What do Adwords and eBay have in Common?
Posted by: Socrates Socratous on: Mar 25th, 2007Over the past few years I sold thousands of items
on eBay (all of them digital products) before I
discovered the idea I am going to share with you
in this blog post.
You can sell almost anything you want on ebay as
long as it is legal and not alive.
That includes selling ebooks and other digital
downloads.
I Bet you already knew that…
Am I really wasting my time here?
I dont think so!Â
See, I talk with many of my thousands MyDD customers
on a daily basis and I found out that around 95% fail
to see the bigger picture.
Most of these people are satisfied making a few bucks
per ebook they sell on eBay. I say satisfied because
they DONT know what I am about to share with you.
eBay is an excellent source of targetted traffic.
Traffic from eBay is very different than the traffic
from PPC and Google Adwords.
WHY?
Because people that browse on eBay are Looking to
BUY something, meaning they are customers.
People that browse Google are mostly looking for free
information.
Got that?
The best way to use eBay is for LEAD GENERATION. in
other words, sell some ebooks on ebay for cheap with
the intention of taking that new customer you got
for $5 and upsell something that is worth $65.
If it costs you $1 in fees to make that $5 sale, you
will need to sell 1000 ebooks every month in order to
make $4000.
That requires a lot of time and work to reach that level
not including the customer service headache of 1000
people a month, if you actually manage to sell 1000
Most people GIVE UP before they even come close to that
Now if you immediately offer an upsell for $65 to all
of your $5 customers, and lets say 1 out of 4 takes
your offer. that means for every 4 customers you make
((4 * $4) + $65) =$81.
That gives you a profit of about $20 per customer
instead of $4. Now you only need to make 200 sales a
month to reach $4000. that comes down to about 7 sales
a day. which is very doable on ebay.
Now let me explain how this compares to google adwords.
When you post a listing on eBay you need to pay fees.
Lets say you pay 35 cents to post an ad for 7 days.
If you get 7 people to click on your ad, in reality
you paid 5 cents per click.
The way people find your ad on ebay is by searching
using the eBay search function.
Ebay will look for the search term in all listing titles
in their system and will show all listings that contain the
search term.
So if you have a keyword-packed title in your ebay
listing, your ad will show every time someone searches
for those keywords, and you will get more clicks for the
same 35 cents.
That my friend, is what ebay and adwords have in common.
Your goal is to setup your listings so that they are
keyword packed to get more clicks for the same money.
THEN, take those leads you generated, and leverage them.
This is the way to make the real money on eBay. It is
also the way to test your sales pages and processes
before moving into Adwords.
That is the secret to eBay and adwords success,
LEVERAGE your LEADS.
Stay tuned for my email tomorrow where I will reveal
the name of the lucky blog poster. Make sure to post
your comments below to get a chance of winning the
“mystery gift”
Till Tomorrow,
Partner to Your Success,
-Socrates Socratous
P.S. If you missed my previous emails, you can find them
posted on this blog. Just click on “Home” from the links
above and navigate Throught the previous posts.Â
Dont forget to post your comments. Talk to you tomorrow.
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I suppose you should track your traffic to see which keywords work best. Having a product that was relevant to top keywords would seem to be the start.
several questions.
i set up ppc on a seperate comp that was supposed to run on its own and generate clicks … never happened.
i sell a lot on ebay and been having a hard time automating the system . software all promises but none deliver so far
opinion help ?
Good idea! Gives me a lot to consider! Thanks!
The other advantage is that with ebay you automatically get their name and email address, instead of having to use a squeeze page. I generally sell hard print books, as I want their postal address also!
Great info, looking forward to the next step.
Al
Ebay and Adsense seem to work just like business in the real world, “find a need and fill it”, “find a problem and solve it”, only online it is soooo much easier to do when just about all you have to do is look at what the searches are for!
Free info (adsense sites) are great to collect lists of potential customers in whatever niche their interest is in.
Adsense sites can have links to affiliate products and back end sales too which pay well!
BusyBee
Thanks, Socrates.
I too forget to choose TOP KEYWORDS when I create my ebay Titles. Thanks for the reminder.
Selling a $5 dollar product and then upselling to $65 item – @ a 25% conversion rate(1 out of 4). Not realistic.
