eBay and your PoD shop - Making Auctions Do Double Duty

Posted on December 9th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, Print on Demand.

I was an eBay seller before I was a CafePress shopkeeper, not a serious seller, just a casual person selling things I owned.

Once I had a few CafePress shops I tried selling some of my CafePress items and didn’t do that well (broke even or didn’t sell the item). I didn’t have an eBay store set up though, I just did normal listings with non html descriptions so the auction presentation admittedly could’ve been a lot better. So in the end it was not really worth it in terms of sheer profit on an item when I still had to pay the base price for the item plus eBay fees.

However, I still occasionally list things on eBay because I think of my auctions more as an advertising expense than a pure profit generator. Here are my reasons why I think of them this way:

1. I mention my store in my About Me page

It is not OK with eBay to put your store link in the auction listing itself but you can add it to your About Me page. By the way, it is also not OK to say in your auction listing “Go to my About Me page for a link to my store”.

2. When I ship out an item I include a link to my store on the packing slip

I use PayPal to generate packing slips for me and I put my thanks and my store url in the area they provide for a note.

3. When I ship out an item I include a flier / catalog type page that promotes related items in my shop.

I’ve created a few versions of a single sheet flier that showcases different items in my shop. I include a coupon code when one is available.

What I haven’t done yet is include information about signing up for my shop’s newsletter. I should add that to the flier I think.

Note that the above methods work even if you are not auctioning off items you actually sell in your shop. I am auctioning off collectible figurines related to my store theme. Chances are if they like an X figurine they may like a t-shirt or sticker or hat, etc about X as well.

At any rate, I tend to use eBay when I can sell things in a batch (less post office trips) and/or when they have a special going on. For example right now they have a free Gallery option until December 12th.

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