Most of the people who make money from eBay don’t actually make all of it by selling on eBay alone. There are many ways you can tap into your eBay business to give your existing businesses a helping hand.

1. Supply Issues

If you have any leftover stock or used items from another business you run, you can sell them on eBay? You can make this a regular thing, using it to get rid of things that won’t sell for the premium you ask for in a shop, or items that are no longer in demand in the town or city where your business is based.

You can really make a lot of money this way, if you know what you’re doing. Since you are already be an expert in the items you’re selling, using them in your business on a daily basis, you will know the true value of those items - their quality and saleability. eBay presents a whole new market for your old inventory!

Not only can you use eBay to dispose of old stock, but your excellent eBay reputation makes you a great buyer! If there’s ever anything you need for your business, the chances are you’ll be able to get it on eBay for a discount.

2. Sales Issues

This is where the true power of eBay lies. eBay give you an ‘About Me’ page, where you can write anything you like and link anywhere you like. This means that you can get traffic to your business’ website by linking to your website from your About Me page and linking to your About Me page from each auction.

To create an About Me page, just click on ‘Community’ on the toolbar, look at the menu on the right hand side for “My World” and click on it.  You will be taken to a screen where you can upload a picture of yourself and write about youself, and your website and provide a link to your website. Once you’ve done this, you should start to notice an increase in traffic to your business website.

There are thousands of people who swear by this technique to drive traffic from eBay to their website - with a little persuasive sales copy on your site, you can sell directly to buyers, cutting out the eBay middleman. What’s more, all the traffic you’ll get will be targeted - because the people who click through were interested in your auction to begin with.

This can be a really powerful technique, especially if you’ve already got an e-commerce site. Even if you haven’t, you might find it worth your time to set up a website that does nothing but list your eBay inventory with a few dollars off each item, with a PayPal ‘Buy Now’ button for each item. Then simply make the link to your About Me page read ‘Visit my website for even more bargains!’, and you’re done.

Now that you’ve seen how to drive visitors to your website, maybe you’d like a little help getting your auction in front of buyers. The next post will show you the secrets of taming the eBay search engine.