Not going to happen. First off, people who shop on eBay are looking for the best price.
Making the leap from $5 to $65 is very difficult, regardless of the product.
Selling 1000 $5 products with a low end auction, for a cost of $1 – improbable.
Your logic is beyond optimistic.
Google people are looking for free information? How can you post the huge number of sales in prior emails and then say that?
What are you smoking?
It sounds much more profitable when you describe it that way. Millions of people per day wanting to spend their money, just looking for the right item. Additionally, ebay has really added some very helpful tools, like Pulse, that show what is going on at any given time and almost hand markets to you on a silver platter.
I guess the really neat thing about it is that within a category they show you the top searches, same way within a sub-category. Wow! Talk about automatic related product ideas. Thanks again!
The lesson for everyone is you need a list, a list of buyers, that is more likely to come from ebay than anywhere else.
Well i have in my personal page a link to my landing page or squeeze page how you want to call it because ebay .it dont have ads so wich will be the way in my case to get more leads?
http://stores.ebay.it/Shopitaliano
i agree that 25% is not realistic!!!
OK, how do I sell my astrological services on eBay using the logic from this post? Do I offer some kind of “small” service for a very low price and then try to make them buy more expensive services of mine?
Or do I have to sell some kind of report for almost free in order to get a list of buyers, which would hopefully become my astrological customers, somewhat later!?
By the way, I do have your MyDD program but I cannot use it since there is no PayPal in my country.
Anyways, thank you for getting me think of eBay once again.
Hey folks,
thank you for your comments so far. keep them coming.
Bill, In my own tests I acheved a 30% conversion rate on an upsel and that was $67. Depends on the product and how you setup your system on the first place.
On a second test, I was able to upsell recurring products of $10 a month up to $25 a month. Again, it depends on your front end and how you do the upsell.
I am not saying you will get the same results as me, but I have friends that upsell thousands of dollars worth of coaching programs on the phone with $20 front ends. (these coaching programs range from $2000 to $15000 per customer)
Once again, depending what the front end is and HOW you do the upsell.
My logic is not optimistic. It is based on facts.
Regarding what I said about google surfers, it is 100% true. that is why the conversion rate from google adwords is lower than the conversion on ebay.
My ebay listings will convert 9% – 18% (based on the clicks I get in my listings) and 48% of the listings will result in sales.
on my adwords I convert from 0.6% to 1.5% (in the examples I shared.)
It is different type of traffic, but if you are not using it, you are leaving money on the table.
After I convert the front end, the backend convertion is pretty much the same from both traffic sources. The idea is to be able to get the lead and leverage it.
Regarding what I smoke, I cannot reveal that here. I could get in trouble 😀
Please keep the comments coming.
Will be back later to answer more questions
regards,
-Socrates Socratous
It is funny that is what I have been trying to do the past 2 months I would el e-books on ebay for a penny anddirect them to my site http://www.umakecents.com then hopefulythey would buy my upsale (e-book package for $9.97) or if not maybe jst a click or two on my googe ads
hmmmm
I also am experimenting with http://www.dunmorephoto.com trying to get more hits from google, anybody have any sugestions
Jim
Hi Socrates,
You brought up some fantastic and very useful information that is very simple to understand and implement.
Now I know how to use ebay to sell my digital product that I am creating.
What I can’t figure out, if for example, you have an item for sale on ebay and lets say you have 700 visitors. When the auction is over you have one name and one email address. What about the other 699? Is there some way to capture their information?
Shit !!!!!!!!
I am new to all this and must say that you have all just lost me.
I guess I need to get my head arround ebay before try to hop skip and jump to adsense,squeeze ect.
Think I might hav to do alot more reading before I type again.
Good luck all.
Wiworri
socrates , im throwing in the towel.after trying to figure out how to make money on line for almost 2 yrs and failing im giveing up.liked your blog tho.take care.ill be unsuscribeing now.
It took me a while to figure that out. It takes a while, but it seems to be working. Great post Socrates!
Socrates,what you wrote here is an idea you have, NOT something you have put into action and found that it works.
The ones of us who are successful at this stuff can spot people who are faking it from a mile away and you are faking this particolar one.
BTW, I started making real money the very moment I gave up on Ebay and Ebooks so here’s the real tip for someone out there.
