With eBay making so many changes and so many eBay sellers becoming unhappy now may be the best time to start an eCommerce website. A while back eBay was a great place to get your feet wet so to speak with selling online, you could open up an eBay store, customize it and get sales almost instantly and actually make some profit. Starting an eCommerce website took a little longer, almost like a steam locomotive, it had to build up steam and there was some time before you could really see sales from it.

We are not seeing that now, we are seeing a lot of people doing a lot of work on eBay only to make a small profit, things do change. In my opinion if it’s not broke don’t fix it but who am I? The bottom line is even back in eBay’s prime when life was better on eBay you were still in business with eBay. You did most of the work, the listing, the advertising, the packing, the shipping and the good folks at eBay sat back and collected a profit plus they were partners in your customer base.

Several years ago there were some top power sellers that left eBay, they took the money they spent in eBay fees per month and put it toward internet marketing, pay per click and different things. They were able to double in one year what they did on eBay. Personally I think more people should have followed their example then.

With the rise in popularity of social media marketing there has never been a better time to make the transition from eBay to your own eCommerce website. You will not only save in eBay fees but you will also own 100% of your client base. You will also be building an asset that later on you can sell or pass down to someone else unlike an eBay business that you don’t really have ownership to.

If you have not started selling on eBay yet and you’re just thinking about it you may want to think long and hard, there are other options out there. If you do currently have an eBay store you do want to take advantage of what you have if you are making sales. Spend a little time and money to make it professional but keep in mind not to put all your eggs in one basket. Focus on the long term goal of your own website and build something that will belong to you and only you.

We have decided to give away an eCommerce website and one year hosting in a drawing that will be held after March 29th. This is a fully functional eCommerce website using the same software that we use for all of our eCommerce websites. It’s packed with features and one of the most SEO friendly shopping carts on the internet.

You also get one (1) year of hosting free.

You can read more about it and enter here.

You only have until midnight on Sunday March 29th to register.

The winner will be posted here after March 29th.

Setting up an eBay Store is one of the easiest ways to kick start your online business and build your brand. Here is the formula:

Set up an eBay store (basic level at $15.95 per month).You can easily set up your store on eBay in a matter of minutes and be selling soon after. The beauty of eBay is that you have customers waiting to buy your products. We have seen clients start making sales as soon as a day after listing items in their eBay store.

As you set up your store pay close attention to what you name it, make sure you get some key words in your store name and separate them with hyphens. Also, you want to go buy a domain name at some place like GoDaddy and point it to your eBay Store. This will not only make it easier to market your store but will help get some age and use on your domain name for the sake of the search engines.

Once your store is set up you might want to add a custom eBay Store design to it. Having a custom designed eBay Store will build credibility and let your visitors know that you really do care about them and your business. It will also set you apart from your competitors that are using the generic templates that eBay provides for their stores.

Now you want to optimize your eBay Store, you are allowed to have custom pages and you should take advantage of them. Use these custom pages to talk about what you are selling, making sure you use good key words in your text. I have seen many eBay Stores show up very high on Google searches.

If you have a good product with a good price point you should start getting sales. Some people like to sell from their store for a while but then they see that they are paying a lot of fees to eBay so it’s time to add to the formula.

Set up or have a professional set up a custom ecommerce website for your business. Remember that domain name you pointed to your eBay Store? That is what you want to use for your website. Forget about using ProStores or Yahoo Stores, you don’t really have the flexibility or control to design, optimize or market these the way you need to.

Since you have started building your brand already with your eBay store you want to make sure your website matches the look of your eBay Store, same logo, same name, same colors, etc.

You want to get those people buying from you on eBay converted over to your website. eBay is very strict about linking directly from eBay so to be safe you need to a little old school. Let’s say you have someone purchase an item on eBay, you will be shipping it to them so here’s what you do. (You will need a shopping cart that will let you generate coupon codes.) Generate a coupon code for a dollar amount or a percentage off, take that code and add it to a “Thank You” note that you will drop in with the package you are shipping. Thank them for their purchase on eBay and tell them as a token of your appreciation you have included a coupon for a discount on their next purchase from your website. They can use it or give it to a family member or friend.

You will start converting people from your eBay store (Where you are a partner with eBay, they are owners of your customer too.) to your website, they will be your customers and yours alone. Now you are building a solid business that is an asset, you can keep it or sell it, it and the customers belong solely to you and you used your eBay Store to get you there.