Use eBay to Generate Website Traffic
If you're looking for a way to market your website, and you
haven't considered using eBay, then you could very well be
missing out on one of the lowest cost website marketing options
around. Let me explain...
Everyone is looking for a way to generate targeted website
traffic at the lowest possible cost, but it seems that a whole
lot of people are overlooking an awesome website marketing tool
that is probably already book-marked inside their browser - eBay.
EBay has over 65 million registered users buying, selling and
browsing all kinds of products around the clock. Just think,
what if we (website owners) had a way to funnel some of that
traffic off onto our website? Well, we do, and we can do it
relatively cheaply!
The key to accomplishing this is the eBay 'Me' page. The eBay Me
page is sort of a profile-like page that you setup for your eBay
ID. When potential customers look at your auctions, and your ID,
they will see a little 'Me' icon graphic that links to your Me
page. And it's very important to note: your Me page can link
to your website.
Let's see how this could work with an example. Let's say you
have a website that sells a course on how to make money using
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines and you want to get traffic
from eBay to this website.
A good way to go about doing this is to create a small report on
PPC Advertising that you can market on eBay. This report should
contain useful information, but it should also pre-sell your
main product - your PPC course on your website. Your PPC report
should be something that you're willing to give away or sell for
very little, in the following example, you'll be selling it for
99 cents.
You then need two more things: an enticing auction
advertisement, and an enticing Me page that drives visitors back
to your website.
You're now ready to open your auction. The particular auction
you're going to create should be a Featured Plus auction, which
means it is displayed at the top of the auction listings before
the non-Featured auctions (regular auctions). You will also want
the auction to be a Dutch auction, which means you can sell
multiple items from the same auction. A Featured Plus auction
will cost around $20.00 to post, along with about $5 - $6 of
miscellaneous posting fees including the Dutch auction fee. So
your cost for selling a low-cost report in this manner will
typically be about $26.00.
Now, I hate to go over figures because there's just so much that
contributes to the outcome of those figures, but let me throw
out some typical scenarios as I experienced them.
If your auction has an enticing title, you could very possibly
get 100-300 visitors to your auction. I've personally seen
auctions that sell home business informational products get up
to 1500 visitors! Let's say you get 150. Of that 150, about 20%
will visit your website through your Me page, which works out to
about 30 visits, again my experience.
Of the 150 visits to your auction, you will generate some sales
for your report. If the auction copy is good, it isn't uncommon
to get 10% - 20% sales, especially at the 99 cents range, which
works out to 15-30 purchases. Let's say you generate 15% sales,
which works out to 22 sales (rounding down).
Now let's tally everything up. At the end of the auction, you've
spent $26.00 on the auction itself. You made $22.00 on the
report sales. And you generated 30 website visits. If we do the
math, you came out paying about 13 cents for each website
visitor ($26.00-$22.00/30 visits). Plus, you have a copy of your
report in the hands of 22 hot prospects (remember your report
pre-sells your website PPC course). Can it get better than that?
The answer is yes! I've been conservative with these figures.
The fact is, you can actually make money and drive traffic to
your website with some practice/tweaking.
Interesting to note, at the time of this writing, Overture was
charging anywhere from $0.51 for the tenth place position and
$2.55 for the number 1 place position for the "PPC" keyword. In
our example, we generated 30 visits for 13 cents per visit from
1 auction. What if you had 10 or 30 of these types of auctions
running?
Granted, I realize that this example may not fit everyone's
situation, but you should be able to apply it to some extent.
The formula is really quite simple: 1. Sell something that
pertains to your website that you can give away or sell for very
little. Information is the perfect product.
2. Then make sure your auction (and auction title) is extremely
enticing - try to drive as much traffic to your auction as
possible.
3. Then make sure your Me page drives the visitor to your
website (maybe offer something free, like another report).
Give it a try... you may have to tweak it here or there... but
the formula does work.
Sincerely,
Michael Ellis