Thanks for the heads up. I never really thought about using eBay like this before. I have been running PPC campaigns for so long and have wasted my time and money. I have always looked at ways to use eBay to better my sales but don’t have any idea on how to get them to download it from a website straight after they have brought it. I wait then send them an email. I know what your thinking how internet ancient is that, and not a good way to run an eBay store. I know exactly what you mean. I have brought that many eBay programmes over the last few years that promise this and promise that and all have done nothing to help the cause. I am looking forward to seeing how this turns out so far it sounds good hope it lives up to its promise. What I am also looking for is a programme that shows you how to build a web page from start to finsih and how to upload it so I can set up my pages to be linked to the product that I sell from eBay. I know it might be easy but I have brought programmes in the past that promise this and just tell you how to do it not show you.
All The Best
Jason
Australia
do you know something,i think this is the second time someone has pointed out to use ebay, internet as a marketing tool and not for for putting something for sale in the ‘shop window’ i find this very refreshing and honest and it has changed my mentality and my outlook when i look at an opportunity to make $$$$$…
before, when i seen all these ‘opportunity’s i got confused and wondered ‘what’s the best one’to GIVE my hard earned cash to,not any more i am learning little by litte thanks to guy’s like yourself what the ‘MARKET’ is all about,all i can say is thanks
Jack
Hey “Mysterious” John,
Since you are so successful at “this stuff” how come you gave up on ebay and ebooks?
Is it perhaps because you have “failed” in this “particular one” and moved on to something else?
You are not alone. As I mentioned in my post, most people will give up because they do it wrong and it wont work for them.
Congratulations for finding the real money somewhere else.
Mind sharing where?
Everything I post here, is based on my own tests and successes or failures. I also share some of my secrets with a few top marketers in this industry where we test and find out if particular things work or not.
In fact, I own a webhosting service that I built from scratch to $5000/month with this particular strategy. (remember upselling recurring products?)
Anyway, I am not going to get into this deeper here.
If you want to learn more about how I do what I do, stick around.
Maybe you will reconsider using ebay again.
Regards,
Socrates Socratous
Great ideas! lots to consider. Thanks all!
Both Adwords and eBay have too expensive fees for my liking. Also if you include paypal fees. The costs just mount up!
Good ideas Socrates. It seems to be getting harder to even sell a $1 ebook on eBay. Without something on the back end (which I try but am not successful, yet), it can be a losing cause. Charlie
One thing for sure. It definitely takes larger thinking to make larger money anywhere. The internet and ebay are not get rich fast opportunities and both take substantial commitment in time and effort. I appreciate you help and direction.
I agree that eBay is a good way to generate leads. You will probably not make much money on the initial sale if any. This is true of most businesses since they rely on repeat customers.
The first time customer will be you’re most expensive to get. You make money on repeat customers that buy other products or services that you have to offer.
Once you know what your customers are looking for it makes it much easier to sell them something that they need or want later on. The same is true for Adwords.
You know what they say. First impressions are the most important so make sure that you’re first customer gets more then what they paid for.
Another technique that I use on eBay is to leave a contact email address if they have any questions. You cannot promote your website directly through eBay but by leaving a contact email address you can display your website’s address. Some people will visit your website based upon the email address.
One question that was asked here was how to collect multiple leads if your auction only generates one customer.
If you are new to eBay then you can only list an auction item which only one person will be able to buy. They key on eBay is to get a feedback score of 5 using a PayPal account which will then allow you to list your product with a Buy It Now Price.
This is called a Fixed Price format which will allow you to sell the product immediately and not wait for bidders.
Once you get a feedback rating of 30 or more then you can sell more than one item with the Buy It Now Price.
Go to eBay and click on the Help tab then search the help pages using the following:
Selling with a Buy It Now Price
This will explain it in more detail.
Another question that someone had was how to setup a website then fulfill the order automatically.
I use 1and1.com as my hosting provider and they make it very easy to setup a website. I also have written a step by step guide which goes into detail on setting up a website and how to automatically deliver ebooks.
One solution is to use Socrates My Digital Dispatch which is designed specifically to deliver ebooks automatically.
To those of you who are thinking of giving up after not having success I would tell you to go see the movie Pursuit of Happyness.
I’m sure many of you have seen it. It is based upon a true story of someone who never gave up no matter what his circumstances were.
