that make of the $100,000 orders..

i have 1 supplier that does not accept  any order of less then 180,000 pieces now try that one on for size LOL

[moviemerchmania]

I currently have about half my inventory listed on eBay, I have considered amazon but find the cost of doing business on amazon is too high for me as it seems like the majority of movies sell for quite a bit less. The competition is much larger, and the seller fees are too high. 

At the moment I have not established any solid suppliers besides one company I deal with as ( like brendenentertainment mentioned) many suppliers require you purchase tens of thousands worth of inventory which I am not prepared to expand to that extreme or take the risks at this time.

[2014cahefo]

Why not do both? Ebay has a lot of traffic, but not everyone is on ebay. Why not use your ebay store to redirect traffic to your own?
This way, in effect, you have may other listings then what ebay is limiting you to. If your products are good and legit, you can capitalize on both. The only downside I can see is the payment processor. That is the benefit of having your own website, is the choice of payments you can/want to take. 

You can start  your own website and compare the sold items between your ebay store and your own website. But don't spend a lot of money on your site hiring professional web designers. First start with a simple site using templates and wait for the result. If you compare reviews of best web hosting sites you will see Godaddy, Hostgator and Bluehost are the most recommended companies by users. Especially Godaddy is one of the most popular ones because users can bill monthly for their cheap web hosting, email hosting and domain registration services.

According to my experience, I rank web hosts below:

1- http://www.godaddy.com
2- http://www.hostgator.com
3- http://www.bluehost.com

Inmotionhosting and Dreamhost are your other good options.