If you have passion and determination then nothing will stop you from succeeding. It takes time and effort to be truly successful at anything in life.
Another book that I highly recommend is Unstoppable by Cynthia Kersey. You can get it at Amazon.com
So if you have not had success as of yet you may need to change what you are doing or maybe take a different approach to the way you are doing it.
Always try and learn from other people like Socrates who have had success.
Socrates, I have just one question – Ebay terms forbid you to sell anything without going through the Ebay system, so how do you overcome this when doing an upsell?
The concept sounds very good and workable, but if you lose your Ebay account because you broke their rules, then it is not as cheap as it appears at first 🙂
I find this topic very interesting indeed as one who has only so far sold solid goods on UK E-Bay (mainly Yankee Candles).
I have the MDD product waiting to upload it to a web site when I have one ready to drive my EBay Info Market traffic – but how do we overcome tofeemaker’s point about each sale – that we may have 700 queries but only one winner of an auction and hence only one e-mail address??
It needs a massive effort in sales to build up a list that way? I must be missing something and there is probably a piece of smart software that can capture the e-mails of “interested parties” when they bid – it wouldn’t be spam to contact someone who bid as they were obviously proving an interest in buying.
John-York-UK
Yeah, Socrates,
#1 thanks for all your response emails.
You’re very helpful and answer every time.
#2 from some of the comments to this blog it is obvious, too many want instant gratification/success and don’t want to put the efforts before it.
Building your own empire on the net is like open a store or starting a company in the “real world”. IT takes time and surprise: “oh my”, work too.
I’m building, learning, making mistakes, since November last year. Accumulated websites, ebooks, domains (over 50 now) and defining some strategies. Now I’m preparing the final jump, just got an ebay store, started an ebook website and now thanks to your help, convinced me to get your MyDD as final tool.
Thanks for this blog, thanks for the positive and negative comments from others. Everything helps, and people: Rome wasn’t build in one day either.
Holger/Costa Rica/pura vida
I am new to all this. Is there a how to sell on e-bay thats free. What are these e-books people are selling about. I need help please…
I know this page of gaining traffic, eBay sucks me dry with all their fees and paypal too! I have come to another way of doing this circumventing all the fees, not from eBay, but using other sources. It’s almost a hands free experience. After presenting Your eBook, then just sit back and let the funds roll in! Socrates, you have taught me much about this. A small or large group of friends or rather, joint ventures, get together on this, back each other up. Have a great testimony page, and offer each other’s items. Also, you must, ( it may be a little time consuming for a week or so, but it pays off) Important, join just about every blog, and group that can be found on google. this is how you will create your traffic, get known, make yourself known, if you don’t only sell eBooks, then present your product as well. leave links everywhere. tell your friends your neighbors, make flyers and hang them in all the local grocery stores that you can! it worked for me. I am not getting an almost annoying amount of traffic. But with MyDD and other joint ventures and of course there are plenty of affiliates on each web site you can join up with,… It’s almost unimaginable how much traffic you can create for yourself in just two simple weeks of hard work. Believe me, it will pay off. After your Marketing Work is done for the week, you can sit back and relax a few days *minus the CSR calls … and it just comes rolling in. Thank you Socrates! And for those of you wondering, NO! this was not a paid advertisement or testimony. 6 Months ago Socrates helped me get focused, and now I am on my way to financial freedom thank you!
Great post. Thanks for smacking me in the side of the head. I see the great lead potential on ebay now. Thank you!!!
Is there a program to search out top eBay keywords? I used to have a link to a free website that would tell you how popular each word was in the description you were looking at using…anyone know what website I am refering to?
John Thornhill also wrote an ebook called the ebook process that talks about capturing leads and generating traffic using ebay. Its a good book.
If anyone can help me out on the ebay keywords program or website just click my name and go to contact page. Thanks a plenty.
Thanks, Socrates (It’s hard to believe that’s your real name; your thinking reminds me of the sharpness of the great philosopher.) In each of your blogs I see an analysis that quickens my hopes.
You also frequently touch on perseverance. I quickly learned sales persistance and made $2,500 to $3,000 every WEEK selling (and training others to sell) – of all things – newspaper subscriptions at temporary store kiosks, universities and sport events. Most people couldn’t grasp the few essential concepts and subtleties that made the difference between a few sales and hundreds of sales a day. I’m hoping to learn how to apply the internet marketing lessons of the experts, such as yourself, to my fledling ebay business. Best, JP
Hey everyone,
wow, what a response…
Let me answer some of your questions.
Question #1. regarding circuvating ebay fees…
Dont try any sneaky things to avoid paying your dues to ebay because they will shut you down.
for example, dont have links outside of ebay to sell your products from your websites.
Having said that, the moment you aquire a customer, that customer becomes YOUR customer and you are allowed to contact them regarding the item they purchased.
Another way of upselling something if you are too scared of ebay closing you down, is to have the item in your store and send the person to buy it from there.
As I said before, you can even call them on the phone AFTER they purchased from you.
Each approach has its applications.
Question #2. Getting 700 clicks to your ad and only selling one item, what happens to the 699 others?
You can have a multiple item auction
You can use the eBay “subscribe to my list” option
you can have a “Classified Ad” type listing
You can offer 2nd chances to all non winning bidders.
There are other methods to take advantage of your clicks as well. We will get to more of these later.
#3 Regarding top eBay keywords, Unless you are getting into a new market and you are looking for the “what’s hot”, such a list wont do much good.
What you need is a list of keywords closely targetted to your product.
You can use the overture tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
You can sign up for wordtracker to perform related searches,
Look into your competitor’s meta tags,
Use the Google Keyword Suggestion tool.
My favorite way of doing this is by examiming the ended listings and analyzing winning listing titles. (hence, spying on your competition)
There is another tool I know of, created by a friend of mine, I will find and post the link later.
Keep your comments and questions coming.
I will be back for more 🙂
Regards,
-Socrates
Hi Socrates.
I did bit on ebay last year seling CDs (games etc) and bit of eBooks. I bought your MyDD and used it for while. I never had great trafic and profit although it kept growing. But I got sick and was in hospital for while. Now I am back and I have to start all again. It is bit overwhelming right now ‘cos I forgot most what I learnt before and have to learn all again. I saw in some post, that you helped somebody to focus on and make money. I will really appreciate if you can help me too. I have some (hopefully) great idea what to do and it will involve to find good hosting. As I was satisfied with your MyDD I suppose that yours hosting will be good value for money. Can you help me a bit with all this? Thanks in advance.
Hi,
I very much liked your points Socrates. I have just started an eBay basic store presenting my country’s (Yemen) unique products. Also I’m interested in eBooks. So I like what you teach here. Thank you.
http://stores.ebay.com/yemen-shop
Hi Socrates,
Like most people on joining this blog, I’ve bought and sold on ebay, and the more you are active on their site the more you seem to want to do both in terms of viewing all those listings in whatever category floats your boat :0) and selling anything you think will make you a decent profit or clear some much needed space at home.
With regards to your mention of keywords in the title the pulse page in ebay is a good reference point for the most searched term in any category, and it breaks it even further down within those keywords so you have say up to 10 words you could potentially use within your title that all having a high rate of searches. Obviously everyone needs to be careful, and not let ebay accuse you of keyword spamming, if you use keywords that don’t really relate to your ad or most importantly your product you could land in with hot water with ebay.
Happy bidding & selling
Gerald
(gezone)
Hi Socrates,
If you have an eBay listing of a digital product. Once customer purchases it and paid, don’t you have to relist it thereby needing human intervention?
Raymond
http://expresslearner.com/
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~raindeer/
Good stuff here.
I just spoke with 2 ladies on ebay live help and they tell me I can have a link to my website in my About Me page. They also told me that yes, I can have my ebook download page as a page from my website. A website template page.
So now after reading the comments above, I’m not sure which way to go.
Also, I was told that just because someone buys an ebook from me, that that doesn’t automatically put them on my mailing list. Is this correct?
Do they not have to opt in for me to put them on my list?
Anyway, thanks for all the pointers.
Trevor
toffeemaker
Regarding your question about capturing leads from page views and non bidders.
The best way is to link from your auction to your ebay about me page.This is within ebay’s terms of service.
You’re allowed to link to any website you like from there or offer a free report with an opt in form.An ebook that thourghly covers this topic is “the silent sales machine hidding on ebay” by jim cockrum.